Author
Polly Babbington
In a little white Summer House at the back of the garden, under the shade of a huge old tree, Polly Babbington creates romantic feel-good stories including The Boat House PRETTY BEACH.
Polly went to college in the Garden of England and her writing career began by creating articles for magazines and publishing books online.
Polly loves to read in the cool of lazing in a hammock under an old fruit tree on a summertime morning or cozying up in the Winter under a quilt by the fire.
She lives in delightful countryside near the sea, in a sweet little village complete with a gorgeous old cricket pitch, village green with a few lovely old pubs and writes cosy romance books about women whose life you sometimes wished was yours.
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@PollyBabbingtonWrites
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Secret Evenings
in Pretty Beach
Polly Babbington
Copyright
© Copyright 2021 Polly Babbington
Pretty Beach Kindle Edition
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
CONTENT
Author
Copyright
CONTENT
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Book for Babbettes
Hello!
Chapter 1
Lottie Cloudberry pulled her floaty trench coat out of her basket and put it on over her boyfriend jeans and white shirt as tiny droplets of rain began to fall from the bright, late March sky. She walked all the way along Pretty Beach laneway under her nearly-as-big-as-her umbrella as raindrops plopped down onto her navy-blue wellies. She smiled at a few Pretty Beach locals here and there, and nodded hello to Holly as she passed the bakery.
Lottie loved rain, mostly because she loved what it did to her garden. She enjoyed the raindrops and how they made everything smell as she sloshed along the pavement, enjoying her stroll through the part of Pretty Beach known as Mermaids, past what was going to be her friend Juliette’s new home, and headed back home towards her house on Strawberry Hill in Pretty Beach Old Town.
She approached the Old Town as cars sped beside her in the rain and walked along through the shops, looked in the window of Pretty Beach Hospice shop, decided she couldn’t even afford to go in, and carried on walking over to Strawberry Hill Lane.
Lottie stopped at the bottom of Strawberry Hill and looked up at the beautiful row of huge five-storey Victorian villas looming majestically over her. The one with the grey-blue peeling paint and overgrown garden a few doors up was waiting for its new owners, Sallie and Ben, to move in, and as Lottie’s eyes slowly wandered up to her house at the other end, she took a deep breath in and hoped that she and her boys wouldn’t be the next ones who had to move out of Strawberry Hill Lane because of debt like the owners of Strawberry Hill House had.
She walked up the steep wet pavement, the rainwater trickling in a stream down the gutter, and strolled past the black railings of the houses next door to hers, and then lastly to her house at the very end. As she looked through the railings she noted that, as usual, the garden was immaculate, but the house itself was starting to veer into the territory of what could only be described as decidedly tatty. And that wouldn’t do in Strawberry Hill Lane, one of the most exclusive areas of Pretty Beach.
Lottie had done what she could to keep the things she could do herself in good repair, but the exterior walls and upper floor windows were desperately in need of paint and there was no way she could afford anyone in to paint and decorate. Everything in the house and garden was down to her and she was getting to the stage where the bills were touch and go every month. So, painting the outside of the house was right down at the bottom of her list along with a new car and new clothes. Lottie sighed as she looked up at the house. Something was going to have to change.
Lottie pushed open the gate. At least that was shiny and well kept - she’d re-painted it in a dry spell a few months before and it had come up beautifully. She walked up the tessellated path to the enormous double front door and smiled: the sight of the beautiful house still made her feel very fortunate every time she came home. As she pushed it open she nodded and muttered to herself. She really could not bear to lose the house; meaning she had to find a way to make money and it needed to be soon.
Each side of the path up to the front door groaned with hundreds of daffodils, and meticulously selected pots of all different sizes sat either side of the front door each planted with an array of tulips in various unusual colours and sizes. The tulips and daffodils seemed to nod and bow their heads in greeting to her agreeing that she needed to keep the house.
As Lottie put her key in the lock and pushed the huge old brass knob to open the door, she mumbled to herself at the worn paint and scuffs on the bottom of the skirting boards - even though they were currently away boarding, three teenage boys did that to a house. She made a mental note that painting the hallway would be next on her list. Her very long list of never-ending jobs that always needed doing.
Lottie put her basket over the hallway bannister, walked all the way down to the end, and opened the door to the kitchen. As warm air from the Aga hit her she sighed; she really didn't want to have to lose the place. Really didn’t want to have to leave the beautiful handmade kitchen she’d designed and had fitted when she had first moved in with Charlie all those years ago.
Lottie sat on an old Bentwood chair at the table in the middle of her huge kitchen, looked over at the creamy-white Aga to her right, and shook her head. What was she going to do? Something needed to change or she would definitely have to put the beautiful old house up for sale, and she didn’t want that. She wanted
to remain on Strawberry Hill Lane until she was an old lady, pottering around spending all day gardening, riding a bicycle around, and making cakes.
She put her tortoiseshell glasses on and looked down at the pile of letters neatly stacked on top of the lovely old antique table and then, sighing, got up to make a cup of tea. She walked over to the sink, filled the kettle with water, lifted the lid of the Aga, and put the kettle on the hotplate. She would make a nice cup of tea and then start to make an action list. A list with some solutions as to how she was going to avoid getting into any mess with debt and remain where she was.
Since her husband Charlie had passed away she’d done a good job to keep her head above water and she wasn’t going to let that change anytime soon.
Chapter 2
Lottie took a white mug with an L on the front from the cupboard, poured tea from the teapot and sat back down at the table in the middle of the kitchen. She picked up the pile of papers again and flicked through the two letters and pamphlets that were sitting neatly in front of her waiting to be actioned. She knew exactly what was in the letters. One was a bill for school extras and the other one was most probably a red for her electricity bill.
She knew she had enough to pay both; her finances and accounting were a finely tuned machine and paying things on the red meant that she was never in debt and all the balls were kept in the air. Just. But it was getting to the stage that the balls in the air were more and more precarious and she didn’t want to play the game any longer. She was sick of having to control it all.
Lottie took her laptop out of the cupboard, opened it, calculated the balances on her accounts and stared at the screen. Yes, all was good. But how long could she go on with the stress of it every month? Every day, even? She felt as if she was constantly checking on her finances, and always chasing her tail. Lottie swallowed and had to admit to herself something she’d been putting off for ages; she was simply going to have to look for another job after she’d finally walked out of the last one and never gone back.
Lottie had been working in a dreadful, soul-destroying job at a cosmetics company in Newport Reef, but she’d finally had enough and now as she sat at the kitchen table staring out into the garden she wondered if she’d done the right thing by walking out.
Getting a job and ensuring an income hadn’t mattered so much in the first few years after her husband, Charlie, had passed away when the boys were small. In those early days there had been enough money to get by, what with the mortgage being paid off, the boys’ schooling all paid for, and a couple of life insurance policies Charlie had taken out years before kicking in. But even without a mortgage, having no job and three boys to look after the money hadn’t gone as far as she’d thought, and over the years it had slowly, but surely, begun to dwindle.
Lottie had watched her finances like a hawk and once she’d seen the lump sum of money from the insurance get a dent in it she’d taken action and decided that she had to find a job. So she’d set out to look for something, but as a stay-at-home mum since she was twenty and having no job experience whatsoever, finding a job to fit in with parenting had been no mean feat, and not much at all had come her way.
Rejection after rejection had followed her multitude of applications, even if the jobs she’d applied for bothered to get back to her at all. On top of whether or not she would even get an interview, once she’d started to look into how she would juggle the boys and a job, she’d soon realised that the after-school care involved for the three boys very nearly cancelled out the amount she could earn. It was a horrible conundrum to be in and she hadn’t been able to see a way out.
The government hadn't been any help either - having the huge asset of the house on Strawberry Hill, they weren’t even interested in her situation. In fact, the woman behind the desk at the appointment Lottie had made to see if she could get any assistance had actually sneered. Sitting behind the screen at the counter the woman had laughed out loud at Lottie’s predicament and her five-storey paid-off house on Strawberry Hill.
Lottie put her head in her hands. She knew she could have it worse, but the boys had already lost their dad and she really didn't want to add losing their house onto that too. Plus, she’d lived in the house since she was nineteen, and there didn’t seem to be anywhere else that would ever feel like home.
With no luck finding a job that worked with the boys and just when she had been thinking that the house would have to go, a couple of pieces of what she had then thought of as luck had come her way.
The first was that her little hobby of cooking had turned into a bit of a side income. A high-flying retail CEO who was also one of the mums at the school had come round one night to pick up her son from a play date, seen a pile of lasagnes Lottie had batch-cooked for the freezer, and asked Lottie if she could possibly buy one from her. Lottie had scoffed at taking payment and wrapped up the lasagne and passed it over. The next day the woman had messaged her, exclaiming that the lasagne was the best she’d ever had, and could she possibly buy more? Lottie had laughed, provided more lasagnes, curries, and cottage pies and the word had slowly spread until she had a small round of customers and a waiting list of families eager to be on her books.
And on top of that, she’d finally got a job. Someone she knew through the Pretty Beach Gardening Club whose daughter-in-law owned a cosmeceuticals company had told her about a part-time job in the marketing department of the company in their offices in Newport Reef. Lottie had applied for the job thinking she wouldn't even hear back, but not only had she got an interview, she’d got the job.
So, with the combination of the homemade dinner clients and the part-time job for a few years, the dent in the pot of money plateaued and Lottie filled her days with cooking meals for her clients, working part-time, and the rest of the time when she wasn’t parenting was spent in the garden.
That little scenario now, though, had come to an abrupt end - the part-time job had turned out to be a part-time nightmare and Lottie had hated every single minute of it. The principal problem being one main thing. One main thing going by the name of Stephanie Beady.
Stephanie Beady was Head of Marketing at the small company and had wheedled her way into the job somehow based on her social media degree. She’d gone for the job using big words about digital media and social engagement and got the position because nobody else in the small company had a clue what she was actually talking about. And oh how she had milked that.
It wasn’t that much of a big deal but the fancy title of ‘Head of Marketing’ had made it sound like it was. In reality, ‘Head of Marketing’ meant that Stephanie Beady had a stand-up desk which was slightly bigger than the two other members of staff, and had an assistant two days a week. And that assistant just so happened to be Lottie.
Lottie had started the job with a combination of utter joy and gratefulness which had very quickly turned sour. Turned sour because Ms Stephanie Beady was a nightmare - a nasty, neurotic piece of work who wrapped up her narcissism in being ‘shy’ and unfortunately, most people fell for it.
A few months in and Stephanie Beady’s conduct was not good for Lottie, and Lottie had begun to abhor the two days a week she was forced to spend under the dark-grey cloud of Stephanie Beady.
Stephanie, ‘please do not call me Steph,’ Beady, liked to keep her part-time assistant very nicely under her control at all times. It all started as soon as Lottie arrived through the door in the mornings. Stephanie would produce a comprehensive list for Lottie every single day, neatly printed out and taped to the front of Lottie’s computer screen, so before she’d even sat down there was a list of things she had to do.
Alongside the print out on paper taped to Lottie’s screen, Stephanie would document the same list in an accompanying spreadsheet, and just in case either of those wasn’t enough, Stephanie added all the jobs into an online organiser too.
Lottie had quickly worked out that it took three times as long for Stephanie Beady to produce the work lists for Lottie than it did for
Lottie to actually do them. And who needed a list to tell you to ‘check the emails in the social media account?’
As the months had gone by Lottie had begun to detest working with Stephanie more and more. Stephanie would position herself just so at her stand-up desk and constantly pushed her fingers into a cake shaped stress ball by her side. She would flick her long, thick wiry blonde hair over her shoulders, examine her split ends studiously, and after twenty minutes of procrastination would start to type away furiously on her computer.
What it hadn’t taken long for Lottie to work out was that Stephanie was spending most of her time sending emails to Lottie and a co-worker who worked in accounts. Quite often Lottie, who sat one desk away from Stephanie, would receive thirty emails from her in an hour.
Lottie, having no skills as such to put on a curriculum vitae and no work experience whatsoever, had stuck it out for two incredibly long years. Two excruciatingly prolonged years where Stephanie Beady would monitor Lottie’s every move.
Every single part of Lottie’s days and her movement would need to be evidenced for Stephanie. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 3pm and 4pm Stephanie would put into play the ‘Hour of Power’ she’d learnt from a textbook at uni where Lottie Cloudberry was not allowed to move from her seat or even permitted to go to the loo.
Lottie had put up with Stephanie Beady because she thought that she’d never be able to get another job. Put up with her because she needed the money. Put up with her because she didn’t value herself and her skills anywhere near enough.
And then one Thursday afternoon at 3pm, when Stephanie was standing at her desk pushing her finger repeatedly into her stress ball cake and peering down at Lottie beside her, asking her if she was ready for the power hour, Lottie had felt something snap.
Lottie had received an email at 2.58pm to ask her if she’d had been to the toilet yet and as she’d read it, Lottie had gathered her things, got up from her desk, picked up her bag, and pushed back her chair.
‘Lottie, where do you think you are going? It’s 3pm and you can’t move until 4pm, remember?’ Stephanie Beady had exclaimed indignantly with a smirk while she pressed furiously on the stress ball cake.
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