The Cornish Guest House (10 page)

‘I really want this job,’ Shelley said suddenly, staring straight at her potential boss for the first time. ‘I’ve got two kids, you see, and my husband was made redundant a while back and he can’t work ’cause of his depression…’

Her voice trailed off and she cracked her bony knuckles nervously. She was perched so precariously on the edge of the chair that it looked as if she might fall off.

‘Please…’

Their eyes met and Tabitha gave a start of recognition. She knew that look – it was desperation. In an instant her mind was made up.

‘When can you begin?’ she asked, straightening. If she were making a mistake, so be it; she’d far rather the job went to someone who needed it.

Shelley’s face broke into a smile for the first time and she looked almost pretty. ‘You mean you’re going to take me on? I’ll work really hard, I won’t stop, and you won’t have no complaints. I won’t let you down, I promise.’

It was after six by the time she left and Tabitha, who felt that she’d go cross-eyed if she looked at one more interiors magazine, decided to take Oscar in his stroller for a quick walk around the village. The dark streets were almost empty and she pulled up her hood and kept her head down, glancing left and right to check her surroundings, keen not to have to speak.

She was relieved, as she headed along the seafront past The Lobster Pot, that no one went in or came out. The tide was high, submerging the beach, and the restless water slapped irritably up the sea wall while the moon, partly obscured by cloud, cast a long thin light like a silvery streak across the surface.

Oscar pointed. ‘’Ook, Mamma.’

‘Moon,’ said Tabitha, without stopping, and he repeated the word wonderingly.

As they left the front and strolled up South Street, they spotted Rosie, Liz Hart’s slightly frail-looking girl with the limp and pale blue glasses, who’d come to the house with the pot plant. She waited for them at the corner of Humble Hill and bent down to speak to Oscar, but soon went on her way when Tabitha explained that he was cold and hungry. She didn’t ask why the girl was out at this time or where she’d been.

Anxious not to follow her, Tabitha continued on her path a little way before turning right into Towan Road, where The Victory Inn pub was, not that she’d been inside. About halfway down a man was getting out of a silver car and she hoped to slip by unnoticed but a voice boomed, ‘Tabitha!’, and there was nothing for it but to stop.

‘We’ve just arrived,’ said Tony, stretching his arms above his head and yawning. ‘Took absolutely hours.’ He lowered his arms and breathed in deeply. ‘Ahh! Sea air!’ His partner, Felipe, went round to the back of the car, opened the boot and heaved out the luggage.

‘Wait a moment, darling,’ Tony called over his shoulder, ‘I’ll give you a hand!’ But he made no move while Felipe staggered up the front path of their cottage, Ebb Tide, humping two heavy suitcases.

Tony turned back to Tabitha and rubbed his hands together. He was wearing jeans and a dark, V-necked jumper that hugged his tum just a little too tightly.

‘So what’s been happening? Any scandal? Been any murders?’ He chuckled at his own joke, checking to see if Felipe had heard, but the younger man had opened the door of the cottage and disappeared inside.

Tabitha smiled back thinly. ‘Not that I know of. I’ve been so busy getting the guest house ready.’

‘Poor darling. Glass of wine?’ said Tony pleasantly. ‘There’s a nice bottle of Sauvignon chilling in the fridge. I won’t take no for an answer.’

‘No—’ Tabitha said, regardless, but Tony waved a hand in the air.

‘Nonsense, it’s Thursday night. The weekend’s practically started!’ Then he grabbed the handle of the stroller from her and half pushed her and her son up the garden path.

‘Felipe will park the car,’ he said casually, leaving it stranded in the middle of the road, the driver’s door still open. ‘He’s much better at it than me. Rio has the third worst traffic in the world, you know. You have to learn to park on a five-pence piece.’

As soon as they’d walked through the bright blue stable door into the living room, Oscar struggled to be let down, and while Tony fetched the wine and glasses, Tabitha took the opportunity to glance around.

The ceiling was very low, giving the cottage a warm, cosy feel, and everything seemed, to her, to be in miniature: the small rectangular sash window with freshly painted shutters that looked out on to the street; the rough, whitewashed fireplace, which was little more than a square hole hewn into the thick wall; the narrow, softly lit alcoves on either side housing books and CDs.

There was a shiny oak floor, a small cream sofa with jolly blue and white striped cushions, an armchair, a TV, a few prints and watercolours on the walls and not much more, but you didn’t need it. The place was simple, tasteful, welcoming and spotlessly clean. If Tabitha hadn’t been a city girl at heart, she thought that she could have moved in straight away.

‘Like it?’ said Tony, reappearing with their drinks and a bowl of crisps balanced on a wooden tray. ‘I bought it as a bolthole about fifteen years ago. Best thing I ever did.’

He fetched a little oval table and set it in front of the sofa before passing Tabitha her glass. Oscar, who hadn’t yet eaten, spotted the crisps and she seized him by the wrist before he could make a dash for them, making him yelp in fury.

‘Sorry, young man,’ Tony said, as if noticing the boy properly for the first time. ‘Would you care for one of these?’

Hunkering right down, he proffered the bowl and Oscar stopped protesting, his eyes lighting up greedily. Tabitha gulped, fearing that he’d grab the lot, but, on the contrary, Tony’s manners seemed to have rubbed off and he took just one crisp rather elegantly between finger and thumb before shoving it whole in his mouth. She was immensely relieved.

‘Scrummy!’ Tony said, smiling indulgently before passing Oscar another, then he rose and sat beside Tabitha, patting the space between them for her son to climb up.

So, she thought, warming, Tony has a gentle side, and despite herself she opened up a little and started to tell him about her day, the themes she had for her guest rooms and the furniture that she’d bought. He listened very attentively and made enthusiastic noises. ‘Divine…! Sumptuous…!’

When Felipe returned from parking the car, he poured himself a glass of wine and settled down with Oscar on the rug in front of the fire to show him his collection of pebbles and shells. The boy watched, enchanted, as he took them out of a cardboard box, one by one, and rolled them in his hands or held them up to the light before passing them over.

‘Felipe adores babies.’ Tony smiled, noticing Tabitha’s eyes on him. ‘He’s got dozens of little brothers and sisters back home. I can’t keep count. He’s awfully fond of them.’

‘Look, spiral like staircase,’ Felipe said, handing Oscar a round, cream shell with diagonal stripes. ‘And this one eez a snail. Pretty.’

‘Pretty,’ Oscar repeated, gazing at the object with wide brown eyes. ‘Snail.’

‘What are you doing about advertising, darling?’ Tony asked Tabitha suddenly, changing the subject. ‘You do realise it’s crucial? You could run the most charming guest house in the country but if nobody knows it’s there, I’m afraid it’s doomed to failure.’

Tabitha frowned. ‘I guess I’ll hire someone. To be honest, I haven’t looked into it yet.’

Tony took a slurp of wine and held up his glass to admire the pale yellow-gold hue. ‘I could do it for you. You know I’ve got my own PR business in London?’

Tabitha’s mouth went dry and she shook her head. ‘I had no idea.’

‘Eez very successful,’ Felipe piped up from the floor. ‘He has many clients, all sorts. Tony’s the best.’

He beamed. ‘I don’t know about that, but I helped some friends who opened a little hotel in St Mawes and I’m glad to say they’re doing very well, always booked up. It wouldn’t be much work and I’ll give you mates’ rates. It would be a pleasure, honestly. Any excuse to spend a bit more time down here!’

Had Tabitha received prior warning, she’d have marshalled her excuses. As it was, her only thought was that under no circumstances must her new neighbour become involved.

‘No,’ she blurted, rising suddenly and nearly knocking over the little table with the tray on it. ‘I don’t want… I’ve already found… a friend’s firm in Manchester…’

It was a lie and it came out quite wrong, but she didn’t stop to correct herself. Instead, sweeping Oscar up, she pulled their coats off the peg by the stable door and hurried out into the night, shoving her son into his pushchair and strapping him in before he’d had a chance to work out what was happening.

The stable door was still wide open as she wheeled him down the path and her hosts must have followed, because she heard Tony exclaim, ‘What on earth got into her? Did I do something wrong?’

He sounded hurt, wounded; not surprising, the way she’d behaved.

‘Eez not you, it’s
her
,’ Felipe hissed loudly. She quickened her pace, hanging her head in shame. ‘Mad. Loco! I think she must have – how do you say? – nail missing.’

*

After Oscar had gone to sleep, Tabitha padded into the reception room where the party guests had gathered the previous weekend and put on some music. The incident with Tony and Felipe had upset her and she wanted to put it to the back of her mind.

There were no curtains on the windows and the light from the streetlamp opposite flooded in, cutting a path through the central space while leaving the corners dark and mysterious. She settled into one of the armchairs in the shadows, rested her head against the back and closed her eyes, allowing the hypnotic, melancholic chords of Diamonds and Rust by Joan Baez to flood through her.

It was a song that Tabitha knew off by heart, having listened to it so often. Joan was one of her heroes, along with Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. In the early days, she’d begun working the clubs and pubs of Liverpool, Hull, Leeds and Manchester with the band, adapting the old classics to make them relevant again so that soon they’d had quite a following.

It had only been later that she’d plucked up the confidence to perform some of her own compositions and by then their fans had been ready for something new and different. They hadn’t minded that some of the music was a bit raw and in need of polishing, they’d just wanted to get a sense of the direction in which the group was heading.

She remembered how on one particular night the club in Liverpool had been packed out, so full that people had been standing in the street, listening at the windows and doors, determined to be part of it even if they’d been unable to buy tickets. That had been the evening that Jez, a scout for MLS Records, had approached them in the bar afterwards, saying he wanted to introduce them to his boss.

‘I’ve told him all about you,’ Jez explained. ‘He’s very keen to meet up.’

She was spaced out, on such a high, but in his enthusiasm he didn’t seem to notice. The haunting line about eyes bluer than robin’s eggs pierced Tabitha’s consciousness and made her shiver. Baez had such a way with words and always sounded vulnerable to her, like a beautiful bird that’s terrified and doesn’t know why.

Suddenly the music stopped and her own eyes fluttered open. ‘Luke!’

Her husband had snapped off the sound and was standing just a few feet away, in the middle of the light, shoulders back, fair hair gleaming. From this angle he looked ten feet tall.

‘What are you doing?’

Tabitha sprang up and he held out both hands, enclosing hers in his.

‘I’ve got something for you. Come.’

Silently, she followed him upstairs to the bedroom, where he walked swiftly to the side lamp and put it on. ‘Look.’

Tabitha inhaled sharply. There, laid carefully on the bed as if someone had just stepped out of it, was an evening dress covered in red, gold and blue sequins. It had wide, padded shoulders, a low-cut V-neck and the long sleeves bent upwards at the elbow as if the spectral wearer was waving at someone, or dancing, perhaps.

‘Where did you—?’ Tabitha started to say, but Luke shushed her.

‘Aren’t you going to put it on?’

Swiftly, Tabitha pulled off her grey sweater, the white shirt underneath and her jeans and shoes and climbed into the dress, which had a zip running all the way down the back.

‘Here, let me.’ Luke did it up. The gown fitted perfectly and he stepped back to admire his purchase.

‘Beautiful.’ He smiled, looking her up and down. She hadn’t had a chance to see herself yet. His hands circled her waist and he drew her to him, pushing his cheek against hers, so that she could feel his moist breath in her ear. ‘I knew it would suit you. It was very, very expensive. It looks as if it’s been made for you.’

As soon as she could, Tabitha pulled away, stumbling slightly on the hem of the dress, which was a little too long as she wasn’t in heels.

‘Where did you get it? Can we afford it, on top of everything else?’

Luke pressed a finger to her lips. ‘Stop worrying. Business is booming.’

She frowned, thinking of the vast sums that she’d shelled out today on furniture and suchlike, not to mention the architect’s fees that, as far she knew, hadn’t yet been settled in full. Despite what she’d told Tony, she still had to find a publicist, Shelley would soon be on the payroll and they hadn’t even begun to take bookings…

‘So? Do you like it?’

There was an edge to his voice that put her on alert.

‘I love it!’ She hurried to the mirror, moving from side to side so that she could view herself from different perspectives. ‘You’re so clever!’

She coiled up her hair with one hand and held a sparkling diamond earring to her lobe with the other. He’d bought her the earrings a while ago, and a matching necklace. She’d queried the cost then, too. Then she tilted her head a little so that she could watch him watching her in the shadows.

‘You wouldn’t have had that, back where you come from.’ His voice was very low.

The memory of a small, dark terraced house invaded her mind; that constant sense of shame, dull hopelessness and fear. Her father’s angry face: ‘Tabitha, stand up straight… Tabitha put on your headscarf. You won’t enter His house without covering yourself properly.’