LITMIR.BIZ

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to speak to Clancy.’

      ‘Really?’ His eyes flicked Clancy’s way and he said to her, ‘Be with you in a minute.’ He began to close the door with himself and his mother on the outside.

      ‘Just come in when you’re ready,’ Clancy muttered, returning to the kitchen table and her list. She’d added gardening gloves by the time Aaron stepped indoors.

      He was still frowning. ‘I had no idea Mum planned to call on you. I hope she didn’t—’ he hesitated ‘—make you uncomfortable.’

      She wrote down coffee pod machine and sat back. ‘I hope we came to an understanding.’

      ‘Right.’ He looked as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what that meant and took the chair beside hers. ‘Shall we get straight down to business? You’ve read Evelyn’s notes, you said?’

      ‘And the information sheet she puts out for guests. I now know that the village was named to celebrate Nelson’s victory at Waterloo, his being born just along the coast at Burnham Thorpe, this headland being a bar, or spit, of land.’

      A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘“Nelson’s Spit” wouldn’t have sounded as picturesque, would it? There’s also a story that he was conceived here, but how anybody thinks they know that I have no idea.’ He glanced at his watch and moved the subject on to Clancy’s duties and the joys of ‘changeover days’ when one set of guests would leave by 10 a.m. and the next move in after 3 p.m.

      After they’d discussed Evelyn’s notes, Aaron sat back. ‘You’ve met Dilys, I hear. Shall we see whether Ernie’s in? He’s feeling left out.’ He hesitated. ‘I ought to warn you that he’s becoming rather … blunt.’

      ‘Thanks for the heads up.’ Clancy followed Aaron out of the front door to the next-door-but-one house and between clipped hedges to the front door. When he rang the bell it was answered by a rather fierce-looking man with sticking-up grey hair and a pendulous bottom lip.

      ‘I’m Ernie Romain,’ he said, sticking out a hand to shake Clancy’s. ‘You’re our new Evelyn.’

      ‘Clancy Moss,’ she said. ‘I’m doing the job Evelyn used to do, yes.’ Then, thinking that she ought to demonstrate her willingness to be approached, added, ‘Just let me know if you have any issues with the cottage.’

      ‘Come in,’ he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. He turned on his heel and disappeared into the house.

      Aaron sighed but when Clancy stepped through the green front door into a tiny hall with stripy wallpaper, he followed. In the kitchen they found Ernie, who obviously had an impressive turn of speed despite his age, already switching on a kettle, an open jar of Maxwell House standing beside three mugs. The kitchen was the same size and shape as Dilys’s but clean and bare.

      ‘Only a quick one for me.’ Aaron took a seat at the table. ‘I’m supposed to be terracing a garden in Titchwell.’

      ‘She’s better-looking than Evelyn,’ Ernie answered, evidently in a different conversation in his head.

      Clancy caught an apologetic glance from Aaron and found herself grinning. ‘Have you lived here long, Ernie?’ she asked, in an effort to turn to safer topics before he enlarged on his opinion of hers or Evelyn’s looks.

      The kettle boiled and Ernie poured the water into the mugs, stirring vigorously. ‘Since I lost my wife. Soon be ten years she’s been gone and still a pain in the arse.’ He stuck a sugar jar and a carton of milk on the table too.

      Clancy might have been thrown by this if Dilys hadn’t already explained their novel living arrangements.

      ‘She said you’re Alice’s cousin,’ he added suddenly, peering at Clancy. ‘Where’s Alice got to? She was a gal, she was.’ Ernie snorted a laugh. ‘Always up to something. Always got some plan afoot. Pretty little dot. She and me got on like a house on fire.’

      ‘Good! I’ve always got on with her, too.’ Clancy was glad someone had something positive to say about Alice.

      ‘You look a bit like her. But she was a cow, pissing off like that,’ Ernie added, his fond tone belying the caustic nature of his words. He fell to drinking his coffee meditatively.

      Oh dear, the positivity hadn’t lasted long. ‘Er, well, I’m looking forward to exploring the village soon. For one reason or another I’ve been stuck in the Roundhouse pretty much since I got here. Evelyn left maps she gave the guests—’

      ‘Maps?’ Ernie bellowed a laugh, his eyebrows beetling incredulously. ‘If you need a map to find your way round Nelson’s Bar you must be brainless.’

      Aaron cleared his throat and, finding the elderly man’s bluntness uncomfortable judging by his pained expression, managed to keep him talking about Roundhouse Row until they’d finished their coffee and could leave.

      ‘Sorry about Ernie,’ Aaron apologised as soon as they were out of earshot in the lane. ‘He just turns his thoughts to words, no matter how inappropriate or blunt.’

      Clancy shrugged. ‘I’m sure we’ll get used to each other.’ Then, as Aaron took out the keys to his truck, she recalled something that had bothered her last night. ‘By the way, I’m sorry if I somehow said the wrong thing to you and Genevieve yesterday. The atmosphere got a bit …’ She let the sentence tail away rather than say ‘weird’.

      He scuffed a booted toe in the dust of the lane. ‘It was kind of you to share your knowledge. Gen’s been knocked off balance by what’s happening to her home.’

      When he said no more, Clancy ventured, ‘She seems nice.’

      ‘She is,’ he acknowledged, but he sounded rueful. His brown eyes looked very dark in the sunshine; almost black.

      Clancy backed away a step. ‘OK. Good. Well, thanks for clueing me in about my new job.’

      He took a couple of steps in the other direction, towards his truck. ‘If you have any questions, just call me on my landline or mobile – I can normally get a signal if I’m out of the village. Or you can leave a message.’

      ‘Sure.’ With a final smile goodbye, Clancy slipped indoors through the porch, wondering whether she was just being ultra-sensitive … or whether she’d read something in Aaron’s awkward manner that did not bode well for Genevieve.

       Chapter Five

      Despite Ernie’s guffaws, Clancy did pick up a map of Nelson’s Bar out of the folder Evelyn had left. She would have liked Evelyn, she was sure, judging by the neat way she’d left everything.

      The hand-drawn map showed that most of the village nestled between Long Lane and Marshview Road, curling together as they neared the tip of the headland and met Droody Road running through the middle. The shape they made looked a little like a heart with an arrow through it, she thought fancifully. Where the three roads met a building was marked ‘The Duke of Bronte B&B’ after which Evelyn had written, ‘(The Duke of Bronte being Lord Nelson’s secondary title)’. Side roads such as Frenchmen’s Way, Trader’s Place and The Green led off the main thoroughfares, and the hill leading to the village was prosaically named Long Climb.

      As she’d already walked up Long Lane as far as Aaron’s place, Clancy decided to begin with Marshview Road, as it would lead her towards what was marked on the map as Zig-zag Path leading to Zig-zag Beach, which she remembered as the short stretch of sand where Alice had once taken her.

      She stepped outside, the map tucked in her pocket. Once she’d left the shelter of the lane the wind pounced on her, whipping her hair about and making her zip up her fleece. Many of the cottages, sunbathing behind hedges as she passed along Marshview Road, were built of the red and white chalk she was fast getting used to. Between them she was able to catch glimpses of the sea, blue and enticing, each

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