Summer at Shell Cottage (13 page)

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.

‘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.

‘I mean, why does Freya even give her that crap?
Is she trying to brainwash her?
For an educated, intelligent woman, she can be a bit stupid sometimes, don’t you think?’

‘Don’t you dare say that to her!
And how do you know Freya even bought her the Barbies in the first place?
They might have been presents from someone else.’

Molly snorted.
‘No daughter of mine will ever play with dolls like that.
No way.’

‘Right, well, good luck to you with that one.
Sometimes daughters do have minds of their own, you know.
Sometimes daughters even ignore the wisdom of their poor, long-suffering mothers,
believe it or not.’

Molly rolled her eyes and put her hand in the shape of a beak, opening and shutting.
Quack, quack, quack.
What
ever
.
‘Mum, I just want to stay in London.
Why can’t I
stay?’

And they’d come full circle.
‘Because you can’t,’ Harriet said distractedly, selecting the series link for
The Great British Bake-Off
and the sexy detective
drama she was addicted to (thank goodness the Sky box didn’t judge a person on their taste).

‘Because I
can’t
?
Is that all you can come up with?
That’s really lame, Mum.
You’ll have to do better than that.
Why can’t I just go to
Dad’s?’

Ahh.
There was the rub.
Because your dad is a tosser who’s heading off to France next week, perhaps?
Because he doesn’t seem remotely interested in you, however many times you or
I text or call him?
Harriet sighed.
‘They’re moving, remember,’ she said gently.

Molly shrugged, but the hurt was visible in her face.
‘I could help them?’

It was heartbreaking, it really was, just how many times a parent could be a shitbag and a child would forgive them, in the hope that everything would change.
And Simon simply didn’t get
that.
He genuinely didn’t seem to understand that he was doing anything wrong.
Why didn’t he care more?
Why couldn’t he register that their daughter had a full set of intense raw
emotions, not to mention hormones rampaging around her teenage body?

Harriet found herself thinking of Molly as a little girl, back when she and Simon were still together.
Molly had lived in a joyful, sunlit world, singing and dancing all the time, with umpteen
imaginary friends and games.
Laughing.
She was always laughing.
Great gurgling peals as if she found delight in every corner of the universe.
She had four favourite dolls – Rosy, Posy,
Pinkerbell (don’t ask) and Benny – all loyal companions, with their own personalities, who went everywhere with her.
But after Simon left, the laughter ceased.
The imaginary friends
vanished, even though Harriet asked after them longingly, probably more times than she should have.
Molly stopped chattering on about everything and became more fearful, having bad dreams and
wetting the bed.
Then Harriet had found Rosy, Posy, Pinkerbell and Benny stuffed head down in the kitchen bin one day, along with the potato peelings and empty fish packets and old teabags, and she
thought her heart might actually break.

However hard Harriet had tried to fill her daughter up with love, Molly had never quite been the same girl again.
There was a sliver of sadness and abandonment locked deep into her soul and
Harriet didn’t think she would ever forgive Simon for leaving it there.
Not that he had any idea, of course.
There was only one important person in Simon World.

‘Mum?’
Molly prompted now when Harriet didn’t reply immediately.
‘Why don’t I help them?’

There were so many reasons why this was a bad idea and Harriet turned away from the screen to give her daughter her full attention.
They could be here all morning otherwise and she had a hundred
other things to sort out before they could load up the car and leave.
‘Sweetheart, let’s give them a chance to settle in, then I can sort out a date for you to go over there and spend
some proper time with your dad.
Maybe the end of the holidays, or even the autumn half-term.
But not now.
Not today when we’re meant to be going to Devon in less than an hour.
Go and finish
your packing.’

‘But—’

‘Look, we’re going, okay?
Robert’s mum is having a hard time after Alec died, so we’ve got to support her.’

Molly groaned, letting her head fall back so that her long hair dangled over the arm of the sofa.
‘Great.
Wowzers.
You’ve really sold it to me now, Mum.’

‘Don’t be mean.
Have a heart.’
Seeing that this had exactly zero effect, Harriet redoubled her efforts.
‘Come on, be positive.
Two weeks by the seaside .
.
.
You can lie
on the beach, get a tan, eat loads of ice cream .
.
.’

‘Yay.
Get fat and develop skin cancer, you mean.
Er, facepalm.’

‘No!’
Harriet tried to remember how she’d been at the age of fifteen in the hope of coming up with something even sarcastic Molly might find irresistible but all she could
think of was the knicker-melting crush she and her friends had had on Paul McIver, the smouldering sixth-form boy who had worked in Woolworths on Saturdays.
Poor lad, they must have driven him up
the wall with all their giggling and flirting, flicking their hair and batting their eyelashes as they handed over their paper bags of Pick and Mix in the vain hope – the insane, completely
deluded hope!
– that he might fall in love with them across a shovelful of jelly babies.

Inspiration struck.
‘You might meet a boy,’ she said, arching an eyebrow.
‘You might have a little holiday romance.’
She grabbed a cushion and pretended to smooch it.
‘Corrr.
Those were the days.
Mm-mmm.’

Molly was repulsed, leaping up from the sofa in an instant.
‘Mum!
You are so gross sometimes, do you know that?
Just .
.
.
ewww.
Please never talk like that again.
Seriously.’

Harriet’s lips twitched in amusement as her daughter strode indignantly from the room.
Gross
indeed.
She did seem young for her age sometimes, not showing the slightest bit of
interest in boys or romance yet.
If ever she wandered in on Harriet and Robert having a snog in the kitchen or wherever, Molly would throw a hand melodramatically across her eyes as if the very
sight of affection was loathsome.
‘Get a room,’ she’d shudder.
‘Oh, please.
Can you two stop sucking each other’s faces for five minutes?
You’re actually making
me feel ill.
Seriously.
Vomiting now.
Genuine sick in my mouth.’

Harriet finished her TV recording schedule and got to her feet.
Time for one last coffee, she decided, then they’d load up the car and go.
Whatever Molly might say, they were in for a
wonderful couple of weeks.
She would damn well make sure of it.