what should we do about it? Who should we tell?” said Coral.
“Tell about what?” sighed Nicks. “We’ve no proof that there’s anything strange going on.
OK, we’ve heard a few noises… so what?”
That was true. Coral thought a bit more about this. Nicks had a point: apart from a thump-whack and a vague shadow, what else did they really have?
“So what should we do?” she asked instead.
“We should finish cleaning the beach hut and then concentrate on Cupid Company business,” replied Nicks sensibly.
Coral nodded. Of course Nicks was right. Cupid Company business should always come first. After all, it was what the hut was all about now.
Coral had inherited the hut from her Great-Aunt Coral, but it wasn’t long before it had become more than just a beach hut. It had become home to the little business they had set up - the business of love and matchmaking. And so far, they’d had two success strikes - Coral’s cousin Archie and Gwyn, and Charlie (daughter of the next-door beach hut owners) and Jake.
Coral sighed dreamily. The path of true love could be a lot of fun. Still, for now, she’d better get on with sweeping. It was her mum who had issued strict instructions to keep the hut clean and tidy at all times. Maturity and responsibility - that’s what it took to keep the hut, she had said. And her mum usually meant things too. Coral reached for her dancing partner, the broom, and sighed. Acting cool, calm and collected did not come naturally to her. Still, she would try her best to concentrate on Cupid Company business while she was sweeping the sand from the deck of Coral Hut, which was how she came to realise that there was no Cupid Company business! Quickly she pointed this out to Nicks.
“No business is the Cupid Company business we need to concentrate on,” came Nicks’s reply.
“Of course it is,” mumbled Coral, keeping one eye trained on the sandiest corner of the deck. She would keep her promise to her mum, but she wouldn’t take her other eye off the glossy red beach hut either. Something exciting could happen, and she wasn’t going to miss it!
“We are a professional matchmaking company,” Nicks said, while buffing the hut’s small glass windows. “At the Cupid Company, when we say ‘All for love and love for all’ - we really mean it!”
Now Romeo grabbed the end of Coral’s broom and started a game of tug-of-war. Coral grinned and pulled back hard. Nicks was too busy to notice. She’d already started on her next job of the day: a list written on the paper attached to her foil butterfly clipboard.
“One, we need to advertise. Two, we need to distribute Cupid Company questionnaires. Three, we need to think hard about all the single people we know in Sunday Harbour,” she said as she wrote.
Romeo finally won the tug-of-war and claimed the broom as his own. He was just about to disappear down the hut steps when Coral grabbed the end back to reclaim it.
Further along, a game of beach cricket had started up. The players were laughing loudly and running about and both girls stopped to watch them for a few moments.
“You know, the problem with living in a nice beachy town like Sunday Harbour,” grumbled Coral, “is that the single people out there are just too busy having fun to think about how lonely they actually might be.” She frowned thoughtfully and leaned against her broom. “They make matchmaking very difficult indeed.” Romeo sat at her feet and stared solemnly ahead like he knew exactly what she meant. “I mean, isn’t being in love what life is all about? Could there be anything better? Nobody can play beach cricket forever, can they?”
“Too right,” Nicks agreed. “But look, would you just give me that broom?” she said impatiently. “If you sweep any more slowly you’ll wear a hole in the floor.”
Coral grinned, handing the broom over cheerfully. “Sure, Nicky-Nicks. I’ll tidy up the inside of the hut, shall I?”
But it wasn’t really a question. Before Nicks could answer, Coral had dashed through the door. She simply loved being inside Coral Hut. With its whitewashed walls and the pretty rug of scrambling pink primroses, it hadn’t changed much since her Great-Aunt Coral’s days.
Coral sighed as she looked around at the walls decorated with gold-framed pictures of chubby cherubs and the two shelves with books of romantic poetry. The whole room was like a shrine to love. What could be better than that? CRREEAAK!
The sudden noise from next door snapped Coral out of her reverie. The sound was like furniture scraping. It really was a mystery. Coral shivered, even though it was warm. Perhaps she’d had too much sun. Or maybe it was time to head for the safety of home.
It was still morning when the girls got back to the beach hut, having handed out Cupid Company questionnaires to anyone who looked just a little bit lonely. Coral Hut stood fresh and pretty in its new coat of pale pink, lemon-yellow and minty-green stripes. There was no other hut quite like it among those dotted along Sunday Harbour’s promenade. The girls slowed to admire it.
The glossy red hut on the right-hand side of Coral Hut stood locked up tight, silent and gleaming in the bright sunlight.
The hut on the other side - named Headquarters - was painted a khaki colour and had camouflage netting thrown across its roof. Unlike the red hut, this hut buzzed with activity. Its small double doors were thrown wide open and Coral and Nicks’s neighbour Birdie, was lifting and bending and packing things into a rucksack at a frantic pace.
“Are you off somewhere?” Coral called out.
“Oh, hello, dears,” Birdie called over. “The Captain and I are going away for a few weeks.”
The girls stood still, waiting for Birdie to say something else. Birdie was the most talkative woman they knew - she spoke in chapters, not sentences. You never had to ask Birdie for more information, but this morning she was pretty quiet.
“So where are you going to?” Nicks finally asked, when they could wait no longer.
Birdie now held a torch in her hand. She shook it irritably and pressed the on/off switch several times. Pressing her eye to the end of the torch, she tried again. This time a bright beam of yellow light shot straight out. She dropped the torch and blinked a few times, momentarily blinded.
“Er, what was that, girls?”
“Where are you going?” repeated Nicks.
Birdie retrieved the torch from the deck and placed it in a small cardboard box. “My sister has just moved up north to the city. We promised we’d visit,” she finally replied.
“That is nice,” said Nicks, when it was obvious that Birdie was only telling the story in very small doses.
Birdie sighed. “Not really. I’m not fond of over-populated spaces.” She tried to smile - perhaps at the thought of seeing her sister - but the smile quickly dissolved into a grimace. Coral changed the subject.
“Birdie, we’ve been hearing some very strange noises—” she started.
“It’s terribly noisy in the city!” snorted Birdie.
Coral paused and chewed on her lip for a moment. “Not in the city… from the red beach hut next door. It sounds like—”
“Sounds like cars honking, engines roaring… traffic and trains… that’s all you hear in the city,” Birdie continued, ignoring them and visibly distressed. “It’s not like Sunday Harbour, where everything is quiet and peaceful.”
Coral decided to give it one more try. “But the noises