Summer at Shell Cottage (16 page)

‘Ooh, how I like my men: strong and black,’ Gloria said with that husky laugh again.
Then she picked up her cigarette butt and dropped it in the ashtray, wiping her hands on her
denim skirt.
‘Only joking.’
She turned her face up to the sky.
‘Sorry, Bill!’
she called.
‘Only messing.
Go back to your fishing and take no notice.’

Olivia couldn’t help feeling a moment’s solidarity with the beleaguered Bill.
Gloria was a force to be reckoned with, like nobody she’d ever met before.
She glanced at her
watch and hoped Freya would be home soon, just in case she needed rescuing.
Then she gave another polite smile and opened the back door of the house.
‘If you’d like to follow
me?’

Sometime later, once the gin had been mopped up from the supermarket floor and Freya had apologized to approximately seventeen different members of staff, and Teddy had finally
stopped crying, they finished the shopping and were at the checkout, packing carrier bags full of groceries.
Freya could see through the glass walls at the front of the shop that Molly was perched
on a wall outside, waiting for them, having tired early of the Ivybridge shopping facilities.
With her phone tucked under her chin, the girl looked a picture of youth and beauty in denim short
shorts and a turquoise scoop-necked T-shirt which read TOO GOOD FOR YOU.

Beep, beep, beep
went the cashier’s scanner.
Molly twirled a lock of tawny hair around her free hand as she talked, her expression alternately coy and on the verge of bursting out
laughing.
A boy, Freya thought, plucking hopelessly at a new plastic bag in a vain attempt to open it up.
It had to be a boy.
No girl or woman ever looked that way about a mere friend.

Beep, beep, beep.
Molly had her head on one side coquettishly, a little smile playing on her lips, one of her flip-flops dangling from her toes as she murmured into the phone.
The whole
scene was as flirtatious and come-hither as if the boy had been right there in front of her.

Freya nudged Harriet.
‘Let me guess.
Important conversation with boyfriend taking place out there,’ she said.

Harriet glanced over and laughed.
‘No!’
she said.
‘Molly’s not interested in boys yet.
It’ll be Chloe, I bet, her best mate.
They’re practically joined at the
hip back in London.’

Before she could reply, Freya was distracted by Teddy, who was rummaging through one of the carrier bags, trying to find the multi-pack of Hula Hoops and tipping out the apples in the process.
‘Oi!
Fingers out,’ she told him sternly.
Next time she’d send Ted out on a surfing lesson with the others, too young or not, she decided.
It was like trying to go shopping with a
monkey, having him here.

Once they’d packed everything and paid up, Freya manoeuvred the laden trolley outside, where Molly was still on the phone.

‘Don’t say that!
As
if
.’
Giggle, giggle, eyes bright.
‘No, that was
you
.
.
.
Oh, you think so, do you?’
She became aware of the others coming
towards them just then and hopped down from the wall, turning slightly to shield herself.
‘Listen, I’d better go.
Yeah, I know you are.
Course you are.’
She laughed.
‘Oh,
all right.
I miss you too.
Happy now?
Speak to you later.’

‘Let me guess,’ Harriet said as her daughter hung up.
‘Chloe’s got these well nice new shoes and she had to describe them to you, stitch by stitch, because they’re,
like, so totally amazing and awesome.’

Molly beamed.
‘Something like that,’ she said, but Freya was not wholly convinced.
She would have put money on that phone conversation being with a boy.
Maybe that was how teenagers
spoke to each other these days, though.

As they walked to the car, Harriet and Molly fell into stride ahead of Freya and Teddy.
Molly really was gorgeous, Freya thought with a sigh for her own lost youth.
Her skin was flawless –
translucent and radiant; she had high cheekbones, a luscious wide mouth and that great sweep of long caramel-coloured hair.
How did Harriet dare let her walk around London unchaperoned, when she
was so ripe and beautiful?
Even in Ivybridge, you could feel the stares from teenage boys and men alike, heads turning, tongues practically hanging out in the Co-op car park.
Freya would want a
full burqa and bodyguard for Libby if she blossomed into such a peach, along with a sign around her neck reading
Hands Off.
Out of Your League.
Her Father is Six Foot Two and a Policeman,
I’ll Have You Know.

To Freya’s surprise, the hallway at Shell Cottage was absolutely sparkling when they arrived back half an hour later.
She stood there for a moment, barely noticing the
plastic handles of the shopping bags cutting into her fingers, as she gazed around at the transformation.
The black-and-white-tiled floor, which, only a few hours ago, had been coated in a fine
powdering of sand, strands of dried grass and general sticky grime, positively gleamed.
The mirror – previously smeared with fingerprints and thick with dust – shone with the light from
the open front door, reflecting Freya’s own surprised face back at her.

Further into the house, the kitchen now resembled something from a Flash advert.
The worktops had been cleared and all the toast crumbs wiped away, the pile of washing-up had vanished, and a
load of laundry tumbled obediently around the washing machine.
The floor shone, the hob was newly spatter and grease free, and a damp cloth hung tidily over the shining mixer tap, as if taking a
rest from all its hard labour.

It was only the scent of bleach and cigarette smoke hanging in the air that convinced her she was not in some kind of dream world or hallucination.
Whoa
, as her kids would say.
Mum had
certainly been busy while they were out.

‘Wow!’
Harriet said, almost cannoning into her as she came in.
‘Has Katie come over, do you think?’

Freya set the shopping bags on the floor, still marvelling.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, just as Olivia appeared and jumped to see her daughter standing there.

‘Oh!
You’re back.
I didn’t hear the car.’

‘We’ve only been here ten seconds.
We were just saying how lovely it looks in here.
Has Katie been round, or did you get stuck in yourself?’

‘Neither.
This is all down to Gloria.
Our new cleaner.’
Olivia’s lips twitched suddenly.
‘Our nude-modelling, former pet-shop-owning, widowed cleaner.
Who’s done
rather a good job so far, I have to say.’

Freya was trying to compute all of those adjectives at once but it was no use: her mind was blown.
‘The nude-modelling .
.
.
?’

‘Of course, she only had time to do in here and the hall today.
Something about going to see a man about a dog.
Whether it was pet shop related or coincidental, your guess is as good as
mine, but there you have it.
She’ll be back tomorrow to do the living room and bedrooms.’
Olivia gestured to the laundry.
‘And I put this lot on,’ she added, looking
uncharacteristically proud of herself.

‘Right.’
Freya rubbed her forehead, still not feeling quite up to speed on the strange turn of events.
I go out to the shops, I leave you for a few hours and this is what
happens?
‘Well .
.
.
great,’ she added eventually.
As long as the house was cleaned by somebody, it made no odds to her who that person might be.
And there was still time to patch
things up with Katie and bring her back into the fold, after all.
Yes.
She’d check out this strange-sounding Gloria, and if there was any kind of dodginess afoot then Freya would dispatch her
and phone Katie, begging if she had to.

She went out to get the rest of the shopping, still puzzling it all over.
She hoped Mum was okay.
The whole thing sounded very odd indeed.

Dinner that evening was a huge plateful of Aberdeen Angus steak burgers, slightly blackened and all the better for it, in Harriet’s opinion.
She had cooked an entire bag
of Jersey Royal potatoes, adding lashings of creamy Devon butter and sprinkling them with mint snipped from the garden, while Freya had assembled a salad.

Harriet had enjoyed spending some time with Freya and Teddy that day.
She had always found Freya rather distant in the past.
Perfectly nice, don’t get her wrong, but just the tiniest bit
cool and offhand, not what you’d call super-friendly.
Perhaps Harriet was being paranoid but she had wondered a few times previously if Freya looked down on her, secretly thinking she and
Molly weren’t good enough for the likes of Robert.
Mind you, Harriet had always felt kind of shambolic and inferior to the Tarrants full stop, because they were so clever and well-off,
basically, and because so many people judged single mothers and often not in a good way.
It was difficult not to be ultra-defensive about these things.

Anyway, it had been rather an eye-opener, their shopping trip, because for the first time ever, Freya had seemed kind of vulnerable.
Fragile.
She definitely wasn’t her usual composed self,
that was for sure.
Harriet had tried asking if she was okay but Freya’s face had closed up like a clam.
I’m fine
, she’d said at once, but it was not a convincing
response, especially as she turned bright red and practically burst into tears ten seconds later when Teddy went and dropped that gin bottle.
Harriet would keep a weather eye on her for the time
being, she decided.

Over dinner, the surfers were in high spirits with tales of dramatic megawaves and theatrical tumbles, as well as moments of triumph for them all.
Robert, who always became pathetically
competitive whenever Victor was around (much to Harriet’s dismay), boasted of riding an eight-footer, although nobody else seemed to have witnessed this.

In contrast, Olivia still seemed out of sorts, barely joining in with the conversation, which ranged from a discussion about who was going to win the family swingball championship this summer
(Teddy was most vociferous in anticipating personal glory, although Harriet caught the distinctly unsporting glint in her husband’s eye which said,
Over my dead body
) through to a
period of whinging about why the children had to eat lettuce when it was like
leaves
and it wasn’t like they were
giraffes
or anything, and then finally (and thankfully, if
the tired snap in Freya’s voice was anything to go by) onto what everyone wanted to do the next day.

A hike was mooted – by Robert, of course, who had to go and suggest a really hard walk on Dartmoor, the sort attempted by professional mountaineers for charity slogathons, just to prove
how he fit he was.
Much to Harriet’s secret relief, this was shot down first by Dexter, who declared scathingly that walks were boring, and then by Molly, who said, with withering sarcasm,
‘Er, hello?
We can
walk
in London.
And there’ll be no signal at all on Dartmoor!’

Harriet gave her a look.
‘We are not here solely for the phone signal,’ she said primly, hoping that nobody thought her daughter too bad-mannered.
And then, ignoring the muttered
‘You’re telling me’ that came from her beloved, added quickly, ‘We could go kayaking.’
They’d all enjoyed this the summer before.
It had been like Swallows and
Amazons, setting off down the river in convoy, Alec with a pirate hat on his head, shouting ‘Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum!’

‘Yeah, kayaking!’
Libby said, her face lighting up.
‘Granny you could come too.
Remember how last time we—’

But Olivia didn’t look as if kayaking was uppermost in her mind, as she suddenly pushed her plate away, knocking over the salt pot.
‘I can’t do this any more.
I just
can’t.
I have to tell you,’ she said, her mouth buckling as if she were in pain.
Everyone turned towards her except Teddy, who was enjoying the fart noises he was making with the
ketchup bottle way too much, and Molly who was surreptitiously typing a text on her phone under the table.

‘Stop that, Ted,’ Freya hissed.
‘Mum, what’s wrong?’

‘Tell us what?’
Robert asked.
‘Are you okay?’

‘Do you want to hear one of my jokes, Granny?’
Libby asked kindly.
‘Knock, knock.’

‘Not now, darling,’ Freya said urgently.
‘Mum?
What is it?
Are you unwell?’

Olivia took a deep breath, one pale hand clutching her throat, then looked from her daughter to her son and shook her head.
‘We need to talk,’ she said.
‘It’s .
.
.
It’s something bad.
I thought I could keep it from you, but I just can’t pretend any longer.’
She got to her feet rather unsteadily, abandoning the rest of her dinner.
‘I’ll be in the snug,’ she said, and left the room.

Talk about going out on a cliffhanger.
Freya and Robert looked at one another and rose from the table wordlessly, food abandoned, as they hurried to follow her.
Harriet gazed
at Victor, who shrugged blankly.
‘Eat up, everyone,’ Harriet said in the deafening silence that remained.

‘So are we going kayaking, or not?’
Teddy wanted to know, unmoved by all the drama.
A huge splurge of ketchup burst out of the bottle and drowned what was left of his salad.
‘Whoops,’ he said innocently.

‘Can I leave the rest of my tea?’
Libby added in the next breath.
‘Can we get down from the table?’

Victor was gazing back at the door through which the Tarrants had all departed.
‘Er .
.
.
yeah.
Sure,’ he said distractedly, which both children claimed as their answer, Teddy giving
a fist-pump and Libby sliding down from her chair before he could change his mind.
Her siblings quickly followed.

Molly looked up from her phone and did a double take.
‘Where did everyone go?
What’s going on?’

Harriet spread her hands wide.
‘That,’ she said, ‘is the question.’

Whatever the announcement was, it was taking a while, Harriet thought as she finished the washing-up and then poured herself a glass of Pinot Grigio.
Seeing Victor out in the
garden with the children, Teddy hoisted up on his shoulders and all of them laughing as they attempted a game of badminton doubles over the washing line, she poured him one too.
‘Sustenance
right here when you need it, Vic,’ she called, taking both glasses up to the patio table on the terrace.

He was nice, Victor, she thought, watching the scene as she sipped her wine.
Tall and broad, with cropped dark hair and lovely olive skin (she was sure he’d already tanned a shade darker
from being on the beach today), he had a directness about him that she found pleasing, a way of looking at you when you spoke as if he were really listening to your every word, mentally noting down
each detail in his little policeman’s book.
You could tell he was good at his job too – he was always fair to the children, never losing his cool with them, even during Olympic-standard
bouts of bickering and She-started-it-No-
he
-started-it fisticuffs.

Seeing him with his brood like that gave her a pang for all the babies she’d never quite had, the big family she’d always wanted.
Some things just weren’t meant to be, though.
She’d accepted that long ago and was grateful for Molly and Robert at least.
They were enough for any woman.

A few minutes later, Victor lowered Teddy to the ground, pleading exhaustion, and came up to the terrace, grinning.
‘Good one, thanks,’ he said, taking up the glass of wine.
‘That’s exactly what I need right now.’

‘I wonder what’s going on inside,’ Harriet said as he sank into the chair beside her.
‘Olivia and the others, I mean.
Have you got any clue what all of this is
about?’

‘Not the foggiest.
Olivia seemed pretty on edge, though.
She has done since we got here.
Definitely not her usual self.’

‘Yeah.’
Harriet hesitated.
‘Actually, I was wondering .
.
.
is Freya all right at the moment?
She doesn’t quite seem herself either.’

Victor looked surprised at the question.
‘Freya?
Sure, why?’

‘Oh.’
Back-pedal, back-pedal.
‘It’s just .
.
.
Nothing, really.
Must be the social worker in me, worrying about everyone, that’s all.’

Victor shrugged.
‘No need to worry.
You know Freya – the ultimate coping machine.
She’s always on good form.’

Harriet didn’t quite know what to say.
Was he for real?
He was married to Freya and yet couldn’t see what Harriet had noticed – that she was really fragile and stressed out.
She was packing away the booze, too.
Last night, she’d drunk so much, Harriet was amazed she could get upstairs to bed in one piece.

Before she could reply, though, the back door of the house banged and then Freya and Robert came marching up the path towards them, tears rolling down Freya’s face.
‘Well, she
doesn’t seem all that happy now,’ Harriet murmured, before jumping to her feet.
‘What’s happened?
What’s wrong?’
she cried.

Freya reached the terraced area and flung herself into one of the chairs, her back deliberately turned to the children.
‘Oh my God, Vic,’ she said.
‘I can’t believe it.
I
just can’t believe it.’

‘What?
Is your mum okay?’
he asked, reaching out for her.
‘What did she say?’

‘It’s Dad,’ said Robert, catching up, white-faced.
‘He had an affair.’

Harriet’s jaw dropped open.
Had an
affair?
No way.
Not Alec.
He was devoted to Olivia.
His face had softened with love every time he so much as glanced her way!
‘No,’
she breathed.
‘Shit.
No wonder your mum’s been looking so upset.’
She clapped a hand to her mouth, feeling almost as sad as if it had been her own parents.
‘Oh my God.
I’m so sorry.
I always thought they were, like, the happiest couple in the world.’
Robert sat down next to her and she wrapped her arms around him.
‘What a terrible
shock.’

‘That’s not all.’
Robert looked at Freya, who was still pale and weeping.
‘There’s a child,’ he said heavily.
‘Our half-brother.’

‘And I’ve met him,’ Freya spluttered.
‘The kid with the flapjacks; Katie’s son.
I even thought he looked familiar!’
She scrubbed at her eyes furiously then
turned to Victor with real pain in her face.
‘And all this time we had no idea.
No clue whatsoever that there was a cuckoo in the nest.
An extra kid brother!’

It wasn’t long before their mother’s distress filtered down to the bat-like ears of the Castledine children, and their badminton game was abandoned, racquets
dropped to the lawn.
‘Why is Mum crying?’
asked Teddy uncertainly, hanging back and staring.

‘Mum!’
cried Libby, loping across the grass.
‘What’s the matter?’

Freya pushed her tears away and smiled a wet and very artificial smile.
‘Nothing, darling, I’m fine.
It’s just .
.
.
hay fever.’

‘But – ’ Libby didn’t look convinced but Victor rose to his feet and headed her off before she could say another word.

‘Mum’s fine,’ he said, ‘but you grubby lot all need a bath or shower.
Teddy!
You’re up first, mate.
Come on.’
He glanced back at Freya.
‘I’ll get
this lot washed and ready for bed.’

‘Ready for
bed
?’
Dexter said indignantly.
‘It’s not even seven o’clock!’

‘Well, clean at the very least,’ Victor said, herding the three of them towards the house with impressive aplomb.
‘Chop chop.
Quick march.
You can have some pudding once
you’re in your pyjamas, if there’s no mucking around.’