Better With Kevin

Chapter 1

It was a sunny Saturday lunchtime in early September, and The Chipped Cup was bustling.

The classical piano album that played on a loop all day long was barely audible beneath the hiss of the steam wand, the buzz and rumble of the grinder, and the chatter of customers. The air was filled with the fragrance of fresh beans and sweet pastries. Every table was occupied.

Chipping Fairford had always been a popular town, located squarely in the middle of the Cotswolds at a convenient distance from London in the south and Birmingham in the north.

I’d grown up watching tourists pour in at the weekends, mostly folk coming up from London to cosplay the country life in their pristine Hunter wellies and Barbour flat caps after a long hard week of diddling the financial markets.

Back then, my parents had owned The Chipped Cup and I’d worked there after school to supplement my weekly allowance.

Now I owned the shop, my take-home pay once the bills and my staff had been paid wasn’t much more than I’d made as a teenager, and Chipping Fairford’s popularity had exploded.

Almost half of the properties that fronted onto the ancient Roman road running through the centre of town had been snapped up and turned into Airbnbs.

A few months ago, those Airbnbs had been packed with the worst kind of tourist—journalists, true-crime content creators, and ghoulish murder fans, drawn here by the discovery of more mummified victims of the now-infamous Cotswolds Collector.

There was no denying that it was great for business.

After all, everyone needs a good cup of coffee, and if you wanted a good cup of coffee in these parts, everyone knew you came to The Chipped Cup.

Unfortunately, those bodies were discovered in my house, so while it was great for business, it wasn’t great for my privacy or my patience.

Once all the dead guys had been carted off to the morgue and I was allowed to return home, I was eager to put the whole experience behind me. No such luck. Instead, I ended up having to chase people out of my drive, off my lawn, and on more than a few occasions, out of my back garden.

My handyman boyfriend, Kevin, disconnected the wiring in the doorbell and removed the knocker, but it didn’t stop people pounding on the door and asking me stupid questions the instant I snatched it open and yelled at them to go away.

Questions along the lines of: Mr Galloway, hello! Kate Chisholm, Wantage Gazette. Tell me, what was your first thought when you found one of the Cotswolds Collector’s human dolls in your bedroom wall?

Or: Hey, hi, how are you? I’m Jessica and you’ve probably heard my true crime podcast! What do you think about coming on and having a chat? I know my listeners would love to get all the gory details.

And: Yeah, so. Like, how mummified was the guy? Was he, you know, a full-on husk, or still juicy?

One arsehole even climbed the walnut tree in my back garden with his camera and a telephoto lens, trying to get a shot through my bedroom window of the body disposal site.

It was a wasted effort. As soon as the forensics team had gathered all the evidence they needed and had given Kevin the go-ahead, he’d ripped out what was left of the false wall that the bodies had been hidden behind, re-plastered the original, and then painted the entire room, including the ceiling, window frames, skirting boards, and doorframe.

Even if the arsehole had been able to get his shot from his precarious perch in my tree (he hadn’t. I’d found him when he got stuck seven feet off the ground, went hysterical, and screamed for help) all he’d have come away with was a photo of a boring, plain white wall.

Or as Kevin insisted, a photo of an exquisitely plastered wall painted in Farrow & Ball’s classic ‘Wimborne White’.

Emulsion finish.

Things had quietened down a lot since then, and today, the people cluttering up my coffee shop were the regular mix of locals and normal tourists. No ghouls.

“Charlie, will you please leave? I’ve got everything under control here and you’re only getting in my way.

Shoo!” Pippa Carrington was my sixty-something head barista.

She had the fashion sense of Audrey Hepburn, the settled confidence and authority of a woman who was in her later middle age and had zero fucks left to give, and the annoying tendency to mother me and my other barista, Milly.

“I’ll empty the dishwasher first,” I said. “Then I’ll go.”

“Dawn can do it when she gets here.”

Dawn worked at the weekends when Milly, a part-time student, was busy writing an essay or cramming for an exam. Pippa didn’t attempt to mother Dawn. Pippa and Dawn butted heads all the time.

“She was supposed to be here an hour ago,” I said. “You’ll be stuck with no clean cups if I don’t do it.”

“I can handle it. If she doesn’t show up, I’ll deputise one of our regulars to help.” She smiled at me. “Isn’t Kevin waiting for you?”

“He doesn’t mind. He’s hanging out with Phil.”

The pair of them were sunning themselves on a picnic blanket in my back garden, according to the selfie Kevin had texted me. Kevin had one arm tucked behind his head and was squinting into the sun and the camera lens. My giant dog was sprawled on Kevin’s chest.

The back door opened and Dawn rushed in, her ponytail lopsided and pillow creases crisscrossing her wan face. “Sorry, sorry,” she said. “Sorry. I know I’m late.”

I lifted my brows, waiting for an explanation. It was well after noon. She’d been scheduled to come in at eleven.

All she said was, “Yeah, yeah. Once more and I’m fired.”

“I mean it this time.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”

Dawn had worked here a couple of summers ago, and in a moment of weakness I’d rehired her when she asked for her job back. She hadn’t been dependable then, and she wasn’t now, so this was on me.

“Charlie, go home,” Pippa said crisply. “Dawn, you can start by unloading that dishwasher and running another load through.”

“Ugh, no thanks. You do it. I prefer to work out the front.” She yanked her hairband out, gathered up her tangled hair, and redid her ponytail. It was still lopsided.

Pippa’s head swivelled slowly in Dawn’s direction.

“What?” Dawn said.

“Unload the dishwasher. You can work at the counter when you no longer look as if you rolled out of bed ten minutes ago.”

“Uh, it was twenty minutes ago? Actually? And come on, it’s not as if anyone can tell. I’m not wearing my pjs. I did change into my uniform.”

“Dishwasher!”

“Okay then, I’m off,” I said, and ducked into the tiny office to grab my phone and my jacket. I stuffed my phone in my pocket, bundled my jacket under my arm, and made a break for it.

“Charlie—” Dawn called after me plaintively.

“Pippa, you’re in charge!” I shouted, and slid out the back door.

Leaving my beloved coffee shop in someone else’s care was a relatively new development for me.

I liked to think it showed personal growth.

I used to be the one to open and close—every single day, seven days a week.

Even though Pippa and Milly had both regularly offered to do it, I’d always turned them down. The Chipped Cup had been my whole life.

It wasn’t anymore, and I’d learned to unclench.

Just a little.

I drove across town, past the honey-coloured houses that looked so picturesque on postcards, past The Star pub with its overflowing beer garden, over the bridge and the river, and past the water meadow.

The pink hollyhocks and purple buddleia that sprouted everywhere in these parts were on their last legs, dropping petals and going to seed.

I gave it a scant couple of weeks before people got ahead of themselves and started decorating for Christmas.

Right now, it was a glorious sunny afternoon, and instead of working until six and dragging myself home to sit blankly in front of my television with Phil until I microwaved something for supper and went to bed early, I got to spend it with my boyfriend and my dog.

And today, I had something special in mind.

Today was the day I finally gave in. I was going to be brave.

I was going to let Kevin do the thing he’d been on at me to let him do for months.

“Please, Charlie,” he’d whisper, usually in bed, when I was all worked up and vulnerable, primed to agree to anything as long as he kept doing what he was doing. “Please. You won’t be sorry. You know I’m good at this sort of thing. Have you ever been unsatisfied before?”

I did know he was good at this sort of thing. He’d proved it, over and over. And, no. I’d never been disappointed with his efforts.

“You won’t have to lift a finger,” he’d promise, pinning me with his heavy body and staring down into my face with unblinking focus. “I’ll do all the work. I like it.”

I knew that, too.

Kevin liked nothing more than hard physical labour. Building up a sweat. Using his big muscles.

“You’ll be so happy,” he’d say. “Come on, Charlie. Let me.”

Fine. Kevin wanted to make me happy? I wanted to make him happy, too. I’d put it off for long enough. It was time to give him the green light.

He could begin renovating my garage.

There wasn’t any good reason to keep denying him, anyway. He’d already been all over the rest of my damn house with his hammers and screwdrivers, paintbrushes and wrenches, electric drills, saws and sledgehammers.

And whatever else Kevin might unearth in the garage, I was at least confident that it wouldn’t be another of the Cotswolds Collector’s human dolls.

The reason I knew this was because—much to the despair of the police—just before the grisly and enlightening discovery in the loft, Kevin and his mate Griffin had cleared out all the junk in the garage that had been left behind by the half-arsed house-clearing company who ‘forgot’ to take it away when they emptied the house before I moved in.