Summer at Shell Cottage Page 5

  She sighed, defeated. ‘Go on, then. Tell me a bit more about how awful it was.’

  He didn’t need any encouragement and pressed closer into her. ‘The women were all monstrous. Dreadful old sexless matrons with warts and chin hair. You would have been the most bewitching creature there by far.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I know so. And the food was nearly as dull as the conversation. You’d have hated it. Strange canapés, greasy little sausages …’

  ‘Talking of greasy little sausages …’ Harriet teased, reaching a hand behind for him. ‘I’m joking, all right!’ she spluttered as he in turn gave an indignant snort. Then she sat up and burst out laughing. ‘Rob,’ she said. ‘Are you still wearing your shoes?’

  It showed how much she loved Robert, that Harriet could shrug off small things with ease: the party invitation debacle (he hadn’t told her she wasn’t invited, whatever he claimed); the completely unbelievable fibs he’d come up with in his pretence of having a terrible night (matrons with chin hair indeed); and as for the god-awful snoring that began rumbling from his throat when he fell asleep on his back moments later, Harriet was sure that plenty of wives faced with a similar situation might have been compelled to put a pillow over that wide-open mouth and hold it there until silence fell.

  Instead, she lay in the darkness, thinking for the millionth time how lucky she was to have met him and how glad she was to be beside him right now, snoring or not. Sometimes she honestly felt as if her heart was so brimful of complete and utter love for him it might just burst.

  Ahh, Robert! After Harriet’s first marriage had bottomed out so disastrously seven years ago – was there a woman left in London that Evil Simon hadn’t slept with? – she had plunged into a freefall of despair, abandoning all hope of anything nice ever happening to her again. Back then, her daughter Molly was eight, and the two of them had clung together, lonely and uncertain, in their small rented flat. Harriet told herself repeatedly that she didn’t need a man to mess them around and cause any more trouble, she was better off without endless dropped phone calls and suspiciously muffled conversations, and that she definitely wouldn’t go anywhere near a lying, cheating heartbreaker again, for as long as she lived. Positive thinking was the key, her best friend Gabbi kept saying. (Apparently Gabbi looked in her mirror every morning and told herself, ‘I love you, you’re amazing, you’re the greatest woman that ever lived’, no doubt with adoring sincerity She probably even kissed the mirror sometimes.)

  While Harriet thought this a tad extreme, she did tentatively attempt her own version of positive reinforcement, reminding her cynical-looking reflection that she had Molly, excellent friends and just enough money to scrape by. And anyway, maybe being single wasn’t quite as spirit-pulverizing as everyone said. At least she got to eat ice cream in bed, and watch trashy American reality shows without anyone complaining. Match of the Day could jog on, too. Men – pffft. She was so over them.

  But then she met Robert – at a beginners’ furniture-making class, of all places – and had to reassess her plans overnight. The class was a birthday present from Gabbi (‘It’ll be full of hot blokes, I bet you,’ she had said unsubtly when Harriet opened the envelope and frowned at the voucher inside) and Harriet, who was about as competent with a hammer and saw as her eighty-year-old grandmothers, almost bottled it at the last minute. Thank goodness she hadn’t. Thank goodness, too, that she’d randomly sat down next to Robert in the workshop: funny, laughing, dark-haired Robert, who helped her with the plane and took the mick out of her for squealing the first time she used the drill.

  Much as she hated to admit it to Gabbi (her friend could be unbearably smug about these things), Harriet quickly found herself looking forward to Thursday evenings amidst the sawdust and wood shavings, trying to concentrate on what Liam, the earnest tutor, was saying about dovetail joints, but finding her gaze straying instead across to broad-shouldered, gorgeous Robert. She was tortured by the way his hair fell just a fraction too long and shaggy on the back of his neck; she found herself fantasizing about the day-old dark stubble like iron filings around his jaw and how it would feel against her skin. By the second lesson, she’d managed to drop into the conversation that she was single and by the fourth, when she absolutely couldn’t wait any longer, she asked him out for a drink. The rest was history. When the course finally drew to an end, Harriet might not have had a decent piece of furniture to show for her efforts – her footstool was indeed the object of much derision from her daughter and now lived hidden away in the bathroom where it had the lowly task of supporting a small wicker basket of toilet rolls – but who cared? She’d only gone and bagged herself the loveliest man in all of London Town instead. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Gabbi crowed when she broke the news. ‘Didn’t I say this would happen?’

  Harriet smiled to herself in bed. Finding Robert had been worth all of Gabbi’s smugness. It was even worth putting up with a bit of drunken warthog snoring now and then. Because just look at her now: happily married with a great daughter, secure job and a holiday on the horizon. Who could want for more?

  Chapter Seven

  How strange it seemed, packing only for one’s self this summer, Olivia thought, folding clean clothes into the suitcase. For the last ten or eleven years, Alec had routinely travelled to Shell Cottage a few weeks ahead of her in order to work, and his subsequent phone calls always involved detailing the many things he wanted her to add to her case. ‘Forgot my shaver,’ he’d say cheerfully while she scribbled it at the bottom of her (already extensive) list. ‘The nights are on the chilly side, could you bring my slippers?’ he would remember another evening.

  She would tsk affectionately and call him a hopeless old man, and ask what his last slave had died of, but she never really minded. In fact, she rather liked feeling so helpful, so needed. It was a little reminder of how indispensable she was, how tightly they were still tied together. Then, as soon as he’d finished with his novel, and had sent it off to his editor and agent, he’d be back on the phone to her at once, for one final call: ‘I’m all yours, sweetheart. Come on down. I miss you.’

  Silly, wasn’t it, that after almost forty years of marriage, she had still felt such a frisson at his low, husky words down the telephone. She’d be all packed by then, of course, her bags waiting in the hall, the previous couple of days usually spent in an agony of limbo as she waited for her orders. Some years, his call came later than others, if he’d had to wrestle particularly hard with a book, and she would become positively agitated for him, unable to settle to her own work, or the weeding, or even coffee with a neighbour, because her mental energy was elsewhere, willing him on to succeed. Then when the phone did finally ring, and she was officially permitted to join him for their holiday – oh my goodness, the great rush of pride and joy she felt every time. ‘Well done,’ she would cry, more ecstatic than him, even. ‘Well done, darling. I’m on my way.’

  She’d glimpse him as she drove up the lane, waving both arms above his head on the terrace, almost knocking off that ridiculous straw hat he liked to wear. He’d be unshaven and dishevelled by then, of course – feral, she’d tease him – but brimming with elation, work done, time to have some fun.

  She tried not to think about that now as she carefully packed the last few things: her toothbrush and toiletries, a handful of Teddy’s plastic dinosaurs she’d found solemnly standing sentry around the shrubbery the other day, where he must have forgotten them, and, somewhat reluctantly, Alec’s final manuscript, neatly printed and slotted into a cardboard folder. ‘Do you think you could get back to me by the beginning of August?’ Eleanor, his editor, had said on the phone the other day, her voice rather high and tight as if someone was slowly strangling her. ‘It’s just … we’d love to publish it for Christmas as originally scheduled but it’ll have to be a very tight turnaround, so …’

  Olivia hadn’t promised anything. She still wasn’t sure she wanted to read Alec’s final work, knowing that there woul
d be no further words to come from him. She was worried it might unhinge her even more.

  Anyway, she could think about all of that once she’d arrived in Silver Sands. Everything always seemed easier when one was in Shell Cottage. The London house had felt like a cage ever since Alec’s death, a prison of sorrow, too airless, too silent, too empty without him. It would do her good to escape.

  She zipped up the case, loaded it into the boot and locked the front door, her fingers trembling on the key as she was struck by sudden apprehension about the long journey ahead and whether she could manage it after all. Come on, Liv, she imagined him saying to her. Think of it as an adventure, not a problem, eh?

  But as she started the car and drove carefully down the road, she couldn’t help wondering if all her adventures were behind her now. When she missed her husband so desperately, how could this summer without him contain anything other than sorrow?

  To her surprise, Olivia’s spirits did lift a fraction once she had left London and all its impatient, lane-cutting drivers behind. She’d taken Alec’s Audi, which was much nicer to drive than her ancient Renault, and she filled the car with the swelling crescendos of a favourite violin concerto. As she headed further west, the motorway ran through rolling green hills and fields of swaying golden wheat, with distant church spires and pretty villages visible beyond. Maybe Robert had been right, she thought: despite the ever-present grief lying like a lead weight in her gut, getting away might actually do her some good. At the very least, it would mean a break from wandering about the Hampstead house alone, with the terrible sapping listlessness she’d felt in recent weeks. There would be no ringing phone or doorbell to bother her, and she could spoil herself rotten with lovely long coastal walks, a glass of wine in the garden as the sun set, and all the books and DVD box sets she’d brought with her in case of rainy days. She might even head out on a boat trip, something seasick-prone Alec had never enjoyed.

  Silver Sands village seemed chilly and grey when she reached it some hours later, and she drove the final few hundred metres up the lane towards Shell Cottage feeling a quiet triumph for having actually made it there under her own steam. But then the empty terrace came into view – no Alec to greet her this year – and tears immediately pricked her eyes.

  No crying, she ordered herself, blinking them fiercely away. No mawkishness. She would mix herself a mug of hot chocolate instead, she decided, throw on a big sloppy jumper and some sandals, and wander down to the beach. The bay would be largely empty on a day like today, no doubt, save for a few hardcore ‘We WILL have fun on the beach if it kills us’ holidaymakers. She would perch on a rock, sip her drink and gaze out to sea, letting the breeze blow away her troubles. The sight of the waves crashing and rolling in on the sand always helped her relax.

  Reaching the driveway, she was surprised to see a small red Fiat already parked there, before realizing it must belong to the housekeeper, Katie. Good old Katie! Hopefully she’d be almost finished, leaving the house clean and hoovered, cushions plumped, beds newly made, like the little angel she was. No doubt Olivia would have to endure yet another earnest sympathy conversation – everyone had loved Alec, and they all wanted to tell her just how sorry they were at great length – but with a bit of luck she could get it over with quickly, then close the door and have the place to herself.

  ‘Hello? I’m here!’ she called, heaving her case in through the open front door. She was surprised to hear music playing from upstairs, then even more taken aback to see a large vase of red roses in the hall and what looked like lunch set out on the kitchen table. She stared at the ready-sliced quiche and bowls of salad, the plate of cream cakes under a protective fly cover, two empty wine glasses, and three place settings. For a crazy moment she thought she’d walked into the wrong house, the wrong holiday. Oh goodness. Was she losing the plot now?

  No. Of course she wasn’t. There was her cooker, the cheerful striped window blind, the knotty pine table. Everything was in its place. And yet …

  Then came a shout – ‘Dad’s here! I saw his car!’ – and the sound of racing footsteps. Flummoxed, she whirled around to see a boy burst into the room. He stopped when he saw her and his face froze. ‘Oh.’

  ‘You’re … you’re looking for your dad?’ Olivia ventured. She’d never heard Katie talk about a husband or partner before. Or a son, for that matter.

  The boy squirmed at the question but didn’t reply. He was gangly and dark-haired, all sharp elbows and knobbly knees, the same sort of age as Dexter, she guessed, eleven or twelve. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked gently when he didn’t reply. Was he even Katie’s son at all, Olivia wondered, trying to work out why he was in her house. Had he wandered down from the village, found the door open and ambled in like a stray cat?

  But then she remembered the three place settings on the table, the two wine glasses. She hadn’t come on the wrong day, had she? Maybe she was having a senior moment. But then Katie wouldn’t be throwing a lunch for somebody else in her house! Anyway, she was certain Robert had said the 14th of July She could almost hear him reading the words aloud as he had typed them: If you could have everything ready as usual for my arrival on the … What shall I say, the 14th of July?

  Something was wrong here. Something wasn’t quite adding up. It was the 14th of July today, wasn’t it? All of a sudden, she wasn’t sure.

  Before Olivia could ask the boy anything else, Katie’s voice came floating down the stairs. ‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you, I had the music on and – ’ Then she entered the kitchen and it was her turn to look stunned when she saw Olivia standing there. Well, who had she been expecting, for goodness’ sake?

  ‘Olivia,’ Katie said, her voice hoarse, her complexion suddenly pale. ‘I thought … Where’s Alec?’

  Olivia stared at her, dumbfounded. Was this some kind of a cruel joke? ‘Alec’s dead,’ she said, after a long terrible moment, her hands curling around the top of a chair, in sudden need of support.

  Katie let out a gasp. Her hand flew up to her chest. ‘He’s … What?’ Her face crumpled. ‘He’s dead? What do you mean? When?’

  The boy’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open. His gaze flicked from Katie to Olivia to Katie again. ‘Mum?’ he said. ‘What’s happening?’

  Tears were pouring down Katie’s cheeks. ‘But the email … He said he was coming, the usual arrangements …’

  Oh dear. It had been such a blur, keeping track of who they had and hadn’t told the sad news to. Most of Alec’s peers and colleagues had heard through the publishing grapevine, of course; there had been obituaries in the broadsheets, and he’d even had a few mentions on the news channels. But somehow – terribly – they had omitted to tell poor Katie.

  ‘The email was from Robert,’ she said haltingly. ‘He must have sent it from Alec’s account. I’m sorry we didn’t let you know earlier but it’s all been rather overwhelming.’ Olivia’s gaze returned to the lunch set out for three on the table, then snagged on the red roses. Red roses? She looked from the flowers to Katie who was still sobbing. Her mind was suddenly too full of questions to think straight. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘I don’t understand. Were you expecting someone?’

  Katie said nothing, her face in her hands. The boy was still staring at her, aghast, and a terrible thought began blooming in Olivia’s mind, like a bloodstain spreading on fabric, seeping larger and larger by the second. Katie really was very upset. More upset than Olivia would have anticipated. And the boy, too – he’d talked about seeing ‘Dad’s car’ outside, hadn’t he? Surely that didn’t mean … ?

  She blinked, trying to clear her thoughts. The sickly scent of the roses caught in her throat and she held tightly to the chair, giddy and unnerved. ‘Katie?’ she prompted. ‘Tell me the truth. What’s going on?’

  There was an agonizing silence for a few seconds. Then Katie wiped her eyes on the back of her hands, took a deep shuddering breath and put a protective arm around the boy. ‘This is Leo,’ she said, drawing herse
lf up taller. Her eyes met Olivia’s. ‘Alec’s other son.’

  Chapter Eight

  It was the final week of term and the change in atmosphere at Riverdale Academy was palpable. The exams were over, the Year 11s had left with the usual fanfare and scandal of prom night, and from her office window Harriet could hear the steady swish-thock of Wimbledon-inspired student tennis tournaments on the courts outside. Three days left to go now, and everyone had their eyes on Friday afternoon and that glorious, yearned-for ‘School’s out!’ moment when the building would empty one last time, and the classrooms fall silent. Woohoo! No students, no paperwork, no infuriating new directives from the government, just six weeks of peace and tranquillity, the chance to close one’s eyes and think about absolutely nothing for a change, apart from perhaps where the next ice cream or cold beer was coming from. Bring it ruddy well on.

  As the school’s child protection officer, Harriet often had mixed feelings about the end of term. Much as she was gagging for a holiday herself, she couldn’t help worrying about the students in her care who led such precarious, chaotic lives. During term-time, she was their ally amidst the mayhem, the one who had their backs and noticed when things were going downhill. But who would keep an eye on Latisha and her family problems over the holidays? Or Kwame, who’d been sofa-surfing for two months after the latest bust-up with his evangelical mother? Or Sasha, who had just confessed to Harriet that she was pregnant at the age of fourteen and scared about having become involved with a horrible gang? Sometimes she had only just made a breakthrough with a teenager when the holidays started and it was as if all her patient, careful work had been for nothing.