Summer at Shell Cottage (35 page)

‘I didn’t tell you, did I?’
Gloria said, as they reluctantly got back in the car and left the Cove of Reckless Women behind.
‘Mitch was asking about you
last night in the pub.
Seemed very interested.’

‘Mitch?’
Olivia felt herself blush like a teenage girl.
‘The tattoo artist?’

‘How many Mitches do you know?
Yeah, the tattoo artist.
That gorgeous, kind, handsome, talented tattoo artist.
Asking about you.’

Ridiculously, Olivia’s heart spun a little pirouette.
‘Oh,’ she said, feeling – well, there was no other way to describe it – flustered.
Flattered.
She remembered
Mitch all right.
The slanting planes of his face, those intense sea-blue eyes that had drawn her in so bewitchingly.
‘That’s nice,’ she said, ‘but .
.
.’
Gracious, it
was quite absurd to even be
having
this conversation.
‘But really I don’t think .
.
.’
She couldn’t get the words out.
‘Oh,’ she said again in the
end.

Gloria gave a hoot of laughter.
They were heading for Shell Cottage because, after Gloria’s confession about Bill, and the revelation that her tough, sparky new friend was secretly every
bit as wounded as she was, Olivia hadn’t thought twice about inviting her to come back for dinner that evening.
There was some puff pastry in the fridge that she’d been planning to use
as the base of a tomato and mozzarella tart, and she was sure she could stretch it out for another person if she made extra salad and a dish of rosemary potatoes.

‘
Oh
,’ Gloria teased, mocking Olivia’s response.
‘Is this the start of a little holiday romance, I wonder?
Because he’s a great guy, you know.
You could do
a lot worse.
A
very
nice man.’

Olivia almost choked at the suggestion.
Much as she liked her friend, she wished Gloria had more than a passing acquaintance with the concept of subtlety.
‘Gloria!
No!
Absolutely not.
No.
A holiday romance is definitely not on the agenda this summer.’

Gloria pursed her lips, slowing fractionally at a junction before swinging the car round into a too-fast right turn.
‘I seem to remember you saying something like that about
skinny-dipping,’ she teased.

‘Yes, but—’

‘You know what they say.
If you fall off a horse, the best thing to do is get straight back on.’

‘Alec was not a horse!’
Oh, the woman was impossible!
It was like being back at school and being teased for supposedly making eyes at Edward Granger in the year above.

‘And wouldn’t you like a bit of no-strings fun?
A summer fling?
God knows I would.
I’d jump at the chance.
I’d jump the first sexy man that raised an eyebrow my way, to
be honest.’

‘I am a grieving widow,’ Olivia retorted, her words coming out rather more piously than she’d intended.

‘Yeah, you really looked like one this afternoon,’ Gloria teased.
‘Come on, Liv.
You’re on holiday.
Have some fun!’

‘I
am
having fun,’ Olivia retorted, ‘but—’

‘Have some more fun, then.
Have some sex fun.
And on that bombshell,’ Gloria added hastily, glancing over and seeing that Olivia had turned puce, ‘I will now shut up before you
withdraw your offer of dinner.
Subject closed.
Lips zipped.’

‘Thank goodness for that,’ Olivia said, folding her hands primly in her lap and staring out of the window.
All the same, though, Gloria’s words lingered in her head for the
whole way back.
And her thoughts did keep annoyingly returning to Mitch’s slow, wide smile, his dark shock of hair, his tanned, strong body.

Olivia Tarrant!
she chided herself eventually.
You wouldn’t!

But perhaps the Cove of Reckless Women was still exerting some mystical power over her, because the very next thing she thought was,
Oh, wouldn’t I?

It occurred to Olivia as they parked outside Shell Cottage that she hadn’t spent much time with her family recently.
She felt, in particular, that she’d rather
neglected her daughter in the last week, especially since the revelations about Katie.
Hopefully it didn’t matter too much, though: Shell Cottage was such a quiet, peaceful sort of place
where nothing much ever happened; she’d have heard if anyone needed her.
They’d probably all had a lovely, relaxing time without her.

All the same, she must make more of an effort, she vowed as Gloria yanked on the handbrake with her usual neck-rattling vigour.
There were only four days left of the holiday, and she was
determined to set aside more time to do family things, Granny things, take everyone for a lovely afternoon tea, perhaps, or out to Dartmouth Castle – that was always a good day trip, and
Teddy in particular would love the shop that sold wooden swords and other weapons.

First things first, though: they were all going to have a nice evening together.
There was wine to slide into the fridge, potatoes to scrub and pastry to roll.
‘Come on in,’ she said
to Gloria, pushing open the front door.
‘Tonight, you’re our guest.
Welcome to the madhouse.’

Olivia had only been joking when she said the word ‘madhouse’ but it wasn’t long into dinner that her words came back to haunt her.

The tomato tart was a success, Gloria chatted away to the family as if they’d been friends for ever (she was even the recipient of about twenty Knock Knock jokes from Libby, which she
answered with great humour and patience) and Freya looked cheerful as she told them all about their afternoon.
True, neither Robert nor Harriet spoke more than a word or two and Molly didn’t
seem quite herself either, but on the whole, it felt a pleasant enough evening.

But then Robert cleared his throat.
By now he had polished off the best part of two large glasses of red wine and there was a strange sort of recklessness about him, Olivia observed in concern.
‘I’ve got a few things to say,’ he began baldly, and Harriet immediately looked away.

Oh dear.
Had they fallen out?
Their body language had been terrible since the meal began, Olivia realized, noticing belatedly that Harriet had seated herself at the opposite end of the table to
her husband.
She felt a pang of guilt for her day larking around in the sea with Gloria while some kind of domestic had clearly occurred.

‘The first thing,’ Robert went on, ‘is that I saw Katie today.’

Olivia’s knife and fork clattered right out of her hands.
‘Oh, Robert,’ she said weakly.
Not now, not tonight
, she thought.

‘Who’s Katie?’
Teddy asked in a loud whisper.
One of the lenses was missing from his glasses, Olivia noticed, giving him a faintly piratical air.

‘That lady that used to clean the house,’ Dexter replied.
‘Remember, last summer, she let us slide down the stairs on the bed sheets?’

‘Hush,’ Freya told them.
‘Maybe we should talk about this later, Rob.’
She looked meaningfully at the children.
‘When little ears aren’t flapping.’

‘My ears don’t
flap
!’
Ted said indignantly.

‘They do when I flick them,’ Dexter said, demonstrating.

‘I don’t want to hear anything about Katie now anyway, thank you,’ Olivia said tightly.

‘Ow!’
Teddy cried, shoving his brother.

‘Look, just hear me out,’ Robert said.
‘I spoke to her and Leo, and—’

‘I really think later would be better,’ Freya said again, more urgently this time.

‘Robert,
please
,’ Olivia begged.
She couldn’t face talking about Katie and Leo tonight.
She didn’t think she’d ever be able to face it, frankly, but
especially not when the subject was sprung on her without warning.

‘Maybe you should respect how your mother feels about this Katie person,’ Gloria put in sternly, and everyone looked at her in surprise, apart from Olivia, who gave her a small smile
of gratitude.

Robert shrugged.
‘All right.
In that case, I’ll move on to the second thing I wanted to say.’

He took another slug of red wine, draining his glass, and Olivia braced herself.

‘I’m a fake,’ he said bluntly.
‘I’m not remotely proud of it, but there’s no two ways about it.
I’ve deceived you all.
I’ve been a complete dick.
And I’m sorry.’

‘Robert!’
Olivia cried, shocked that he was saying such things in front of children and a guest.
What was wrong with him?
She glanced at Freya, who looked equally startled.
Harriet,
though, had narrowed eyes and a pinched mouth.
She knew all too well what this was about, Olivia realized with a lurch.
And by the expression on her face, she fully agreed with Robert’s
self-assessment and the ‘complete dick’ judgement too.
Oh dear.

‘Ted, Libby and Dexter, you may leave the table,’ Freya said quickly, sensing worse to come.
Everyone
sensed worse to come, judging by the expectant hush that had descended.
‘If you go right now, you’re allowed to watch TV in the living room.’

Round-eyed and gawping, Teddy looked as if he’d much prefer to stay right here and learn some more rude words, courtesy of Uncle Robert, but Freya added, ‘Now please, Teddy,’
with such chilling authority that he reluctantly peeled himself off the dining room chair and scuttled after the other two.

Barely had they left the room when Robert went on, the words rattling out like machine-gun fire, as if he was worried he’d lose his nerve if he stopped to take a breath.
‘I’ve
lied to you all.
I’m so sorry.
But there is no novel.
Well, there is, but it’s shit, and I don’t have a book deal.
I don’t have an agent or a contract either or .
.
.
or
anything.
I made it all up.
Because I’m a dick.’

A clamour went up.
‘
What?
’ cried Freya, incredulous.

‘I don’t understand,’ Olivia said.

‘Does this mean we’re not going to America?’
Molly asked in dismay.

‘No, sweetheart,’ Harriet replied.
‘And there’s no money either.’
She gave a hollow laugh and made limp jazz hands.
‘Yay.’

‘No way,’ Molly said, mouth falling open.
‘Oh,
man
.
So we’re skint again?’

Harriet shrugged, turning her face away, but not before Olivia saw the wounded light in her eyes.
She recognized the how-could-you?
anguish visible in her daughter-in-law’s body language;
it was how she’d been feeling most of the summer.

Oh, Robert
, she thought in despair.
Was it really true?
No book deal?
No glittering career?
Maybe there’d be no wife any more either, by the look of them.
She couldn’t make
sense of it.
Harriet was the best thing that had ever happened to her son.
What had he been thinking?

Robert’s jaw clenched – you could almost see him absorbing the hit – but then he nodded.
‘I’m sorry’ he said.
‘I should have told you.
Things .
.
.
Things got out of hand.’

‘So you made it all up?’
Freya asked, her forehead creasing.
‘The stuff about your editor and the foreign rights?
None of it’s true?’

Robert shook his head.
‘None of it’s true,’ he said.

There was a moment’s silence and then Gloria pushed her chair back and rose from her seat.
‘I think that’s my cue to pop out for a fag,’ she said tactfully, and left the
room.

Olivia was still trying to get her head around her son’s extraordinary announcements.
Was Robert drunk?
Had he gone mad?
‘But
why
?’
she asked him in bewilderment.
‘Why did you feel you had to lie?’