Summer at Shell Cottage Read online

  She curled her hands into fists, digging her fingernails into her palms. Come on, Olivia. Keep it together. She had to stop allowing herself to be felled with sorrow by every tiny memory, every single conversation.

  ‘I don’t recognize the name, sorry,’ she said, after a deep breath.

  ‘No worries. Oh, and there’s an email from Katie, checking we’re still set for the summer as usual.’ He gazed expectantly at her. ‘When were you planning to go?’

  Katie was their sort-of housekeeper at Shell Cottage, a cheerful thirty-something woman who lived in Silver Sands village and kept an eye on the place when they weren’t staying there. During the summer, she was like their good fairy, popping round to clean and make up the beds while they were out. Had anyone even told Katie about Alec? Olivia had lost track of who knew the terrible news and who didn’t.

  She leaned against the bookshelves, stuffed in a haphazard fashion with all the foreign editions of Alec’s books. The idea of being at Silver Sands without her husband was unbearable. Who would organize the lilo races and the crabbing? Who would man the barbecue and lead the legendary hikes out on Dartmoor? Who would appear on the terrace with a cool drink for her just when she was feeling thirsty, or rub suncream into her fast-pinking shoulders? ‘I don’t know about the holiday this year,’ she mumbled, looking away.

  ‘What? Oh, Mum, no. You’re not staying here and moping around all summer. You have to go. Everyone else still wants to.’

  ‘It’s just … without your dad …’ She shrugged helplessly. If she went to Shell Cottage alone, she’d only feel tormented by memories of all those summers gone by, their precious wedding night, and most recently, last New Year’s Eve, when they’d set off fireworks in the garden, just the two of them, and kissed as if they were teenagers. How he’d loved the sheer extravagance of fireworks, the bright pinwheels of colour exploding in the dark velvety sky.

  But Robert’s fingers were already flying over the keyboard again. ‘Dear Katie, Thank you for your email. We are looking forward to our return to the house,’ he read aloud sternly. ‘If you could have everything ready as usual for my arrival on the …’ He broke off and glanced up at the calendar. ‘What shall I say, the fourteenth of July? That gives you another week or so to tie up a few more things here.’

  Olivia hesitated. She couldn’t imagine going into London on her own right now, let alone driving all the way to Devon. Robert met her look steadfastly with those green eyes, so like his father’s, and her resistance faltered. She’d never been able to refuse Alec anything when he looked at her that way.

  ‘Mum?’ Robert prompted. ‘You could take Dad’s manuscript with you, couldn’t you? Read it through if you felt up to it. One last story to enjoy.’

  His gaze was unswerving and Olivia found herself nodding in defeat. ‘Okay,’ she said. Whatever, as her grandchildren would say. She could always ring Katie and cancel, she told herself.

  ‘Great,’ Robert said, typing again. He clicked on ‘Send’ with a flourish. ‘I think it’s the right thing, Mum. The sooner we all try and get back to normal, the better. And a holiday is probably exactly what you need.’

  Chapter Four

  Sixty feet below ground level, Harriet Tarrant-Price heaved her canvas bags of paperwork and folders up onto one shoulder as she heard the distant rumbling of the train far back in the tunnel. Thank goodness. It was steaming down in Camden Town station today, the tiled walls sweaty with condensation, the platform crammed with tourists and schoolchildren. The sooner she travelled the five stops to East Finchley and could re-emerge into daylight the better.

  The train wheezed into the station, as slow and shambling as a recalcitrant teenager, and there was the usual hot crush of human bodies as the crowd forced its way on-board. As luck would have it, there was a seat free in the middle of the carriage and after a swift check-around for desperate pregnant women (no), Harriet hurled herself towards it and collapsed breathlessly onto its dusty surface. A half-read copy of the Metro rustled against her as she leaned back and she reached round to pull it out, her gaze falling on the headline. JUICE YOUR WAY SKINNY!

  Oh, bog off, Harriet thought. That was the thing about summer: you had to avoid so many magazines and newspapers with their annoying ‘Beach Body’, ‘Bikini Diet’ nonsense. If it wasn’t ‘Starve Yourself’, it was ‘Pluck Out Every Last Hair on Your Bod’, or – worse still – ‘Exercise Your Way to a Size Minus Two’, or whatever women were supposed to aspire to these days. Yeah, yeah. Harriet would not be cowed by such body fascism. Let them juice themselves into oblivion. She’d rather have a plate of pasta and buttery garlic bread, thanks for asking.

  The train rumbled off and she turned her attention to the nerve-racking prospect of the party she was due to attend that evening. She still hadn’t decided what to wear for starters. What did one wear to a gathering of scarily intellectual types who were publishing your husband’s brilliant first novel? A dress, definitely, rather than her favourite jeans, which therefore meant getting her legs out, urgent depilation and toenail painting and a toss-up between which pair of smart heels she could bear to stand in the longest. (The short answer: none of them. At each of the last three summer weddings she’d been to, she’d resorted to bare feet after a single glass of Pimms, blisters popping up all over her tender pink toes. And she certainly couldn’t stay in the knackered silver Converse she was wearing right now, which had the unfortunate habit of making farting noises when her feet got too hot and sweaty.)

  She glanced surreptitiously at the woman opposite her – a Nordic blonde looking cool and elegant in a crisp white dress with bronze Gladiator sandals – and wished that she could look so effortlessly glamorous. Even once would be nice. How did anyone keep a white linen dress clean on the Tube, unless they were some kind of goddess with magical powers? Harriet would have sat in pink bubblegum or dropped a leaky biro into her lap by now, or a bird would have pooed on her during playground duty.

  If only she looked like white-dress woman, she could stride into the party tonight with supreme confidence. Instead, she was short with an avocado-shaped body and chunky calves that looked weird in a skirt (‘Legs like a pit pony,’ as Evil Simon had always teased, which still made her feel like punching him, seven years down the line). She had dark brown hair, currently cut in a boring, boyish crop, freckles like spilled demerara sugar and a faint, fuzzy moustache shadowing her top lip, which she absolutely must bleach into non-existence before a single person at the cocktail party could see it and snigger. Once a teenage acne sufferer, she still had the habit of putting her hand up to her face when she felt insecure in social situations. She pictured herself at the party: a blushing moustachioed hobbit covering her face amidst the confident, beautiful people – the literati! – and cringed. It was going to be a nightmare. It was going to be such a bloody nightmare!

  Her eyes fell back onto the Metro and despite her earlier irritation, she found herself reading up about the juice camp in Wales at which the journalist had apparently lost half a stone in a week. Hmm. Maybe there was something in this idea, after all. (Why hadn’t she booked herself in to a Welsh juice camp in readiness for this party? Why was she always so ill-prepared?)

  Oh, right. Closer reading revealed that it cost over eight hundred pounds for the five-day break, and the campers had endured gruelling six-mile runs and freezing river swims every day. Sod the juice camp, then. If Harriet had a spare eight hundred quid, she’d sooner blow it on a luxury weekend away in Paris with Robert, ta very much. If they really put their minds to it, they could probably shag enough to lose half a stone each anyway, and tuck into steak frites and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon afterwards.

  The train suddenly braked, and came to an abrupt halt, and Harriet lurched against the sweating man in a too-tight suit next to her, her elbow squelching into his McDonald’s paper bag. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled as a weary, please-God-no tension spread through the carriage. Breaking down mid-tunnel was always grim but on a roasting hot day, wi
th barely room to breathe, they’d be melting into puddles within seconds. Besides, she wanted to get home in plenty of time so that she could titivate herself for the party: all that hair-removal and outfit-agonizing would take forever. She would make an effort for Robert’s sake, though, to show how thrilled she was at his amazing career turn. No problemo.

  Goodness, but she was proud of her husband! Not every person had the courage he’d had, giving up a steady job to follow his dream of writing a novel. Admittedly, he’d hated working as a cycle courier, and yes, okay, so he hadn’t really talked it through with her before quitting in a fit of pique one day, but he’d knuckled down and slogged through a first draft in six short months. A first draft that was now, by all accounts, the talk of literary London, no less!

  She just had to hope she wouldn’t look too out of place tonight; the sole pleb in a sea of glittering brainiacs. Would they be able to tell she hadn’t been to university? Would it be obvious she only read two books a year, usually juicy psychological thrillers while on holiday, and that she couldn’t name a Booker Prize winner even with a gun to her head? And what if one of the hipsters asked what she thought of her own husband’s book? Apparently the publisher had called it ‘that rare thing – a comic literary novel’, but from the few chapters Harriet had been permitted to read, it was about three male characters arguing about the meaning of life in a way that was actually quite slow and boring. That was probably just her being thick, though. Surely. What did she know about books?

  The train started moving again, a slow, dragging shuffle before finally accelerating into a more thunderous pace. Just smile and nod to the other guests, she reminded herself. Smile and nod, have another cocktail, and if all else fails, talk about how clever Robert is.

  Ahh, East Finchley station. At last! Her cotton blouse sticking to her in the heat, Harriet was grateful to emerge blinking into the daylight and start striding towards home, her shoes gently trumping with each step. Sod it, she thought, she would not let herself feel overawed at the party. Just that day at school, she’d spoken to Latisha Baldock – angry, defensive Latisha, who’d been suspended last year for breaking a boy’s nose – and sensitively tackled the subject of her mother’s latest health problems. To the surprise of them both, hard-faced Latisha had let down her guard for once and cried actual tears in the sanctuary of Harriet’s little office. She’d even allowed Harriet to hug her and comfort her, and accepted that it would be good to talk to a counsellor who could help. ‘Fanks, Miss,’ she’d said, tucking a soggy tissue in her skirt pocket, when she eventually left. It was like being awarded a gold medal in the Social Work Olympics. And how many brainbox authors at the party could claim that kind of job satisfaction, eh?

  The party would be fine. It was only one evening. And if it was awful, she and Robert could giggle about it in the taxi afterwards and slag everyone else off. So there.

  An hour later, Harriet had scrubbed and moisturized, bleached her tache into non-existence and then applied a stinky depilatory cream to de-hair her legs. Unfortunately the cream had been ancient – from the summer before, she realized belatedly – and made her itch horribly to the point where she couldn’t wait the full treatment time but ended up with first one leg in the bathroom sink and then the other, hastily rinsing the burning goo straight off again and yelping the whole time. Of course, wouldn’t you know it, her skin promptly sprang up with a scarlet rash, forcing Harriet to smear on gallons of EasyTan bronzing lotion in a panicky cover-up attempt. The only silver lining in the whole disastrous episode was that her daughter Molly had vanished off to her best friend Chloe’s for tea, so wasn’t there to snigger and post photos of the strangely orange, hairless, pit-pony-resembling limbs on Instagram. Small mercies.

  What next? Eyebrows. The plucking didn’t go too well first time around so she had an emergency glass of wine and tried again (even worse). Then she resorted to drawing on new eyebrows, which gave her the surprised air of someone who’d just had a dart fired into their bottom. Well, it was a talking point, she supposed. That or the death knell of any future invitations out with Robert, anyway.

  ‘Hello? Where is everyone?’

  Oh, thank goodness. Now her husband was home and he was sure to make her feel better. He would kiss her and tell her she looked sensational in a hessian sack, and didn’t she know, big pencilled eyebrows were totally the in-thing this year, and he’d always adored her strong legs, however weirdly neon and shiny they might look now. ‘Up here!’ she yelled in reply, unhooking her red cotton H&M dress from the rail and holding it in front of her.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked as he came into the bedroom. ‘Red? Or …’ She rummaged through the wardrobe, wishing she had an extensive collection of summer outfits she could choose from for a glamorous cocktail party. Instead, her hand fell on her faithful pink Primark wrap dress which she’d worn so often the fabric was bobbly. ‘Or pink?’

  Robert came over and tossed both dresses onto the bed, then wrapped his arms around her and kissed her very thoroughly. Wearing only a pair of pants and her bra, Harriet felt suddenly raunchy, especially when he started tugging at said pants. Unfortunately, they were control panel ones, with a rubbery, hold-back-the-flab top, which made them almost impossible to remove unless one was prepared to use surgical instruments and a whole can of WD40. She giggled, feeling infinitely more party-ish. ‘Well, someone’s pleased to see me,’ she said, as he gave up on the pants and began unhooking her bra. ‘What are you wearing tonight, then?’

  ‘As little as possible,’ he murmured in her ear, releasing the clip and yanking her bra from her body. Then he sniffed. ‘What’s that weird smell?’

  Oh Lord. It was the disgusting depilatory cream, she knew it. Or maybe the pungent EasyTan bronzer. ‘No idea,’ she said, the wine putting fibs in her mouth. ‘Robert, no … I need to get ready. Haven’t we got to be there in, like, an hour or something?’

  He was bending down, nuzzling between her breasts, which was both ticklish and erotic at the same time. Mmm, hello. ‘Where?’ he said.

  ‘The party!’ she laughed, stepping back so that he almost fell over. ‘Your publishing thing. At the posh house. Cocktails. Mingling. Everyone saying how great you are.’

  His face went blank for a moment – two, three long moments – and then he slapped a hand to his head. ‘Oh shit,’ he said.

  Harriet, feeling slightly silly standing there in a pair of huge, unflattering, for-her-eyes-only control pants, positioned her arms over her bare breasts and bad choice of underwear. ‘What do you mean, oh shit?’

  ‘I …’ He raked a hand through his hair and sighed. ‘Oh, love. I thought I’d told you. I got it wrong, about it being a plus-one thing.’

  ‘You mean … ?’ Her heart beat wildly. He hadn’t told her. There was no way she would have forgotten him telling her, not when she’d been stressing out all week about this effing party. The effing party to which she hadn’t even been invited, as it turned out. And now she’d obliterated her own eyebrows and brought on a virulent leg rash for nothing! ‘I’m not going?’

  He shook his head and sat down on the bed. Harriet put on her dressing gown, feeling like the biggest idiot ever.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m such a doofus. And here you are, getting all ready …’

  She tried to smile, although she probably still looked surprised from the stupid eyebrows. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said but inside she was deflating like a punctured balloon. No cocktails, then. No party. No make-up and high heels and frock. No giggling about all the goss to her friends at work on Monday morning. (‘So I was saying to Zadie, right …’)

  ‘It does matter. Of course it does!’ He looked at her wretchedly and somehow, despite the punctured-balloon sensation, she felt her stomach flip ever so slightly at his hangdog eyes. ‘Look – let’s blow it out,’ he said. ‘Let’s forget the dumb party, and go out, just the two of us, and have a laugh somewhere instead. I’d much rather be with you.’

  She sho
ok her head. ‘No, don’t worry, honestly.’ It was a relief really, she told herself. For the best. She hadn’t truly wanted to go anyway, had she? But …

  ‘But you’ve got your sexy pants on and everything,’ he said, flicking the top of the elastic (with some effort, admittedly; he’d probably broken a finger in the attempt). ‘They’re all Matron-esque and forbidding. I’m getting stirrings just thinking about them.’

  She pulled a face. ‘I’m glad someone is. I feel completely numb from the waist down. God knows how I’m ever going to get them off again.’

  He made a growling noise in his throat. ‘Now there’s a challenge … Come here, gorgeous. Let’s see if we can do something about that.’

  Forty-five minutes later, Robert left in a cloud of aftershave and further apologies and Harriet tried not to feel too disconsolate. Oh well, she told herself, putting on her pyjamas and trudging downstairs. There would be other parties, wouldn’t there? Lots of other parties. Not going tonight would give her more time to brush up on some clever things to say and hunt down a fancy dress and sparkly shoes.

  She tried not to think about those fabulous white stucco houses near Regent’s Park where the publisher lived – she’d been dying to have a nose around inside – and poured herself an exceedingly pokey vodka tonic instead. ‘Cocktails, shlocktails,’ she said, drinking it down in three eye-watering gulps.

  Just as she was on the verge of nosediving into a gloomy all-by-myself mood, Molly came back from Chloe’s house – ‘I got a lift from Chlo’s dad, don’t worry, Mum’ – and she was pink in the cheeks and giggly, her phone pinging with new text messages which made her eyes shine even more. Harriet felt better listening to her daughter talk about her day and the forthcoming end-of-term party the Year 10s were throwing, and was warmed by thoughts of what a beautiful creature Molly was, all long legs and Bambi eyes and big tawny hair.