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

of her caravan, talking to Bill. She joined them and he smiled. ‘I knew you could handle Janet. Have you worked a miracle and persuaded her to give you the day off?’ His smile wavered. ‘Mim? Is something wrong?’

Where to start? She took the easiest option.

‘It’s Janet,’ she said. ‘She was behind all this – the posters and the vandalism.’

‘Are you sure?’ Corin frowned. ‘I know she can be grumpy but I wouldn’t have expected her to be malicious. I thought you said the vandals were young people.’

‘She must have persuaded or paid them to do it. There’s no doubt. I caught her preparing another poster. She wasn’t bothered about being found out. She wasn’t ashamed at all.’ Mim had never come across anyone so blinkered. Janet hadn’t even been willing to listen to what Mim said. She’d made her mind up and, as far as she was concerned, everyone else was wrong. ‘She doesn’t want penniless scum polluting her village and driving down the value of her business.’

‘Her village?’ Bill repeated. ‘Well, I’ll be blowed. Who the devil does she think she is? What did you say to that, love?’

Mim grimaced.

‘Probably the wrong thing. I lost my temper and refused to work for her anymore. So now I’m unemployed and without a reference again.’

‘Good for you,’ Bill said unexpectedly. ‘We’d have been disappointed if you’d done anything else. I’m only sorry we persuaded you to take the job in the first place. Let me have a word with Bea and see what we can do.’

He beetled off.

‘Janet said something else, didn’t she?’ Corin asked. ‘Come on, Mim. It’s not like you to hold back.’

Mim couldn’t meet his eye. She had no intention of repeating what else Janet had said. It was far too embarrassing. She didn’t want to dwell on that part of the conversation or examine the fact that she’d only quit her job after Janet had said those things about Corin, not before. She shrugged and tried a smile.

‘Oh, you know. Just a load of stuff implying that people with no money have no morals. It’s not very nice to be reminded of how worthless you are.’

‘Don’t say that. You’re worth a thousand of Janet.’ He reached out and touched her hand briefly, so that she looked up at him. His eyes were full of warmth, not the pity she’d expected. ‘A thousand times more than most people I know. Come on. Where’s the Mim who less than twelve hours ago was chasing away vandals and who was raring to fix these caravans? We only have forty-eight hours to go. We need her back.’

‘You’re good at this.’ Mim laughed, and the tension of the last hour drained away. ‘Don’t tell me. You were head boy at your posh school, weren’t you?’

‘There was no such thing at the sixth form college I attended.’ Mim looked at him, not sure whether to believe him. With his money and accent, he must have gone to a private school, mustn’t he? Corin smiled at her. ‘Don’t judge, Mim.’

It was a long, hard day. They had decided to work on the damaged blue caravan first and even with several people working on each wall it was slow progress. After a process of trial and error, they had discovered that Lia’s nail varnish remover and some strange butter wax that Bill had found in his workshop were most successful in removing the paint, but it was tiring work rubbing at the damaged area without spreading it to the rest of the bodywork. Mim’s arm ached, and she was sure the muscles in her right arm would be twice the size of those in her left by nightfall.

Reinforcements came and went during the day. Someone must have spread the word about the nail varnish remover, as a group of women turned up after the school run carrying half full bottles, although Ros had been sent on a mission to buy as much as she could. Parcels of sandwiches were passed round, but no one wanted to stop to take a proper break. By five o’clock, only Mim, Corin, and Bobby were still on site, and they worked on for another couple of hours until one caravan looked relatively clean.

Corin threw his sponge into a bucket and stood back to take a look.

‘That looks passable, doesn’t it?’ he asked, appealing to Mim and Bobby.

‘It’s much better,’ Mim said, inspecting the caravan wall. ‘Is there still a shadow where the paint was, or am I imagining it?’

‘It’s definitely in your imagination.’ Corin came alongside her. ‘I think we’re only conscious of it because we’ve focused on the paint all day. No one who attends the launch on Saturday will be scrutinising the bodywork like this.’ He stepped back. ‘I say we need beer and food. Who wants to come round to my house? Bobby?’

‘Sorry, I’m meeting a mate tonight,’ Bobby replied. Corin looked at Mim.

‘It’s just you, me, and Dickens then,’ he said to her. ‘What do you say to seafood risotto?’

‘Is it one of Mrs Dennis’s specialities?’

‘Certainly not. I can actually throw a meal together. Are you brave enough to try it?’

A meal on her own with Corin? Mim wavered. She would have agreed yesterday, glad of this sign of friendship, but now Janet’s insinuations echoed in her ears. Did everyone else think she was setting her sights on Corin? She didn’t want to fuel gossip for either of them, especially when it was so far from the truth. Before she could answer him, her phone rang.

‘You’re late for work,’ Howie said, when she answered the call. ‘Are you on your way?’

‘No. I quit this morning. And Janet sacked me,’ she added, compelled to tell the truth. ‘I thought you knew.’

‘Aye, Bill mentioned it. You quit the shop, not the Boat. As long as my name’s above the door as landlord, I’ll decide who works here. Janet owns the building, not the business, whatever she might think. You’re a good worker and popular