Summer at Shell Cottage (29 page)

The sheer numbing cold of the sea took your breath away for the first minute but after some brisk swimming back and forth, Olivia quickly acclimatized.
And then she was
laughing out loud in utter delight.
My goodness.
It was heavenly!
‘Oh, Gloria,’ she said, floating on her back, the water lapping gently under her arms, ‘you are a breath of fresh
air.
Never in a million years would I have done this without you.’

It was true.
Gloria had completely turned this holiday around.
Olivia had envisaged slogging her way through three weeks of moping and misery, particularly after Katie’s devastating
secret.
Instead, the woman doing a splashy front crawl a few metres away had shaken everything up, and in a good way.
In less than a week, Olivia had had to rethink her preconceptions on a number
of things: tattoos, lobster shacks and now skinny-dipping.
Life was full of surprises – good ones as well as bad.
Just look at her now!
She felt unmoored, set free, joyfully floating here
like some geriatric mermaid as if this was what she’d been destined to do.

Gloria beamed and smoothed her hair back from her face.
‘Never a dull moment,’ she said.
‘That’s what Bill used to say.’

‘Well, he was a lucky man,’ Olivia told her.
‘I hope he appreciated you.’

To her surprise, Gloria’s smile slipped a fraction, like a cloud passing over the sun.
‘Ha.
Maybe.
Does any man really appreciate his wife?
I mean – truly.
I’m not sure
they do.’

In the past, Olivia had always shied away from those confessional all-girls-together conversations where husbands inevitably came in for a slating but there was something about being naked in
the sea that made you forget your inhibitions.
‘Mine didn’t,’ she heard herself saying and shrugged, the water sliding from her shoulders.
‘Mine played me for a total
fool.’

Gloria raised one of her severely plucked eyebrows and considered Olivia.
‘You don’t strike me as a fool,’ she said.
‘Far from it.’

Olivia let herself sink down in the water until the balls of her feet touched the soft mud of the seabed, then pushed gently back up again, relishing the feeling of buoyancy.
Gone were her aches
and pains, her stiff knees, her tired old feet.
‘I didn’t think I was a fool either,’ she agreed, ‘but somehow my husband got away with having a mistress and another son
while I was looking the other way.
Thirteen or fourteen years, it must have been going on.
So not only a fool but blind as well.’

Gloria’s mouth fell open for a moment before her expression changed to one of thorough indignation.
‘Flaming Nora,’ she said and whistled.
‘Seriously?
Now that’s
devious.
That’s proper greedy.
Straight from one of the pages of his books, that kind of behaviour.
Catch me buying another of them now?
No chance.’

Olivia said nothing, letting her body drift downwards again, while she thought of the still-unread manuscript, untouched and gathering dust in a bag in her bedroom.
She hadn’t gone online
to look at her emails since arriving in Devon but she would lay money on there being a few marked ‘Urgent’ from Alec’s editor, Eleanor, by now.
Urgent, indeed!
They were talking
about a novel here, made-up words on a page, not a building on fire or a volcano about to blow.
Let Eleanor email away and get her knickers in a twist.
She’d be in for a long wait, that was
all Olivia could say.

‘Tell me about Bill,’ she said, not wanting to think about Alec or Katie or Eleanor any longer.
‘Was he the love of your life?’

She was expecting the usual toothy smile on Gloria’s face but again came that muted expression, the clouding of Gloria’s eyes.
‘Well, I thought he was,’ she said
cryptically and gazed out at the horizon for a few moments.
Then, to Olivia’s consternation, a tear trickled down her friend’s cheek and into the sea.
‘Sorry.
Always reminds me of
him, coming here.’

‘You don’t need to say sorry,’ Olivia replied at once.
‘I’m sorry for asking.
Silly of me.’
She knew only too well how the smallest thing could set a widow
off, memories waiting to ambush you around every corner.
‘Do you want to talk about him, or .
.
.
?’

Gloria shook her head.
‘No, I’m fine,’ she said.
‘Just having a moment, that’s all.’
She rubbed her arms theatrically.
‘Brrrr.
Think I’m going to
get out and warm up again.
There’s a flask of coffee in my bag.
What do you reckon?’

‘Sure,’ Olivia said.
She recognized subject-avoidance when she heard it; she was an expert herself, after all.

Taking your clothes off and swimming in the sea was one thing, but it was even more daunting to walk out again, completely naked.
All the water pouring off your wet body to
start with, and then the terrifying prospect of facing land as one emerged.
Needless to say, Gloria didn’t seem fazed for a second, and strode ahead confidently, arms swinging, towards the
refuge of the bamboo mat.
Olivia, by contrast, had one arm clasped across her goosepimpling breasts, and the other covering her privates.

‘Looking on the bright side,’ Gloria said, drying herself quickly, then passing the damp pink beach towel to Olivia, ‘at least we won’t be sitting around in wet costumes
all afternoon.
Nothing worse than that, in my book.’
She put on her bra and dress, and Olivia hugged the towel around herself.

‘Absolutely,’ she said, sinking down onto the mat.
Her bare legs glistened with water and her muscles felt stretched.
The warm air encircled her like an embrace and she twisted her
hair up, squeezing out the drips.
‘That was wonderful,’ she added.
‘It reminded me of being a girl.
I’m starting to think that women of our age should behave recklessly more
often, you know.’

Gloria grinned.
‘Sounds like a T-shirt slogan right there,’ she said.
She rummaged in the bag for a thermos flask and brought out two plastic mugs as well.
‘The Reckless Women
Club.
We should make badges.
Or get matching tattoos.’
She winked and then went plunging back into the bag to produce a white paper bakery bag with two fat jam doughnuts inside.
‘Here.
Get one of these down you.’

‘Jam doughnuts.
Now you’re talking.
I’m always prepared to be reckless when it comes to jam doughnuts,’ Olivia said, taking one and biting into it.
‘Thank you.
For
all of this.
You thought of everything.’

Gloria passed her a steaming mug of coffee.
‘All part of the service.’
She held her own mug aloft.
‘To being reckless women!’

‘To reckless women everywhere!’
Olivia echoed.
Coffee had never tasted so good.
She gazed out at the rich deep blue of the sea, a million golden sparkles on its surface.
You’ll never guess what I’ve been doing
, she imagined saying to Freya when she returned to the cottage, and felt happier and younger than she had done for years.
Contrary to
popular belief, life could still be fun when you were widowed, she marvelled.
It was a revelation.

Coffee drunk, doughnuts munched, they lay back in the sun for a while, soaking up the warmth, like two old lizards on a rock, Olivia thought drowsily Now, this felt
good.
Much as she
adored her children and grandchildren, much as she’d always enjoyed family holidays down at Shell Cottage, this was something just for her for a change.
Miles away from the house, from the
heartbreak, from Katie, she felt as if her energy was being restored, charged up by sunshine and relaxation.
Olivia Tarrant, you’re going soft in the head
, she scolded herself in the
next moment.
But still.
There was something to be said for getting away from it all, that was for sure.

‘So what are you going to do about this other woman?’
Gloria asked after a while.
‘Want me to shove her off a cliff for you?’

Olivia gurgled with unexpected laughter.
Every conversation she’d had about Katie recently had been accompanied by fraught, angry tears and hurt offspring.
Lying here and actually being
able to laugh made the whole messy situation slightly more bearable.
‘Better not,’ she replied.
‘My son-in-law’s a detective.
My recklessness doesn’t go as far as
seeing either of us locked up behind bars.’

‘And there’s a kid as well, did you say?’
Gloria remarked and Olivia heard her snapping her lighter and then two quick puffs of a cigarette.
The smoke hung in the air like a
small fragrant cloud.

‘There’s a kid as well,’ Olivia confirmed.
‘Leo, he’s called.’

Gloria coughed on her cigarette.
‘Oh right, Leo Browne?
Christ.
And
Katie.
I know who you mean now.
He’s a nice lad.
Used to come in my pet shop every Saturday and mooch
about, stroking the hamsters and giving them all names.
His mum was allergic so he wasn’t allowed one of his own.’

Olivia rolled onto her front, not really wanting to hear about Leo and his devotion to small rodents.
The more the boy was coloured in with details – hamsters, allergies, ‘a nice
lad’ – the more he began to take shape in her mind as a real person.
As Alec’s son.
Living and breathing.
Crying in her kitchen.

‘So what are you going to do?’
Gloria asked again.

The question was like a scalpel poking at a wound.
Olivia shrugged, her good mood shrivelling at the edges.
‘I’m not sure,’ she confessed.
‘Katie’s tried a few
times to build bridges but .
.
.’

‘You’re not ready for bridges,’ Gloria finished for her.
‘Fair enough.
Plenty of time for bridge-building.’

If I actually want to build any bridges, that is
, Olivia thought doubtfully.
Given the choice, she would rather sever all ties, turn her back on what had happened and slap thick black
paint over that part of her memory.
Bridges were overrated.

Gloria rolled over too, and blew a perfect smoke ring that hovered in the air for a moment before wispily dispersing.
‘It’s bloody annoying, when the one you love surprises you after
they’ve gone, isn’t it?’
she said, in commiseration.
‘Inconvenient too.
You can’t have it out with them and make them answer for what they did.
You can’t ask
them why, or how could you, or what the hell were you thinking?
Inconsiderate bastards.’

Precisely.
Olivia couldn’t have phrased it better herself.
‘Quite.
And
they leave you the mess to deal with on your own, just when you’re feeling at your absolute
worst,’ she agreed.
Then the full portent of Gloria’s words trickled down into Olivia’s subconscious and she eyed the other woman across the bamboo mat.
‘Go on.
You might as
well tell me.
What did Bill do?’

For a moment, Olivia thought she’d overstepped the mark, pushed too hard.
It was none of her business what had happened with Gloria and Bill, after all.

She was just about to apologize and retract her question when Gloria spoke.
‘He died in a road accident,’ she said, puffing another smoke ring.
‘It was a wet night, him on his
motorbike, the front wheel must have skidded.
Went straight into the path of this Land Rover, the driver couldn’t do anything about it.
First thing I know is the next morning when two coppers
are knocking at my door, hats in their hands, the works.’

‘Oh, Gloria,’ Olivia said, picturing the scene.

‘Accidental death, the coroner said.
But .
.
.
Well .
.
.’
Gloria heaved a sigh.
‘I just don’t know, Liv.
He’d been depressed for a few weeks before then –
our business was going under, things were looking bleak.’

‘I remember you saying.’