The Little B & B at Cove End. Linda Mitchelmore

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       Chapter Six

      In the cool light of day, with Mae now gone to school, and time to reflect on what had happened the night before, Cara set about getting the house back to how it had been before Hines had turned up. It was almost therapeutic finding a tin of paint and glossing over where skirting boards had been scuffed. She was glad she’d chosen matt white paint for all the walls in the house and it was just a matter of taking some cleansing cream to grubby bits and giving tired-looking patches a quick touch-up. The vacuum was put into overdrive – not that Cara ever let the house look too run-down. She got the polisher from the garage and mercifully there was a can of unopened polish so she waxed the parquet in the hall.

      It felt good to be doing something physical and by lunchtime Cara was pleasantly tired but ridiculously pleased with her efforts.

      She began to sing.

      ‘I’m going to wash those Hines right out of my hair …’ She giggled as she paraphrased the famous line from South Pacific.

      A quick tomato sandwich with lashings of black pepper for lunch and Cara was ready to tackle the soft furnishings. Cushion covers were whipped off and put through the washing machine, and were soon dry on the line and back on again. She even vacuumed the curtains in the sitting room, before spray-polishing every surface to within an inch of its life.

      Then she went outside, rang her own doorbell as though she were a guest, and came back in again.

      She tried to see Cove End as a stranger might see it and decided it was more than okay – it was a very lovely home. A much-loved home. Lived in. And it would more than do for her next guests. The flowers in the garden – so many varieties – were coming into their own now and Cara made a mental note to put small posies in the bedrooms and a big display of whatever flowers and greenery she could find in the hall. It was the little touches, she told herself, that mattered. Chocolate. Yes, chocolates. She had a whole pile of glass dishes she’d saved from when she, Mark and Mae had had chocolate mousse or panna cotta or some other treat from the supermarket for pudding and she would use those to put a few chocolates on the bedside tables. A welcome.

      Cara ran up the stairs, surprised but pleased beyond belief that a drama of sorts had made her more positive than ever to make a go of her B&B. She showered off the effort of her mad activity, changed into a pair of cropped leggings and a navy linen shirt and came back downstairs to ring Rosie.

      ‘Rosie, have you got a moment?’ Cara asked. She’d texted Rosie after breakfast but her text hadn’t been answered, not that that was unusual if Rosie had a salon full of clients booked in. She was using the landline now.

      ‘Half an hour before the next client. What’s wrong? I can tell something is. You sound a bit breathy.’

      ‘I’ve been all domestic goddess this morning.’

      ‘Spare me!’ Rosie laughed. ‘But that’s not all, is it?’

      Cara sighed. She could never get anything past Rosie really – her friend knew her too well. It would take half an hour to tell Rosie everything – about the theft of her property, how Mae practically freaked out coming home to find Cara missing and her room trashed, and how things were now with her and Mae, and about Josh, and the police going all over the house and the fingerprinting and everything.

      ‘Well, the précis is that I was an idiot last night and I left two strangers who knocked on the door asking for a bed for the night alone while I ran to the corner shop to get the wherewithal for breakfast … and …’ Just talking about it all was making her hyperventilate.

      ‘Shit, Cara, you didn’t? No, don’t answer that, ‘cos you obviously did. What’s missing?’

      ‘Silver, a bit of cash I had in the back of a kitchen drawer for emergencies, Mae’s laptop … amongst other things. But the thing is, I can’t be certain whether these lowlifes – they told me they were called Hine, but that’s no doubt stretching the truth – took my jewellery, or if Mark did. Sold it down the pub or something. Mae’s boyfriend told me that there’s a rumour going around that Mark had sold stuff in the pub and other places so …’

      ‘Okay, okay. I’m getting the drift. Why didn’t you ring me last night? I could have come over. No, scratch that, I would СКАЧАТЬ