The Little B & B at Cove End. Linda Mitchelmore

badly wrong on her date with Josh. Cara made to walk past Mae, but Mae grabbed her arm.

      ‘Eh?’ she said. ‘What guests? I’ve been in every single room in this house looking for you and there’s no one here.’

      ‘Oh my God!’ Cara shrugged off Mae’s hand and stumbled into her hallway. She leaned against the newel post at the bottom of the stairs for support. Perhaps Eddie and Pam Hine had changed their minds about stopping and had simply left? Mae had followed her in, so Cara put down her bag of shopping and put an arm around Mae’s shoulders. ‘They said they wanted a full English, but I didn’t have the things for it so I went to shop. I was only gone a few minutes. Fifteen minutes at the most. I made them a pot of tea before I left and I ran all the way there and back. Perhaps they changed their minds?’

      And then Cara realised that there had been no car parked outside when she’d left to go to the shop, and they’d had no luggage with them to speak of, only a tartan old-fashioned holdall thing. And she knew, beyond doubt, that if she hadn’t given them the opportunity so recently to steal stuff, she would have found things missing in the morning.

      ‘Just wait until you see what they’ve done to my room!’ Mae yelled at her, running up the stairs.

      Cara followed, her legs feeling like lead and her head pounding.

      ‘Great idea not, Mum,’ Mae said as Cara walked around the room as if on some sort of automatic pilot picking up Mae’s clothes, which had been strewn all over the bedroom floor in haste by Pam and Eddie Hine – if that was what they were called – as they ransacked it.

      Cara felt hot with rage one second and then cold with horror the next, just thinking about the Hines and how they’d touched all Mae’s personal belongings.

      ‘Your room’s the same, Mum,’ Mae said, as though reading her mind. ‘All the drawers pulled open or tipped out completely on the bed, like they do in TV dramas.’

      ‘I’m sorry,’ Cara said. ‘I’d give anything for this not to have happened.’

      She smoothed and folded Mae’s clothes as carefully as she would had they been freshly laundered, with the scent of lavender fabric conditioner mixed with fresh sea air clinging to them. Although she knew, as she methodically piled Mae’s school blouses and skirts and cardigans, that she would have to wash everything – everything! – because it was as if she could smell the Hines and the badness that was in them to have done such a thing.

      ‘They looked perfectly respectable. Middle-aged,’ Cara said.

      Mae stared angrily at her.

      ‘Huh!’ Mae said. ‘How stupid was that, to go out and leave strangers in the house?’

      ‘Very stupid,’ Cara admitted.

      But this was a small place. There was hardly ever any crime and what there was only revolved around the pub when a bit of overdrinking got out of hand and a window got smashed, or someone’s wing mirrors got trashed. Burglary just didn’t happen in a place like Larracombe. Until now.

      ‘It seems I no longer have a laptop,’ Mae said. ‘So perhaps you could tell me how I’m going to do my homework? We have to do it online, you know.’

      ‘I know,’ Cara said.

      She thought fast. Perhaps Rosie would loan her the money? Or buy one in advance of Mae’s birthday as her birthday present? Rosie was a good and generous present-giver to her goddaughter.

      ‘That was the last thing Dad ever got me,’ Mae said. ‘I was the last in my class to get a laptop. And he only got it for me then because he wanted to use the computer at night when I wanted to use it for homework. And now you’ve let someone steal it.’

      So, Dad good, me bad, Cara thought. She knew she would have to tell Mae about Mark’s gambling soon, but now didn’t quite seem to be the time. While the robbery was making Cara feel uncomfortable, it was by no means as bad as Mark dying within hours of her asking him to leave the family home. Would she have the courage to tell Mae that?

      ‘I’ll get you a new laptop just as soon as I can,’ Cara said. ‘But perhaps Josh could loan you his in the meantime?’

      ‘That waster,’ Mae sniffed.

      It was then that Cara noticed pins down one side of the skirt of Mae’s dress, and that the netting petticoat was more than hanging off. Mae’s knees had stopped bleeding – more bad grazes than deep cuts.

      ‘What happened tonight, Mae? Your frock? Your knees?’ Cara asked, suddenly cool and calm, her thoughts sharper and more focused. Whatever the Hines might have done was nothing compared to what she thought Josh might have done to Mae to get her into such a state. ‘Between you and Josh?’

      ‘You can’t ask stuff like that,’ Mae said. ‘Not even because you’re my mother.’

      Yes, I bloody can if he’s hurt you, Cara thought. She reached for Mae’s hand.

      ‘Let’s sit down for a moment, Mae. On your bed. We’ve both had a bit of a shock.’

      Much to Cara’s surprise, Mae allowed herself to be led.

      ‘He drank too much,’ Mae said, still with her hand in Cara’s. ‘I’m certain he’d been drinking before then, although …’

      ‘Meg Smythson told me he’d bought wine. And that you were with him.’

      ‘Do you want to know what happened or not?’ Mae said. ‘Not that I think she had any right to tell you anything.’

      ‘No, she didn’t. Sorry. That wasn’t meant to sound as though Josh shouldn’t have been buying wine if he wanted to, or that I’m cross that he did. I let you drink wine sometimes. But I need to know, Mae … did Josh attack you?’

      Did he try to rape you? was what she meant but couldn’t bring herself to say the words.

      ‘No. Not exactly. I only had one glass or maybe a bit more, but Josh had drunk the rest of the bottle and I knew he shouldn’t drive so I tried to get his car keys off him. I wanted him to walk back with me and tell his sister the car had broken down or something, but he didn’t want to. And my frock got ripped when he tried to stop me getting out of the car and … it’s the last frock Dad ever bought me and it’s special and …’

      And then Mae dissolved into tears. Cara was full of questions, questions she couldn’t ask like, where were you when this happened, were there no other people around, did you have sex?

      ‘Time for a hug?’ Cara said, opening her arms wide to her daughter.

      ‘Not at the moment,’ Mae said, her tears drying up rapidly as she reached for a corner of her quilt and swiped it across her eyes. ‘I’ve been to hell and back, Mum, wondering what had happened to you when you weren’t here and stuff was missing. Did you ever think of that?’

      It was as though, in that moment, Mae was the adult, and she, Cara, the child.

      ‘No, no I didn’t,’ Cara said. Whatever had she been thinking of going out and leaving people she didn’t know in the house? Yes, she’d been desperate to start making some money for them both but, well … ‘We’d better phone the police.’

      ‘I’ve already done it. I said I’d get you to ring when you got back.’

      ‘In a minute,’ Cara said. ‘I’ll tidy up a bit here first.’

      She only had two vague descriptions of the Hines. Their accents could have been false, and there was no vehicle that she’d seen that could be traced.

      ‘No, don’t do that. The police will want to take fingerprints, won’t they? Honestly, Mum, sometimes I wonder what planet you’re on.’

      ‘Of course. It’s the shock. I won’t touch another thing. Let’s go downstairs. I’ll make that call to the police to let them know I’m back and then make a cup of tea. And a