The Gin Shack on the Beach. Catherine Miller
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certain, though not entirely sure, that it was the Tuesday-morning woman. The same lady she’d spoken to all those months ago. The one who’d told her swimming in the sea was like oxygen. The same woman she waved to every time she was at the beach when they were the only solitary figures on the sands. Which meant she knew a very important secret… How to escape from Oakley West unnoticed.
Attempts to grab her attention weren’t working, the woman far more enthralled in the game of bingo than Olive ever could be. Even dropping her dabber on the floor and retrieving it wasn’t enough to redirect her focus.
‘Everything okay over there, Olive?’ Melanie, activities coordinator extraordinaire, asked.
It was like being the new girl at school. They were using her first name as frequently as possible to make her feel welcome and included. Olive smiled and waved her pen to indicate she was fine. Even that didn’t shift the woman’s gaze.
‘Bingo!’
Olive’s heart skipped a beat at the enthusiastic yell. Bloomin’ hell, it really wasn’t as relaxing as the pamphlets made out if she was going to pop her clogs within less than a week on the back of a resident winning a box of chocolates.
The heart-attack-inducing yell came from a lady near to Melanie and the whooping and yelling made Olive gawp for a while. Was this really the kind of thing she would end up excited by if she was here for long enough?
When the gent next to her stood up and obscured her view, Olive realised she’d taken her eye off the ball. The lady she was trying to grab the attention of was already up and making her way out of the room.
‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’ The gent held out a hand. ‘Nice to meet you. I’m Randolph, but my friends call me Randy.’
‘Olive.’ She stood and shook the man’s hand. ‘I don’t suppose you know who that is?’ Olive pointed to the lady who was leaving the large day room.
‘That’s Veronica. Why do you ask?’
Olive paid a bit more attention to Randy now she knew she had no chance of catching up with Veronica. ‘I thought I recognised her, but I wasn’t sure where from. But, seeing as I’ve moved here now, I’ll no doubt get to speak to her at some point.’
‘Have you settled in okay?’
‘It’s hard to say. I’ve only been here for a few days. My son kindly deposited me and left me to get on with the activity programme.’
‘Families can be kind like that, can’t they?’
‘Yours too? My son runs a business up in London. I think I’m a bit of an inconvenience at times. This should make things a bit easier for both of us.’
‘My daughter is the same. But I think you’ll find you’ll like living at Oakley West. On the whole, it’s a nice bunch of people living here and the staff aren’t all bad especially if you get them on your side.’ Randy offered a cheeky smile which made Olive wonder what he meant by having them on your side. ‘Have you had a tour?’
‘Yes, Matron showed my son and I around when we got here.’
‘Not the official tour. I mean the unofficial one.’ There was a twinkle in Randy’s eyes beneath his dark, bushy eyebrows. She really hoped he wasn’t Randy by name, randy by nature. It would be just her luck if, by saying yes, she ended up as the new girl being seduced by the resident silver fox.
‘How’s that different from the official one?’
‘Matron won’t have shown you where to go if you want a sneaky cigarette for starters.’
Maybe it wasn’t a tour straight to his boudoir after all. ‘If you reckon the unofficial version is worth going on, I’ll take your word for it in that case. Let the tour commence.’
‘Great. Follow me.’
They headed out of the vast space that was the day room. It doubled up as the dining-room space and was the focal point for most of the activities. The residents’ rooms were over the first and second floors, with most of the rooms on the ground floor set aside for different reasons and activities, including the out-of-bounds living area for the staff.
‘It used to be Oakley West Hotel in the 1950s, but tourism dropped round this area and it ended up vacant and in need of refurbishing. They turned it into retirement quarters about five years ago. It sits somewhere between being a care home and warden-controlled flats.’
Olive wasn’t from here originally so, unlike Randy, she had no memory of it. She’d grown up in Dover and met her husband, John, when he’d worked at the docks. It was John who was from around these parts. There was every chance Randy might have known him, but she didn’t like to talk about the past. That always raised questions she had no intention of answering.
They moved into the lobby with its vast clusters of chairs and coffee tables with the daily newspapers scattered about.
‘Do you like reading?’ Randy asked, shaking Olive from taking in the surroundings properly this time round.
‘It’s up there in my top three hobbies.’ Olive wasn’t going to tell Randy about the other two. They were a secret.
‘They run a book club and Melanie hosts it here in the lobby once a month. She always goes for the serious stuff, though, so, if that’s not for you, just give Flo a nod. She’s got a little Mills & Boon book club running on the sly. It’s far more popular than Melanie’s. Just don’t let on, okay.’ Randy tapped a finger against his nose in a mum’s the word kind of fashion.
Olive winked. She was beginning to like it here.
‘This way.’ Randy led the way along a corridor Matron had missed. ‘They can be a bit regimented here with mealtimes, but for the days you don’t feel up to a full meal, this is where you need to come.’
Randy threw a quick glance over his shoulder to check if they would be seen and Olive wondered if he was going to get her in trouble. As she followed him, she noticed nearly every door along here had a sign stating STAFF ONLY. They were in the forbidden section of the building.
‘Should we be down here?’
‘Of course not, but the only one who would tell us off is Matron. So as long as she doesn’t see you, you’ll be fine.’ Randy turned a final corner at the end of the corridor. ‘Right, this is the place. It’s where the staff take their breaks. They don’t mind us popping in here and Matron takes her breaks in her office so you won’t ever get caught by her sitting here. They have a larger staff room for their lunches so this is normally where they take shorter breaks, so it’s never as busy. But the thing we’re here for is this.’ He waved his hand and beckoned Olive closer.
Checking behind her one last time, Olive moved into the snug area. It was an open alcove with a small kitchen area and seating for no more than two people on a sofa. Randy had better not be using the smallness of this not-even-a-room to try and pull off a move.
‘This is where the secret store is that we’re interested in.’ Randy opened up the two small overhead cupboards. Inside was a stash of everything you needed for a round of tea and toast: bread, spreads, tea, coffee and every other beverage she could think of. ‘There’s a mini fridge on the side with milk and butter.’ He opened it to prove he wasn’t making that fact up.
‘But this is for the staff.’
‘It is, but not many of them want toast on their break. They have the same supplies in their main staff room. So, if the bread and milk don’t get used up they go to waste. And if Matron thought it wasn’t being used she’d soon stop them having it here. So by helping ourselves every now and then we’re helping the rest of the staff out. If you ever don’t have the appetite for an entire roast, or you get the midnight munchies, just head here and help yourself.’
‘Does everyone know about this then?’ Olive was sure they’d said there were in excess of fifty residents. If they were all raiding this cupboard