The Leading Lady Read online

  Archie shook his head, laughing at himself. ‘All these years I’ve been doing it wrong. Could have saved myself a fortune … Oh, I’ve had an email back from Brazil already.’

  We both leaned over to read the screen.

  ‘Due to the public holiday, Penhaligon’s has taken this opportunity to have a mini break and close for two days,’ he read. ‘We reopen on Wednesday and will reply to your message then. Best wishes, Tim Pen …’ Archie’s voice fizzled out to nothing.

  ‘Tim Penhaligon?’ I finished, reading over his shoulder. ‘Who on earth is that? Archie, my flowers were from someone whose name starts with T!’

  ‘Vic is so good,’ said Kate brightly, marching into the kitchen. She picked up the kettle, shook it then added some more water. ‘He’s off to the lifeboat house now to give Jude an estimate for work there too.’ She stared at us. ‘What’s the matter with you two? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Not a ghost,’ Archie stuttered. ‘Perhaps a skeleton in the closet.’

  ‘And whoever it is,’ I said, trying to quell my nervous excitement, ‘is most definitely alive.’

  A little while later I crossed the courtyard to Beaver’s Barn. I’d been summoned by Maxine. She was leaving tomorrow after all, because her executive producer on The Holy Coast had requested a meeting in London before heading up to Scotland on Friday, and so she had finally agreed to do a bit of last-minute exploring with me now. The afternoon was still warm and as the tide was low, I planned to drag her for a long walk across the beach and finish up on the terrace at the pub for a cream tea.

  ‘I’m missing Paul now,’ she confided as we headed down the drive. She clomped inelegantly along the potholes in her heeled boots, despite my advice to borrow my trainers. ‘She would love it here.’

  ‘You should have brought her.’

  ‘She’s lecturing in Australia at the moment, but even so I wouldn’t have brought her. I needed this week on my own to work, to think and read. I knew I had to make the decision whether to stay on Victory Road or head into uncharted waters. I’m glad I came. The peace and quiet is every bit as wonderful as you promised.’

  ‘Except for bumping into Campion?’

  ‘Oh, I’m glad he came too. I have no reason to hide who I am any more. I’m far more confident than I was when I first met him. I was fooling myself for a long time as a young woman. Growing up, I had a picture of Cliff Richard pinned above my bed, not the butchest of men, I grant you, but even then I secretly preferred Tammy Wynette. Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be the done thing to pin a poster of her up in Cliff’s place.’

  It was hard to imagine Maxine Pearce ever lacking confidence, but I kept quiet. I just felt terribly sorry for her that she’d felt as if she’d had to hide her true self from the outside world for so long.

  ‘Well, I wish Campion hadn’t come.’ I sighed. ‘He wants to turn the boat house into an art gallery.’

  ‘Oh, that would be lovely! Sorry,’ she said, catching my mutinous expression. ‘I mean, that would be awful. What a lovely building, though, it should be made the most of.’

  ‘Which is why we want to keep it for the community to use.’

  Maxine winced. ‘I hate to say this, but that man does have a habit of getting what he wants.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you could have a word with him for us? Ask him to open an art gallery somewhere else?’

  She harrumphed. ‘Sorry, dear heart, but then I’d be beholden to him; he’d most certainly want something in return. Look what happened to Oscar Johnson, he repaid a favour by letting Cecily take that plum role in Mary Queen of Scots. And what a disaster that turned out to be.’

  ‘Is there a part in The Holy Coast she could have? A small one?’

  Maxine didn’t even dignify that with a reply. She simply raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Just investigating all avenues.’

  ‘So,’ she said, changing the subject, ‘while I’ve had my head hanging over the desk burning the midnight oil, what have you been doing other than the laundry?’

  ‘Last night I shared my bed with a starfish, at lunchtime I think I might have told a man that I’m falling in love with him and this afternoon I discovered that my father is running a gay club in Brazil.’

  ‘Crikey,’ said Maxine, looking impressed. ‘Sod the cream tea, this calls for gin.’

  ‘Careful!’ I said as she sprang mountain-goat-like over a slimy piece of seaweed.

  ‘Ooh!’ she yelped as she lost her footing.

  I grabbed her arm but she was too heavy for me. Her heels caught the edge of a wet rock and she landed with a thump on her back.

  ‘Ouch. Oh seriously, ouch. My back and my ankle.’

  I dropped to my knees beside her and she gripped my hand. Her face had gone a greeny colour.

  ‘I’ll get help,’ I promised.

  My phone, of course, didn’t work, but at the far side of the harbour I could see Big Dave tossing lobster cages from his boat to the quayside. I jumped up and waved my arms.

  ‘My rape alarm,’ muttered Maxine. ‘In my pocket. It’s ancient but it should still work.’

  I found the small device and pulled out the pin. The noise was deafening.

  Big Dave looked around for a second and then saw me waving my arms and began running down the slipway.

  I replaced the pin to stop the awful high-pitched alarm and knelt back down. ‘Help is on its way.’

  ‘Good. But I still need gin.’ Maxine’s eyes were squeezed tight and tears of pain were leaking from them.

  ‘So do I,’ I said, pressing a hand to my racing heart. ‘At least a double.’

  Chapter 36

  ‘Right, that’s great,’ I said into the phone the following morning. ‘Four adults in four single beds with two dogs for a week in September. It’s in the diary for you.’

  I put the phone down in the hall and flicked through the pages of the months ahead. That was the first booking for September and there were only one or two vacancies left during the school holidays now.

  Word was spreading about Brightside Holidays: the Coastal Cottages website was helping to generate interest and Kate and Theo’s own website had its fair share of enquiries too, although it had to be said, most of the people who got in touch mentioned the Maidens of Mayfair and asked for the cottage that Sapphire Spencer had stayed in.

  I’d kept an eye on Sapphire’s Facebook page. It was only four more sleeps until her wedding and yet hardly a thing had been posted about it publicly. I felt proud of her for keeping her and her fiancé’s plans away from the public eye. It made it more special, more personal, and I was sure they’d look back in the future with satisfaction at the choice they’d made.

  The news section on the Maidens of Mayfair website had announced that Sapphire was leaving the show after marrying scientist Brad on Saturday and that she would be taking up a research position at a Canadian zoo. And the article even had a link to her JustGiving page in lieu of wedding gifts to raise money for her ant project. I’d smiled to myself when I’d seen it; so she had managed to raise some awareness of that clepto thing she’d been obsessed with. Good for her. No mention of who would be taking her place in the show, though, so I guessed her sister Ruby had stuck to her guns and was concentrating on her singing career. God help Simon Cowell …

  ‘No offence, but you look a bit mental sitting there grinning to yourself.’ Molly’s voice made me jump and I swivelled round to look at the front door, still grinning.

  In London you’d never keep the door open, but here it was propped wide with a cast-iron door stop whenever the weather was good enough. I loved it. Fresh air billowing in, carrying with it the smell of the sea and the faint scent of bluebells from the hedgerows. Heavenly.

  ‘Better happy than sad, though,’ she added, walking through to the kitchen and dumping a basket of clean bedlinen on the table. She pulled off her cycle helmet and her hair tumbled round her shoulders. ‘I wasn’t sure how you’d be fe
eling after yesterday.’

  ‘It was an epic day,’ I replied cautiously, wondering how much Archie had told her.

  ‘Are you putting the kettle on or what?’

  ‘You look happy too,’ I said, obeying orders and clinking mugs and spoons. I waited, hoping that Archie was the source of the flush to her cheeks.

  ‘I am. I’ve just been offered a job!’ She scooped her hair up into a ponytail and secured it with a band from around her wrist.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘Jethro.’ She pulled a face. ‘Can you believe it? He’s going on a cruise.’

  I felt a twinge of pride. So the grumpy old git had actually done it. ‘He mentioned that he’d always fancied it.’

  ‘Just for a couple of weeks, but you never know,’ she continued, ‘if he’s happy with what I do, it might lead to more hours.’

  ‘Gosh, just think, with your influence he might get rid of some of those antique tins of new potatoes and actually put in some decent veg. And a deli counter, imagine! Our self-catering guests would love it.’

  ‘Well, baby steps, Nina. If I can persuade him to stock proper coffee instead of that dreadful cheap instant, I’ll consider myself a success.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad for you. For both of you.’

  ‘My new role is nothing like you with your fancypants-one-step-away-from-Hollywood acting role, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.’

  I glanced sharply at her. ‘You’re not that strapped for cash, are you?’ And if she was, I knew Archie would want to be straight in there, trying to help her out.

  ‘I can afford the basics; it’s the little extras I need help with.’

  I told her about all the new holiday bookings and the regular laundry that would inevitably come her way, which cheered her up.

  ‘Good, because Jethro doesn’t need me for another month or so and I’m still trying to save for a holiday for Ellis and me. I reckon I need five hundred pounds.’

  ‘How much have you got saved?’

  ‘Eighty.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Might get us a day trip to Legoland, but that’s about it.’

  My heart squeezed for her. She was such a determinedly positive person and a great mum, she deserved a bit of luck in her life.

  ‘In that case, I hope Jethro gets the travelling bug and goes away more often,’ I said.

  ‘By the way, he said he saw you last night jumping the queue in A&E at the hospital. He said he’d jumped through hoops to get an appointment about his bad leg and you and your friend just waltzed in. I said no wonder his leg hurt if that was what he’d been up to.’

  I snorted. ‘And by waltzed in, he actually means arriving on a stretcher by ambulance.’

  ‘Yes, he did admit that eventually.’

  Poor Maxine. She was feeling very sorry for herself. She’d almost passed out with pain yesterday as two paramedics plus Big Dave had helped her on to the stretcher and into the ambulance. She was lucky: no broken bones, just an ankle sprain, a tender coccyx and a bruised ego that she was nursing today in Beaver’s Barn having crawled up to bed on all fours last night.

  Her main concern throughout the whole incident was that she absolutely had to be on the train back to London today. She was quite vocal about this until the doctor, peering down at her as she lay flat on her back, had said simply, ‘Then get up and leave and stop wasting everyone’s time.’

  She’d gone quiet after that.

  ‘What’s wrong with Jethro’s leg?’ I asked Molly now, getting another mug out for Maxine and setting it on a tray with a plateful of biscuits – shop bought, say what you like about Jethro’s vegetable assortment, but his biscuit shelf wasn’t bad.

  ‘Apparently the doctor had told him to do some exercise to get himself fit for this cruise and he’d overdone his “physical jerks”. Don’t ask,’ she said darkly, catching my quizzical look. ‘Anyway, he’s pulled the muscles in his inner thighs. The nurse gave him some ibuprofen gel and a worksheet of gentle stretches and told him to give his exercise routine a second chance.’

  We giggled for a moment or two at the thought of Jethro doing star jumps behind the counter of the shop. Then I got up to re-boil the kettle to make a cafetière of coffee for the patient.

  ‘And talking of second chances,’ I said softly, ‘how did it go with Archie?’

  Molly sighed, took a biscuit from the plate I’d set out for Maxine and nibbled into it. ‘I’m not a high-maintenance woman. I just want someone who’ll put their money where their mouth is … No, scratch that. That’s precisely what Archie does do. I want someone I can rely on, not just me but Ellis too. And when a man says he’ll show up, he has to deliver on that promise.’

  I nodded, sympathizing with her totally. ‘But did he tell you about that club in Brazil, the one in Kate’s photos? That was part of the reason he dashed off the other night.’

  She placed her hand over mine. ‘He did. He told me all about finding the photo amongst your mum’s things and everything. I hope you don’t mind?’

  Hope bubbled in my chest as I protested that I didn’t mind in the least. For Archie to open up to someone, he had to really like them a lot. I’d love for him to fall in love and live happily ever after, have a focus to his life other than his business.

  ‘So what’s next for the two of you?’ I said, pouring water on to the coffee grounds.

  ‘The three of us,’ she said shyly. ‘We’ve made a date for Friday. He’s taking me and Ellis for pizza and ice cream. But this is it; if he bails on me again then …’ She laid her biscuit on the kitchen table very deliberately, raised her hand and karate-chopped it.

  ‘Crumbs,’ I muttered.

  ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ Jude said later that day.

  It was early evening and I’d gone down to meet him on the beach after work. He was sitting on a rock at the bottom of the slipway watching Mabel galloping along the sand playing with two golden retrievers and a noisy Jack Russell and he stood up to greet me, kissing my cheek.

  ‘Good, definitely,’ I grumbled. ‘I’ve been looking after the patient from hell all day. Maxine has not taken to the notion of bed rest at all well.’

  ‘I heard she was still here.’ Jude chuckled. ‘I passed the pub on the way down to the beach and Raquel said Maxine had phoned up and placed an order for lunch and was most disgruntled when Raquel told her that no she could not have a chicken Caesar salad delivered to her cottage and that Deliveroo, whatever that is, was not available in this part of Devon.’

  We both laughed. He gestured towards the water and rested his hand lightly on my waist. We began to walk along the shoreline and with each step I felt my shoulders relax a bit more, my smile come back and my heart skip. I stole a sideways glance at him; I loved this, just him and me and Mabel, of course.

  I hadn’t felt like this about anyone before. I’d been so career-focused, telling myself that work had to come first, that there was no room in my life for love. I shook my head at myself. I was just as bad as Archie really, when it came down to it. But no more, from now on I was going to give my love life equal billing to my career.

  I filled my lungs with sea air purposefully and smiled up at him. ‘I made her an egg salad in the end and even then she checked twice to make sure I’d boiled the eggs for seven minutes. Fastidious to the last is Maxine, but then that’s what makes her so good at her job directing TV shows.’

  Jude’s face fell briefly but he rallied. ‘So do you want to hear the good news …?’

  ‘Oh yes, sorry. I got carried away with the view for a second.’ I eyed him cheekily and he grinned back.

  ‘Vic the builder can do the work on the boat house. He says the basics to put some plumbing into it – a loo, kitchen sink, that sort of thing – will be simple enough. We could have it up and running as a rough and ready venue in a few weeks.’

  ‘Great!’ I beamed, but I could already sense by the look of defeat on his face that the bad news was going to far outweigh the good. ‘And the bad?’r />
  ‘The cost.’ He puffed his cheeks out. ‘The builder might be willing, but the bank balance is weak. Just to do the initial work will be five thousand quid, and that’s before we think about changing the big doors either end, which were designed for boats to slip in and out of. He reckons we’ll need at least another ten for that.’

  ‘So actually we need fifteen thousand pounds just to make it look more of a meeting place and less of a shed,’ I mused. ‘Quite an ambitious target.’

  ‘Impossible, more like.’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘If we can pull this off, I’ll strip off, run down the beach and go skinny dipping.’

  ‘More good news.’

  He laughed, properly this time. ‘Seriously, though, short of a miracle, I really can’t see that happening, can you?’

  I turned to face him, pressing an impulsive kiss to his cheek. ‘I’m not giving up now. We’ve still got a few days. And besides, seeing as my next role is playing a vicar, perhaps I can conjure up a bit of divine intervention?’

  I supposed the easiest thing to do would be to ask Archie for a loan. But I wouldn’t do that. Firstly, I didn’t think Jude would accept it, and secondly, given Archie’s confession that things were difficult at the moment for his business, it wasn’t fair on him either. No, I thought, stomping back along the coastal path half an hour later, this time I wouldn’t go running to my big brother for help, I’d try to figure something out on my own.

  I called into the fish and chip shop on my way home for Maxine’s order – plaice and chips with plenty of salt and no vinegar – and then jogged back so that it would still be warm enough for her ladyship.

  ‘I need a favour, dear heart.’ Maxine sat forward so that I could adjust the cushion behind her back. Her injured ankle was propped up on the coffee table, tightly bandaged, with an ice pack from the first-aid box tucked over it. The other foot was still wearing its high-heeled shoe. ‘My meeting really does need to go ahead as planned tomorrow.’

  I paused from handing her her dinner on a tray. ‘You’re not seriously thinking of travelling to London?’