Читать книгу The Little Bed & Breakfast by the Sea - Jennifer Joyce, Kerry Barrett - Страница 11

Chapter Three

Melody

The train was packed with bodies, heat and noise as Melody crab-walked down the aisle in search of a seat, battling with the hefty rucksack and laptop bag she held in her hands, tucked in tight to her body so she didn’t bash anybody about the head with them. Melody was thankful she’d decided to travel light during her trip, packing only the essentials: a handful of outfits she could chuck into a washing machine at a laundrette every few days, her washbag with the necessities, a couple of pairs of pyjamas, her laptop, and her camera. Okay, the laptop was hardly light, and her rucksack was cumbersome, but it would have been much worse if she hadn’t been so strict with her packing. She was hoping to find a seat so she wouldn’t be forced to hold on to her bags for the duration of the journey, but it wasn’t proving an easy task.

‘Excuse me.’ She flicked the corners of her mouth up into an apologetic smile as she attempted to squeeze past elbows and shoulders. ‘Sorry. Can I just…’ She managed to shuffle past without knocking anybody out cold with her rucksack and then she saw it, just ahead. An empty seat! Or rather a seat empty of a human bottom. She waddled towards it sideways, resting against the headrest with a relieved sigh when she finally reached the seat without somebody else nabbing it first. She looked down at the laptop bag currently sitting there and then over to its owner in the neighbouring seat. The owner – a suited man in his mid-to-late twenties, currently tapping away at the laptop in front of him – glanced in her direction briefly before returning to his screen.

‘Excuse me,’ Melody said, using her most polite voice. ‘Is this seat taken?’

By anything other than a bag? she silently added.

The man sighed heavily and turned away from his laptop, performing an elaborate eye-roll as he moved his face towards Melody.

‘I need to keep my bag close by.’

Melody nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ The man shifted his gaze back to his screen. ‘I assume you’ve bought an extra ticket for your bag, though.’

The man frowned, sighing again as he snapped his head back up to Melody. ‘What?’

‘I assumed you’ve purchased two tickets, since you’re taking up two seats.’

‘Obviously I haven’t bought a ticket for my bloody bag.’ The man rolled his eyes again and, shaking his head, resumed tapping at his keyboard.

‘In that case…’ Melody reached up to push her rucksack into the overhead storage rack. ‘I’m taking this seat. You can move the bag if you want to, but I don’t mind either way. I’m sitting whether it’s there or not.’

Melody eyed the man. He eyed Melody. Melody pushed her own laptop bag under the table and lowered herself onto the seat, pressing her lips together so she didn’t display a smug grin as the man’s laptop bag was whipped away at the very last second. The bag was shoved under the table, wedged between the wall of the train and the man’s feet. She could feel the glare from her neighbour as she unlooped her camera from around her neck and switched it on. She looked up, smiling sweetly at him.

‘I’m Melody, by the way.’ She thrust a hand out towards him, but he made no move to shake it.

‘And I’m very busy.’ With one last glare, he turned back to his laptop, tapping furiously.

And very rude, Melody thought, but she didn’t dwell on her neighbour for too long. She’d met lots of different people on her recent travels – some lovely, some not so much – but she didn’t hang around for long enough to let the negative ones impact her life. In fifteen minutes, she’d shuffle off the train and wouldn’t see this dude again.

Melody clicked through the menu on her camera, loading up her latest photos to scrutinise. Some of the photos were good – she particularly liked the snap of Blackpool Tower at dawn – but some weren’t so great. The composition was wrong, or the lighting didn’t quite work, so she deleted those she definitely wouldn’t be using. She’d take a closer look once she had her laptop set up, but for now she’d weed out the obvious duds – she’d taken hundreds of better photos over the past three weeks so they wouldn’t be missed.

Melody’s plan was to spend a chunk of the summer visiting as many seaside towns and villages in northern England as she could and was currently working her way along the Lancashire coast. Clifton-on-Sea was her next destination and she’d already looked the town up online beforehand. She knew there was a mile-long beach surrounded by cliffs, with a pier at one end and a harbour at the other, and she was hoping to capture some magical seaside moments there on camera over the next day or two.

The train came to a stop at a rather rustic-looking but quaint station. She’d visited many train stations lately, some large and filled with shops and kiosks, while others were more basic and little more than a platform with a ticket booth. Today, the train had pulled up alongside a single-storey stone building with a row of small, arched windows and an open, bottle-green door. The outside was decorated with wooden planters bursting with a rainbow of flowers, sitting either side of a couple of wrought-iron benches, and a sign welcomed those disembarking to Clifton-on-Sea. A ginger cat lay stretched out on one of the benches, basking in the sun.

Melody grabbed her bags and made her way to the nearest exit, hopping down onto the platform and following the crowd through the green door. Inside was as quaint as the outside, with a traditional tearoom staffed by two little old ladies, an information booth manned by a man in a smart uniform, and a little shop selling souvenirs. Melody hadn’t eaten since early that morning and, as it was now almost lunchtime, she was tempted to sit down with a cup of tea and a slab of lemon drizzle cake. But she should be getting on. She’d had a laissez-faire attitude to her travels so far, hopping on trains and travelling to her next destination when she fancied, so she hadn’t booked any accommodation in advance. So far, it had worked out, but she didn’t want to leave her lodgings until the last minute and run into trouble.

Reaching into the back pocket of her cut-off shorts, she pulled out the photograph she’d carried throughout her travels, smoothing down its slightly crumpled corners. She studied the familiar image for a moment before returning the photo to her pocket. Hitching her rucksack onto her back, she headed out of the station to see what Clifton-on-Sea had to offer.