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

‘Oh!’ Mim looked at Corin with fresh eyes as he pulled down the boot and locked the car. ‘I didn’t realise you were clever.’

Corin laughed.

‘I don’t know how to take that. Did you think I was awarded a PhD simply for being posh?’

‘Sounds about right.’ Mim grinned. ‘You have one of those too?’

‘I do, but don’t worry. I won’t insist on you calling me Dr Howard.’

Mim dropped into a curtsey.

‘You’re too kind to us ’umble folk,’ she said, putting on her thickest accent. She laughed and pointed towards the café where the customers were gathering. ‘Better not keep your adoring fans waiting, doctor.’

Corin led the group down onto the beach. It was a grey day and drizzle hung in the air, but even so there were a fair number of people scattered up and down the beach, poring over the pebbles. They stopped a few hundred metres along the beach and everyone gathered round Corin. He showed them a couple of things he’d picked up on the short walk from the car park. The first was a small pebble, with thin ridged columns visible on the surface, which he told them were crinoids. The second looked like an ordinary grey stone, but there was a cream line running horizontally round the centre of it, which Corin explained meant there might be an ammonite inside. Everyone leaned close while he tapped it gently with his hammer and prised the stone open, and there was a collective sigh of disappointment when there was nothing of interest inside.

‘See if you can do better,’ Corin said and the group didn’t need telling twice. Mim was amazed at how this group of mild-mannered, middle-aged people suddenly transformed into cut-throat fossil hunters, scrabbling for what they thought was the best place on the beach. She didn’t know how Corin bore it with such patience; every couple of minutes, one or other of the group took him something to examine or a pebble to hammer, although the conversation usually ended with a regretful shake of the head. Even Mim was caught up in the competitive nature of the hunt and was determined to win more than a, ‘Good try’ from Corin.

After a couple of hours, Corin called the group together again as the guided walk had ended. Mim was frustrated to see that a few of the others had been quite successful and she admired a belemnite and a fragment of ammonite with a forced smile.

‘Didn’t you find anything?’ Corin asked Mim, as they wandered back towards the car park.

‘Nothing real,’ she said. There had been plenty of false starts, including an embarrassing moment when she’d mistaken a piece of plastic for dinosaur poo. She kicked a pile of pebbles in frustration and then bent down, ignoring the throbbing in her toes. She picked up a smooth oval pebble with a clear seam running horizontally around the middle.

‘Another dud, probably,’ she said, and was about to toss it back on the beach when Corin took it from her.

‘Let’s try,’ he said, and he tapped at certain points on the side of the pebble until it gently split in his hands. He held it out so that Mim could see. Inside the stone there was a clear imprint of an ammonite.

‘This is the best find of the day,’ he said. He smiled at Mim. ‘In fact, the best find for a few days. You’re a natural.’

‘Can I keep this?’

‘Yes. It’s all yours.’ He placed both halves of the stone in Mim’s hands and she studied it, marvelling at this evidence of long ago life. ‘What do you think?’ Corin asked. ‘Will this interest the guests?’

‘What? Oh, the caravan guests.’ It took Mim a moment to remember. This was supposed to have been a fact-finding mission for the charity, not a source of so much fun. Reluctantly, she put the pebble away in her pocket. ‘I think it would be great, but perhaps I’m not the best person to judge. Everything down here is new to me. It’s all exciting.’

‘That makes you the perfect person to judge.’ Several strands of Mim’s hair had worked loose from her bobble in the wind, and Corin watched as she refastened it. ‘It’s easy to become jaded with what’s on offer when you see it every day. You can breathe fresh enthusiasm into it. Into all of us.’

Lia didn’t hang about. No sooner had Mim tentatively suggested a trial of the caravans at Easter than it was adopted as a plan, with a schedule of works drawn up to ensure everything was ready for that date. Bea and Bill had stepped back and allowed Lia to take charge of the scheme from the Howard side, and she had picked up the challenge with surprising efficiency and enthusiasm – so much so that Bill had rubbed his hands together with glee and declared that she ‘was a chip off the old block after all’. Given what Mim had heard about Bill and his short-lived schemes, she didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

The first job, of making sure that the gas, electricity, and water supplies were safe and in working order, were already underway, including a check on Mim’s caravan. The news wasn’t good. All the caravans needed work to meet the current regulations and it would take a few days to complete the job.

‘But it isn’t all bad news,’ Lia said, when she called in on Wednesday evening to update Mim. ‘It means that you’ll have to come and stay with us for a few nights.’

‘There’s no need for that. I’m sure I’ll be fine here.’

‘Darling, you can’t mean that. All the services will be switched off. You won’t have any lights or be able to flush the loo. Can you imagine how awful that would be?’ She shuddered. ‘You can’t live like a savage.’

‘It wouldn’t be that bad,’ Mim said. It would still be an improvement on