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

Mim ran her hand over the glossy surface of the prospectus. Is that how Corin saw her? As a cause, like Benite in Rwanda? The idea made her feel curiously flat. She looked out over the field, watching Lia and Bobby as they attached the signs to the other verandas. They were laughing and joking and it was remarkable to see the change in Lia, and how confident she appeared around Bobby now.

‘Have I missed a development in Lia’s love life?’ Bea asked. She was looking in the same direction as Mim. There was no clue in her expression or her tone as to what she was thinking. Would she disapprove of a relationship between Lia and their handyman? Mim answered cautiously.

‘I think they’ve become closer while working on the caravans,’ she said. ‘But only as friends.’

‘Just good friends?’ Bea laughed. ‘That tells me everything I need to know. Lia never takes her time over a relationship. This one must be serious.’

‘Would you disapprove if it was?’ Mim asked.

‘Disapprove of Bobby? Why would I do that?’ Bea closed the prospectus she was flicking through. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever told you how Bill and I became a couple, have I?’ Mim shook her head. ‘I was brought up with my brother down near the Cornish border, on a glorious estate with land running down to the water’s edge. It was a charmed life, and an idle one, I admit. I had nothing to do but attend parties and make myself look beautiful so that a suitable young man would come along and choose me as his wife. My parents took it all very seriously and invited a parade of men they thought would be just the job.’

‘I thought that sort of thing had stopped years ago,’ Mim said, pulling a face. ‘It’s a bit sexist, isn’t it?’

‘It sounds it now, but my parents married late in life and they still liked to do things the old-fashioned way. They were keen to ensure their money would one day pass to an appropriate custodian, one selected by them.’ Bea’s disapproval was obvious. ‘Then, when I was nineteen, my brother brought home a friend of his from Oxford. His name was William Howard and he was quite the most handsome man I’d ever seen. Not only handsome – he was clever, kind, and his head was full of ideas and inventions. He wasn’t like any of the other men of my acquaintance. I was totally bowled over.’

‘And so you married him?’ Mim asked. She loved hearing this story. It was clear that Bea was still as bowled over now as she had been from the start.

‘I wish it could have been so simple,’ Bea replied. ‘He was the perfect man in my eyes but my parents didn’t agree. He had many fine qualities but he didn’t have the necessary breeding and he was poor as a church mouse, and that was enough to rule him out as a potential son-in-law. Bill asked for my hand in marriage and my father refused.’

‘That’s awful,’ Mim said. ‘I hope you ran away and did it anyway.’

‘Not straight away, I’m ashamed to say. I’d been brought up to respect my parents and old habits die hard. I carried on seeing Bill in secret and tried to persuade them to change their minds. But they found out about our meetings and were furious. They said that if I didn’t stop seeing him, they would cut off my allowance and my inheritance.’

Mim leaned forward across the picnic table, engrossed. ‘What did you do?’

Bea laughed.

‘Then I married him. It was simple, in the end. I found I could live without money but I couldn’t live without Bill. I’ve never regretted it for a moment. Don’t settle for anything less in a relationship, my dear. Look for that person who is the most important piece of your world.’

Mim had no experience of that kind of relationship. It hadn’t been a feature of her childhood and it wasn’t anything she’d ever really thought of for herself. But why should her future be limited by her past? She wasn’t unhappy on her own but she could be happier. Seeing the relationship between Bea and Bill had made her long for more and dream of possibilities. What if there was a missing piece of her world out there, waiting for her to find him? Although, it seemed unlikely he was waiting in Littlemead. Most of the men she encountered in the Boat were over fifty, or were already attached. Or saw her as a cause.

‘Did your parents change their minds?’ Mim asked, turning away from that thought. She gestured around. ‘You have all this now.’

‘They never gave me a penny,’ Bea said. ‘We’re not as different as you might think, my dear Mim. I was cut off by my family and so I made my own instead. Eventually, my parents softened and divided my inheritance into trust funds for each of the children. I wish I could see their reaction to how Corin spends his!’ She laughed. ‘Everything we have now is down to Bill and all the more precious because of that. He promised when we married that he would make up for what I lost and though I assured him it didn’t matter, he did it anyway. He made our fortune with his invention and the business that flowed from it, and he bought this beautiful house for us to live in. I have the best life I could wish for. And so you see, my dear, I would never disapprove of my children following their hearts. I’d disapprove in the strongest terms of them doing anything else.’ She reached across the table and took Mim’s hand. ‘And to be absolutely clear, that applies to them all, not just Lia. Whoever they choose to love we would welcome as one of us.’

‘There was a bloke in here earlier, asking after you,’ Howie said, squeezing past Mim as she pulled a