Summer at Shell Cottage (33 page)

Oh Molly.
She wished she’d thought to just ring her before leaping into the car and heading off.
Her phone was back in her bag in the footwell, but she was driving too fast and furiously
to start leaning over to try and fish it out now.
Wait for me, love
, she thought desperately.
Just hang on.
I’m coming.
Don’t do anything daft.
Please!

Who
was
this boy, anyway?
Who the hell was he, booking hotel rooms and arranging things on the sly?
Wait till she got her hands on him, that was all Harriet had to say.
Freya’s
last message had assured her that she was heading down to Ennisbridge, in order to give this lad ‘a flea in his ear’ and make sure Molly was okay.
Well, Harriet would give him a lot
more than that if she caught up with him.
She would be so ferocious that his skin would blister.
If he thought he could try it on with her fifteen-year-old daughter, then he jolly well had another
think coming.

If she could get there in time, that was.
If!
Still six miles from Ennisbridge and now she was stuck behind a sodding tractor on a single-track bit of road.
Harriet thumped the steering wheel
and yelled every last expletive she could think of at the chugging, trundling farm vehicle.
Why had she come all the way down to Hamstone anyway?
She should not have left Molly on her own in the
house.
Her mother instincts should have been better; she should have known somehow, a sensor in her head, the daughter radar picking up signals .
.
.
Oh, where was that sodding ‘Rewind’
button when you needed it?

She just had to hope there was still time.
What if she was already too late?

Hurry up!
I’m in reception, eagerly awaiting your arrival .
.
.
Ben texted as Molly hurried along the prom, and she felt her legs turn weak and watery at
the promise of him there, in the flesh and so close, waiting for her.
Drumming his fingers, perhaps, glancing up hopefully every time the door swung open .
.
.

Oh my God.
And then there it was, the hotel, less than twenty metres up on the left: a large white-painted building on the corner, just as Ben had described it.
She thudded to a stop, fighting
the feeling of disappointment that their romantic rendezvous point actually looked more like a big old house than the glitzy hotel Molly had pictured in her mind.
A seagull was pecking at some
dropped chips on the pavement outside and there were grubby net curtains at the windows.
Oh, so what?
she told herself.
Big deal!
She wasn’t a snob.
It could be a bus shelter or a cow barn
and she’d still be excited to see Ben there.

Excited if slightly terrified, mind, but whatever.
She’d got this far and she wasn’t a bottler.
It couldn’t hurt
that
much, surely, otherwise nobody would ever bother
doing it twice.
And she did love him, didn’t she?
She certainly didn’t want him to go off with anyone else.
Let’s do this.

Molly hadn’t ever stayed in a hotel before.
A few bed and breakfast places with Mum and Robert, a youth hostel on a school trip to Wales, a campsite with Mum in a leaky tent back when they
were skint.
She had imagined that hotels would be full of butlers and maids, chandeliers and silver cutlery, kind of like in
Downton Abbey
, only on a larger scale.
When Ben had told her
they were booked into a hotel, she’d envisaged a vast crisp bed, a massive TV and room service arriving under those big silver domed covers .
.
.
Maybe the Ennisbridge Hotel wasn’t
going to be quite so posh, though, she thought, stepping cautiously through the propped-open front door.
She found herself in a small, poky hallway with an empty desk and chair in front of her.
Ring for service
said a small card propped against an old-fashioned bell.
What, seriously?
Molly wanted to giggle at the idea of her standing there ringing a bell.
Yeah, right.
Like that
was going to happen.
Now, where was Ben?

There were rooms leading off to the right and left of the hall, and she poked her head around the one on the right.
It was a rather fussy-looking lounge with dusty velvet sofas, a huge sprawling
fern in one corner and a bookcase full of peeling hardbacks that probably hadn’t been read by a single person for at least fifty years.
But that was all irrelevant because there, too, was Ben
– Ben!
– unfolding his long legs and standing up.

‘You made it,’ he said with a grin.

Her heart gave an enormous flip.
‘I made it,’ she said.
And then – yes!
– just like in her dreams, he was walking across to greet her, and then grabbing her in the most
enormous smoochy kiss, and it was all just so blissfully romantic and beautiful.
His hands roamed up her body and her breath felt shallow in her throat.
Oh my God.
This was it.
They were here
together, in Devon, in a hotel.
This was really happening!

‘You look beautiful,’ he said, touching her face.
‘Oh, Molly.
You’re amazing.’

She could feel herself blushing, her whole body one huge blush, suffused with the heat of her blood.
It felt weird seeing him, and not being in school uniform, almost like a dream, being in this
musty-smelling hotel together, miles from London.
‘Thank you,’ she managed to say, her legs trembling.

‘Just relax,’ he said, his voice low and whispery.
‘We’re going to have fun together.
Loads of fun.
Shall we go up to our room?’

Molly gulped.
Our room.
All of a sudden, her feet felt heavy as if she might not be able to drag them across the carpet.
But she could hardly back out now, could she?
Not when
he’d come all the way down to Devon to see her.
She swallowed, trying to act cool rather than the bag of nerves that she really was.
‘Sure,’ she said.
‘Although .
.
.
Maybe
we could .
.
.’
She cast her eye around hurriedly, wanting to delay their departure.
Just for a few minutes until she felt ready and brave.
She saw a half-drunk glass of Coke on a side table,
where Ben had been sitting.
‘I wouldn’t mind a drink,’ she said tentatively.

He placed one hand over her breast and squeezed it, slowly and deliberately, his eyes on her face the entire time.
‘We’ll order up room service,’ he told her, and pulled out a
key from his pocket.
‘Shall we?’

This was it.
Now or never.
Her lips parted to reply but her mouth was so dry.
‘I .
.
.’

And then in the next moment, there was another voice in the room.
‘Hey!
Oh no, you don’t, pal.
Get your hands off her this minute.
Now!’

Molly swung round and – holy
fuck
– there behind them was
Aunty Freya
, like a pantomime genie appearing from out of nowhere.
What?
For real?
Molly wondered if she
might be dreaming for a second but no, it was definitely Freya, her hair wilder and corkscrewier than ever, striding forward with her handbag so purposefully that Molly actually thought she was
about to wallop Ben with it.

‘Er .
.
.’
Molly stammered in alarm, as she and Ben unclinched themselves.
Talk about a passion-killer.
This was a passion-annihilator.
What the .
.
.
?

Ben, meanwhile, stared from Molly to Freya.
‘Who the hell are you?’
he asked Freya, then rounded furiously on Molly.
‘Is this a joke?
I told you not to tell anyone.’

‘I didn’t!’
squeaked Molly, taking a step back, but Freya wasn’t deterred.
If anything, she looked like she might very well punch Ben.

‘I could ask you the same question,’ Freya replied tartly.
‘Who the hell do you think
you
are, sneaking around with a fifteen-year-old girl?’

Oh shite
, thought Molly, the romance of the scene evaporating before her eyes, like blight on a rose, a glass heart trampled by a jackboot.
She was going to be in so much trouble for
this.
She should have known nobody else would understand their love!
But before Ben could even answer, in came a shrieking hellcat –
Mum!
–
barrelling into the room with such
force and ferocity that the walls practically quaked.
‘Molly!’
she cried, making a beeline for her and almost squeezing the life out of her with a wild embrace.
Jesus.
Hysterical mother
alert.
Now she was definitely in the shit.
But then, as her mum’s arms tightened around her, she was struck in the same moment by how safe she felt, and how relieved she was, deep down, to
have been rescued at the last second.
Embarrassingly, she almost wanted to cry.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Molly began saying but was almost deafened in the next moment when Mum let out a yell of shock upon recognizing Ben.
‘Mr
Jamison
?
What on earth
.
.
.
?’

‘I can explain,’ Ben mumbled, hanging his head, but Mum was on a total roll now.
She let go of Molly and advanced on him, eyes blazing, squaring up to him like a boxer.

‘You’re her English teacher, you dirty old sod.
She’s
fifteen
years old!
What the frig do you think you’re doing?
Wait until the headteacher hears about this.
And the police!’

Everything happened really quickly after that, like a film that had been set on fast-forward.
Mum went on ranting, her voice rising shrilly – ‘Is this what you do,
prey on young girls?
You piece of shit!
You pervert!’
– while Ben collapsed into the nearest armchair and put his head in his hands.
‘Please don’t tell the head,’ he
said, his voice muffled.
He didn’t look at Molly.
‘I don’t want my wife to know.’

‘I bet you bloody don’t,’ Freya said with disdain, just as Molly cried, ‘Your
wife
?’
He still wasn’t looking at her and she felt heat rush into her
face, a huge lump of hurt sticking in her throat.
He’d never said anything about a
wife
!

‘Welcome to womanhood, darling,’ her mum said in the most awful, angry voice.
She glared at Ben; Molly had never seen her face look quite so ugly with hatred.
‘Spoiler alert:
they’re all tossers at the end of the day.’

‘I’m ringing the police,’ Freya said.
‘This is appalling.
You realize you’ve broken the law?
Christ, man, pull yourself together.
Snivelling isn’t going to
help you now.
You’re finished, end of story.
You’re history.’

‘Ben,’ said Molly in a low voice.
‘
Ben.
’

Still he didn’t raise his gaze to hers.
‘Don’t speak to him, darling,’ Mum said, as Freya said, ‘Police, please,’ into her phone and began rattling off what
had happened.

‘Please, Ben,’ Molly said desperately.
Even though she was secretly kind of relieved that she hadn’t had to go through with it – sex with him, her thirty-something
teacher, in this weird-smelling hotel – she was devastated too.
Sorry for him, even.
He looked broken and haggard.
No more swagger.
No more charming smiles, white teeth and suggestive looks.
Now he seemed to have shrunk in the space of a few minutes, his forehead lined, a sheen of grease on his top lip.
He’d seemed so handsome at school, striding around with an armful of exercise
books, reading them Wilfred Owen poems and becoming so choked up with emotion that his voice had caught on the last lines.
She had fallen in love with him there and then, swooning in her bedroom
later on over the hidden depths of sensitivity, wisdom and compassion that little catch in his voice implied.
A man who was unafraid to show his emotions – hell, yeah.
Emotion me right
up, Mr Jamison
, she’d thought dreamily.

And then he’d caught her eye once, twice, three times in class.
He’d asked her to stay behind one lesson – something about a book he thought she should read – and touched
her arm, unbearably softly, just with his fingertips.
She had gasped and turned red (and had then gazed yearningly, romantically at that same patch of skin on her arm for the rest of the day,
unable to believe it didn’t still bear the imprint of his touch).
She had even had a go at reading the poetry book he’d lent her, although in all honesty, poetry was so not her thing
and she didn’t have a clue what poets were wittering on about half the time.

But he’d kindled something in her.
Something hot and exciting and unquenchable.
English lessons became the golden hours of her week at school, the hours that sped by fastest, where she
drank in the sight of him, her heart fluttering like a million butterfly wings whenever he glanced her way.
God, he was beautiful.
He was just so manly and knowing and clever.
A million miles away
from all the spotty jerks in her year, with their bobbing Adam’s apples and disgusting Lynx miasma.
Compared to Mr Jamison, they were practically babies who knew nothing.

Yet now – at last – he was looking up and his gaze was cold and unpleasant.
‘You had to go and open your mouth, didn’t you?’
he said sullenly and she felt sick
inside, that this was all her fault, that he hated her now.

‘Ben, I swear I didn’t tell anyone,’ she cried in anguish, tears pricking her eyes, but Mum was already flying at him.
‘Don’t you dare,’ she hissed, pointing
a finger in his face.
‘Don’t you dare even
look
at her any more, or you’ll have me to answer to, sunshine.’