The Cornish Guest House (18 page)

She’d already begun to establish a routine at home, with finger painting one day, baking another, but couldn’t help feeling that Oscar would benefit from the company of children his age. Jean had mentioned a good toddler group in the nearby village, to which she took her own charges, and it was easy to get to by bus, but Tabitha had seemed reluctant so Loveday had dropped the idea. In any case, come the summer she could take him to the beach, where there’d be plenty of little ones.

‘Some mums are very protective,’ Liz had said when Loveday had raised the matter. ‘Particularly with first children. You know how I am with Rosie; I can’t help it.’

As Loveday wheeled the pushchair up the road, she found herself blinking in the light as she breathed in the sights, sounds and smells of the village. Now that the rain had stopped, the birds were tweeting and the world seemed to have come alive once more. People’s voices could be heard above the noise of an occasional car starting up, and lazy trails of smoke billowed from chimney pots before wafting away on the wind.

When they reached the corner of Torren Street, Sally, the Jack Russell, came scampering down the hill with John in hot pursuit. His hair and clothes were damp and he gave a wave but didn’t stop.

‘Heel!’ he shouted, but as usual the dog took not a blind bit of notice.

‘Woof,’ said Oscar excitedly, kicking his legs. ‘Woof woof.’ He craned his neck so that he could watch the animal until it ran out of sight.

They were about to resume their journey when a voice behind them cried, ‘Wait!’ and Loveday swung round to see Tabitha hurtling towards them in the smart beige sweater and dark trousers that she’d put on that morning, her black hair streaming behind her like a waterfall.

‘Where are you going?’

Loveday hesitated. Had she done something wrong? ‘Only to the park. Do you want me to—?’

Tabitha shook her head. ‘You didn’t tell me. I thought…’ She was panting. ‘Everything’s fine.’

It didn’t seem fine, though. Her eyes slid left and right, as if searching for something in the little side roads and alleyways, behind a garden wall or under a wheelie bin. Anyone would think the Beast of Bodmin had escaped from the moor and was roaming the area in search of prey.

‘Are you sure?’ Loveday pressed, and Tabitha looked shifty. Anxious to do the right thing, Loveday offered to come back but her boss refused.

‘Just be careful, that’s all. There are bad people in the world.’

Loveday was taken aback. Crime was rife in London, she knew, but down here graffiti in the public loo made front-page news.

Not in this village
, she almost said, then decided that it might seem impertinent and shut her mouth.

*

Tabitha cursed herself inwardly. She shouldn’t have given the girl a fright like that. She was being stupid and panicky and Luke would be furious if he knew. And yet…

The guests were still by the fire as she tiptoed past and Shelley was in the kitchen with the door shut, so she padded silently to her bedroom, picking up the phone on the side table and dialling the familiar number.

Molly didn’t reply at first, but rang back almost immediately when she spotted the missed call. She was good like that.

‘What’s up? Everything OK?’

Tabitha’s mouth felt dry and she took a sip of water from the glass beside the bed. She was so relieved to hear her friend’s voice that she almost wept.

‘I thought I saw him, Moll,’ she whispered, checking the door to make sure that no one was about. ‘Just now. Outside the house. He was wearing a padded black jacket, like the one he used to have. And a baseball cap. When he saw me at the window he walked away quickly. It all happened so fast, I couldn’t be sure, but oh! What if he’s found me? What if he tries to hurt Oscar?’

She let out a sob that muffled Molly’s reply.

‘What makes you think it was him,’ she was asking, ‘other than the jacket? Could you be mistaken? Could it have been someone else?’

Tabitha bit the back of her hand, leaving tooth marks on the skin. It was the only way to stop herself crying.

‘I might be wrong. I couldn’t see his face properly because of the hat. It’s just that he was the right sort of height and size, and there was something about his manner… And if it wasn’t him, what was he doing hanging round the house anyway?’

Molly cleared her throat. ‘Maybe he was thinking of renting a room?’ She’d swung into practical mode. ‘He could have read about the guest house and wanted to check it out. Honestly, it’s very unlikely he’d have followed you to Cornwall. Besides, he knows you’re with Luke.’

Tabitha took a deep breath. Molly always managed to sort her out, she was a pro.

‘You’re right,’ she said, feeling the damp cloak lifting from her shoulders. ‘Anyway, he hates the countryside and he’s hardly ever been south. I’m just being silly.’

‘That’s the spirit.’ Molly paused, and Tabitha thought that she could hear another voice, someone at the video company where she worked. She came back on the line. ‘I’ve got to go, sorry, but try not to worry. Call back soon. Love you, Tabs.’ And she was gone.

Even so, Tabitha couldn’t help sneaking back to the window and flicking to one side the temporary blind that she always kept closed. Satisfied that the man hadn’t returned, she lay on her bed and shut her eyes for a moment, repeating Molly’s words over and over: ‘Renting a room… Checking out the guest house… Knows you’re with Luke.’

As she lay there, feeling the soft, cool sheets against her cheek and the palms of her hands, her mind flipped back to another time, thirteen years ago. She wriggled, turning her head backwards and forwards on the pillow restlessly, but to no avail. She seemed destined to repeat the story over and over, until the day she died. Beyond, even…

It had all started, really, after she had been kicked out of home and had gone to stay with Molly. Not in her house, Molly’s mum and dad wouldn’t have allowed that. They’d taken against Tabitha’s adoptive parents, saying the fundamentalist religion that they’d joined was weird and Molly should keep well away.

‘They indoctrinate children and force them to marry within the sect,’ Molly’s mum had told her. ‘They can’t even go to university – imagine that! Maybe Tabitha’s got a chance, because she’s from different stock and she’s more feisty, with a mind of her own. But the younger two look like zombies or robots in their funny clothes and with that weird way of speaking. They’re not allowed to think without checking with their parents first.’

Back then, there had been a great deal that Molly and Tabitha hadn’t understood. Molly had said if the council found out that Tabitha was on her own, they’d send her to a horrible children’s home or put her with a foster family, who might be even worse than the other lot. So for nearly a year Tabitha had hidden in the garage, sneaking in and out via the alleyway at the back, peeing in bushes and waiting for Molly to return from school and bring her food that she’d managed to scavenge from her parents’ cupboards and fridge.

She’d found an old mattress for her friend, a sleeping bag, candles, books, paper, writing things and a little heater for when it got cold. And whenever her mum and dad went out, she’d signal to Tabitha that the coast was clear for her to come inside and have a wash, go to the loo and change her clothes.

The garage, which had been made into a sort of studio for Molly to practise with the band, was quite clean, but no one could pretend it was luxurious. Tabitha remembered lonely hours spent huddling in the sleeping bag, hugging her knees to her chest and wondering when it would be safe to venture out and wander the streets.

She had been permanently afraid that Molly’s parents would discover her, or that her own would come looking and drag her back. It had been years before she’d realised that, in reality, if she’d bumped into them in the street they’d have averted their gazes and walk on by. The only respite she’d been able to find had been in writing music, and at weekends, when the boys had come round, they’d have jamming sessions, just like the old days, only Tabitha had had to sing quietly in case someone heard and recognised her.

As it happened, she and Molly had been clever and Molly’s parents had truly believed that their daughter’s friend had run away.

‘Doesn’t she keep in touch?’ Molly’s mum would ask occasionally, and Molly would shake her head. ‘That’s a shame, because you were such good pals. I wonder what she’s doing now. I hope she’s made a better life for herself away from that peculiar family.’

They could have continued like that for quite a while longer had not Molly’s dad decided to set up his own company and announced that he needed to convert the garage into a study for himself.

‘You hardly use it now, Moll,’ he’d argued when she protested. ‘Only at weekends, and next year you’ll be working hard for A-levels and then you’ll be off to college or university. It’ll make the perfect office space for me. Sorry, love, you’ll have to practise at someone else’s house from now on.’

As soon as Molly broke the news, Tabitha realised that she’d have to get a job and a room somewhere fast. Time was of the essence. In truth, she’d been planning to do it for a while, only the thought of being on her own had frightened her so that it had been easier to put it off. Plus, Molly kept saying that if she waited, they’d land a record deal and everything would be hunky-dory. Of course it was unlikely, but somehow Tabitha had made herself believe what she wanted to believe, that there was a rainbow with a pot of gold at the bottom and it wouldn’t be long before they found it.

Finding a job with no experience, no fixed address and an anxious look in your eye, as if you had something to hide, was never going to be easy. Molly cobbled together the money for a deposit on a poky room in a run-down house, but Tabitha soon realised that delivering leaflets wasn’t going to pay the bills; she’d have to get something more lucrative.

There were jobs going at the student pub up the road but they wouldn’t have her front-of-house, she was too young and green.

‘You can work in the kitchen, washing the dishes,’ the manager, Alf, told her, eyeing her up and down. ‘I don’t want no trouble, mind. Whatever happens in my pub stays in my pub, understand? Good girl. Then I think we’re going to get on famously.’

He squeezed her waist as she walked by as a token of their new-found camaraderie.

The hours were long and the job was mind-numbingly dull, apart from when she had to spring into life to dodge Alf’s wandering hands. The only chink of light was when she and the band managed to get together at Matt’s or Dave’s house once or twice a week to rehearse. Then she could lose herself in her singing and imagine that she was someone else entirely, a famous musician like Joan Baez, travelling the world and performing to audiences who appreciated the passion in her voice, the depth of feeling in every word she uttered. They even started to get regular gigs in pubs and clubs around the area, though it was difficult to fit them in, what with her job and the others’ schoolwork. But they managed somehow.

For a while, things improved further when Carl got a job as a barman at the pub. He was in his late twenties, small, strong and wiry, with close-cropped dark hair, a permanent six o’clock shadow and clever little black eyes that seemed to miss nothing.

He took a shine to Tabitha and would look out for her, glaring at Alf, who was lazy and drank too much, and cracking his knuckles at him. At first Alf would find fault with him, so that at any moment Tabitha suspected he might give him the sack. But before long he began to fear and rely on the younger man to run the place, and the other staff began to forget who was the boss and who the employee. It was Carl who ruled the roost, Carl whom they deferred to. More and more, Alf would retire with a bottle of whisky to his flat upstairs, while Carl kept the tills ringing and the customers happy with more than just drinks. He always had a supply of something to hand – heroin, coke, whatever they fancied.

So lost was Tabitha in her thoughts that at first she didn’t hear the noises in the corridor outside.

‘Come on, little man, let’s get your coat off.’

Her eyes snapped open and she felt a surge of relief. Loveday and Oscar back from the park! Home safe and sound and, what’s more, they’d drag her from the dark place that she’d been in.

‘Can I come in?’ Loveday tapped at the door before entering the room with the little boy in her arms. ‘He loves that roundabout so much! He doesn’t seem to get dizzy and he found a little friend to play with.’

‘What friend?’ Tabitha checked herself. ‘I mean, did you know him?’

Loveday looked at her strangely. ‘Only one of Barbara’s granddaughters. You know? Barbara from The Lobster Pot? Her son Aiden’s got two kids who live in Launceston. He’s divorced but he brings them here quite often.’

Tabitha felt her shoulders relax. ‘How nice!’ She took her son from Loveday’s arms and pressed her cheek against his. He smelled of milk and baby soap and soft young skin.

‘She’s called Matilda,’ Loveday went on. ‘She’s two, like Oscar. They were chasing each other round and round and going on the slide together. I only came back because he’s tired.’

He yawned on cue, gave a grouchy moan, and Tabitha settled him down to sleep before suggesting a cup of tea. Shelley would have left by now, she wasn’t the chatty type anyway, and Tabitha enjoyed these one-to-one moments with Loveday and could tell that she did, too. At times like this, the age gap seemed to melt away and they were more like friends than boss and employee. Tabitha didn’t have a lot of friends.

They sat on stools round the kitchen island and spoke about clothes and music – and Jesse.

‘He’s got a great six-pack.’ Loveday grinned. ‘And he can cook! Perfect combo.’

Tabitha laughed. ‘The ideal man! Does he have a brother?’

Loveday didn’t have time to reply because Luke strode in, halting the conversation in its tracks.

‘What’s so funny?’ He took off his coat and threw it on a stool.

‘We were just discussing Oscar’s new word,’ Tabitha replied, quick as a flash. ‘He says “bests” for “guests”. I rather like that.’

She glanced at Loveday, who nodded almost imperceptibly. She was good like that, loyal, even if she didn’t understand.