The Little Bed & Breakfast by the Sea

Closing the door behind her, Willow switched on the lights and moved across to the shop’s counter, which had been recrafted from an old oak sideboard. Her assistant would be there soon, allowing Willow to get creative in the workroom, but until then she would remain in the shop, catching up with admin and smaller jobs between customers.

The morning’s second irregularity occurred when nine o’clock rolled around and there was no sign of her assistant. Gary didn’t have Willow’s eye for detail, but he was handy with a paintbrush and always willing to help her shift hefty items. Plus, he made a cracking cup of coffee, perfecting the milk-to-coffee ratio like an experienced barista. He’d been working with Willow since leaving college a few weeks ago and hadn’t been late once in that time.

Another hour passed and there was still no sign of Gary. Willow had sold a pack of mini, spiral-bound notebooks she’d made using the property cards from the Monopoly sets as covers to a tourist looking for gifts for her grandchildren, and had arranged a house clearance for the following week, but her assistant hadn’t arrived. She dragged the planters she’d made from wooden pallets, which were filled with a rainbow of fragrant blooms, out onto the pavement in front of the shop to attract passing trade and ran a duster over the furniture, but still there was no sign of Gary.

Her phone beeped with a new message mid morning as she was painting jam-jar lids at the counter. Wiping her hands on the apron she’d thrown over her dungarees, Willow grabbed her phone from her handbag, expecting it to be an explanation from Gary. But it was a message from Ethan. While Willow had been hoping for a phone call, desperate to hear her husband’s voice, she was relieved he’d got in touch to let her know he was okay. She replied to the message, asking him to phone her as soon as he was able to.

While she had her phone in hand, she scrolled through her contacts and called Gary’s number. The phone rang and rang until Willow was about to give up and return to her jam-jar lids.

‘Hello?’ Gary’s muffled voice said as she moved the phone away from her ear.

‘Gary? It’s Willow. I was just wondering where you are as you haven’t turned up for work.’

‘What time is it?’ Gary asked, his voice raspy and sluggish.

Willow glanced at the clock she’d created using driftwood and shells from the beach. ‘It’s after ten. Are you okay? You sound terrible.’

‘I feel even worse,’ Gary said. ‘I must have slept through my alarm. Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Willow pulled her diary from one of the counter’s drawers and flicked through it until she found that day’s page. ‘You don’t sound well at all. Go back to sleep – I can manage on my own for the day.’ She was due to deliver the Monopoly table that evening, but it wouldn’t be too much of a problem closing half an hour earlier just this once. Moving the table from the shop to the van solo would be a challenge, but she’d faced bigger obstacles before.

‘Are you sure?’ Gary asked.

‘Of course. Rest up and I hope you feel better soon.’

Willow said goodbye and hung up the phone, but it beeped almost immediately, alerting her to a voicemail. She pounced, pressing to listen to the message and placing the phone against her ear, anticipating the sound of her husband’s voice.

But it wasn’t Ethan at all.

‘We have a problem. A pretty major one. Call me back as soon as possible.’

Willow and Ethan had spent the first five years of their marriage renting a sweet but tiny cottage on the outskirts of town, but when the opportunity had come up to buy one of the Georgian, three-storey houses on the seafront, right in the heart of their seaside town, they’d jumped at the chance. From the outside, the house was beautifully grand with a dove-grey rendering and rows of tall windows either side of a porched front door. Yes, the rendering was starting to crumble, the windows needed a restorative touch and the front door looked as though it would fall off its hinges in a gentle breeze, but the asking price had been an unbelievable bargain and Willow was used to making neglected things shine again.

The inside of the house had been much worse, with rotting floorboards in every room, warped doorframes and damp throughout, but still Willow and Ethan had been undeterred. They’d gutted the house and started again with a clean slate. This way, at least, they could put their own stamp on the place and make it their own.

‘What is it?’ Willow asked now as she returned her builder’s call, the jam-jar lids still abandoned on the counter. ‘What’s happened?’

Willow was thinking the worst: a burst pipe flooding the house, or the foot of one of the builders coming through a newly plastered ceiling, or, most heartbreaking of all, the bathroom tiles she’d sourced online from a reclamation yard being dropped from the van and shattering on the pavement.

Willow’s worst wasn’t even close.

‘There’s a problem with the foundations. I think you’d better come down here.’

‘I can’t,’ Willow said. ‘I’m in the shop on my own today so there’s nobody to cover for me.’

‘What about Ethan? Can he get over here?’

Willow scratched at a small, still-wet blob of pastel-pink paint that had splashed onto the counter. ‘He’s gone away for a few days. Working. I’m not sure for how long.’ She wiped the paint from her thumb nail onto her apron. ‘Can’t it wait until this evening?’

‘Willow…’ The builder’s tone was firm. ‘You need to come down here. We can’t carry on with the refurb until this is sorted.’

Willow straightened, the fingers on her free hand moving to rest on her chin. ‘What exactly is the problem with the foundations?’

‘We’re not entirely sure yet. It needs investigating properly. But what I can tell you is that the whole structure of the house is unsafe.’

Willow’s eyes widened and she had to put a hand down on the counter to steady herself. ‘It’s that serious?’

‘It’s that serious.’

Willow snapped her diary shut and shoved it roughly into the nearest drawer. ‘I’m on my way.’

This was bad. Very bad. Willow and Ethan had sunk their savings into this house, had taken out a massive mortgage and loans for the refurbishment. If this went wrong, they’d be up to their eyeballs in debt. And worse – they’d be homeless. Although the house was nowhere near finished, Willow and Ethan had already moved in, living among the rubble as best as they could. Living onsite while the work was being carried out wasn’t ideal, but at least the money that would normally pay their rent could be redistributed towards the refurb. But there was no backup plan. If the house was unsafe, where would they live?

Her quarrel with Ethan the previous evening filtered into her head.

Maybe we shouldn’t have bought this house. We should have thought about it more. Thought about us, our future.

But that’s what we were doing. This house is part of our future.

Is it? At the moment, we don’t even know what’s in the future for us.

Willow pushed the memory away and scuttled out from behind the counter, throwing her apron in the general area of a chair and grabbing her keys from the pocket of her dungarees as she barrelled towards the door. The house was only a ten-minute walk away, so Willow usually walked to and from the shop, leaving her van parked on the side street next to the shop, but she jumped inside now, slamming the door shut, tugging on her seatbelt and starting the engine in quick succession. The van rumbled into life and she pulled out of the side street and headed down towards the seafront, her heart hammering above the hum of the engine. Within minutes, she was pulling up outside the house. You couldn’t miss it, trussed up with scaffolding as it was, but Willow was glad it was still standing upright. Part of her was expecting to see the house in a heap, bricks tumbling out of the garden and towards the promenade, her hopes and dreams of her future with Ethan buried beneath the rubble.

‘I’m here!’ she called as she sprinted across the garden. The front door was open and she found the builders milling around the foyer, sipping cups of tea and working their way through a packet of custard creams. ‘What’s going on? I need to know everything.’

‘Everything’ turned out to be devastating. Willow didn’t understand a lot of what the builder was telling her, but the gist of it wasn’t promising. The foundations were no longer secure and the house might need underpinning. Willow wasn’t entirely sure what underpinning a house involved, but the builder warned her it could take several weeks to do, eating severely into their budget and extending their timeframe.

‘I’d strongly advise you to find somewhere else to live until we’ve made the foundations safe again,’ he told Willow. ‘I wouldn’t stay and, if you were my daughter…’ He shook his head. ‘There’s no way I’d let you either.’

The problem was, Willow didn’t have anywhere else to stay in the meantime. They’d already given up their rented cottage when they’d moved into the new house, and both sets of parents lived over fifty miles away, which was impractical both for getting to and from work and overseeing the refurb.

But it would be okay. They would work something out. At least that’s what Willow told herself as she walked away from the house and climbed back into her van. She sat in the immobile vehicle for a few minutes, staring out of the open window at the pier and the sea beyond, listening to the cacophony of seagulls, holidaymakers and crashing waves she’d been drawn to. Pulling out her phone, she dialled Ethan’s number but it went straight to voicemail, as she suspected it would.

‘What are you going to do?’ Liam asked, wandering towards the van. Her builder’s face was creased with concern, and Willow was pretty sure it mirrored her own.

‘I don’t know.’ Willow shrugged and started the engine. ‘But I’ll figure something out.’

She had to. With Ethan’s absence even more noticeable now, it was down to Willow to sort this mess out. It wasn’t in her nature to crumble, no matter how tempting it was, and she wasn’t about to let herself – and Ethan – down now. She set off in the van, eyes peeled for the nearest B&B. She knew there were several in the seaside town and she managed to locate one easily, further along the seafront. She parked the van, jumping out and rushing along the pavement when she saw a woman and her child leaving the property. She didn’t know whether the woman was the proprietor of the B&B or a guest, but she didn’t have time to pop inside first. If this woman was in charge, she couldn’t miss her.

‘Excuse me…’ Willow was breathless from her dashes that morning. ‘Is this your B&B?’

The woman was in her late twenties but looked as though she’d been plucked from the wrong decade. She wore a red-and-white polka-dot dress, cinched in at the waist, with matching heeled, peep-toe slingbacks, and her dark hair was pinned back in victory rolls. The style suited her, though, and Willow suddenly felt frumpy in her striped T-shirt and dungarees.

The woman slipped the quirky red, heart-shaped sunglasses from her eyes. ‘It is, but I’m afraid we’re fully booked for the next few weeks if you’re looking for a room.’

Willow’s shoulders slumped. ‘Oh.’ Maybe finding alternative accommodation at a B&B wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d thought. ‘It’s just I’m refurbishing a house up the road.’ Willow pointed further up the seafront towards the pier. ‘But there’s a problem with the foundations and it isn’t safe to stay there.’

The woman’s face softened and she patted Willow’s arm briefly. ‘I’m sorry. That sounds terrible.’ She bit her lip, which was a glossy pillar-box red, and shook her head. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t fit you in. Have you tried any of the other B&Bs? There’s a lovely little one in the harbour that’s a little quieter, being away from the beach and everything, so you might have better luck there. Or there’s the hotel up by the pier, but that’s a little more expensive, or you could try the caravan site?’

‘Nanny says we can stay in a caravan when Mummy isn’t so busy,’ the little girl standing with the woman piped up, squinting in the sun as she looked up at Willow. She was cute and had a rather more relaxed look than her mother with her sundress and wellies combo.

Willow crouched down to the little girl’s level. ‘That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? I’ve never stayed in a caravan before but it sounds fun.’

The girl nodded. ‘You get to sleep in a little room in a little bed and watch a little telly.’

Willow gasped and widened her eyes. ‘That sounds amazing! I hope you get to stay in your caravan soon.’ Willow stood up again. The woman had returned the heart-shaped sunglasses to her face. ‘Thank you for your help.’

The woman nodded. ‘Good luck.’ She turned to her daughter and took her hand. ‘We’d better get going. I need to drop the keys with Mrs Hornchurch and then get you to Nanny’s.’

Willow watched as the woman and her daughter disappeared into the neighbouring house before climbing back into her van. She’d work her way through town and try the other B&Bs, the hotel and caravan site. There had to be a room available somewhere.

Chapter Three

Melody

The train was packed with bodies, heat and noise as Melody crab-walked down the aisle in search of a seat, battling with the hefty rucksack and laptop bag she held in her hands, tucked in tight to her body so she didn’t bash anybody about the head with them. Melody was thankful she’d decided to travel light during her trip, packing only the essentials: a handful of outfits she could chuck into a washing machine at a laundrette every few days, her washbag with the necessities, a couple of pairs of pyjamas, her laptop, and her camera. Okay, the laptop was hardly light, and her rucksack was cumbersome, but it would have been much worse if she hadn’t been so strict with her packing. She was hoping to find a seat so she wouldn’t be forced to hold on to her bags for the duration of the journey, but it wasn’t proving an easy task.

‘Excuse me.’ She flicked the corners of her mouth up into an apologetic smile as she attempted to squeeze past elbows and shoulders. ‘Sorry. Can I just…’ She managed to shuffle past without knocking anybody out cold with her rucksack and then she saw it, just ahead. An empty seat! Or rather a seat empty of a human bottom. She waddled towards it sideways, resting against the headrest with a relieved sigh when she finally reached the seat without somebody else nabbing it first. She looked down at the laptop bag currently sitting there and then over to its owner in the neighbouring seat. The owner – a suited man in his mid-to-late twenties, currently tapping away at the laptop in front of him – glanced in her direction briefly before returning to his screen.

‘Excuse me,’ Melody said, using her most polite voice. ‘Is this seat taken?’

By anything other than a bag? she silently added.

The man sighed heavily and turned away from his laptop, performing an elaborate eye-roll as he moved his face towards Melody.

‘I need to keep my bag close by.’

Melody nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ The man shifted his gaze back to his screen. ‘I assume you’ve bought an extra ticket for your bag, though.’

The man frowned, sighing again as he snapped his head back up to Melody. ‘What?’

‘I assumed you’ve purchased two tickets, since you’re taking up two seats.’

‘Obviously I haven’t bought a ticket for my bloody bag.’ The man rolled his eyes again and, shaking his head, resumed tapping at his keyboard.

‘In that case…’ Melody reached up to push her rucksack into the overhead storage rack. ‘I’m taking this seat. You can move the bag if you want to, but I don’t mind either way. I’m sitting whether it’s there or not.’

Melody eyed the man. He eyed Melody. Melody pushed her own laptop bag under the table and lowered herself onto the seat, pressing her lips together so she didn’t display a smug grin as the man’s laptop bag was whipped away at the very last second. The bag was shoved under the table, wedged between the wall of the train and the man’s feet. She could feel the glare from her neighbour as she unlooped her camera from around her neck and switched it on. She looked up, smiling sweetly at him.

‘I’m Melody, by the way.’ She thrust a hand out towards him, but he made no move to shake it.

‘And I’m very busy.’ With one last glare, he turned back to his laptop, tapping furiously.

And very rude, Melody thought, but she didn’t dwell on her neighbour for too long. She’d met lots of different people on her recent travels – some lovely, some not so much – but she didn’t hang around for long enough to let the negative ones impact her life. In fifteen minutes, she’d shuffle off the train and wouldn’t see this dude again.

Melody clicked through the menu on her camera, loading up her latest photos to scrutinise. Some of the photos were good – she particularly liked the snap of Blackpool Tower at dawn – but some weren’t so great. The composition was wrong, or the lighting didn’t quite work, so she deleted those she definitely wouldn’t be using. She’d take a closer look once she had her laptop set up, but for now she’d weed out the obvious duds – she’d taken hundreds of better photos over the past three weeks so they wouldn’t be missed.

Melody’s plan was to spend a chunk of the summer visiting as many seaside towns and villages in northern England as she could and was currently working her way along the Lancashire coast. Clifton-on-Sea was her next destination and she’d already looked the town up online beforehand. She knew there was a mile-long beach surrounded by cliffs, with a pier at one end and a harbour at the other, and she was hoping to capture some magical seaside moments there on camera over the next day or two.

The train came to a stop at a rather rustic-looking but quaint station. She’d visited many train stations lately, some large and filled with shops and kiosks, while others were more basic and little more than a platform with a ticket booth. Today, the train had pulled up alongside a single-storey stone building with a row of small, arched windows and an open, bottle-green door. The outside was decorated with wooden planters bursting with a rainbow of flowers, sitting either side of a couple of wrought-iron benches, and a sign welcomed those disembarking to Clifton-on-Sea. A ginger cat lay stretched out on one of the benches, basking in the sun.

Melody grabbed her bags and made her way to the nearest exit, hopping down onto the platform and following the crowd through the green door. Inside was as quaint as the outside, with a traditional tearoom staffed by two little old ladies, an information booth manned by a man in a smart uniform, and a little shop selling souvenirs. Melody hadn’t eaten since early that morning and, as it was now almost lunchtime, she was tempted to sit down with a cup of tea and a slab of lemon drizzle cake. But she should be getting on. She’d had a laissez-faire attitude to her travels so far, hopping on trains and travelling to her next destination when she fancied, so she hadn’t booked any accommodation in advance. So far, it had worked out, but she didn’t want to leave her lodgings until the last minute and run into trouble.

Reaching into the back pocket of her cut-off shorts, she pulled out the photograph she’d carried throughout her travels, smoothing down its slightly crumpled corners. She studied the familiar image for a moment before returning the photo to her pocket. Hitching her rucksack onto her back, she headed out of the station to see what Clifton-on-Sea had to offer.

Chapter Four

Mae

As predicted, the Fisherman had burst into life around lunchtime. It was a tradition for those working nearby to buy their lunch from the fish and chip shop along the harbour and, as Frank didn’t serve food himself, he didn’t mind when they migrated into the pub with their parcels of hot, delicious-smelling food, unwrapping them after ordering drinks at the bar. No, Frank didn’t mind at all – profits soared as soon as the chip shop opened its doors. The dominoes had been packed up in preparation (Frank had won, though he hadn’t gloated too much) and it was all hands to the pumps as Mae, Frank and Corinne served the customers as quickly as they could before their food grew cold. Mae chatted as she worked, enquiring about husbands, wives and children as she filled glasses and took payment. She knew most of the customers well, though there was the odd less familiar face too.

Her latest customer, who technically should have been served by Corinne, was very familiar. The landlady had not-very-mysteriously vanished as soon as it was Alfie’s turn to be served.

‘What can I get you?’ she asked, while secretly plotting ways to torture her boss.

‘Would you judge me if I ordered an extremely large Jack Daniels and Coke?’

‘That depends.’ Mae leaned across the bar towards the local vet. ‘Are you going to be operating on any unsuspecting creatures this afternoon?’

‘Good point. I’ll just have the Coke then, thanks.’

Mae grabbed a glass and started to fill it. ‘Stressful morning?’

Alfie gave a long, loud sigh. ‘Very. We’re still without a vet nurse until tomorrow and the one the agency sent is…’ Alfie tilted his head to one side, trying to conjure the right words. ‘Incompetent seems like such a harsh word.’

‘But she is,’ Mae said and Alfie nodded.

‘I’m afraid so.’ He grinned as Mae placed the glass of Coke on the bar. ‘But do you know what would cheer me up?’

Mae placed a finger into the corner of her mouth, her eyes wandering to the ceiling as though she were deep in thought. ‘Hmm, let me think… A date with me?’

Alfie puffed his cheeks out before letting the air seep slowly from them as he shook his head. ‘Blimey, Mae, that’s one hell of an ego you’ve got there. I was going to say a bag of cheese and onion.’ He looked past Mae, at the boxes of crisps stacked against the wall.

‘Oh.’ Mae could feel her brow furrowing into a frown, so she fought against it, keeping her features as neutral as possible. ‘Right. Yes. Cheese and onion.’ She turned to grab a packet of the desired crisps, but a hand pulled her back. Alfie was leaning across the bar, his hand on her arm.

‘I’m kidding about the crisps. Of course I was going to ask you out. It’s what we do, isn’t it?’ He let go of her arm and straightened, reaching into his pocket for some loose change. ‘I ask you out, and you cruelly turn me down.’ He shook his head as he grabbed a few coins from the palm of his hand. ‘Every. Time.’

‘I’m not being cruel,’ Mae said as she took the money. ‘We’re mates. Good mates.’

‘It’s okay. I get it.’ Alfie held his hands up, palms facing out. ‘You don’t fancy me.’

Mae felt her stomach tie itself in a knot, tightening as she looked at poor Alfie’s downturned mouth. It wasn’t that she didn’t fancy Alfie. He was a very attractive man and a few years ago she’d have agreed to a date the first time he’d asked instead of dodging his requests time after time. But a lot had happened in that time. Dating men – even fun, caring and handsome men – wasn’t an option.

‘Are you fishing for compliments again?’ she asked to lighten the mood, and Alfie’s mouth curved into a smile that loosened the knot in her stomach.

‘Am I that obvious?’

‘You’re about as subtle as Hannah when she’s hinting for ice cream before dinner.’

Alfie’s entire face seemed to crinkle as he smiled, the areas around his eyes and mouth most prominently. ‘How are the summer holidays treating you? As stressful as you feared?’

Mae made a seesaw motion with her hand. ‘At times. She’s a good kid, but it’s hard on my own.’

‘I often wonder how Mum coped on her own with the four of us.’ Alfie shook his head. ‘We could be terrors. I should visit her more, make up for it.’

‘Your dad wasn’t around?’ Mae asked and Alfie gave a humourless laugh.

‘When he wanted to be, which wasn’t that often, and only when he wasn’t busy wooing his women. He was pretty useless, actually.’