Summer at 23 the Strand: A gorgeously feel-good holiday read!. Linda Mitchelmore

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СКАЧАТЬ left as you leave this office. One double bedroom, one sitting room with sofabed cum galley kitchen, one loo with basin and shower. All breakages to be paid for. No barbecues on the wooden deck, I’m afraid, because the chalets are wooden. Fire risk, and all that. To be vacated a fortnight from today by 10 a.m. to give the cleaner time to turn it all around before the next occupants. The key with the luggage-label tag on it to be posted through the letterbox here if we’re closed. Any problems—’

      ‘I’ll sort them,’ Martha interrupted. The last thing she needed was to have to come back here and, possibly, have someone else turn up at Number 23 The Strand to sort out whatever problem she might have. Just standing here, listening to the clerk reciting what she must have recited hundreds of times before, was giving her goose bumps. The sooner she got out of here the better.

      ‘Of course, this could be the last season this particular chalet is let because it’s up for sale,’ the clerk said as though Martha hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s owned by the local authority at present, as are a couple of others and they need to cut costs, so they’re up for sale too. The others are privately owned by locals who keep them for their own use at weekends and in the school holidays, although some do rent them out to holidaymakers. There’s not been a lot of interest in Number 23 so far but it’s early in the season. Any questions?’ The clerk cocked her head to one side questioningly.

      ‘Can’t think of any,’ Martha said, perhaps a bit too sharply, which is what happens when one’s nerves are on end. She didn’t want to be rude but she had to go.

      Well, Martha thought, as she closed the door of the chalet behind her, what a lovely surprise. She’d glanced at the photos on the website when she’d booked, of course, but she hadn’t studied it in much detail. It was bigger than she’d been expecting – more ski chalet than beach hut, perhaps a bit boutique hotel – and just as the lady in the tourist office had said, a little home from home. And so very clean. A nest. Martha felt the welcome of it wrap around her, warm her. The boarded walls were painted a soft shade of yellow, like vanilla custard, with a frieze of stencilled scallop shells in deep turquoise where the walls met the ceiling. Pretty, cotton curtains with blue and yellow sailboats hung at the windows in the double bedroom and living room. The cream, linen-covered sofabed was piled with large and squashy cushions in various shades of yellow and blue, and two small but matching armchairs had biscuit-coloured fleece throws draped over the arms, for colder days perhaps. The duvet on the double bed, covered in a turquoise, jacquard-style pattern, was thick and sumptuous, and the pillows large, plump and inviting.

      ‘All very Eastern Seaboard,’ Martha said out loud. ‘I love it.’

      Some of the tension she’d been carrying with her was beginning to seep away. Yes, she’d made the right decision coming here. It was as though this chalet had been waiting for her. She patted the duvet, her hand almost disappearing in its sumptuousness.

      ‘And I could lie down on you right now,’ she laughed, surprising herself with that laugh because she hadn’t laughed for weeks now. But she couldn’t flop down on it just yet. Martha drew her breath in and then let it all out again slowly, her shoulders dropping as she physically relaxed. Yes, it felt good here. It would give her space and time to rethink what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. But first, she just had to do something with her hair.

      Martha had never done a home hair dye before. Ever since she’d been eleven years old and at stage school, her naturally blonde hair had always been professionally cut and coloured. And, of course, for filming she’d often worn wigs. It felt strange, but empowering, to be choosing a new hair colour without others calling the shots. So she’d chosen red; a sort of rosehip red with a bit of gloss to it to cover her natural blonde. The basin in the bijou bathroom – small but perfectly appointed the brochure had said, and so it was – looked as though a murder had been committed as Martha rinsed her hair one last time. Now to dry it. And then cut it. She pulled her hair high over her head and, with eyes closed, chopped straight across. When she opened her eyes again she had about eighteen inches of ponytail in her hand. Shaking her head to loosen her hair, she braved the mirror.

      Not bad. Not bad at all. Next came the coloured contact lenses. Martha’s eyes were the palest blue, bordering on turquoise, but she reckoned a redhead might have green eyes. So in went the onyx contacts.

      ‘I hardly recognise myself,’ Martha said, in a Scottish accent, light years away from her true Home Counties way of speaking. But that was the advantage of being an actress. She could become anyone from anywhere. And she had. Many, many, times. From stage work to period TV dramas, through a six-month stint on a ‘soap’, to Hollywood. But there was a downside – over the years so many other people had pulled her strings, as it were. So many that she felt she had almost lost the essence of who she was inside. Almost.

      Her agent, Ralph Newcombe, had been furious when she’d decided to turn her back on it all.

      ‘You cannot be serious!’ he’d raged at her in his office that smelled of whisky and cigarettes, making Martha gag. Or rather making Serena Ross, as she was known to the world, gag. ‘You are making me look an utter fool pulling out of this! I’ve worked my backside off getting you, not the lead role admittedly, but a not insignificant role in a Tom Marchant film. Bets were on that you’d get Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars. And you pull this stunt! I’ll be surprised if you ever work again!’

      That night, Martha had gone back to the flat the film company had provided and cried and cried and cried. No need for glycerine on her bottom lashes to bring on the tears. And then she’d called Tom and told him she wouldn’t be coming back to the set. She’d been flattered by his attention, even though she’d known he was married with two small children – as did the rest of the world. Sitting close to him on breaks, sharing a burger or a salad, a frisson of excitement had fizzed through her. His invite to dinner after the day’s filming had been tempting. So she’d gone. Just dinner, he’d said. And it had been. Although if she were honest with herself it wouldn’t have taken much for their feelings to run over – perhaps not this time they had dinner, but definitely the next. Tom had felt it too.

      ‘Taxi time,’ he’d said, leaning across the table to give her hand a squeeze. ‘The danger hour approacheth. Two people from out of town with hours to fill till morning.’

      Tom had even called the taxi for her, walked with her to the door – just a little behind her with a hand in the small of her back. And that’s when she’d been startled by a barrage of camera flashes and saw in rapid fast-forward how it would be if she were to enter a full-blown affair with Tom. She – and he – would be hounded.

      Martha, not liking herself very much at that moment for what she’d been on the cusp of, had turned to Tom then.

      ‘The danger hour is too dangerous for me,’ she’d said. ‘I’m not in the habit of breaking up marriages, despite the magic…’

      ‘…between us,’ Tom had finished for her.

      Martha didn’t think Tom was a serial adulterer, although she was under no illusion that she’d been the first to tempt him. For the two weeks they’d been thrown together, working on Breaking Ice, he’d showered her with gifts, in time-honoured Hollywood style – bespoke perfume and a designer handbag, Italian silk scarves and an amethyst pendant on a fine gold chain. She’d worn that pendant on her first – and last – dinner date with Tom. But she’d known in an instant, the camera flashes almost blinding her, that she hadn’t been in love with him – merely in lust, feelings heightened and enhanced by the place and the setting and the fabulous clothes. There could be many Toms in the future if she stayed here among the beautiful people with money to spend and lavish lifestyles. Was that what she wanted?

      And that was when she’d made СКАЧАТЬ