Rosie had hit on the idea of opening her salon on Sunday evenings for women and girls who worked nine to five and couldn’t make weekday or daytime appointments, and who – perhaps – didn’t want to cut into their weekend time off by going to a beauty salon on a Saturday when they could be shopping or out with their mates. It was really taking off. But if she was honest, Cara was missing Rosie’s company; needing it now more than ever. The first six months after Mark’s death had been a mad scramble to sort the legal aspects that result from a sudden death, and Cara had got through it on automatic pilot almost. Then came the year of ‘firsts’ followed by a time of mourning for the good times she and Mark had shared, and a feeling of loss that they would now not have a future.
‘No, I’m fine,’ Cara said, feeling anything but. ‘You go. I need to sort out bed linen and crockery and so on. Then I’ve got to think of something to send to the paper about putting in an ad for the B&B. With this art festival coming up, I can’t fail to get guests, can I?’
Cara took a deep breath. And I’ve got to try not to worry about Mae being with Josh Maynard and whether he is pushing Mae into having underage sex, and work out how many rooms I will need to fill to pay the rates and the supermarket and for Mae to go to Paris with her school in September, she thought. Her head was a maelstrom of random thoughts, and she was starting to get a headache between her eyes.
‘It’s hardly St Ives here,’ Rosie said. ‘I mean, Larracombe? Two pubs, one church, a harbour that holds about a dozen boats, two gift shops and a handful of cottages. And a half hour drive to a decent supermarket. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. It’s all over the village that some famous painter is coming. I mean, now this house is denuded of paintings, do you really want an art festival thrown in your face?’
‘I need the money,’ Cara said quietly. Just as soon as she was alone she’d ring the number on the bottom of the flyer and register. ‘And I thought you were in a hurry to go.’
Rosie laughed.
‘Bugger off, you mean,’ she said. Rosie reached for her bag, rifling through it for her keys. ‘But think about it, eh? I wouldn’t want you to have any more pain – emotionally that is – than you already have.’
‘I have thought about it,’ Cara told her. She glanced at the darker patches on the kitchen wall where her beloved paintings had been, knowing the walls in every other room in the house looked the same. ‘Anyway, how hard can cooking bacon and eggs and a few rounds of toast be?’
Rosie had found her keys and jangled them at Cara.
‘For me, my love, it would be akin to penal servitude – a fate worse than death. Oh God, sorry. I didn’t mean death as in Mark, you know. I meant death as in the worst possible thing that could happen to a person and …’
‘Stop! You’re digging yourself in deeper. You’ll need a sparrow’s crane to get you out if you carry on. Go!’ Cara laughed, feeling the ripple of the laugh ease her pain, and the tightness in her chest, just a little. Even the headachey worry lines between her eyes were smoothing out a little. She reached out and held onto her friend’s hands, and for a moment the two women’s eyes locked before Cara looked away, afraid that Rosie would notice Cara was hiding lies of her own. Because what she hadn’t told anybody – not Rosie, the coroner, the police, or Mark’s parents was that as well as all her paintings, Mark had also taken most of his clothes and his computer because Cara, unable to put up with Mark’s gambling any more, had asked him to leave.
And would the guilt of that ever leave her? What if Mae were to even suspect that of her? What then?
‘Great, Mae,’ Josh said, giving Mae a quick kiss on the lips. ‘Glad you made it.’ He held out a hand and Mae slipped hers into it. How good it felt, her hand in his, especially knowing how half the girls in the village were greener than grass with envy that she was Josh Maynard’s girlfriend and they’d been passed over.
‘Course I made it,’ Mae said.
Sometimes she had to pinch herself that he’d asked her out in the first place. She’d been shuffling along the breakwater, wrapped up against an early spring chill, looking out to sea, thinking about stuff, not really wanting to speak to anyone when Josh had come along and said, ‘Hi’. She hadn’t seen him around much since the time he’d come along to the funeral parlour with his dad, who was supporting her in her wish to see her dad one last time before he was buried in St Peter’s Churchyard. Her mum hadn’t wanted her to go. The funeral people wouldn’t let her in without an adult so on a whim she’d gone to the vicarage to ask if the Reverend Maynard could help. She’d been so surprised when Josh had pitched up that day. His dad had said he thought it might be easier for her if someone younger was with her as well. But she’d only been thirteen then, and Josh a teenager. What a difference a couple of years made.
‘So, here’s the plan,’ Josh said. He began walking away from the bandstand in the park, where they’d met, towards the gates. ‘A little trip to Fairy Cove. Just you and me. I’ve borrowed my sister’s car.’
‘Cool,’ Mae said.
‘Parked up over there.’ Josh pointed towards the car park.
Mae’s mind fast-forwarded and she could already see them, kissing and cuddling in the car in the lane that went down to Fairy Cove.
‘Love the frock, by the way,’ Josh said. He held Mae out at arm’s length. ‘Give us a twirl.’
Mae obliged, doing a couple of spins as he twirled her round.
‘Thanks. My dad bought me this one, you know, before he died.’
‘Well, he’d hardly buy it after, would he?’ Josh said. But he said it with a grin to show he was only joking. ‘You’ve not told me much about your dad.’
‘I thought you knew,’ Mae said. Hands clasped, she and Josh were meandering slowly to wherever it was in the car park his sister’s car was. ‘You came with your dad that day …’
‘He said I had to,’ Josh said. His grin had dropped now. He looked more angry than sad that he’d been made to go with his dad and Mae to the funeral parlour.
‘I’m glad you did come,’ Mae said. ‘But you could have said no.’
‘No? To my dad? You have got to be kidding!’
‘At least you’ve still gone one,’ Mae said in a quiet little voice. Her dad hadn’t been perfect and he got cross sometimes if she interrupted him when he was doing stuff on the computer, and almost never remembered to buy her mum a Valentine’s card and stuff like that. But still she wished she could say, ‘My dad’s picking me up from school today,’ or something.
‘Yeah, but it’s not easy,’ Josh said. ‘You should have heard the fallout when I did say no to him. About going to uni. He quoted, chapter and verse, how much he’d spent on private education for me and how I was an ungrateful so-and so. He wanted me to do theology like he had. And his father and his grandfather before him.’
‘And you wanted to break the mould?’
‘Yeah. Gardening’s not his idea of a career move, although I think Monty Don would beg to differ.’
Mae had no idea who Monty Don might be, but she guessed he was a famous gardener or something. Mae often didn’t know who or what Josh was talking about but wasn’t so stupid as to ask because it would highlight the differences in their family backgrounds and their education. She didn’t want to sound too much like a schoolgirl even though that was what she was.
‘Mums and dads don’t always know what’s best for their kids, I shouldn’t think.’