Finding Home by Kate Field (read book .txt) 📗

how her luck had changed in the course of a few days. She had somewhere to stay and she had a job. There was only one thing missing: somewhere to swim. It was her one indulgence, the only break she had regularly taken at the hotel. Powering through the water made her feel strong and in control, made her feel equal to everyone else, as if the past couldn’t touch her. She couldn’t manage without it. She glanced towards Corin who was strolling at her side, an amused smile on his face.

‘Are there any swimming pools nearby?’ she asked. ‘Cheap ones, I mean. Council owned – I don’t want a fancy gym. I just want to swim.’

‘You like swimming?’ Corin’s smile widened. ‘The nearest pool is in Sidmouth but there is a cheaper option.’

‘Is there? What’s that?’

Corin pointed down the path that was signposted to the beach and Mim headed that way. The cobbled path ran between a high wall then turned abruptly to the left where it met the beach. Dickens ran off without a backward glance, tearing along the beach and occasionally jumping up and barking at nothing. Mim wasn’t so sure-footed. She took a few tentative steps onto the pebbles that made up the ground between the land and the sea, slipping and sliding and stumbling on the unfamiliar terrain under her feet. It wasn’t what she had expected.

‘What sort of beach is this?’ she asked. ‘Shouldn’t there be sand?’

Corin smiled.

‘This is part of the Jurassic Coast. Many of the beaches are shingle along here. The geology is incredible. There’s over 185 million years of history along the coast, from the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. It’s a fascinating place to live.’

He certainly looked enthusiastic but Mim hadn’t understood half of what he’d said.

‘Sorry.’ He laughed. ‘I don’t suppose you’re interested. What do you think of this? Is it a big enough swimming pool for you?’

He gestured across the sweep of the bay. Behind them, the land rose steeply on both sides of the village, creating tall cliffs that jutted out towards the sea in the distance, forming the crescent shape of the beach. In front of them, the sea was a shimmering expanse of grey that merged into the sky on the horizon.

‘It’s magnificent,’ Mim said. She walked down to the edge of the shore and dipped her hand down to an incoming wave. She took it out again quickly. ‘It’s freezing!’

‘It’s not for the faint-hearted,’ Corin said. ‘Perhaps you’d be better in a proper pool.’

‘No. This will be perfect. I’m not a soft southerner,’ Mim said with a grin. ‘I’m tough enough to cope with some cold water.’

‘After seeing the way you handled Janet, I think you probably are.’ Corin smiled at her. ‘Ask Mum if you can borrow a wetsuit. She’ll have a stack of our old ones somewhere. And don’t go out on your own – at least until you’re used to it. It’s quite a different experience to swim with the current and the waves. Try asking Lia. She’s rarely busy.’

Mim nodded, without much intention of following his advice. She didn’t need a minder. She’d survived far worse than a few waves and pebbles underfoot. She wandered along the shore, her cheeks stinging with the cold, and stopped occasionally to scoop up stones and to admire how smooth they were and how much variety there was in the colours and shapes on close inspection. She’d expected the beach to be the yellow sand she’d seen in photographs and on television but she wasn’t disappointed. The raw, natural beauty of this place tugged at her heart in a way she couldn’t explain.

She looked up from a curious, heart-shaped stone and found Corin was studying her, while Dickens raced back towards him with a stick.

‘Do you think you’ll stay here?’ he asked.

‘For now,’ she said. ‘If I can pass Janet’s two week trial.’

‘There’s no reason for you to go back to Lancashire? No family or friends pulling you back?’

‘No. It’s up to me where I go.’

‘You’re lucky.’

He spoke the words so quietly that Mim thought she must have misheard him. His earlier enthusiasm was gone, replaced by a sigh of resignation so that for a moment he was once again the man under the shadows of the trees on New Year’s Eve. But he wasn’t that man and the connection that Mim had imagined between them had never really existed. How could he say that she was lucky? He had the dream life, as far as she could see. Family. A home. Stability. Money. Everything she had craved throughout her life.

‘It’s a curious definition of luck to have no one and nothing,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t wish it on you.’ She slipped the stone into her pocket. ‘Can you tell me the way back now?’

Chapter Five

It was almost a disappointment when Mim wasn’t woken by a member of the Howard family the next morning. Almost a disaster too: if it had been Thursday, she would have been late for work, she realised, as she grabbed her watch and noticed that it was after nine-thirty. She had the feeling that Janet wouldn’t tolerate unpunctuality. It answered her question about what she should do today. Shopping would have to be her top priority, and an alarm clock was now added to her mental list.

Despite the late hour, she stretched out like a starfish, enjoying the luxury of a proper bed. A double bed too – she’d only had a single in the hotel, in a room squashed up in the eaves that had been too poky to rent out to guests. It might have been tiny, but that room had been the world to her for the ten years she’d stayed in it. She had knocked on the kitchen door of the hotel one teatime, weary and ragged after a day of fruitlessly begging for work, and found that she had called at the perfect time. Gordon’s waitress had resigned that morning, his chef