Summer at Shell Cottage Read online

  Oh dear. And poor Freya would think she was losing her marbles, finding the house in such disarray. How was she going to talk her way out of this one?

  ‘Mum! There you are!’ Here she came now, bustling from the house, her jaw noticeably tense even from this distance. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been ringing you and texting you for ages. I even tried calling Katie to see if you were all right—’

  ‘Ha,’ said Olivia contemptuously before she could stop herself.

  Freya looked startled. Olivia was not normally a sarcastic sort of person who said things like ‘Ha’, particularly in relation to their darling housekeeper. ‘Mum … is everything all right?’

  Olivia tried to pull herself together. The short answer, of course, was ‘No’ but she couldn’t possibly tell Freya the news she’d discovered. She’d always been such a daddy’s girl, it would destroy her to learn of her father’s double life. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, then took a deep breath, forcing herself to smile. ‘Better for seeing you,’ she said truthfully. ‘And where are those delightful grandchildren of mine?’ She hugged Freya, trying to act as normally as possible. ‘How was your journey? Let me make you a cup of tea. Ahh. I’m not sure there’s any milk left actually.’

  ‘We’re okay Mum, thanks, all fed and watered; we’ve been here since three o’clock. And I brought milk, it’s fine.’

  Olivia checked her watch: almost half past four. Another day had slipped by practically unnoticed. ‘Oh. Okay, then.’

  There was an awkward pause then Freya gave a bracing smile. ‘Come and say hi to the kids and Vic, anyway. They’re supposed to be getting their things together to go down to the beach but seem to have been sidetracked by a horrendously competitive swingball tournament. I’m expecting a full public inquiry to be called any minute if Teddy isn’t allowed to win.’ She put a hand on Olivia’s back and steered her gently towards the back garden. ‘By the way,’ she added, as they walked along the rosemary-scented path, ‘Katie sounded a bit odd when I rang. Said something about needing to come round and talk to us all at some point. What do you think that’s about?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  It had not been the relaxing start to the holiday that Freya had so desperately wanted. On arriving at Shell Cottage, they found the house so messy and uncared for, she wondered for a crazy moment if a group of squatters had taken the place over. Cigarette butts littered the patio and there was a whole bottle bank worth of empties … Had Mum been throwing wild parties, left to her own devices? Surely she hadn’t consumed them all herself? It seemed extreme, even by Freya’s own increasingly low standards. Thank goodness she’d thought to stop at the nearest supermarket and pick up a few provisions on the way, otherwise there’d have been nothing to eat that night. By the looks of things, Mum had been surviving on alcohol and a few tins of beans all this time. Like mother, like daughter, she thought with a grimace.

  Upstairs, she discovered the beds had been left unmade, there were no fresh towels laid out awaiting their arrival, not even so much as a new cake of soap in the bathroom. Was Katie ill? she wondered, perplexed. Usually their housekeeper prided herself on keeping the place immaculate for them. And where the hell was Mum, anyway?

  Katie sounded weird on the phone when Freya rang her five minutes later. Tearful, almost. Katie had worked for the Tarrants for years, and had always been cheerful and competent, delighting the family with surprise offerings of strawberries or a vase full of flowers or occasionally a pot of home-made blackcurrant sorbet in the freezer. She was practically part of the furniture of Shell Cottage. But this year, for some reason, she was … well, not unfriendly, but certainly a bit offhand on the telephone.

  ‘I don’t know where your mother is, I haven’t been to the house all week,’ she said. (Unheard of. She popped in and out most days to keep the place tidy and clean. That explained why it was such a tip, at least.)

  ‘Oh,’ Freya said dumbly, noticing with a shudder that there were two bluebottles patrolling around the sticky wine bottles by the sink. She pushed open the kitchen window and attempted to shoo them away but they dived past her, buzzing loudly. ‘Is everything all right, Katie?’

  Was it about money? she wondered when no reply came. Maybe Katie had asked for a pay rise, but Mum had refused and Katie had downed tools – or the washing-up brush anyway – in retaliation. She couldn’t envisage this scenario, though. Her parents had always been generous people. They wouldn’t have underpaid Katie, no way.

  Katie eventually made a strange noise that might have been a laugh or might possibly have been a sob, then she’d made that unexpected comment about needing to talk to them all and hung up abruptly. Weirder and weirder.

  And now here was Mum looking dishevelled and – Freya hated to say it – a bit manic. Her hair was loose and straggly, she was wearing fawn chinos with a grass stain on one knee, and a jumper so ancient Freya thought she remembered her wearing it twenty years ago. Oh dear. And to think she’d been assuming Mum had switched off her phone so as to get away from it all. Now it seemed as if Freya’s unanswered calls and texts were due to some kind of … well, breakdown, possibly. She felt like the worst daughter ever for not having guessed this earlier.

  ‘Granny!’ cheered the children as Freya led Olivia around to the lawn to see them. ‘Granny, I’ve got a joke for you!’ called Libby. ‘Knock, knock, Granny. Granny! Knock, knock!’

  Freya’s gaze, meanwhile, was caught by the sight of the apple tree – or rather, what was left of it.

  ‘Oh no! What happened here?’ she cried in dismay, but Olivia was being deafened by Libby’s joke-telling (Freya hoped it wasn’t one of the toilet-related Knock Knocks that her daughter favoured) and Teddy announcing gleefully how he had been carsick, and how it had gone everywhere, and you could still see the bits of cornflakes from his breakfast.

  Nobody seemed to notice that Freya had spoken so she wandered over to the tree for a closer look. As she drew nearer she could see it had been cut, and recently too. Damp sap still oozed on the stump, like blood leaking from a wound. Poor old thing, she thought with a pang. All the apples they’d munched from its branches in Septembers gone by. It was the first tree Dexter had ever climbed, cheered on by all the adults as he swung nimbly from branch to branch, the biggest grin of triumph on his face as he hauled himself up. Who’d cut her down, and why? Visions of Katie running amok with a chainsaw flashed into her mind and she shook her head at her own fevered imagination.

  Beyond the tree were the remains of a fire: blackened grass and a few charred logs. Freya could almost smell the applewood smoke that would have risen as the branches burned to embers. It must have been teenagers, she guessed, up from the village after exam season was over, looking for mischief. There was a fair bit of resentment towards ‘second homers’ in this area; every now and then they’d arrive at the cottage to discover an egg had been thrown at the front door, or find the occasional broken window. But cutting down a medium-sized tree and then lighting a bonfire was not an impulse act, was it?

  She poked the stump with the toe of her shoe, knowing how sad her dad would have been to see it felled and gone. Oh, Dad. That must be why Mum looked so dreadful, of course; she must have missed him terribly the last week. If Freya had given it more thought, she’d have insisted Olivia waited until they could all come down together, sparing her the loneliness she must have suffered being here on her own. Another person she’d let down lately, she thought dismally.

  ‘MUM! We’re going to the beach!’ came Libby’s voice just then. ‘We’re going rockpooling. Granny’s coming with us!’

  Freya turned to see that the children were pulling everything out of the shed – buckets and spades and fishing nets, all covered in lacy cobwebs. ‘Not on your head, Lib!’ Freya cried, two seconds too late.

  ‘I’ve been caught! I’ve been caught!’ squealed Libby, capering about.

  ‘There’s a spider on you!’ Dexter shouted untruthfully, making her scream and fling the net off, running in ci
rcles.

  ‘There are loads of spiders in here,’ Ted announced happily, crouching down to examine the shed floor and prodding at one with a spade.

  Olivia appeared somewhat shell-shocked by all the noise, and Victor put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you sure you’re up to coming with these mad children?’ he asked with a laugh.

  ‘Of course,’ Olivia replied with a weak smile. ‘It’s been very quiet here, on my own. I’m glad of the company.’

  ‘Frey? Coming with us?’ Vic asked.

  Freya would have liked nothing more than to join the noisy beach-going party but she was conscious of the messy kitchen behind her, the fact that their beds were still unmade, and that everyone would require feeding within the next hour. ‘I’ll be down in a bit,’ she promised. ‘I’ll just get our things unpacked first.’

  It was silly of her – needy, too – but it would have been nice if one single person had protested at her words, insisting that she came along with them. But nobody did. They clattered past her, laden with rockpooling equipment, the children all talking at once, nobody so much as looking in her direction. She turned away so that they wouldn’t notice the hurt expression on her face but of course none of them gave her a backward glance.

  Feeling a little sorry for herself, Freya washed everything up, wiped a cloth around the kitchen and scrubbed some Charlotte potatoes for dinner. Then she tucked sheets around the beds, fluffed up the pillows and whipped clean covers onto all their duvets.

  From her bedroom window, she could see them down on the beach, five stick figures clambering around on the black seaweedy rocks at the far end of the bay – even Olivia.

  Instead of going to join them, as she’d promised, Freya was hit by a wave of weariness. Sod it, she thought. This was her holiday too, and for half an hour or so, she would enjoy the peace and quiet all on her own. So she poured herself a sneaky gin and tonic, clambered into the faded canvas hammock in the garden and shut her eyes, determined to block out the world for a while.

  Freya must have dozed off because sometime later, she heard a boy’s voice saying, quite close by, ‘Hello? Um … hello?’

  She blinked groggily awake, disoriented for a moment until she twisted round and felt her body sway in the hammock. Hammock? Oh yes. Silver Sands. Sunshine. Ow. She should have put some suncream on, her arms were flushed hot and pink already.

  ‘Hello?’ said the voice again and she opened her eyes fully to see a boy standing hesitantly in front of her, holding – of all things – a cling-filmed plate of flapjacks.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, wondering if this was part of some stress-related dream. She refocused. Definitely flapjacks. Mmm. Had she woken up in a parallel world where she was some kind of empress to be waited on hand and foot?

  ‘Mum said to bring these,’ the boy said, shifting from foot to foot.

  Something about him was familiar somehow, the shape of his nose, maybe, or those unusual green eyes. He reminded her of someone she couldn’t place. ‘Your mum did?’ she replied, sitting up and accepting the plate, although not really understanding. ‘Who’s your mum, then, love? Does she live nearby?’

  ‘It’s Katie,’ he said, as if she was an idiot. ‘My mum’s Katie.’

  ‘Your mum’s Katie? Oh!’ Since when did Katie have a son? A son the same sort of age as Dexter, more to the point. How come she’d never had a mum chat with Freya? It was like finding out the housekeeper had a pet tiger back at home that she hadn’t thought to mention. Freya realized she was gaping and shut her mouth hurriedly. ‘Well, it’s nice to meet you and thanks very much for these. We all love your mum’s flapjacks.’

  He didn’t smile. He was an earnest little thing, all dark hair and lanky limbs. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Leo,’ he said, then shrugged. ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Okay. Wait – is your mum all right? It’s strange her not being around. Nobody’s told me what’s happened.’

  His eyes hooded over suddenly and he scuffed the grass with one battered old trainer, shrugging again. ‘I dunno.’

  He did know, obviously. He must have heard Katie slagging them off or … or … Freya’s mind came up against a brick wall. She had no idea why Katie had left them so uncharacteristically in the lurch. Had Mum upset her somehow?

  ‘She’s not poorly, is she? Your mum?’

  He shook his head, still not looking at her. His body was held in a tense position as if he was dying to be released and get out of there. It was the same stance Dexter adopted whenever he was longing to walk away from one of her bedroom-tidying lectures.

  ‘Well … thanks, Leo. I’m Freya, by the way. Please pass on my thanks to your mum and say that I hope we see her soon, will you? Can you remember that?’

  Scorn flashed across his face; she could almost hear him thinking I’m not stupid, you know. But he merely nodded. ‘Bye,’ he said, and loped away abruptly, flapjacks delivered, mission accomplished.

  Barely ten minutes later, something even odder happened. Victor and the children romped back from the beach, with Olivia bringing up the rear. The children fell on the plate of flapjacks like ravenous lions, and Freya was just explaining how this boy – Katie’s boy! – had appeared with them, like some wonderful cake-bearing vision, whereupon Olivia caught up, heard what she was saying, and … well, there was no other way to describe it. Basically, she went nuts.

  ‘Stop! Put them back! We’re not eating those!’ she cried, snatching the plate from Freya. ‘We don’t want them.’

  Victor had just taken a huge mouthful and looked from Freya to Olivia in confusion. ‘We don’t?’

  ‘We do!’ Libby cried, stuffing the rest of her flapjack into her mouth before her grandmother could whisk it away.

  ‘We really do,’ Dexter said, dodging a safe distance from Olivia so that his wasn’t snatched from him either.

  ‘I love flapjacks!’ Teddy declared through a huge sticky mouthful, oat clusters already welded to the sides of his lips. ‘Oh, man!’

  Olivia paid no attention to her grandchildren’s thoughts on the matter. ‘Coming round here with flapjacks, indeed,’ she raged. ‘Like that will change the situation. Like that makes anything better!’

  ‘Wait – what’s the problem?’ Freya called, almost toppling out of the hammock in her hurry to follow her mother. Olivia was stalking towards the house, the plate held out in front of her as if it smelled bad. ‘What are you doing?’

  Olivia didn’t stop but marched through the back door and into the kitchen, where she opened the lid of the swing bin and tipped all the remaining flapjacks inside. The sight of those treats, deliciously gooey and moreish, vanishing into the depths of litter was almost enough to make a grown woman weep.

  ‘Mum!’ cried Freya. ‘What did those perfectly nice flapjacks ever do to you?’

  Olivia dropped the plate into the bin for good measure and let the lid swing close.

  ‘MUM!’ Freya said again, starting to seriously worry about her mother’s mental health. ‘That’s Katie’s plate. What on earth … ?’

  ‘I don’t want Katie’s plate in my house. I don’t want her flapjacks either. And if you knew the half of it, then you would feel the same way!’

  And with that, Olivia strode away again, visibly bristling, and Freya was left to stare after her, open-mouthed and deeply discomfited.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Do I have to go on holiday with all Robert’s family?’ Molly groaned, collapsing across the sofa as if she’d been shot by a sniper. ‘It’s going to be, like, so tragically boring and tedious, Mum. Can’t I just stay here?’

  Do I have to? seemed to be Molly’s default setting these days, especially if it involved doing anything as a family. Harriet could feel her daughter pulling away all the time, a kite on a string impatient to fly free, leaving her tedious mother far behind, alone on the ground, staring anxiously upwards into the blue.

  Glancing over from where she was knelt in front of the TV, in the middle of setting up
all her favourite trashy TV programmes to record while they were away on holiday, Harriet gave her daughter a stern look. ‘Don’t be like that! It’s the beach! The seaside! And that lovely, gorgeous house.’ She thought again of the fact that this might be their last holiday together and vowed to dig her heels in. No way was she going to lose this argument. Forget it, lady.

  Molly remained unmoved by her mother’s words. ‘I don’t mind being on my own,’ she said, inspecting her nails (silver and jewel-adorned today), then stretched her arms languidly above her head and gave a dramatic sigh. ‘Devon’s just, like, so pensioner-ish and dull. And I’m telling you now, there is no way I’m sharing a room with Dexter and Libby again. It’s not happening.’

  ‘You don’t have to. I told you, we’re bringing the camp bed so you can go up in the attic room. Okay?’

  ‘Good, because I’m not a total baby. Last year, Libby wanted me to play Barbies with her. And I’m, like, hello? Feminist? Libby, real women do not look like those pieces of plastic, created by the patriarchy to undermine womanhood – you get that in your head right now, girl. The place for those Barbies is in the bin – not in this bedroom. And—’

  ‘Okay, Molls, you’ve made your point.’ There was nothing like the self-righteous declarations of a teenager to exhaust a person, Harriet thought, however much she might privately agree with what her daughter was saying. Once Molly got on a roll you might as well give up on whatever you had planned for the next half an hour, because that daughter of hers could talk.