Bones Under The Beach Hut

Chapter Two

The deal with Philly Rose was concluded at the beginning of June, but it took a couple of weeks before Carole plucked up the courage to visit her acquisition. A new owner of a beach hut in Smalting must of necessity be an object of curiosity for the more established users. Everyone would be bound to look at her.

But eventually Carole had to overcome her misgivings and bite the bullet. It was a Tuesday in mid-June. Gaby and Lily would be arriving for the start of their seaside holiday on the following Sunday week. If Carole was going to look vaguely competent as the denizen of a beach hut (would she ever get to the point of thinking of herself as a hutter?), she needed to have a few dry runs. And she had nearly a fortnight to make it look as though beach-hut life was second nature to her.

Because of her disquiet about potential illegality, Carole had spent much time consulting the website of Fether District Council to check local by-laws. (Having for a long time resisted the lure of computers, she had finally succumbed, and with the zeal of a convert was now in a relationship with her laptop which made many happy marriages look inadequate.) She was relieved not to find on the website any ruling that specifically prohibited subletting of beach huts, and her researches also brought her another bonus piece of information. Dogs were allowed on Smalting Beach.

She was quite surprised by this. Carole knew there were beaches in Bognor, Felpham and Littlehampton where no dogs were allowed during the summer. And she would have expected a place as refined as Smalting to be very strict in such matters. The idea of dogs fouling their precious sand must have been anathema to the gentry of the village. But according to the website there were no restrictions, even in the summer months when the beach would be crowded with visiting families. Carole eventually decided the reason for this anomaly. Most of the inhabitants of Smalting probably were dog owners themselves and so would lobby against anything that might curb their own pets' movements.

Anyway, she was cheered by the thought that she could have the support of Gulliver during her first experimental day at the beach hut.

Carole had once again fallen into the error so common among shy people — the idea that everyone is watching their every movement. But when she pitched up at Smalting Beach with her tote bag and Labrador, nobody took a blind bit of notice. Though the beach was quite full, mostly families with very small children taking advantage of the relative calm before the schools broke up, they were all too preoccupied with their splashings and sandcastles to register the newcomer undoing the padlocks of Quiet Harbour.

The blue double doors at the front went virtually the entire width of the hut. Across them a stainless-steel bar was fitted into slots and padlocked at either end. There was also a padlock on the staple and hasp where the two doors met, so there were three keys on the yellow plastic-tagged ring that Jude had got from Philly Rose. In spite of the protective rubber covers that fitted over the slots, the salt air had got in and the keys were hard to turn. When she had finally — and with difficulty — opened the doors, she fixed the hooks that hung from them into the rings at the sides of the hut.

Carole dared to let Gulliver off the lead while she examined her property. Though he was unfamiliar with Smalting Beach, she knew he wouldn't stray too far away from her.

The interior of Quiet Harbour was very neat and not a little poignant. Everything in it seemed to be designed for two: a pair of folded director's chairs, a small camping table. From pegs on the wall hung two snorkels, flippers, large for him, small for her, and a set of two plastic rackets with a foam ball. On a shelf at the back stood a Camping Gaz double burner and a row of sealed plastic containers, which turned out to contain cutlery and basics such as tea bags and sachets of instant coffee. There were two large and two small bright red plastic plates and a pair of mugs with humorous inscriptions: 'MR STUD' and 'SEXY LADY'. Everything in the hut was a celebration of the relationship between Philly Rose and Mark Dennis; the relationship he had walked out of.

The floor was covered by an offcut of newish-looking, clean green carpet, on which Carole's flip-flops left sandy marks when she entered the hut. She opened up one of the chairs and set it just inside the doorway. In time she would venture out on to the beach, but she wanted to make an unobtrusive start. And the position where she'd put her chair would get plenty of sun. It was a beautiful June day, one of those which should have presaged a perfect summer. But Carole Seddon had lived in England too long to be over-optimistic about that hope being realized.

Not knowing that the burner would be there, she had brought a thermos of hot black coffee with her and she poured herself a cup. Out of her tote bag she drew her copy of The Times and turned to the back of the main section for the crossword. She felt the familiar tug of annoyance at the positioning of the puzzle. In the old days, before The Times went tabloid, the crossword was always on the back page with the clues beside it, so that the paper could be folded to reveal both elements at the same time. Whereas now, it was on the penultimate page with the grid and the clues on separate halves so that, unless you had the paper flat on a table you had to keep turning the folded sheets. Why was it, wondered Carole in exasperation, that people keep wanting to change things that were already working perfectly well?

Even as she had the thought, she realized how crusty she would have sounded if she'd said the words out loud. But it didn't worry her too much. Carole Seddon was getting to the stage in life when she reckoned a little crustiness was entirely justified. And of all the things in the world to which a crusty response was justified, meddling with The Times crossword stood head and shoulders above the rest.

'Tristram, do stand up straight. Just because you're in your bathers, there's no need to be slovenly.'

From her perch inside Quiet Harbour, Carole could not see the owner of the over-elocuted female voice that issued this command from the adjacent beach hut — called Seagull's Nest — but its addressee was in clear vision. A boy of about five, wearing bright red shorts and a martyred expression, straightened his shoulders. 'Yes, Granny,' he said balefully.

'And Hermione's right down by the sea! You really should keep an eye on her, Nell.'

'Yes, Deborah, all right.' A harassed-looking, chubby young woman in a one-piece swimsuit appeared in Carole's eyeline, hurrying down to the edge of the wavelets where a blonde-haired toddler in a swimming nappy sat doing no harm to herself or anyone else. The child was absorbed in patting at the sand with a plastic spade and seemed uninterested in her mother's appearance by her side. Soon her brother, the one saddled for life with the name of Tristram, joined them and the three got into a routine of splashing games. Carole began to feel almost excited at the prospect of Lily doing the same, in less than a fortnight's time.

The voice of the unseen female from the next beach hut started up again. 'You know, Gavin, Nell really has let herself go since she had Hermione. She hasn't made any attempt to get her figure back, has she?'

'Well, she's kept pretty busy,' an upper-class male voice protested, 'what with the two little ones and—'

'Mothers have always been busy,' the woman steamrollered on, 'but that doesn't mean that they should lower their standards. I was busy when I had you and Owen to look after, but I still made sure that when your father got home from work, you were both in bed and I was made up and looking my best for him.'

'Yes, but the fact is, Mummy, you didn't have a job. Nell works full time and still—'

'Your father would have been appalled by the idea of any wife of his having a job. He would have regarded it as a criticism of his abilities to look after his own family.'

'Maybe, but times have changed, Mummy, and—'

'At least your father didn't live to see you married to Nell. He always had very high hopes for you, Gavin. I wouldn't have liked to see him disappointed.'

'But, Mummy—'

'Oh, look, Tristram and Hermione are throwing sand at each other now. And Nell's doing nothing to stop them. In fact, she's positively encouraging them.'

'They're just kids and—'

'I'd better go and sort this out,' the voice said ponderously, and Carole watched as its owner came into view and processed down the beach. The woman called Deborah was probably seventy, but she'd kept her figure well. She wore a predominantly white bathing costume with a design of red flowers on it, and her tanned skin had the texture of shrivelled leather. Over well-cut white hair she wore a broad-brimmed straw hat with a thin red and white scarf tied around it. Carole recognized the type. There were plenty of them on the South Coast. Well-heeled widows, pampered, soigné and utterly poisonous.

Unwilling to witness Deborah's latest attack on her daughter-in-law, Carole returned her attention to her crossword. And as she did so, she had the thought: that is an object lesson in how not to be a grandmother. Please, please, God, may I never behave even vaguely like that towards Lily.