The Little B & B at Cove End

‘Have you?’ the man said. ‘It does say B&B on your sign. And vacancies.’

‘Yes, I know it does,’ Cara said. ‘But it was a try-out with the sign, and really I’m not quite ready for guests. I was just about to put the polisher over the parquet.’ She opened the door wider so that the middle-aged couple could see the tatty state of the hall floor and her still-denuded walls. ‘I’m in the middle of redecorating,’ she lied.

‘Well, it looks clean enough to me,’ the woman said, ‘so can we come in? We’ve tried the pub but they don’t do rooms, and that place called…what was it, the Lookout?… is fully booked, and the Information Office is closed. I know I sound desperate and really we would be so …’

Cara took a deep breath. She hadn’t really prepared herself for how it might feel to have strangers in her home. But she had to start her fledgling business some time. She hoped Mae wouldn’t be too shocked – or cross – to find strangers in the house already when she got back from her date with Josh.

‘A double,’ the man said, as though to remind Cara of what she’d been asked.

‘Yes, I’ve got a double room,’ she said. ‘Do come in, if you don’t mind the fact the walls are less than perfect. My paintings are in storage while I redecorate …’

‘A bit of faded wall won’t bother us, will it, Eddie?’ the woman said.

Cara did a mental inventory of the linen cupboard. The best was an Egyptian cotton duvet cover and matching sheets and pillowcases, which was on her own bed – a luxurious treat to herself, a bit of spoiling now that Mark was gone. But the lilac floral was clean and aired and would have to do. No matching towels, but she couldn’t worry about that now.

‘I’ll get a room ready for you as quick as I can.’ She opened the door wider and ushered them in. ‘I’m Cara, by the way.’

She proffered her hand first to the woman, and then the man.

‘Pam and Eddie Hine,’ the woman said. ‘Pleased to meet you, and I mean really pleased. We thought we were going to have to sleep in the car, didn’t we, Ed?’

‘Yes, love,’ Eddie said, looking fondly at Pam as a flush reddened the side of his neck.

Well, well,well, Cara thought. I’ll bet my last £223.26 that these two aren’t married, despite making a good display of being newlyweds. She glanced at Pam’s wedding finger where a wide gold band shone brightly in the lights from the hall. And that look, and that flush of Eddie’s, brought a lump to Cara’s throat that was threatening to choke her. She saw herself trapped, in limbo, between fifteen-year-old Mae’s calf-love for Josh, and Eddie and Pam at the other end of the spectrum.

And her own love for Mark stripped bare, sucked from her by his gambling.

‘Will you want the full English breakfast?’ Cara croaked.

‘Lovely,’ Pam said. ‘We don’t usually have a fried breakfast when we’re at home, do we, Ed?’

‘No, love,’ Eddie said. ‘But we’re not at home now, are we?’

‘No, we’re not,’ Pam giggled, which made Cara’s oneness more painful, and she felt herself invisible, a not-really-wanted witness to their coupledom.

‘Right,’ Cara said, battling to look like a real B&B hostess, ‘I’ll show you where the sitting room is and then I’ll make you a cup of tea while I get your room ready. The downstairs cloakroom is over there,’ she went on, pointing, and metaphorically crossing her fingers it was as squeaky clean as it usually was. ‘After that, I’ll need to pop to the shop to get the wherewithal for a cooked breakfast because, as I said, I wasn’t expecting guests so soon.’

At least the sitting room was nicely appointed. Mark hadn’t had room to take the flat screen TV or what was left of the silver that had been Cara’s grandmother’s, although Mark had already squirreled a fair bit of that out of the house and sold it, much to Cara’s annoyance at the time.

‘You do that, Cara,’ Pam said as Cara ushered them into the sitting room and urged them to make themselves comfortable. ‘We’ll be as happy in pigs in muck here while we wait.’

‘I’ll make you a cup of tea. Then ten minutes to sort your room, another fifteen or so while I pop to the shops and…’

‘Don’t panic, Cara,’ Pam interrupted, laying a gentle hand on Cara’s arm. ‘We’ll be just fine while you pop out or our names aren’t Pam and Eddie Hine.’

‘Lovely in here it is, Ed,’ Cara heard Pam say as she walked towards the door that led into the hall. ‘Quality. Lovely curtains and everything. Comfy cushions. Very high end, designer.’

A warm glow spread across Cara’s shoulders. She’d made those curtains. And the cushion covers. Rosie was always telling her she should take up sewing and make a business of it … well, maybe if the B&B business didn’t take off, she would. She left Pam and Eddie Hine cooing over her lovely sitting room and went to make the tea.

Cara ran along Higher Street praying she’d catch the corner shop before it closed for the night. The sky was beginning to darken, that lovely indigo shade shot through with fuchsia pink that Cara loved, and which usually meant that tomorrow would be a fine day. She speeded up as she saw Meg Smythson walk towards the door of her shop, as though she was about to lock up. But Meg had seen Cara and held the door open for her to go in.

‘Well, fancy,’ Meg said. ‘I had your Mae in here earlier. Lovely girl, your Mae. Where does she get those dresses she wears?’

Mae had been to the shop? Cara wondered what for, and what she might have bought, not that she had a lot to buy anything with, but the bank was paying Cara a small widow’s pension, even though it wasn’t stretching very far and Cara liked to give Mae a bit of pocket money.

‘Charity shops,’ Cara said. ‘And a stall in Totnes Market. And she’s had some of it for ages, waiting to grow into it.’

‘Well, she looks stunning in them,’ Meg said. ‘And is going to be more beautiful still once she’s finished her growing. With that Josh Maynard, she was.’

Cara didn’t like the way Meg had put the word ‘that’ in front of Josh’s name, as though he was something best left in the gutter.

‘I know. She’s going out with him.’

‘Bit of a disappointment to his dad is that Josh,’ Meg said. ‘Wanted university for his son, he did, but all that was in Josh’s head was surfing and earning money and he was having none of it. Never going to get rich gardening, is he?’

Cara suddenly felt defensive of Josh. She didn’t like his character being ripped to shreds by Meg, any more than she’d liked it when Mae had been dismissive of Rosie.

‘Monty Don seems to do very well from gardening on TV,’ Cara said. She had a ‘bit of a thing’ for Monty Don as she imagined many viewers did.

‘Another world, that, TV,’ Meg countered, her voice dripping with disdain. ‘Hardly Larracombe, is it? A bit of lawn-mowing for the Thrupps at Barley Mead, and a quick strim around the edge of the graves up at St Peter’s.’

Cara’s blood seemed to chill in her veins at that last remark – Mark was buried in the graveyard at St Peter’s. She hadn’t been there for a while to lay flowers or just to stand there and talk to him, tell him how sorry she was for everything that had happened between them. She wondered if Mae had. She could ask, of course, but Mae thought questions like that were an intrusion so Cara tended to hold back. But right now Cara didn’t really have the time or the inclination to be getting into any sort of philosophical argument with Meg about gardening and TV and she could only think that life wasn’t too exciting amongst the pre-packaged potatoes and the newspapers and the bars of Cadbury Milk, and that when Meg did manage to get an audience she liked to share an opinion or two.

‘Have you ever asked Josh if he wants to be rich?’ Cara asked. ‘Or if, perhaps, he’s happy working the soil, growing things?’

Meg Smythson bridled.

‘Well, all I’m saying is,’ Meg said, leaning closer towards Cara as though someone might overhear her even though there was no one else in her shop, ‘I know I’m telling tales out of school, and that Josh can charm the birds from the trees, but it was alcohol he was buying.’

‘And is legally able to do so,’ Cara said. ‘He’s over eighteen.’

‘Ah yes,’ Meg said. ‘I know that.’ She tapped the side of her nose. ‘And he assured me it was for his parents’ consumption, if you know what I mean.’

Cara knew. Meg Smythson was implying that Mae would be given a share of the wine and none of it would be going back to the rectory.

‘Eggs,’ Cara said. ‘I’d like half a dozen large eggs if you’ve got them. And a packet of best back bacon. Sausages – chipolatas if you have them. Oh, and a thick sliced loaf. Please.’

There were, Cara knew, a couple of tomatoes in the salad box of the fridge that had gone a bit soft but which would be perfect to go with a fried breakfast, and there was an unopened jar of marmalade in the cupboard, won at Mae’s school winter fair, and neither of them liked marmalade, so that would have to do.

‘And a dozen or so mushrooms,’ Cara added, as she spied a basket on the counter with milky-white button mushrooms in it.

‘Got guests, have you?’ Meg said, taking a packet of bacon from the fridge and handing it to Cara. ‘I saw the sign. You’ve had the council people in, hygiene and that, I expect?’

‘Er, yes. Of course,’ Cara said, hoping Meg wouldn’t realise the word ‘yes’ wasn’t the answer to both questions. How had she completely overlooked the possibility that she might have to be registered to take in B&B guests and have her kitchen and bathrooms passed for hygiene?

Well, that’s what widowhood did to you, wasn’t it? It deprived you of rational thinking for a while at least. And widowhood, mixed with the terrible guilt that Mark wouldn’t have died had she not asked him to leave, was threatening to overwhelm her now. She made a show of examining a tin of chicken curry on the shelf beside her, just for something to do – so she wouldn’t have to look Meg Smythson in the eye and run the risk that Meg would know she was lying.

‘Good,’ Meg said. ‘Because if you haven’t had the hygiene people in before guests arrive, then they take a very dim view of the whole thing. A very dim view.’