The Little B & B at Cove End. Linda Mitchelmore

you let Bailey Lucas do it?’ Josh asked. He leaned sideways and tried to plant a kiss on Mae’s cheek as she sat in the passenger seat beside him, but she jerked her head away from him.

      ‘I’m not answering that.’

      She didn’t ask Josh, chapter and verse, what he’d got up to with previous girlfriends, so the same applied – he had no right to ask.

      ‘Yeah, well, I have you down as having better taste than that anyway.’

      She was going to have to make a decision about how she was going to get home in a minute. Let Josh drive back up the long lane to the main road, get out, and walk from there was an option. But would Josh stop the car to let her out?

      Best keep him talking. Maybe talking would sober him up a bit.

      ‘Bailey’s only jealous I’m going out with you now,’ Mae said.

      Josh shrugged his shoulders. ‘He made that pretty obvious! There’s all sorts of rumours flying about the place.’

      ‘What sort of rumours?’ Mae asked.

      ‘Shtuff.’

      Josh jangled the keys high above his head again, and with his other hand began to caress Mae’s knee.

      Mae pushed his hand away.

      ‘Come here, gorgeous,’ Josh said.

      ‘No!’

      ‘You’re nothing but a teathe, Mae Howard,’ Josh said. ‘You were up for it jutht now.’

      He was well and truly over the legal limit for driving now, wasn’t he? He couldn’t say his s’s properly.

      ‘Just the kissing, Josh,’ Mae whispered, suddenly frightened that if Josh, who was much bigger and stronger than she was, turned nasty down here, with no one to come to her rescue, she could be in real danger. It was the drink talking – she knew that. Josh wasn’t a bit like this when he was sober. She wanted the Josh who had come to the funeral parlour with his dad so she’d have the support of someone nearer her own age as she bent to kiss her dad’s cold, smooth forehead one last time. He’d come in with her, standing respectfully a step or two behind her even though they didn’t really know one another then. The Reverend Maynard had stood beside her, his hand on her elbow. Mae wanted to remember that Josh, not the one who was frightening her. ‘And your arms around me like my dad used to put his arms around me, loving and safe,’ she finished.

      ‘Well, I’m not your dad, am I?’

      Josh turned away from her and began fumbling to get the key in the ignition.

      ‘No, Josh! Don’t drive, please. I wouldn’t have agreed to come here with you if I’d known you’d drink the whole bottle.’

      ‘You had some of it.’

      ‘Nowhere near as much as you had.’ Keep him talking. Perhaps he’d sober up a bit the longer he sat there. Mae reached for her bag in the foot well, and yanked it up onto her lap. Opening it she found a KitKat and a packet of mints. ‘Eat these. They might sop up a bit of alcohol. Put you below the limit at least. Please, Josh.’

      ‘Give over, Mae, it was only a few mouthfuls more than you had. I’m fine to drive. I’m used to it. I’m a big bloke. I can take more alcohol than that runt Bailey Lucas before it affects me. The Leith police dismisseth me. See, I said that without lisping.’

      Runt? Bailey was taller than Josh was, not that that made a person better, or worse.

      And then Mae realised Josh had said all of that without slurring his s’s and she considered that perhaps he’d been playing games with her before, slurring his words, and he wasn’t as drunk as she thought he was. Her mum and dad had often had a bottle of wine on the table in the evenings and at lunch on Sundays, but they only ever had a couple of glasses each, not a whole bottle. She couldn’t remember either of them ever slurring their words. There were girls in her year at school who boasted on Mondays how out of their heads on gin or whatever they’d been, but she was never going to be one of them. She was too scared. What if too much drink turned her into another person, as it was turning Josh into someone she didn’t know?

      ‘I still say we should walk, Josh,’ Mae said as calmly as she could even though her heart was hammering in her chest now. ‘We can tell your sister the car wouldn’t start. That you flooded the engine or something.’

      Whatever that meant and however you did it, but she’d heard it said on a TV programme only a few nights ago. Maybe Josh would know.

      ‘What? A good vicar’s good son tell a lie? What are you asking of me, Mae?’ Josh said, looking mock-outraged. ‘I know, we could do a bit more kissing while I sober up. How would that be?’

      ‘Hah! You’ve admitted it. You’re drunk.’ Mae had had enough now. She closed her bag, did up the buttons on her cardigan, ready to go. ‘Well, if you won’t walk back, then I will. Mum said not to be late and …’

      ‘You’re listening to your mum?’

      Josh made it sound as though Mae listening to her mum was a rare occurrence – rarer than hens’ teeth.

      ‘I might be,’ Mae said. She opened the car door and tumbled out, but Josh grabbed onto the fabric of her full skirt yanking her back. She heard a ripping sound. ‘Josh, no! Let me go. Not my frock. It’s the last one Dad bought me before …’

      ‘Well, he’s dead now, isn’t he? He’s not going to know if it’s ripped or not.’

      ‘Don’t say that!’ Mae yelled. She was a mixture of fear for the situation she was in and anger that Josh, who still had a clump of the material of her frock clasped in a fist, had just said what he had. Besides, there were times when Mae thought she could feel her dad’s presence, smell his aftershave, knew that he was somewhere taking care of her, whatever scrapes she might get into.

      ‘I jutht have,’ Josh said, theatrically slurring the ‘s’ again, which made Mae certain he was doing it on purpose to frighten her now. ‘Oh, bugger off and let me sleep it off.’

      Josh let go then and because Mae had been struggling to get away from him, the sudden release of tension made her fall against the door lock, the fabric of her frock catching in it, before she fell out onto the muddy, stony ground. Her knees hit the ground first and there was a searing pain as something sharp caught her below her left knee. She reached out a finger and found blood.

      ‘You’ve hurt me!’ she yelled. She wondered if she’d be able to get back up the lane now. ‘Josh …?’

      But there was no answer, so lifting the now-ripped skirt of her dress up over her knees, Mae half ran and half hobbled back up the lane, the heels of her shoes skidding this way and that on the rough, stony ground. If she ran really fast, she could be home in under ten minutes.

      But would Josh still want to go out with her after this? Did she still want to go out with him?

       Chapter Five

      ‘Where the heck have you been, Mum?’ Mae said. She was standing by the front door, arms folded. ‘Honestly, you tell me not to be late and I wasn’t, but you weren’t here! And what did I find when I got here? The front door wide open, that’s what!’

      Mae’s voice was angry, and if Cara wasn’t mistaken, also a little afraid. One side of Mae’s frock was hanging down a bit; the netting petticoat looked as though the stitching might have come undone. And was that a graze on her daughter’s knee?

      ‘Mae, what’s happened? Your frock and …’

      ‘I’m fine,’ Mae said. ‘Really. I can’t believe you went out leaving the front door open and unlocked. Where have you been?’

      ‘To the corner shop,’ Cara said. She