Summer at Shell Cottage (17 page)

Once they’d gone, Harriet looked from Robert to Freya, both of whom seemed to have lost the power of speech.
‘I am so sorry,’ she said.
‘What a shock.
And your poor mum
too.’

Freya nodded miserably, draining Victor’s glass of Pinot in a single mouthful, and Harriet seized an opportunity to offer some practical help.
‘I’ll get more wine,’ she
said, dashing inside.

By the time she had located the bottle and extra glasses, Robert was loitering at the back door.
‘I need to go for a walk,’ he said, raking a hand through his hair.
‘Clear my head.
This is completely nuts.’

Of course.
This was Robert’s answer to everything: to move, whether it be walking or running or cycling, just working his body, hard and fast, to try and relieve the build-up of stress.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
she asked, remembering Freya weeping up on the terrace and now presumably alone.
‘Because .
.
.’

He shook his head.
‘I’d rather be on my own,’ he said.
‘Whereas Freya .
.
.’

‘Yeah.’
Whereas Freya should definitely not be on her own in this state.
Got it.
Harriet gave him a hug.
‘Okay, well, take care, all right?
Don’t go too far.
Make sure you come back again.’

His lips smiled briefly but his eyes were sad, so sad.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said.
He must have been
really
sad because he didn’t even do an Arnold Schwarzenegger
impression as he said the words.

Meanwhile, Freya was pink-eyed, her face swollen and puffy from tears, so Harriet hurried back up to her and poured her a gigantic glass of wine.
‘Here,’ she said.
‘Get that
down you.
What a shitty bit of news to hear.’

Freya gulped.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Yet another shitty piece of shitness in Freya Castledine’s shit-tastic shitsville life.’
And with that, she drained the glass in two
swallows and filled it up again.

Whoa.
Okay, then.
So Harriet had been right.
Something
was
troubling her sister-in-law, just as she’d suspected.

‘Do you know what?’
Freya said before she could respond to this declaration.
‘You’re the first person in this whole family who has actually asked me, am I all right.
Yeah.
You!
The only one.
Mum hasn’t noticed.
My own husband hasn’t noticed.
Too busy rescuing everyone else to remember I’m even here.
But who’s left to rescue me?
Nobody,
that’s who.’
Her mouth trembled and she twisted her fingers in her lap.
‘And then today, in Ivybridge Co-op, you asked me, was everything all right.
The only one to ask.
And I
said .
.
.’
She began to cry again.
‘And I said yes, everything was fine.
But it isn’t.
It isn’t fine at all.’

Harriet reached out and put a hand on Freya’s.
‘What’s going on?’
she asked softly.
‘Tell me.’

It was as if she’d uttered an enchantment, some kind of code that unlocked Freya.
Because out it all came: how worried she was that she’d screwed up at work.
How desperately she
missed her father, and how this latest bombshell had completely rocked her adoration of him.
But also – saddest of all – was that she felt she couldn’t talk to anyone about it,
because everyone was under the illusion that she was some kind of superwoman who could manage everything flung at her without breaking a sweat.

‘And I can’t,’ Freya sobbed, draining another glass of wine.
‘I can’t manage any of it any more.
And I don’t know what to do.’

Harriet hugged her, feeling desperately sorry for her.
The ‘coping machine’ Victor had called her.
Her own husband, and he hadn’t even picked up on any of this!
She knew that
Olivia, too, had leaned heavily on her daughter since Alec’s death – the whole family had, until Freya, quite naturally, had reached breaking point.
And now look at her: defeated and
unhappy and crying all over Harriet’s shoulder.

‘Oh, lovey,’ Harriet said, feeling Freya’s body heave with so many pent-up tears.
‘Oh, Freya.
Don’t worry.
Get it all out.’

Get it all out was exactly what Freya did for several minutes, while Harriet just held her and rubbed her back as if she were a tired child in need of comfort.
Eventually, Freya took a long,
shuddering breath and pulled away, blowing her nose and trying to control herself.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.

‘Don’t be,’ Harriet said.
‘You really needed that, I can tell.’

‘I really did,’ Freya said.
She looked exhausted all of a sudden.

‘I think everyone’s taken you for granted recently, haven’t they?’
Harriet said.
‘Good old Freya, she won’t mind doing this for me.
Good old Freya,
she’s brilliant at juggling everything, she can handle it if I add one more thing to her load.’
She risked a joke, gently elbowing the other woman.
‘It’s your own fault, you
know.
You’re too bloody fantastic at everything.
They’ve stopped remembering that you’re a human being as well, and that actually you’re all juggled out.’

Freya nodded.
‘Yeah,’ she said, but she didn’t smile.

‘You need a break, that’s all,’ Harriet said.
‘This hasn’t been much of a holiday for you so far, has it?’
She thought quickly.
‘But Rob and I can take
the children out if you and Vic need some time together.
And obviously forget about things like cooking and chores – the rest of us can get stuck into that.
Maybe you just need some time off
to sleep, read, go swimming .
.
.
whatever you want.
But .
.
.’
She cleared her throat, suddenly feeling self-conscious.
She and her sister-in-law had never been particularly close, after
all.
‘But you don’t have to keep on coping if it’s too much for you.
You don’t have to struggle along alone.
I think your mum and Victor would be shocked to find out how low
you’ve been feeling.
And I’m here.
You can bend my ear any time, all right?’

‘Thank you,’ Freya said but Harriet wasn’t sure she was even listening any more because her eyes had gone very faraway.
‘I keep thinking about all the lovely things Dad
ever did for me, you know?
Coming to pick me up from university early one winter when I was ill.
Making the most beautiful speech on my wedding day.
The way he’d ring up, just for a chat, and
his voice always sounded as if he was smiling.
I really loved him.
So much.’

‘Of course you did.
I know you did.
He was such a wonderful man.’

‘But to hear that all this time – ’ her voice shook – ‘he was carrying on with
Katie
.
.
.
I mean, she’s younger than me.
Don’t you think
that’s gross?
I’m not sure I’d be able to believe it, if I hadn’t seen that boy with my own eyes.
Leo.’
She grimaced, real pain on her face.
‘He looks so like
Dad I should have guessed right then.
But you don’t expect such a thing to ever happen, do you?’

‘No,’ Harriet agreed, trying to imagine how she would feel if she discovered her father had been carrying on with her friend Gabbi, or someone else her age.
It was quite difficult,
admittedly, as her dad, a leading entomology professor, tended only to have conversations about a) insects or b) cricket, but all the same.
The very notion made her queasy.
‘That is
gross,’ she agreed.
‘And really upsetting.’
She held up the empty bottle.
‘I’ll get more wine.’

By ten o’clock, they had sunk the best part of two bottles of Pinot and the dark garden seemed to be sliding around them, like a fairground waltzer.
There was still no
sign of Robert, or of Vic, who Freya predicted had probably nodded off while reading one of the younger two a bedtime story.
A silver crescent moon floated in the velvety blackness of the sky, and
you could hear the gentle rushing of the waves down in the bay.
The perfect summer evening, except of course it wasn’t.

‘So what are you going to do?’
Harriet asked, slumped back in her rattan chair, her feet tucked under her for warmth.
It was starting to get chilly but she felt too drunk to go
inside for a blanket or a jumper.
‘About everything, I mean.
You are going to talk to Vic, aren’t you?
I really think you should.’

Her words were slurring, her lips floppy, but Freya sounded even worse.
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘No.
Can’t talk to him.
Just can’t.’

‘You can,’ Harriet argued.
‘You have to.
You have to tell him what you’ve told me.
He’s got no idea how you feel, you know.
I asked him tonight, what’s wrong
with Freya?
She doesn’t seem herself.
And he said, nothing’s wrong.’

Freya snorted.
‘That figures.’

‘Which is why you have to tell him.
Really!
He’d be devastated if he knew all of this.’

‘Devastated if I knew all of what?’
came a voice, and they froze for a moment before spotting Victor’s shadowy figure through the darkness, very much awake and striding up the
path towards them.
How long had he been listening there?
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘I dozed off on Ted’s bed.
What’s going on?’

‘Nothing,’ Freya said immediately.

‘Freya .
.
.’
said Harriet.

‘I said nothing!’
Freya snapped, and lurched up onto her feet.
‘Leave me alone!’

And then in the next moment, she had taken off and was running a drunken zigzag through the garden.
‘What are you doing?’
Victor shouted after her.
‘What the hell’s wrong
with her?’
he asked Harriet, when no reply came.

Harriet felt very drunk and very cold and very tired.
‘Just .
.
.
go after her,’ she said, seeing Freya vanish through the gate that led down to the beach.
‘Just go, Victor.
She’s not a coping machine, whatever you think.
She needs you.
Go!’

Another son in the family.
A kid brother, a third of his age.
Holy Christ.
Nobody had seen that one coming, thought Robert in bed that night, when he had finally returned to
Shell Cottage and trudged up the dark staircase.
Nobody had had the faintest.

Beside him, Harriet slept fitfully – it was languidly muggy, even now at two o’clock in the morning – but Robert’s brain was still whirling; there was no way he was going
to sleep a wink.

He stared up at the ceiling, feeling hollow with sadness.
Your parents weren’t supposed to let you down so badly.
The mask wasn’t supposed to slip.
Perhaps he was too trusting but
his mum and dad – particularly his dad – had always seemed superhuman in Robert’s eyes, proper grown-ups, the like of which he was still aspiring to emulate.
And yet Alec had
failed them all, twice as it turned out – once with this affair with Katie (Katie!
She was
their
age, for crying out loud, it was almost perverse!) and then again with Leo,
Robert’s all-new half-brother, blinkingly shoved into the hot Tarrant limelight.

Well, good luck to the lad.
Really, good luck to him.
If he was expecting any kind of open-arm welcome from Olivia, he would have a long wait.
And what if the story broke in the media?
What if
the world got to hear that Alec Tarrant, devoted husband and father, had had a secret mistress and love child?
Nobody would want that kind of attention, least of all a kid.
Being Alec
Tarrant’s son was a curse and a blessing, as Robert knew all too well.
What was more, in his experience, being Alec Tarrant’s son led you to do some very stupid things.

Robert had mused upon the strangeness of having a famous father many times, right from when his teacher at junior school pulled him up for poor spelling.
‘What would your
dad say about that, then, hmm?’
she had asked, raising an eyebrow.

To the nine-year-old Robert, who had until then enjoyed a certain cachet in the playground for having a dad in the public eye, this was like being drenched with a bucket of cold water.
The
realization that this was how it would always be – he would be judged against his dad his entire life – was devastating.
How could a small boy ever measure up to such a giant of a man?
How could anyone?

Other adults were kinder.
One English teacher had written
Like father, like son!
, at the bottom of one half-decent essay and drawn a smiley face in red pen.
His girlfriend, Emma, back
when he was twenty-two, had gratifyingly never heard of Alec Tarrant, and assured Robert that he was miles better looking anyway.
But such cases were few and far between, compared to the hordes of
people who immediately made judgements about him, once they knew his name.
The conversation usually travelled along the same well-trodden tracks.

You’re Alec Tarrant’s son?
Oh wow!
Do you write yourself?
(No.)

God, that must have been amazing, growing up with him.
Did he tell you really cool bedtime stories?
(No.)

Are you tempted to have a go at the old writing thing yourself?
(Well .
.
.)

So what do you do, then?
Something creative as well?
(I’m a cycle courier – or sales executive, or whatever else he was doing at the time.)

Oh.
Right!
Well, nice to meet you.
Any chance you could get me your dad’s autograph?

It was enough to drive you nuts, frankly, particularly the way the exchange would invariably end with the other person’s thinly disguised pitying looks, their polite smiles and sudden
hurry to leave.
If he hadn’t been Dad’s son, nobody would have cared that he was a so-called underachiever.
Instead there was the most unbearable pressure from having this colossus in
the family, this global success, loved by millions – and trying in vain to live up to him.
Freya had been smart to pursue a career in medicine, so completely different and admirable in its
own right that she never had to put up with the direct comparisons.
Robert, though, hadn’t managed much of a career at all.
Nobody had ever said so to his face, but he knew that the rest of
his family had always seen him as the weak link.

‘I do worry that Robert will never achieve anything, if he doesn’t change his attitude,’ he’d once overheard his father say to his mother one evening, not realizing
Robert was in earshot.
He’d ducked out of the room, face burning, hating the patronizing, almost sorrowful expressions glimpsed on their faces, but the words had already branded themselves
onto him, like a terrible prophecy.

Robert will never achieve anything.

Robert will never achieve.

Never.
Never.
Never.

Last year, he reached a tipping point.
He’d had enough of being the weak link.
He was done with having to listen to the triumphs of Mum, Dad and Freya, and feeling as if he had nothing to
offer in return.
Perhaps the balance was swung by being married to Harriet, who was always telling him he was just as good as the rest of his family.
Perhaps it was one too many ‘So are you a
writer too?’
questions.
It was also the feeling of, well, why not?
How hard could it really be?
Would sitting down at a laptop every day and tapping out a few sentences seriously be more
laborious than cycling miles around London as a courier, weaving through black cabs and buses, dodging one accident after another?
Come on.
No way.
More pertinently, it might just shut everyone up
for a while.

Sure, Robert could remember how his dad would lock himself away for hours on end to write, eventually emerging with his hair standing on end where he’d raked through it incessantly.
He
would growl and glower, complaining bitterly about how he’d never finish this blasted book, and he was done for this time, he had run out of steam – but such moments seemed to fade into
insignificance beside all the publication celebrations Robert remembered: the flowers and champagne, the parties and speeches and fan mail.
For a while there had even been a deluded female stalker
who kept appearing in their garden, wild-eyed and pressing love notes against the window.
(Robert had been fifteen at the time and found the whole thing mildly erotic.
He’d been quite
disappointed when his mum eventually called the police and had her bundled away.)

Harriet gave a little snore beside him just then and Robert rolled over for the hundredth time, kicking the covers off his feet.
The shock of his mother’s announcement was giving way to a
growing curiosity about Leo, this surprise new half-brother.
Freya had said he was the spit of Dad, now she thought about it.
I knew he reminded me of someone!
, she’d cried in
anguish.
Robert had missed Alec very badly.
Who wouldn’t want the chance to see this half incarnation of a lost one?
You couldn’t ignore that, could you?
It wasn’t the kid’s
fault he’d been born into such secrecy.

Yet if he did make contact, Olivia might never forgive him.
She would see it as a betrayal, a taking of sides.
‘We are the Tarrants,’ she had said imperiously at the end of their
conversation, clutching his and Freya’s hands.
‘We are Alec’s family.
Not them.
And they never will be.
So don’t you forget that.
He might have broken our hearts but we are
still the Tarrants and we are united.’

The meaning had been implicit.
Do not go near them.
Shun them both.

Robert shut his eyes, willing sleep to descend, if only to muffle the conflicting thoughts that churned through his brain.
Then came the thorniest question of all.
Had Alec loved the boy more
than him?