beat of silence passed as the three women let the revelation—or lack of one—sink in.
“Ha!” Taryn finally exclaimed. She slapped a twenty-pound note down on the counter beside Lacey. “I’ll leave you to deal with this crisis. Thanks for the lamp.”
And with that, she waltzed away, leaving a scent of smoky cedar perfume in her wake.
Once she was gone, Lacey turned her attention back to Carol, staring at her in disbelief. Of course, a new B&B was terrible news for Carol, who would be facing even stiffer competition for the tourist trade than she already did, but it didn’t make one jot of difference to Lacey! And considering the awful misfortune the town had experienced with the murder of Iris Archer and the more recent murder of Buck, she ought to know better than to run around town screaming over something so trivial!
All Lacey seemed able to do was blink. Her fury seemed to have routed her tongue well and truly to her palate. Gina’s tongue, on the other hand, was as loose as ever.
“That’s it?” she bellowed. “A B&B? You nearly gave me a bloody heart attack!”
“A B&B in Wilfordshire is terrible news for everyone,” Carol cried again, frowning at Gina’s response. “Not just me!”
“Really?” Lacey said, finally finding her voice. “And why would that be exactly?”
Carol shot her a daggered look. “Huh, well I should’ve known you wouldn’t understand. You are an outsider, after all.”
Lacey felt herself flame with rage. How dare Carol call her an outsider? She’d been here for several months, and had contributed to the local town in a myriad of ways! Her store was as much a part of the fabric of the high street as anyone else’s.
She opened her mouth to respond, but before she did, Gina snatched up a box of tissues from the counter and stepped forward, creating a physical barrier between her and Carol.
“Why don’t you take a seat?” Gina said to the B&B owner. “Let’s talk all this through.” Then she flashed Lacey a look that said, I’ll handle this, because you’re about to blow.
She was right. The panic Carol’s non-event had induced in Lacey was starting to subside, but she really could’ve done without it in the first place. And she certainly could’ve done without Carol calling her an outsider! If anything could rile Lacey, that was it.
As Gina guided Carol to a red leather loveseat, offering her a tissue—“Here. Take one of these for your snoz”—Lacey paced away and took several calming breaths. As she did, Chester looked up at her and let out a sympathetic whinny.
“I’m all right, boy,” she told him. “Just a bit rattled.” She bent down and patted his head. “I’m okay now.”
Chester whined as if in reluctant acceptance.
Bolstered by his support, Lacey went over to the loveseat to find out what was really going on.
Carol was full on sobbing now. Gina slowly rolled her eyes up until her deadpan expression locked with Lacey’s. Lacey made a shooing gesture with her hand. Gina quickly vacated her seat.
Lacey perched beside Carol, the design of the loveseat forcing her to sit thigh to thigh with the woman; far closer than Lacey would ever choose if not for the circumstances.
“It’s that bloody new mayor’s fault,” Carol wailed. “I knew he was trouble!”
“The new mayor?” Lacey said. She didn’t know anything about there being a new mayor.
Carol turned her angry red eyes to Lacey. “He’s had the east half of town rezoned. That whole area beyond the canoe club’s been changed from residential to commercial! He’s going to have a shopping mall built! Filled with horrible, characterless chain stores!” Her voice grew more and more incredulous. “He wants to build a water park! Here! In Wilfordshire! Where it rains for two-thirds of the year! And then he’s going to build this monstrosity of a viewing tower! It’ll be such an eyesore!”
Lacey listened to Carol’s ranting, though she failed to understand why this was such a big problem. As things stood at the moment, barely anyone ventured beyond the canoe club. It was pretty much dead space. Even the beach on that side of town was rugged. Developing the area seemed like a good idea to her, especially if there was going to be a high-class B&B to service it all. And surely that would benefit all the businesses on the high street, with the increased tourism.
Lacey looked up at Gina to see if her expression might hold any clues as to why this was supposedly such a big crisis. Instead, Gina was barely hiding the smirk on her face. Clearly, she thought Carol was being overdramatic, and if Gina thought you were being overdramatic, then you really had problems!
“She’s some go-getter from London,” Carol continued ranting. “Twenty-two years old. Fresh out of uni!”
She took another tissue from the box and blew her nose noisily, before handing the soggy scrunched thing back to Gina. The smirk was immediately wiped from Gina’s face.
“How does a twenty-two-year-old open a B&B?” Lacey said, her tone one of marvel rather than Carol’s disdain.
“By having rich parents, obviously,” Carol sneered. “Her parents owned that huge retirement home in the hills. You know the one?”
Lacey could just about bring it to her memory, though she’d barely ventured that way. From what she remembered, it was a very large estate. It would require an enormous renovation to turn it from a dated retirement home to a B&B, not to mention some development of the infrastructure. It was a good fifteen-minute walk out of town and there were only two buses an hour that served that part of the coast. It seemed like a lot for a twenty-two-year-old to take on.
“Anyway,” Carol continued. “The parents decided to retire early and sell off their retirement portfolio, but each of her kids got to choose one property each to do what they wanted with. Can you imagine being twenty-two and being given a property? I had to work my fingers to the bone to start my business and now Little Miss Thing is just going to waltz in and start hers like that.” She snapped her fingers aggressively.
“We should count ourselves lucky she decided on something as sensible as a B&B,” Gina said. “If I’d been given a huge house at her age, I’d probably have opened a twenty-four-hour nightclub.”
Lacey couldn’t help herself. She let out a bark of laughter. But Carol dissolved into tears.
Just then, Chester decided to come over and see what all the commotion was about. He rested his head in Carol’s lap.
What a sweetheart, Lacey thought.
Chester didn’t know Carol was being dramatic about nothing. He just thought she was a human in distress who deserved some comfort. Lacey decided to take a page out of his book.
“Sounds to me like you’re panicking over nothing,” she said to Carol, softly. “Your B&B is iconic. The tourists love the Barbie-pink house on the high street just as much as they love Tom’s window sculptures made from macarons. A luxury B&B can’t compete with your period property. It has its own quirky style and people love it.”
Lacey had to ignore the sound of sniggering coming from Gina. Quirky had been a carefully selected word to
