Summer Kisses at Mermaids Point, page 2
As the lunchtime gossipers drifted home again, the only sound in the café was the incessant rattle of the rain against the windows and the quiet swish of her mop over the tiled floor as she washed away the mess of shoe and boot prints no door mat could cope with on a day like today. By the time closing time arrived, Laurie had cleaned every available surface, rearranged her display cabinets and rewritten the chalkboard menu. Adding a few bright flowers to decorate the board had done nothing to lift her mood and she was feeling thoroughly sorry for herself when her dad called out to ask if she was ready to join him for their short walk home.
Forcing a smile, she tucked her long black hair under a more practical than stylish wide-brimmed hat and snuggled into her dad’s side. As he’d always done, he walked on the seaward side, using his body to shield her from the worst of the rain and freezing-cold spray the wind was whipping in.
‘Urgh! Right in my bloody ear.’ Shuddering, her dad ducked his head deeper into the raised collar of his oilskin jacket and they increased their pace until they were all but running up the cobbled hill of whitewashed cottages to their house. A more modern brick addition to the village, the house the Morgans called home might not be as aesthetically pleasing as the traditional fishermen’s cottages, but with both Dad and Nick topping out at six foot, at least the higher ceilings saved them both from knocking their heads on the oak beams so beloved of visitors to the village. Most of the cottages were rental properties these days, their quirkiness attractive enough for a week or two, but not very practical for modern family life.
Laurie’s dad pushed open the front door and ushered her into a bright, familiar warmth. As they toed off their boots and hung up their dripping jackets in the inner porch, the strains of the radio – and Mum’s enthusiastic accompaniment to an old eighties pop classic reached their ears. Beaming, her dad padded down the hall in his socks and reached the open kitchen door just in time to join in with the chorus. As she followed in his wake, Laurie could hear her mum laughing as she scolded her husband for making her jump. When she entered the kitchen, it was to find her dad with his arms around her mum’s waist, pressing kisses to her cheek as she tried to fend him off with ineffectual flicks of the tea towel she’d been using to dry her hands. ‘Come on, Sylvia, my love, give your poor husband a proper kiss.’
Rolling her eyes, Laurie turned away, though her heart sang at the pure love they still held for each other after nearly thirty years together. They’d always been the same, full of easy, open affection, and though she adored the way they were together, Laurie suspected one of the reasons both she and Nick were serially single was because of the high relationship bar their parents had set. That, and… no. Laurie shook the memory away before it could settle and spoil her mood.
‘How was your day, darling?’ Having extracted herself from Dad’s clutches, her mum came over to give her a hug and a kiss.
‘A bit quiet, apart from a flurry at lunchtime when everyone came in to talk about the mermaid.’ Taking the tea towel from her mum’s hands, Laurie crossed to the draining board to dry the couple of pans and dishes still dripping, which her mum had obviously been using to make dinner. During termtime, when the shop was quieter, Sylvia Morgan volunteered at the local combined primary and junior school on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. She helped the children with their reading and writing just as she’d been doing for the past twenty years. She’d started when Laurie had been old enough to join Nick at the village school and had stayed on after they’d both transitioned to secondary education. Like all the children from the villages scattered along their part of the coast, they’d been bused to a comprehensive school some twenty miles away. Laurie’s stomach gave an uneasy twinge at memories of those queasy journeys, the winding roads and the smell of diesel from the old bus an unhappy combination she’d never grown accustomed to.
On school days, Mum was usually the first home, so she cooked. The other two weekdays, Laurie and Nick split the task between them, with their dad in charge at weekends when he had time to experiment with his ever-expanding collection of cookery books. Like Laurie, Nan had taught him to cook as soon as he was old enough and he’d helped develop their palates with everything from elaborate Thai curries to homemade sushi. He was on a bit of a vegan kick at the moment, part of a drive for the whole family to try to eat more healthily, which was why Laurie didn’t feel too guilty about sneaking him the odd bit of flapjack or thin sliver of cake.
‘What mermaid?’ Mum asked, coming over to take the pot Laurie had just dried from her hands.
‘Look here, I’ll show you.’ Her dad took out his phone and opened it. ‘Bloody hell, it’s got nearly quarter of a million likes now. Mermaids Point is well and truly viral.’
Abandoning her chore to retrieve her own phone, Laurie started clicking through her various social media apps. ‘It’s everywhere. Look, Dad, it’s even trending on Twitter.’ She showed her parents the list of the current most talked about topics in the UK. ‘It’s crazy.’
The front door opened, sending a draft of cold air into the kitchen. ‘Did you guys hear the news? A mermaid’s supposedly been spotted out by the Sisters.’ Nick appeared in the doorway, still wearing his bright yellow raincoat, though he’d had the sense to kick off his boots rather than traipsing wet footprints across the carpet.
‘Hear it?’ Dad raised an eyebrow at the same time as their mum told Nick off for dripping on the floor and started tugging his coat off.
Grinning down at their diminutive mother, Nick obediently held out his arms to let her pull the soggy jacket off. ‘It was on the local news just now, and it’s all over the internet. Whoever dreamed it up must be having a right laugh.’
‘Whoever?’ Laurie gave her older brother a suspicious glance. Since she’d first seen it that morning, it had seemed like the kind of prank her brother and his friends might try and pull off. Who knew the islands better than the people who sailed out to them most days? And who else would be daft enough to do it? Unless it was some random stranger who’d picked their village purely based on its name, there were few likely suspects, and Nick’s name was close to the top of the list.
‘Don’t give me that look, Lorelai!’ Nick shifted his hands to his hips. ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Just like painting the front of The Sailor’s Rest bright pink last year wasn’t anything to do with you?’
He gave her a grin. ‘That was a matter of honour.’ Nick’s best friend, Stu, had got into a fight with a tourist and the whole of their little gang had been kicked out by the landlord. The tourist had been at fault for groping Stu’s girlfriend as he’d squeezed past on the way to the bar. Like everyone else, Pete Bray relied on the holiday makers who frequented the pub in the summer months and so he’d barred Stu, Nick and the rest without giving them chance to explain. They’d all gone back to Stu’s and after a few more beers, this time from his fridge, they’d raided the supply of paint in the back of Stu’s van and given the pub a makeover. Pete had been furious at first, but the neon pink had drawn so many curious new faces across the pub’s threshold that he’d kept it that way for the rest of the summer. Their ban hadn’t been lifted until Nick and the rest had repainted the pub – and not just the front, but all the window frames and the door, too.
‘It was an act of sheer foolishness,’ Mum countered, giving his arm a flick with her fingers as she returned from hanging up his coat. ‘Don’t stand there making the place look untidy, set the table. And I hope for your sake that you didn’t have anything to do with this mermaid nonsense. Things like this have a habit of backfiring, and you know what the internet is like, they’ll already be hunting out whoever is behind the account.’
‘Well, I hope they don’t find out too soon,’ Dad said, placing a stack of dinner plates in the centre of the scarred wooden table they ate at during the week, the dining room being reserved for Sunday night dinners and special celebrations such as birthdays and Christmas. ‘I posted a few pictures of the mermaid-themed items we stock on our page this afternoon, and I’ve had over a dozen orders on the website.’
‘Look at you go, Dad,’ Nick said, giving his shoulder a friendly shove as he worked his way around the table laying out the cutlery and place mats. ‘You’ll be an internet billionaire in no time.’
‘I’ll be happy if it keeps us ticking over. About time we had a bit of good luck around here. Maybe those old stories about the mermaids protecting the village have a ring of truth to them after all.’
‘That’s a nice thought, love.’ Mum placed a rectangular ceramic dish of lasagne in the centre of the table, the sauce on the top still bubbling. ‘It’s been such a miserable day, I thought we could all do with something to warm us up. It’s butternut squash and spinach before you ask.’ She took her usual chair at the head of the table. ‘Who knows, maybe it’ll bring a few visitors down at the weekend. I checked the forecast earlier and this rain is supposed to blow through tomorrow and then it’s clear skies.’
‘Let’s all cross our fingers and hope so,’ Nick said, accepting the spoon from their mum and dishing himself up a huge slab of pasta and sauce. ‘We haven’t had a booking since that ornithology group we took out last week. Uncle Tony was even talking about looking to see if any of the trawlers need temporary crew.’
‘Oh, it hasn’t come to that, has it?’ Mum’s fork clattered against her plate, her face pale with worry.
Nick raised one shoulder in an unhappy shrug. ‘We can’t pay the bills with fresh air. I told him if anyone’s going out, it’ll be me. He shouldn’t be hauling nets at his age, not when he captained his own boat. It’d be too much of a comedown. Besides, he could’ve done anything he wanted with the proceeds of the sale, he didn’t have to establish a business and try and make sure we all still had work. I owe him.’
‘You’re a good lad.’ Dad placed a broad palm over the back of Nick’s hand and gave it a pat. ‘A couple of weeks out on the boats wouldn’t be too bad this time of year.’
‘I’ve been out in worse, that’s for sure.’ Never one for dwelling on his worries, Nick gave them his trademark broad grin. ‘Who knows, maybe I’ll haul in a mermaid in the nets and she’ll fall madly in love with me – about the only chance I’ve got of getting a girlfriend these days!’
‘See if you can catch a merman for me, while you’re at it,’ Laurie chipped in. Having grown up with the few eligible prospects around the village, it was hard to see them as anything more than her brother’s friends. She’d been asked out now and again by visitors to the village, but one failed summer fling was more than enough to put her off for life. The way things were going, she’d end up alone like Aunt Nerissa, Dad’s younger sister.
Laughter rippled around the table, the way it had on so many evenings past.
Laurie wasn’t laughing the next morning when she opened the front door just after 7.30 to see a queue of cars snaking down the hill in front of the house. What in the world?
The driver’s window of the nearest one slid open. ‘’Scuse me, love, but are you local?’
Bending at the waist, she met the excited gazes of a family of four. ‘Umm, yes, I am.’
The man in the driver’s seat beamed at her. ‘Any idea where we can park? All the roads seem to be double-yellows.’ In order to save the residents’ sanity and to prevent parked cars from blocking the narrow streets, the local council had confined parking to authorised car parks, apart from a couple of loading bays that the local businesses used for deliveries.
‘There’s a council car park not far from the front.’ Laurie pointed down the hill. ‘Although it looks like you might be in the queue for it already. If you don’t get any luck there, there’s another one back the way you came. It’s a bit of a longer walk, but not too far.’
The blonde woman poked the driver in the arm. ‘I told you I saw a sign just as we were coming into the village.’ She leaned across him to smile at Laurie. ‘Looks like we’re not the only ones who have come mermaid spotting. We thought we’d be ahead of the game by setting off early but seems like everyone else had the same idea.’
‘Have you seen it?’ A little girl, the spitting image of her mother, poked her head between the front seats. ‘The mermaid? Is she pretty?’
The driver rolled his eyes, but the indulgent grin on his face didn’t waver. ‘Mermaid-mad, that one. Aren’t you, Rosie?’
Nodding, the little girl waved what looked like a Barbie doll with an iridescent fish tail at Laurie. ‘They’re sooo beautiful. I wish I was a mermaid.’
Mermaid spotting? Laurie glanced up and down the row of cars stretching as far as she could see. ‘I… umm… I haven’t seen the mermaid, no. Would you excuse me a moment?’ Without waiting for an answer, she dashed back inside. ‘Dad? Nick?’
‘In the kitchen, love.’
Rushing in, she found the rest of the family finishing off their breakfast. ‘You’d better shake yourselves and get down the shop,’ she said to her parents. ‘And you need to call Uncle Tony,’ she added to Nick.
‘What’s going on?’ Her brother asked, rising from his seat to place his crumb-covered plate in the dishwasher.
‘I think Dad was right. I think that mermaid might be bringing good luck to the Point.’
3
Jake Smith stared at the candid shots littering the table before him, feeling sicker by the minute. He felt grubby and dirty as though he’d been one of the pathetic men who’d used and abused the sad-eyed women being ushered into the back of a van by a border force official. Whatever sense of satisfaction he’d had over playing a part in their discovery and rescue was buried under an avalanche of guilt. Yeah, you’re some bloody hero, all right. He’d ignored their plight for weeks. At the time he’d justified it, knowing there was a bigger story to uncover. The authorities had had their chance and blown it. The story only landed on Jake’s desk thanks to a call to the Eastern Comet’s tip line. If the police hadn’t ignored Mrs Rodgers’ complaints about suspicious activity across the street, the women would’ve been in safe hands long ago. Knowing that didn’t make Jake feel any better.
Like the cops, he’d thought it a dead-end at first, just some bored old lady twitching her net curtains, and been furious at Mac, his editor, for assigning him a non-story any of the juniors should’ve been able to deal with. But Mac had a nose for a story, and the moment Mrs Rodgers had opened her front door, Jake had felt that familiar buzz of adrenaline he only got when he knew he was onto something good. Over a pot of tea, Mrs Rodgers had told him about the comings and goings at all hours. The strange cars parked in the street, the odd glimpse of women at the windows when she’d been told a couple of brothers had bought the place. He might still have thought it nothing more than a figment of a bored imagination if he hadn’t witnessed the arrival and departure of three cars in the hour he’d spent with her.
Delighted to have someone take her seriously, Mrs Rodgers had been only too happy to turn over her spare front bedroom for Jake to use as an observation point. After a couple of nights camped out in there, he’d come to the same conclusion as her – someone was operating a brothel in this quiet little street. He’d happened to spot a man leaving on foot, just as he was departing one morning after wolfing down the full English Mrs Rodgers had laid on, and followed him to a mini cab firm operating out of a rundown shop on the high street. Jake had dug around and found the taxi company was registered to two brothers, along with several other small businesses, including a couple of takeaways, a barber shop and a dry cleaners. All the kind of places it would be easy enough for someone with the right knowledge to launder illegal money through. And as the investigation continued, his focus became less and less about the women behind that anonymous front door and more about the shadowy activities of the brothers. Jake watched the same ‘customers’ using the barber’s week in and week out, though they seemed to spend more time chatting than anything else and their appearances were unaltered when they left. He’d even posed as a customer to take a closer look, leaving twenty minutes later with a disastrous buzz cut, and the conviction the bloke wielding the clippers knew no more about cutting hair than Jake himself did.
The taxi company proved trickier to dig into. There were plenty of legitimate drivers on the books – Jake’s expenses at the end of the month could attest to that. Using a cover story about his own car being written off in an accident and having to wait for the insurance to sort it out, he’d gone everywhere in taxis for three weeks solid. A couple of the drivers were bored and eager to chat, especially after he’d been picked up by the same ones a few times. Before too long they were airing complaints about a couple of the other drivers who weren’t pulling their weight, always on the road but never available to pick up any of the jobs called in. He started feeding information back about his suspicions to a reliable contact on the local police force who shared intelligence off the record about cabs being a possible source of drug dealing in the area. More pieces of the puzzle fell into place, and Jake’s entire focus narrowed to building a story of the two brothers running a major crime ring in the town.
He studied the abject misery and desperation etched on the women’s faces before him. Finally convinced he had enough proof, he’d gone back to his contact on the force and persuaded him to let Jake and a photographer he trusted tag along when they raided any of the properties. Weeks had passed while the police carried out their own investigations and Jake focused on drafting and polishing what would now be a series of exposés, not just on the crime and corruption surrounding this case, but also on the rise in these types of crimes in other small towns. It wasn’t until he’d seen the first woman being led from the house by an immigration officer that the true human cost behind the story hit home. A couple of the younger women – no more than girls from the look of them – had been in tears. Another had started kicking and screaming the moment she saw the black immigration van with its caged interior, as though she knew this wasn’t a rescue mission, simply a transfer from one type of confinement to another. But what had struck Jake the most was the blankness on the faces of the rest of the dozen or so women. There was no hope in their eyes, no relief. As he stared at them now, trying to narrow down the selection of photos before he sent them to Mac for final approval, he felt only disgust. Not for them, but with himself for extending the horrors they’d been put through in pursuit of a better story.
