‘Great,’ she grumbled under her breath. ‘Better find a carpenter pretty sharpish, before the rest of my life turns into the bottom of a rabbit hutch.’ She heaved up the door, resting it on her face at one point to get a better handle on the heavy wood. Placing it to one side of the room with a loud bang, she looked at the dust on her plain black T-shirt and old blue jeans and sighed. She brushed herself down, gingerly around the already bruising chest area.
‘Well,’ she said to the room, looking around. ‘Cheers for the excellent welcome, new home. Be careful, or I will use the last of my money to have a wood chipper party, right here.’ She pointed her finger to the centre of the floor and braced herself, but the ceiling didn’t fall in. Phew.
The reception hut was deceptively large, a square room with a desk off to the left-hand side, complete with a counter in the same faded white-painted wood as the rest of the place. Off to the right, against the wall, were rows of shelving, all empty and filled with dust. The floor was the same white wood, giving the whole room a cube-like effect, and making April feel a bit hemmed in for a second.
There were windows behind the desk on the left, and on the back wall opposite the door was a large set of glass-panelled doors, leading out to a grassed area out of the back. The chalet park ran on the green grass like a horseshoe, twenty blue-and-white trimmed identical chalets, all with their own porches and back patio areas for dining out and sunbathing. Where the ends of the horseshoe met, on the left was the sign indicating the park, with a rack that must have once been used for bicycles alongside it. It was metal and had been painted cream at one point, with pretty shell details around the lettering. Currently, it looked a little worse for wear, the paint peeling and rust-coloured. There was a lone rubber tyre and a dented shopping basket using the facilities, and the sign was tilted to one side, looking as though it was hanging on with the one rusty protruding nail that was still attached. To the right of this was the reception, and on the other side of this, her chalet. It matched the others and looked just as dilapidated. Through the dusty doors, she could see the blue sky and the grass expanse beneath, leading off to the track to the beach. The beach where her mother had taken her, that first night here all that time ago.
It had nearly been dark, the sun setting slowly on their first long day in Cornwall. April had been tired. She remembered how cloudy her head had felt, how she’d moaned when her mother wanted them to see the sunset together.
‘When are we going home?’ She could hear her little voice now, remembered how her mother ignored her at first. Her back to her, facing the fading sun, head tilted up like a flower head. Her mother’s fists clenched when she asked again, her voice whinier, higher. It sounded at odds to the crashing of the waves, the laugh-like call of the birds ahead.
The clenched fists were only there a second, but April thought of her father and shrank back. Her mother turned, but her face was kind.
‘April, come here, petal.’ April went to her mother, and she turned them back to face the chalet park. Other families were in the chalets, or out on their patios. Playing cards, having a glass of wine. Laughing as the kids played. They passed them on the way to the shore, and the happy noises of life filtered down to the beach.
Hands on her daughter’s shoulders behind her, her mother spoke. Her voice sounded different. Louder, somehow.
‘You hear that?’ she asked, gentler now.
‘The sea?’
‘The people, April. You hear the people up there?’
April looked past the dunes, where the lights from the park could be seen. She could hear the sounds of people talking, laughing, kids screeching with joy as they played and ran about.
‘Yes,’ she said, her mouth curving into a smile.
‘That’s what life is supposed to be like, April. I want you to look around you, my girl, soak it in. I want this for you, all of this. We’re not going home, April. It’s just going to be me and you from now on, and we’ll be just fine.’ Her mother squeezed her shoulders, a loving gesture that warmed April through as the words washed over her like the waves behind her. ‘This is our second chance hotel, sweetheart. New life starts right here.’
*
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