The Girl With Nine Lives and The Girl Who Bit Back: The Adventures of Benedict and Blackwell Book 1 & 2

by E. Earle

  The image of flames engulfed my mind as I envisioned that satisfying view. Rum slid down my throat again as a smile finally emerged on my lips.

  I found myself in a pub eventually. The bottle of rum was gone and I was swaying. It takes a lot of rum to get me down and I was impressed with myself. The pub was called The Cove, and was filled with sun bronzed people. I stared at the groups of happy laughing people as they munched down their burgers and cheesy chips. It was quite dark inside, which was what I liked. I sat in the corner, a small round wooden table in front of me. A class of rum and coke was clutched in my hands, cold and wet with condensation.

  What a day.

  I had called my stepdad and asked him to organise a surveyor to come over. I couldn’t do it.

  I had argued with the owner of the pub to let Ben come in. I think he was more surprised than anything, so when I argued that he had dogs inside, he could at least extend the courtesy to Ben and me.

  Ben’s tail was high in the air with indignation as we walked to our seats. I think he was fine now. I had ordered fish and chips and shared. He loved battered fish.

  I pulled out the catnip toy from my pocket and let him pounce on it, as I watched him rub his cheeks with it and start to purr. He made me smile as I put an arm around him.

  I was just about to take another swig of my rum when I saw Brynn O’Connell standing in front of me.

  “You ok?” he asked, a dark eyebrow upraised, an evident knowledge pasted all over his face that, no, I was not ok.

  I mumbled something and slurped my drink. Ben ignored him. “I am just dandy,” I said, slamming my now empty glass on the table. It was nice to have a blow out once in a while.

  “Mind if I sit down?” he asked, gesturing to a stool.

  I stared at him, remembering that morning and shifted uncomfortably at the memory. He had seen my pants. I shrugged, pretending I didn’t care.

  He sat and took a breath, staring at Ben as he rolled on his back, batting his toy between his paws.

  “This is Benedict,” I said very formally, gesturing to the once composed cat. “He likes catnip.”

  Brynn laughed. “Who doesn’t?”

  I raised an eyebrow and he stopped.

  “Yeah, well,” he continued, “I’ve had a talk with the guys, and I think it would be good if we had a staff meeting- you know? Just to introduce you and…”

  “Benedict.”

  “Benedict… we can talk about what we can do with the place.”

  I nodded, taking a breath. “Right…”

  “You do want to do something with it right?” he asked, trying to act nonchalant.

  My eyes met his and I could see the worry there. He was concerned for his job and that made me feel all the worse. I groaned and put my head in my hands. Now all of these people’s livelihoods were on my shoulders. How, for the love of God, was I supposed to get through this?

  “Ok, fine,” I announced. “We’ll do it- tomorrow morning…afternoon. Late afternoon. We’ll talk.”

  He left shortly after that and I continued to drink. I think he knew that there was no way he could help me tonight. I didn’t want help. I wanted to drown in the rum and darkness that it promised. Ben’s pale gold eyes stared at me as I ordered more drinks. He didn’t judge me. He didn’t tell me to stop. He just watched and let me seek the oblivion I needed for this one night.

  And I loved him for it.

  If I thought that Brynn was gone when I walked out of the pub, I was very much mistaken. He was sitting there with a book waiting for me. He looked at his watch then back to me, his face grim and set.

  “What are you… doing here?” I slurred.

  “I figured you could use a hand getting home,” he said.

  I frowned. He had been back to the lodge. His hair was slightly wet and he had changed his shirt. A half empty (or half full, depending on your viewpoint) glass of cider was on the table he had been sitting at. He had been to the bar? I hadn’t seen him.

  “Home?” I mumbled, rubbing my forehead. “You’re taking me back to Nuneaton?”

  “No,” he said softly, taking my arm. “Back to Craggys.”

  I wrenched my arm away from him, furious suddenly. “Craggys is not home,” I growled. “And it will never be home, all right? It’s your place, not mine. Never mine.”

  He stared back at me, his face hardened. I hated seeing that flash of pity there and I looked away. Ben meowed at my feet and I just about caught him in time as he jumped up at me. His purring immediately calmed me down. I hugged him close to my face and started walking away from the pub.

  “Err, Ellena, it’s that way,” called Brynn.

  I frowned and turned left. “I know,” I snapped and turned in the right direction. “What? Can’t a girl take a detour?”

  The next morning, I found myself tucked in bed, Ben half lying on my face. I groaned and reached out for my phone. What I grasped was a godly glass of water. I gulped it down immediately and lay back down, not remembering even pouring it.

  Dear God, I felt bad.

  We slept for a few more hours; Ben curled up against my stomach when I told him what I would do to his new balls if he didn’t get off my face. Someone knocked on the door and I ignored it. I glanced at my watch as they knocked again.

  “Bloody hell,” I moaned again. “It’s nearly one o’clock.”

  “Meeting,” meowed Ben sleepily. “Food first.”

  More knocking.

  “Argh! What?” I growled.

  The door opened in answer. Jessica poked her head in. “Um, everyone’s waiting downstairs for you,” she said sheepishly.

  I frowned. “I thought we were meeting late afternoon…?”

  She blushed. “We thought this would be… Brynn’s got a surfing class later so we had to do it now…”

  I swallowed and closed my eyes, wishing for the world to end there and then. I hadn’t felt this bad for a long time. “Ok,” I muttered. “I’ll be down in ten minutes, is that ok?”

  She nodded and hesitated. “Do you want a bacon sandwich doing?”

  I could only blink in yes. Moving my head hurt too much. She smiled nervously again and was gone.

  “You should have told me to stop drinking,” I growled at Ben.

  “You should hurry up,” retorted Ben jumping off me. “She’s doing us bacon? Can I have some of yours?”

  Muttering obscenities, I threw the covers off me, wondering why I still had last night’s clothes on. In fact, I couldn’t even remember getting into bed?

  “Dear God, please don’t tell me he put me to bed,” I moaned, putting my head into my hands. That was the last thing I needed, was for the manager to think of me as some incapable drunkard. Swearing, I started to get ready. My hair was a big mess so I put it up in a quick messy braid and pinned it in place- sounds complicated, but it was the fastest thing I could do. I sprayed deodorant, washed my face, brushed my teeth and put a bit of lippie and mascara on. I threw on the easiest thing I could, which just so happened to be a flattering dark purple dress that showed off my shoulders. I wasn’t trying to impress- I was being lazy and couldn’t be bothered to find my leggings.

  “Come on, Ben,” I said, spraying on some perfume. He wanted to look his best and had been licking himself none stop.

  “I think I had too much catnip,” he said trotting ahead of me.

  The “team” of Craggys stared back at me expectantly. There were six members of staff. One chef, two waitresses/barmaids, Charlotte and Jessica, Brynn and Jack the Surfmasters and Donny the handyman who also liked to deal with bookings now and again.

  The team was small, but they were people that I was now responsible for. I could tell on their faces that they were worried. They had on me fixed eyes of disappointment. They expected someone older, more experienced- someone with money- or did they? They now knew that I couldn’t sell the place. There was no way I could walk away from here with £60k in debt without trying to turn the place over.

  “Right,
” I breathed, Ben purring in my lap. “I’m Ellena if you haven’t all met me before, which you have.”

  They nodded and didn’t say anything. I puffed air from my cheeks. Jessica trotted from the shack and set a hot bacon batch in front of me. Ben’s ears perked up immediately and the traitor had gone straight from my lap to the prime seat before my breakfast.

  I sighed, opened it up and gestured for him to take the bacon.

  “This,” I said raising my eyebrows, “is Ben. But if you want to get on his good side, you’d better call him Benedict.”

  I glanced up and saw that Ben had indeed stolen all of the attention. Good job- I was finding their disappointed stares difficult to handle. Oh dear, had I just displayed myself as a crazy cat lady?

  “Are you selling the place?” Jack asked suddenly, his crossed arms becoming uncrossed, crossed again, behind his back and then awkwardly shoved in his pockets.

  I waited for him to settle himself before answering. “No,” I said. “I’m not selling Craggys.”

  They all immediately seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, a weight lifted from their shoulders.

  “This place needs to make money,” I said grimly before they relaxed. “It can’t stay like this. Do you have any ideas?”

  Again, their expressions switched- into something I wasn’t expecting. Surprise.

  “You want to know what we think?” Jack asked, bewildered.

  I blinked in surprise. “Of course.”

  They exchanged glances, except Brynn. He was staring at me solidly with his arms crossed over his chest. I couldn’t read his expression but I tried not to stare. I was embarrassed beyond hell.

  Jessica was the first to speak. “I paint,” she said slowly. “I could liven up the place a bit if you like?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’d be great.” I reached out and saved some bacon for myself before Ben ate it all. He looked at me ruefully. “We’re going to have to do a lot to drum up local interest in restoring Craggys,” I continued after taking a huge bite of bacon batch. “Get donations and the such. Is anyone in contact with the papers?”

  Again, the bewildered look. I was about to move on when Donny coughed. Donny was a man in his late fifties and looked as though his skin had never been absent from the sun’s rays. He was brown all over, freckles not sparing one part of his skin that was visible. He stank of tobacco, but for some reason, I liked that about him- mainly because he used a pipe and I hadn’t seen one being used before.

  “My missus writes a column for the church paper,” he grumbled. “She could probably get something in for this Sunday.”

  I nodded. “That’d be great. I’ll write something up and pass it to her- see if she can use anything from it. Any other ideas?”

  “We could keep the bar open longer?” Charlotte piped up reluctantly. “We don’t usually, but there is demand for it and it’d bring in more sales.”

  “Yeah, I like that,” I agreed. “Do promotions, themed nights- whatever you want. Competitions, quiz nights, karaoke, bands that will play free- open mic night, that sort of thing.”

  Discussion rose up for the next five minutes about Jack’s band and how the pub down the road (that I learnt was the one I got pissed in) wouldn’t let local talent play. I was encouraged to hear enthusiasm creep into everyone’s voices. Everyone but Brynn’s. He was still staring at me oddly.

  I met his stare dead on, raising an eyebrow in challenge. Was there something he didn’t like that I was doing?

  “Why hasn’t this stuff been done before?” I asked him. “This seems like a simple set of ideas that could have been put into action a long time ago.”

  But Brynn didn’t answer me. It was Jack.

  “Marshall didn’t want us to change anything. I don’t think he was bothered about the place- but he didn’t want us to take any risks either.” He crossed his arms again. “I don’t think he was very experienced with pubs or such.”

  I frowned. Why the hell wouldn’t someone want a place to be successful? Then I took the plunge. “Did Barry ever come down?”

  “The owner?” Jack shook his head then, blonde dreadlocks waving. “Nah, he never came down. He called once or twice but never bothered to check it out.”

  This really didn’t make any sense. Why buy a place, never see it and then let it fall into ruin? It seemed a bit too elaborate thing to do to just buy a place to screw over your biological daughters.

  I shook my head and then reached for rum and coke that wasn’t there. I sneered at the pot of tea as I dumped two sugars into my cup.

  “I think the potential is there to make it great,” Donny piped in, his gravelly voice making me look up from my tea. “When the recession hit, I don’t think Barry or Marshall had the funds to invest in the place and…” he shrugged. “Well, it just fell into disrepair. I’ve done my best to keep it intact,” he said, pulling out that wonderful shining pipe. “But without money…” he left the sentence unfinished and threw me a wink.

  “We’re screwed,” I finished for him.

  My online banking account had £1k in it- just about. I bit my lip, thinking about what I could do with it. The money we were making at the moment was just paying for the wages and didn’t even cover half of the bills- not to mention the loans that Barry had pulled out to cover the place and the money that needed to repair the place.

  I had to make this place work for itself.

  Now.

  I never asked what Brynn could bring to the table. I would have liked to have heard his suggestions, but I was planning on talking to him at some point. My skin prickled, knowing that he was still watching me. Forcing my body to stop moving uncomfortably, I pasted a fake confident smile on my face.

  The surveyor came the next day and walked around with me and Donny, talking to us about what needed to be done. It was pretty much the same that the last guy had quoted us, and afterwards I was feeling thoroughly depressed. But I liked being proactive and wrote up a news story for the local paper, a Christian aid request for the church paper, which Donny’s girlfriend could tweak, and I managed to get a load of flyers made with Jessica, asking for donations and supplies.

  Jack’s dad was a painter and decorator so there were tubs of half used paint for projects that they didn’t need anymore.

  I raised my eyebrows at the assortment of colours as the team sat in the front bar. We had shut early that day- the only customers being two couples from Spain who had come for a surfing holiday. I hadn’t seen Brynn at all. I don’t know what he had been doing, and I was yet to see his contribution towards the place.

  He was constantly outside on the beach.

  “Is there something you reckon you can do with this?” I asked Jessica dubiously.

  She was smiling, flushed with excitement and nervousness. “Oh yes- I can pretty much make any colour out of this lot.”

  “What you gonna do?” I asked her curiously, brushing the sand from my knees.

  Her smile dropped. “What do you want done?”

  I shrugged. “Anything,” I said. I looked around at the sea shells stuck onto the wall and the old mural of people surfing. “It looks a bit like a hippie shack at the moment,” I mused. “Let’s not do anything by half-baked measures, yeah? Let’s go all out.”

  “What? Really?”

  “Yep,” I said, standing up. Ben had found a spot of sunshine on the floor and had stretched himself out with a feline grin on his face. “If you want to paint a mermaid on the wall with dreadlocks and a tambourine- you go for it.”

  I realised then that this wasn’t just my home. I shook the thought away angrily as quickly as it had come. It wasn’t my home, I corrected myself. But it was for these people. They lived and worked here. I had to put the effort in and at least try to make this work.

  I left her to it before she could say anything else. I had to sit down with Charlotte. Charlotte had suggested doing a Twitter and Facebook page for Craggys. We agreed that promotion was important to get more business. I left her wit
h instructions to set us up the social sites as well as a normal website and walked outside to catch a breath.

  Donny was down at the church pinning up the rest of the flyers we had made about donations with his girlfriend, who I hadn’t met yet but had spoken on the phone with. She had sounded very enthusiastic about getting a story sorted. I’m not sure whether she was happy that I had already prepared something for the church news, but I assured her she could take from it and even rewrite it if she wished.

  The next morning, I missed Brynn again. He was out with the Spanish couples for the morning surf with Jack.

  Craggys had four floors and a basement. There were four bedrooms on each of the top two floors, and I was surprised to learn that Jack was living in a caravan down the road from the surfer shack. Jessica and Charlotte shared the biggest room in the attic, which left a room for me and a room for Brynn. Donny lived in a small outbuilding on the property and showed me around.

  There were three small outbuildings at the side of Craggys, which stored junk basically. Old tables and chairs, broken surfboards, other surfing equipment, smelly wetsuits and two old fridges. I sighed as Donny locked the doors. There was potential, so much potential. But money was needed.

  Donny’s small outbuilding was surprisingly cosy. A small electric heater was in the corner of the room and in the other corner was a small makeshift gas stove. It didn’t look particularly safe, but that was for another discussion. There was also an outside toilet, which Donny informed me suited him just fine. I thanked him for the excess of information and admired his photograph covered walls.

  “These are amazing,” I breathed, skimming my hands over the black and white pictures of people surfing.