The Little Bed & Breakfast by the Sea. Jennifer Joyce

       Chapter One

      Mae

      Mae was in a mad rush that morning as she flitted from room to room, eyes flicking to whichever clock happened to be nearest every thirty seconds. Right now, it was the digital display on the microwave that made her eyes widen in panic as she trundled into the kitchen, dumping the armful of goodies she’d collected onto the breakfast bar. Where had the morning gone? She could have sworn it was only five minutes since she’d dragged her weary body from beneath her sheets, forcing it in the direction of the coffee machine. And now it was almost time to go and she wasn’t even ready. The caffeine hadn’t had chance to work its way into her system, even after her second giant mug, gulped down between bites of toast.

      Taking a calming breath, Mae added the goodies to the baskets she’d set out on the breakfast bar with a practised hand, arranging the mini bottles of shampoo, conditioner and body lotion to the bed of scrunched-up tissue paper among the bottled water, individually wrapped teabags and sachets of coffee. The bar of chocolate, cellophane-wrapped biscuits and stick of rock added a sweet touch. Mae prided herself on attention to detail; it was the little things that stuck with guests long after they’d packed their suitcases and returned home, the unexpected touches they gushed over with their friends and family or added to their TripAdvisor review. Although the welcome baskets she left in the rooms of her bed and breakfast took time, effort and extra cost, Mae knew they could tempt a guest to leave a sparkling, five-star review instead of a four-star, and entice them back next year – and the year after that. Mae had dreamed of running her own bed and breakfast since she was a little girl. Now her wish had come true, she would put her all into the venture and make it the best bed and breakfast she possibly could.

      ‘Hannah!’ she called as she popped the final item – a note for her guests written on a postcard with a photo of the seaside town on the front – into the basket. ‘Have you got your shoes on yet?’

      She grabbed the baskets – one each for the two rooms she had available in the house she’d inherited from her grandmother four years ago – and headed towards the stairs, stopping outside the family room where she spotted her four-year-old daughter still glued to the television. Shoeless.

      ‘Excuse me, little lady, but aren’t you supposed to be putting your shoes on?’ Mae arched an eyebrow at her daughter. ‘We need to set off for Nanny’s in two minutes.’

      ‘It only takes me one minute to put my shoes on,’ Hannah said, eyes travelling back to the screen.

      Mae’s eyebrow arched further. ‘And how long does it take you to walk up the stairs to grab them?’

      Hannah scrunched up her nose, eyes still on the television, as she calculated. ‘Ten seconds?’

      ‘And do you know where your shoes are?’

      Technically, Hannah’s shoes should be lined up at the bottom of the wardrobe with her other shoes, but Mae knew her daughter too well. Mae might be a stickler for the little details, but her daughter was not. In Hannah’s world, there was a place for everything, but nothing was in its place.

      ‘One of them is under my bed,’ Hannah said. ‘I kicked it under there this morning when I tripped over it.’

      Mae closed her eyes, briefly. ‘And the other?’

      Hannah shrugged. ‘In my room?’

      Mae hoped the shoe was in Hannah’s bedroom. They had guests arriving later and Mae lived in fear of the day one of them would trip over an abandoned shoe or toy. She did her best to keep the house in pristine condition, but it wasn’t always easy with a four-year-old tearing about the place.

      ‘So, actually finding the other shoe could take you more than the fifty seconds you have left. Plus, we’ve been discussing this for…’ Mae scrunched up her own nose as she calculated the wasted time. ‘Twenty seconds? So, really, you only have thirty seconds to find your shoe. Probably twenty-five by now. So do you think you should turn the telly off and go and put them on?’

      Hannah sighed, her little chest heaving dramatically. ‘Fine.’

      Mae watched as her daughter wriggled off the sofa and turned the television off before shuffling out of the family room and up the stairs. Hannah was four and already behaving like a teenager – how would Mae cope when hormones set up camp? But Mae didn’t have time to ponder. She had welcome baskets to set out and less than two minutes to do so. She followed Hannah up the stairs, pushing open the guest room they had on that floor, and placed the basket on the end of the bed, smoothing the bedspread with the palm of her hand. The left curtain wasn’t quite even so she moved across the room to open it a little more, smiling at the view as she did so. With the bed and breakfast on the seafront, Mae had the perfect view of the beach, with the pier in the distance, the Ferris wheel already turning slowly. The school summer holidays had started the previous week, so Clifton-on-Sea was jam-packed with holidaymakers hopeful of a warm and dry British summer. Growing up in Clifton-on-Sea, Mae hadn’t always appreciated the beauty of her little town. Building sandcastles with her grandpa, the delicious scent of sweet candyfloss and hot doughnuts mingling with the sea air, eating fish and chips from the paper with her feet dangling over the harbour walls – these were ordinary occurrences for Mae as a little girl, and it wasn’t until she left the town in her late teens, eager to see a bit more of the country, of the world, that she realised what a special place she’d left behind. Or how privileged she’d been to have such an idyllic childhood by the sea. She couldn’t imagine a better place to raise her daughter.

      ‘Mummy!’

      Hannah’s voice broke Mae’s reverie and she backed away from the window, smoothing the bedspread one last time as she passed.

      ‘I can’t find my shoes,’ Hannah said, poking her head out of her bedroom.