Summer at Shell Cottage Page 2

  Oh, Dad. It was going to be so subdued at Shell Cottage this year without him there, making them all roar with laughter. However would they manage?

  She’d held it together each time she’d been back to her parents’ elegant, book-filled Hampstead home, taking charge when Mum floundered, distracting herself with the million and one things that needed doing. But she felt like an overfilled vessel these days, perilously close to bursting and spilling everywhere. As well as losing Dad, she’d had to cope with Victor going into hospital, trying to prop up Mum, keeping her wits about her at work and still remembering to send Libby in with cakes for the school summer fair, find Teddy’s glasses that he’d lost for the hundredth time and wash Dexter’s cricket kit … It was no wonder she’d taken to sinking into the sofa with a glass of wine of an evening. Most evenings, to be fair. And who could blame her? The moment she took her first grateful mouthful and savoured its taste was like melting into a warm embrace. It was the only time of day she felt vaguely human.

  And yes, okay, so the glass inevitably turned into two glasses, and sometimes a whole bottle. And, admittedly, she no longer looked directly at the GOT A PROBLEM? alcohol awareness poster in the surgery reception these days. And yes, all right, so she had nipped out on her lunch break to pick up an emergency gin bottle for later because the thought of an evening stone-cold sober made her feel decidedly twitchy.

  So what, though? Big deal! It wasn’t as if anybody had noticed anything untoward about her behaviour. She put out the clinking recycling box in darkness, covering the telltale empties with the bag of newspaper and milk cartons so the neighbours wouldn’t notice. Similarly, she hid the hollow ache of grief inside and kept up appearances to the rest of the world. For the time being, at least. She couldn’t help worrying she was clinging on to sanity by the very tips of her fingers, though. One night, when Victor and the children were in bed, she had actually driven out to the middle of nowhere, pulled over in a layby and just howled like an animal. Like a madwoman.

  Broken. That was how she felt. A little broken doll.

  In the past, if someone had come into the surgery and said to her, I’m broken, I’m devastated, I’m drowning in sadness and only ever feel better after a bottle of Merlot, she’d have put on her professionally concerned face and trotted out the usual suggestions: plenty of exercise and fresh air, talk to friends, eat properly, don’t make the mistake of relying on props like alcohol or caffeine to see you through.

  What a load of bollocks. She’d never be so patronizing again. Now she would lean over, look them in the eye and say, I understand. My God, I understand. I’ve been there myself, way down at the depths like you. The thing is, I have no answers for you, only my own question. When will it end?

  Her door opened just then and she plastered on an expectant smile as an elderly man entered, leaning on a stick and breathing heavily. Despite the sunshine outside, he wore a blazer over his shirt and was scarlet-faced and perspiring as a result. Freya jumped up to help him to a chair. ‘Mr Turner,’ she said, once he had lowered himself into the seat and mopped his shiny brow with a crumpled white handkerchief. ‘How can I help?’

  By five o’clock, Freya was flagging. She still had one last patient to see but her mind was flitting ahead to collecting the children from the childminder, arriving home and starting on dinner: pork stir-fry tonight, even though she could already predict that six-year-old Teddy would painstakingly pick out all the sugar-snap peas and leave them in a shiny green heap at the side of his plate, and that Libby, nine years old and toying with vegetarianism, would talk mournfully about the cuteness of pigs. Dexter, aged twelve, would eat a huge plateful at least, but then he was in the midst of a gigantic growth spurt and shovelled in food like coal into a furnace. (One of these days Freya fully expected to come in to see him gnawing on a chair leg, having emptied the entire fridge and pantry.) No, the challenge with Dexter would be whether or not she could extract more than a grunt from him when it came to finding out about his day at school. It could go either way.

  Meanwhile, her husband Victor, a detective sergeant, was four days into a two-week public order course in Gravesend, simultaneously learning how to be even more of a heroic figure of authority and forgetting to call home and wish his wife and children goodnight. There was over a week left until he came back, and she had the dismal feeling they would seem like strangers to one another by then.

  Anyway. Whatever.

  She glanced at her computer screen, saw that her next patient was Ava Taylor, and groaned. Ever since Ava had been born six months ago, her mother Melanie had wheeled her self-importantly into the surgery approximately twice a week, fretting that her daughter had a sniffle, a cough, that she had been glassy-eyed during breakfast, that her breathing sounded ‘a bit quiet’.

  ‘You understand,’ she’d said conspiratorially more than once, glancing sideways at Freya’s framed desk photo: the children balancing atop a huge wonky sandcastle on Silver Sands beach, Teddy brandishing a sword perilously close to Dexter’s groin. ‘Us mums, we do worry, don’t we?’

  Melanie was right to worry but not necessarily about her daughter. A mere two days earlier, Richard Taylor, her husband, had shuffled into Freya’s consulting room looking shifty and uncomfortable before unzipping his trousers and showing her his painful swollen testicles, then describing the burning pain he felt when peeing and the cloudy, blood-tinged discharge he’d experienced from his small, frightened-looking penis.

  Gonorrhoea, Freya briskly told him, before administering an antibiotic injection into his pale, hairy buttock and writing a prescription. A nice festering case of the clap, which he almost certainly hadn’t picked up from his wife. It was strange and not entirely pleasant to have insights into marriages all over town. Thank goodness nobody could peer into hers right now.

  She drummed her fingers on the desk, waiting for Melanie, and her thoughts turned to the bottle of Hendrick’s gin nestling in her bag, along with a rather squashed packet of Cadbury’s Mini Rolls (for the school summer fair cake stall – they could like it or jolly well lump it). Good old mother’s ruin – bring it on, she thought. Ice cubes, juicy lemon slice, enough tonic splashed in to make it respectable … She glanced down at the bag by her feet. If Melanie didn’t hurry up, at this rate she’d be uncapping the bottle and having a swig right now.

  Too late. There was a knock at the door and Melanie wheeled in the buggy, the usual expression of certain doom on her face.

  ‘Hello there, Melanie,’ Freya said politely. ‘What seems to be the problem today?’

  Melanie wittered on about baby Ava feeling a bit hot, and just sort of, you know, grouchy and not quite herself, but Freya was struggling to concentrate, imagining instead the distinctive rattle of ice cubes being dropped into a tall glass, the hiss of the tonic bottle opening. You were meant to have cucumber batons with Hendrick’s, weren’t you? Did they have any cucumber? The salad drawer was woefully empty, she thought, remembering the lonely yellowing spring onion and the bag of dried-looking carrots. Did they even have enough for a stir-fry tonight, come to think of it? Bugger it, they might just have to have a takeaway after all.

  Freya jerked back to the moment, aware that Melanie had stopped speaking and was waiting for her opinion. Snap out of it, Freya. Be professional.

  She ran through some basic checks on her patient: listening to Ava’s chest, checking her temperature, and gently sliding a finger into the baby’s warm, wet mouth to prise it open and look inside. Ava, perched plumply on her mother’s knee, stared at Freya with interest the entire time, sucking curiously on Freya’s finger when it appeared in her mouth, her round pink cheeks soft and pillowy to the touch.

  ‘Well,’ she said afterwards, returning to her seat, ‘I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. She has a mild fever and her throat looks a bit red, but it’s probably just a summer cold.’ Ava batted the air with both hands as if playing an invisible piano, then stared down at her fingers, seemingly mystified by thei
r behaviour. ‘Give her plenty to drink and a spoonful of Calpol if she seems in discomfort.’

  Melanie didn’t appear satisfied with this bland piece of advice. No doubt she’d been hoping for a dramatic dash to A&E, sirens wailing. ‘But she’s having trouble sleeping,’ she persisted, pursing her thin pink lips. ‘She didn’t want any of her pear and apple puree at lunchtime and that’s her absolute favourite. She really doesn’t seem herself.’

  ‘She seems fine to me,’ Freya said firmly, approaching the fast-unravelling end of her tether. Go away, Melanie. I want to drive home and see my children now, to fry chopped onions and pork, with a lovely big gin at my side. I want to sit in my garden with the grass tickling my bare toes and not think about anything for a while. ‘Try not to worry too much. She’s a lovely healthy baby, with a bit of a sniffle, that’s all. Give it a few days, she’ll be right as rain.’ And while you’re at it, have a word with that pox-riddled husband of yours and tell him to keep his pants on more often.

  Melanie looked affronted to have her concerns rebuffed as being ‘a bit of a sniffle’. Mouth pinched in apparent disagreement, she rose stiffly to her feet and returned Ava to her buggy. ‘Thank you, doctor,’ she murmured in a martyrish sort of way.

  Just at that moment, Freya’s phone started trilling and vibrating. Damn! She hadn’t realized it was even switched on. She lunged for her bag but kicked it over in her haste and – oh Christ – the neck of the gin bottle slid right out onto the grey carpet. She could almost hear the wail of a klaxon – Alcoholic alert! Alcoholic alert! – as she leapt from her chair. Face flaming, she made a desperate scramble for the bag, the phone still chirping away.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said with a nervous laugh, once she’d switched it off. Melanie’s face was impassive as she said goodbye and left, and Freya sank back into her chair afterwards, feeling rattled. Had Melanie seen the gin? Had she noticed Freya’s panic? Shit. ‘Not your finest hour there, Frey,’ she muttered with a sigh. She really bloody needed a drink now.

  Chapter Three

  Ever since Alec’s death, Olivia had been thinking a great deal about her last day with him. Dwelling on it, you could say. Should she have guessed what was to come? Could she have saved him somehow? It had all seemed so ordinary to begin with, that was the problem. Just another beautiful summer’s morning, the two of them eating breakfast on the patio of the Edwardian Hampstead house where they’d lived for the last twenty-five years. He was leafing through The Times; she was thinking vaguely about how she would begin planting up the Fortescues’ garden later that afternoon. Then the phone rang inside the house. ‘I’ll get it,’ Alec grumbled, taking a last munch of his toast and marmalade.

  Olivia had carried on sipping her tea and gazing out at the dahlias, which were just springing into vivid splashes of colour: crimson, orange, red. She could hear the distant sound of someone practising scales on a piano and the loud chack-chack of a blackbird warning that there was a cat prowling nearby. Then came Alec’s voice, gruff and cross through the open door. ‘How did you get this number?’ he said. He was always grumpy when he slept badly, and the stifling June heat had played havoc with his sleep recently. ‘You mustn’t ring this number again!’

  An overenthusiastic fan, Olivia thought mildly. They tracked him down sometimes. Her knuckles tightened on the teacup as she caught sight of the ravaged leaves of her beautiful carmine lupins. Slugs again. She’d really have to sort out the –

  Then there came a crash. A strangled sort of shout. She ran inside to find Alec prone on the hall carpet, the dropped telephone beside him. His face was puce, his eyes bulging and shocked; one hand clutched at his chest. A faint line of dribble leaked from the corner of his mouth, his lips parting as he tried to speak. But no words came, only a great, groaning pant of distress.

  After that everything happened very fast, as if time had accelerated around her. Despite the best efforts of the paramedics and then the consultants, Alec slipped into unconsciousness and never came round again. She’d sat next to him as he lay unmoving in the crisp white hospital bed, begging and praying for him to come back to her but instead his soul quietly departed with one last hoarse breath, and he was gone. Sixty-four years old and his life was over.

  Her world felt desolate without him, unbearably empty. Alec had always been the gregarious one of the marriage, the sort of man who could stride into a crowded room and charm everyone into becoming his new best friend within minutes. He was witty and charismatic, generous and spontaneous; the most fun and interesting person in any gathering. Now that he had died, Olivia felt like a small tugboat cut adrift on a stormy sea, uncertain where she was heading or if she could even stay afloat. She had counted on at least another ten or twenty years together; they had planned to retire down to Devon before too much longer to ‘grow old disgracefully’, as he’d put it. But no. One rogue blood clot marauding through her husband’s body had put paid to that.

  Sometimes she wondered angrily who the pestering fan had been on the phone that day – How did you get this number? You mustn’t ring this number again! – and whether Alec’s subsequent ire had been the last fatal strain on his health. Had the caller felt a twist of guilt, a prick of conscience, when they read of his death in the newspaper? Had it even occurred to them that they might unwittingly have contributed to his demise?

  Since that terrible airless June morning three weeks ago, Olivia had functioned on autopilot, the big, quiet house silting up with unwanted flowers, and sympathy cards she couldn’t bring herself to read. Maria, their Filipino cleaner, tiptoed around now and then, head bowed as she dusted and polished and occasionally changed the putrefying water in the vases, but Olivia barely noticed her presence. It seemed a minor miracle to survive each long, torturous day without disintegrating, turning into a madwoman, clawing at the ground, screaming at the sky. Alec is gone, Alec is gone. She’d never hear his husky laugh again or feel his arms around her; she’d never be warmed by the golden, unswerving spotlight of his devotion. How was it possible to go on?

  Over the last fifteen years, Olivia had built up a small boutique garden design service, with two members of staff and their own van. She had always found solace in planting and weeding, but this summer she didn’t even want to step outside her back door to water her own garden, let alone venture further to tend the flower beds, lawns and shrubbery of her wealthy clients. What the hell. Let them wither and droop, let them dry to a brown crisp. Without Alec, it all seemed pointless anyway. Everything did.

  The children helped out where possible. Although she was a busy GP with three little ones of her own, Freya drove down from her home in Hertfordshire to assist with the practicalities of the funeral, as well as briskly tackling many of the horrible, cold formalities: registering the death, winding up her father’s bank accounts, and wading through the reams of correspondence and documents piled up under his desk. Capable and pin-sharp even in the throes of mourning, Freya had always been one for Getting Things Done. It had been a wrench when she returned home, leaving a typed to-do list and renewed silence in her wake.

  Robert, too, was supportive and helpful, coming over to deal with the extraordinary number of emails which had piled up in Alec’s inbox – a task Olivia herself hadn’t been able to stomach. All those polite replies to type, all the condolences to acknowledge, not to mention the myriad work-related conversations that needed untangling.

  ‘How’s it going?’ she asked, walking into Alec’s study one Friday afternoon to see her son frowning at the ageing computer screen. It was still strange to find another person there in her husband’s domain, cluttered as it was with book paraphernalia, several crime writer awards and umpteen souvenirs from his travels.

  ‘Not bad,’ he replied, stretching his arms above his head. Robert had the same green eyes and dark hair as his father whereas Freya was like her: fair with pale skin that burned easily in the sun. Tall and rangy, Robert was the athlete of the family, walking at seven months old, and not stopping ever
since. Even now, he was wearing a running top with shorts and trainers, as if he’d broken off midway through a marathon to pop round. ‘Eleanor’s asked, in the nicest possible way, if we think Dad’s last book is going to be publishable,’ he went on. ‘She said they could supply us with a ghostwriter if we felt it was necessary, although that would probably mean moving publication into next year.’

  His last book. Olivia’s heart seemed to clench. That wretched book had helped kill him, she was sure of it: the stress of trying to meet the tight deadline, the dread of another big American tour and festival appearances looming that autumn. Alec was a professional, always delivering a new novel to his editor in July, with the hardback edition published several months later in time for Christmas. Regular as clockwork the schedule went, only this particular book had got to him for some reason. Her husband didn’t often suffer from self-doubt but in the weeks before his death, he had agonized to Olivia privately a number of times that he just wasn’t sure about this one. Some days he would go off to the heath for a walk and not return for hours, still with the same distracted light in his eyes. She didn’t even know if he had been close to finishing it when he died.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Leave it with me. Is there anything else?’

  ‘Yes. Marcus – solicitor Marcus – has come back with a few queries. Dad left quite a lot of money to someone called Leo Browne. Do you know him?’

  Leo Browne. She turned the name over in her mind, but it didn’t ring any bells. Maybe it was an editor he’d worked with in America, or his film agent; she’d never been able to keep track of all Alec’s contacts. Her lip trembled as she remembered teasing him about the ridiculous number of Christmas cards he used to receive from friends, fans and colleagues; how he couldn’t even recall who half the senders were. They would appear like drifts of snow through the letterbox each morning, an avalanche of festive bonhomie. This Christmas the haul would be decimated, though. She’d sign their cards alone, the white space that bit emptier without his confident black-inked scrawl alongside hers.