One Small Act of Kindness Read online

  Also by Lucy Dillon

  The Ballroom Class

  Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts

  Walking Back to Happiness

  The Secret of Happy Ever After

  A Hundred Pieces of Me

  www.lucydillon.com

  www.facebook.com/LucyDillonBooks

  twitter.com/lucy_dillon

  #onesmallact

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Lucy Dillon 2015

  The right of Lucy Dillon to be identified as the Author of the

  Work has been asserted by her in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any

  means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

  in which it is published and without a similar condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 444 79603 2

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  For Jan and James Wood,

  the kindest and best neighbours anyone could

  wish for. Especially if the anyone is a scatty,

  key-losing writer.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Acknowledgements

  One Small Act of Kindness competition page

  Your real-life acts of kindness

  Pets As Therapy: a note from Lucy Dillon

  Has Lord Bob stolen your heart?

  A Hundred Pieces of Me

  The Secret of Happy Ever After

  Walking Back to Happiness

  Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts

  The Ballroom Class

  Welcome to bookends

  Chapter One

  Arthur stared up at Libby, his beady eyes conveying what his elderly owners were too polite to say. Which was, ‘You haven’t got us booked in, have you?’

  On the other side of the Swan Hotel’s polished oak reception desk, Libby’s hand froze as she clicked through the computer check-in system. He knows, she thought, staring back at Arthur. He knows that we have no record of any reservation, that we currently have not one room in a fit state to show to a guest and that I secretly don’t even think dogs should be allowed in hotels, let alone on a bed.

  The dachshund wagged his whippy tail slowly from side to side and tilted his head as if to confirm she was right. Particularly the bit about dogs on beds.

  Libby blinked hard. It’s a sausage dog, she reminded herself. Not a hotel inspector.

  Although, as the hotel forums warned, you never knew . . .

  ‘Two nights, name of Harold,’ repeated Mrs Harold, shifting her handbag onto her other forearm. ‘Is there a problem? We’ve been travelling since eight to get here.’

  ‘From Carlisle,’ explained Mr Harold. ‘Three changes and a replacement bus service. I could do with a cup of tea, love.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Libby tore her gaze away from Arthur and increased the warmth of her smile – the smile she hoped was covering up her panic as the upstairs rooms flashed before her mind’s eye. She’d launched Operation Deep Clean two hours ago specifically because the hotel was empty, and now not one of the rooms had a bed in the right place, let alone a spotlessly smoothed set of pillows. She and Dawn, the cleaner, had moved everything so they could tackle the carpets properly; as Dawn pointed out, there was enough accumulated dog hair under the beds to knit your own Crufts. Libby pushed that thought away. ‘My husband and I only took over last month,’ she explained. ‘We’re still finding our feet with the booking system.’

  Mr Harold coughed and awkwardly touched his salt-and-pepper hair, confirming the sinking suspicion forming in Libby’s mind since she’d sprinted downstairs to answer the brass reception bell. ‘I don’t mean to . . . Is that something in your hair?’

  Libby casually ran a hand through her blonde bob. Yup. It was a cobweb. A massive one.

  ‘We’re in the thick of renovating,’ she explained, trying to flick it discreetly off her fingers. Maybe if Dawn moved one bed back and closed all the doors, they could get one room ready . . . ‘Now then, where are we?’ She willed the screen to stop messing her about. ‘You’re absolutely sure it was April the twenty-fourth?’

  ‘Yes! I spoke at some length on the telephone to your receptionist. An older lady.’

  An older lady. The penny dropped. ‘Oh. In that case . . .’ Libby reached under the desk for the battered reservations book, angling it so the Harolds couldn’t see that Friday and Saturday’s columns were untroubled by any bookings, whether in pencil, on Post-its or any of the other haphazard note forms employed by her mother-in-law, Margaret, who had only recently started writing down reservations at all.

  ‘Donald and I never wrote anything down,’ Margaret would insist. ‘When it’s your hotel, you just know who’s coming.’

  The problem was, though, thought Libby, scanning the book in vain, this wasn’t Margaret’s hotel anymore. It was their hotel: Libby’s, Jason’s and Margaret’s. And at the moment, pretty much no one was coming.

  The booking spreadsheet was just one of the ideas Jason had introduced when he and Libby had moved into the hotel to help Margaret after his father, Donald, had died very unexpectedly; however, like most of their efforts to make Margaret’s life easier, she had taken it as a personal criticism. Jason’s website suggestions hadn’t gone down well either (‘Your father wasn’t at all convinced about the internet, Jason . . .’), nor had their ideas about making some rooms dog-free or putting croissants on the breakfast menu.

  Libby’s heart broke on a daily basis for Margaret, who seemed suddenly colourless and lost without jolly, sensible Donald, whom she’d nagged and adored for thirty-five years, but the Swan was in urgent need of attention. Both financially and hygienically. In order to get the deep clean started without a hurt Margaret arguing that most guests didn’t share their ‘paranoia about a dog hair or
two’, Jason had had to take his mother over to the big Waitrose for a leisurely morning’s shopping, leaving Libby in charge of a hotel and a guerrilla cleaning operation. Not to mention Margaret’s self-important basset hound, Bob, who was safely shut in the office. Libby wasn’t even going to think about what he might be getting up to in there.

  ‘Does it matter? You can’t be full, surely?’ said Mr Harold, looking around at the deserted reception. He made eye contact with the moth-eaten stag’s head over the door to the lounge and did a violent double take.

  Libby sighed. If Margaret was putting her foot down about the reservations book, it was nothing compared with her resistance to their plans to update the decor. Jason had grown up in the Swan and didn’t mind the wall-to-wall thistlemania in the public areas, and Libby had rather enjoyed its gloomy charm when they visited a few times a year from London, but now their remaining life savings were tied up in the shabby, stag-infested surroundings, it made her twitchy. She wished there were some way she could persuade Margaret to let them get on with the revamp they’d agreed when they’d sold up and moved here for their own fresh start.

  As it was, thanks to Margaret’s reluctance and their own careful budgeting, she and Jason were doing it room by room, by themselves, in the evenings. The bedrooms were more Laura Ashley than Braveheart, and they’d spent the previous month stripping the busy pink paper from room four, replacing it with soothing dove-grey-painted walls and soft linens. Libby had made mood boards for the luxurious boutique look they’d decided the hotel needed if they were going to attract a bigger-spending clientele. Or any spending clientele, come to that. Jason and Libby’s savings had just about managed to rescue Margaret from the clutches of the bank, but there wasn’t a lot left over to rescue the hotel from the ravages of time.

  Neither of them had done any DIY before – Jason had been a stockbroker; Libby had been a television researcher – but room four looked pretty good, considering. And she’d quite enjoyed watching Jason wielding a sander, with his sleeves rolled up and his fair hair dark with sweat. She’d always known him in his City suit, or his off-duty weekend wear. And it gave them time alone to talk. And to not talk, too, sometimes; just working alongside each other, worn out in a good way, knowing every scrubbed board or sanded windowsill was a step forward. Room four was the start of something precious, Libby reminded herself. Proof that fresh starts sometimes came disguised as horrible endings.

  As if she could read Libby’s mind, Mrs Harold said, ‘The lady we spoke to over the phone said she’d give us a specially refurbished one. Room four? Arthur likes a firm bed for his back, and I understand room four has a brand-new memory-foam mattress.’

  ‘Indeed it does! Room four is—’ Libby started to address her reply to Mr Harold, then remembered that Arthur was, in fact, the guest currently sniffing the laundry bag and . . . Oh lovely. Cocking his tiny leg against it. ‘Room four, um, might still need a day or two’s airing. Wet paint,’ she finished, as convincingly as she could.

  Arthur wagged his tail at her, but it cut no ice with Libby. Dog hairs weren’t part of the plan, despite Margaret’s stubborn insistence that dog-friendly rooms had been their trademark for years.

  ‘I can give you a lovely ground-floor room,’ she went on. ‘With a garden view on—’

  ‘What was that?’ Mr Harold put one finger in the air and inclined his head towards the door.

  ‘Could have been our cleaner upstairs,’ said Libby. Dawn was getting full value out of the rented carpet shampoo-er; the water coming out was mesmerising them both with its tarry blackness. ‘It’s just this morning. We won’t be disturbing you later on.’

  ‘No, it was definitely something outside,’ he said. ‘Unless I’m losing my hearing . . .’

  ‘I do sometimes wonder if you can hear a word I say,’ muttered Mrs Harold to herself.

  Libby stopped and listened. Nothing, apart from the sound of Dawn shampooing. And some ominous crunching from inside the office. She remembered, too late, that she’d left the nice biscuits in there. The ones that were supposed to be in the lounge, for guests.

  ‘Did I just hear a car braking?’ said Mr Harold.

  And then they all heard something: the undeniable sound of a woman’s scream. A thin, falling yelp that cut through the air.

  Libby’s throat tightened up. The hotel was on a bend, and the turning for the car park wasn’t obvious, so cars slowing down to find it were in danger of being hit by someone coming the other way. The locals, of course, knew the road and so wouldn’t – Margaret had assured her – need the safety mirror Libby thought they ought to install as a matter of urgency.

  ‘I’d better go and see if everything’s all right. Would you like to take a seat in the lounge while I check?’ She slipped out from behind the front desk, grabbing her mobile as she went, and crossed the reception to open the door to the lounge. More tartan, more squashy sofas, but at least Dawn had cleaned in there already today, and Libby had replaced the pre-millennium Country Lifes with some more recent magazines. ‘If you and, er, Arthur would like to relax in here and help yourself to tea and coffee, I won’t be a moment.’

  The Harolds gave the stag’s head a nervous glance and made their way underneath his glassy stare into the chintzy comfort of the lounge.

  Outside, the bright sunlight shining through the trees made Libby squint, but the scene on the main road was all too clear.

  A rough-and-ready farmer’s 4x4 and a red Mini had stopped at strange angles, like toy cars abandoned by a bored child: the Mini was pointing up towards the banked hedge, and the Land Rover was in the middle of the road. There was no sign of a driver in the Land Rover, but a man was getting out of the Mini, looking shell-shocked.

  It was his guilty expression that set a chill running across Libby’s skin. Whatever awful thing had just happened was clearly reflected on his face.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she called. ‘Do you need an ambulance?’

  The man shook his head – he was about thirty, dark hair, stubble; Libby thought she should try to remember details in case she was later asked as a witness – and it was then that she saw what he was staring at.

  A pair of bare feet on the ground, partially hidden by the Land Rover’s wheels. Libby spotted a flip-flop, a plain black one, thrown across the other side of the road.

  Her chest tightened. The feet were long and pale, a woman’s feet, and the calves above them were speckled with tiny drops of blood from fresh grazes.

  ‘I didn’t see her,’ the Mini driver was saying, rubbing his face in disbelief. ‘The sun was in my eyes. She was in the middle of the road . . .’

  Libby hurried round the Land Rover, where the driver was bent over a young woman’s body. An older man, she noted, not wanting to look down. Grey hair, fifties, checked shirt and cords. Probably a farmer. Good. He’d know what to do. He wouldn’t be scared of blood. Libby was very squeamish. Moving to the countryside hadn’t helped; there seemed to be a kamikaze amount of roadkill around Longhampton.

  Don’t be such a wuss, she told herself. Who else is going to help?

  ‘Is she breathing?’ Libby inched nearer. ‘Is she . . . OK?’

  The man winced. ‘She hit the Mini, only just missed me. She went up his bonnet, then straight down onto the road. Head took a fair knock. Don’t know if anything’s broken, but she’s out for the count, poor lass.’

  The woman was curled up as if she were napping, her dark brown hair fanning out around her head and her denim skirt riding up above her bare knees. Her toenails were painted a bright candy pink, the only bold colour on her. Everything else was plain: dark skirt, dark hair, long-sleeved black T-shirt, even though it was a sunny day.

  A startling thought flashed across Libby’s mind: she looks just like Sarah. It was followed by a protective pang. She knew it wasn’t her little sister – Sarah was in Hong Kong – but something vulnerable about her face
jolted her. The creaminess of the skin, with the oak-brown freckles underneath. The long eyelashes, like a doll’s. She leaned forward, forgetting her squeamishness, and put her fingers to the woman’s pale throat.

  The skin was cool under her fingertips, but she felt a pulse. Libby let out a breath and realised her own heart was beating hard, high in her chest.

  ‘It’s OK – there’s a pulse.’ She glanced up. ‘Have you called the police? And an ambulance?’

  ‘I’ll do that now.’ The man stepped away and went back to his car.

  Libby couldn’t take her eyes off the woman, but her brain was clicking into gear, throwing up practical information to blot out the panic. She’d been on a one-day first-aid course for the hotel (thankfully mostly theory, not gory practice) and they’d covered the basics. Don’t move her, in case of spinal injuries. Airway – clear. Good. There didn’t seem to be any blood, though her grazed arm was at a funny angle, pale against the rough grey tarmac, crossing the white line.

  The white line. Libby stood up with a jerk, signalling to the Mini driver.

  ‘We need to stop the traffic coming round the corner. You’ve got warning triangles, haven’t you?’

  He didn’t move, just carried on staring at the motionless body, hypnotised by what had happened, so quickly, in the middle of a perfectly normal morning. Libby would have stared as well, but she was too aware of every second ticking past for the woman on the ground. A lump the size of a duck egg was rising on the woman’s pale temple, and the skin around her eyes was bruised. Libby tried not to think about what internal injuries there might be.

  ‘Warning triangles – get them out, quickly! Do you want someone else to get hurt, crashing into your car?’ She glared at him and he opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind and hurried off.

  Libby bent down to hide her own shock. ‘It’s fine,’ she murmured, putting her hand on the woman’s shoulder. It had been something the first-aid trainer had said: keep talking, keep contact going, even if you think they can’t hear you. ‘Don’t worry – the ambulance is on its way. You’re going to be fine. Everything’s going to be OK.’