Summer at Shell Cottage (37 page)

Freya sat down on the bottom step, her heart banging in her ribcage as if she’d just run around the block.
‘Hi,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper.
‘How are you?
How’s Ava?
I hope you didn’t mind me ringing earlier.’

‘Ava’s fine.
She’s much better.
She came home yesterday and is eating and drinking like it’s going out of fashion.’

Freya’s throat felt so tight for a moment that she couldn’t speak.
Ava was fine.
She was back home.
Eating and drinking.
Oh, thank goodness.
Thank goodness!
‘I’m so
pleased,’ she said, hearing a sob in her voice.
The breath whooshed out of her with sheer relief; she felt light-headed and dizzy with a burst of happiness.
‘I’m so glad to hear
that, Melanie.’

Melanie had sounded formal and clipped until that moment but then her voice softened a tone.
‘Me too,’ she said.
‘It’s been .
.
.’
It sounded as if she might be
swallowing back a sob herself.
‘It’s been a nightmare.’

‘I’m sure.
I can imagine.
And for what it’s worth, I am truly sorry about that day.
If I missed anything.
I mean, I honestly don’t think I did, but—’

‘I’m sorry too,’ Melanie said, and Freya was so surprised she stopped mid-sentence.
‘I’m sorry I took it out on you.
I said some horrible things.
I was just scared,
that’s all.
Really scared.
But it wasn’t your fault.’

It wasn’t your fault.
Never had words sounded so God-given, so merciful and downright wonderful in one’s ear.
It wasn’t her fault.
Freya had to press her lips together
for a moment, fearful that she might break out into full-blown tears.
‘Thank you,’ she said eventually.
‘Thank you for saying that.
I really appreciate it.
But seriously,
don’t worry about the things you said.
You wouldn’t be a mother if you weren’t prepared to fight for your child.
I completely understand.’
She let out a long, shuddering
breath, feeling a weight of tension leave her body.
‘Thanks for letting me know anyway.
I’m so glad Ava’s okay.’

‘You’re welcome.’
A thin mewling cry went up in the background.
‘Oh, I’d better go, there’s madam now, just woken for her bedtime feed.’
She hesitated
as if she wanted to say something else, but then the crying went up a notch and she must have changed her mind.
‘Goodbye, then, Doctor Castledine.’

‘Goodbye, Melanie.
Take care.’

Freya clicked off the call and leaned back against the stairs, clasping the phone to her chest as if it were a lucky charm, a talisman, a love letter from a sweetheart.
Not a person remotely
given to superstitious whims, she nonetheless felt very much like offering up some kind of prayer to the universe all of a sudden, for granting her this reprieve, this day of redemption.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, shutting her eyes and breathing in sheer, blessed relief.
‘Thank you, thank you,
thank you
.’

‘Why didn’t you
tell
me?’
Molly cried, just as soon as they’d left the dinner table.
‘God, Mum, why didn’t you
say
?’

Harriet topped up her wine glass, feeling numb after the dinner table revelations.
Everyone else had left the room, except for her and Molly, still there with untouched puddings in front of
them.
So now they all knew, she thought dismally.
Now they all knew Robert had been lying for months, living in this crazy fantasy world of his, and everyone would be eyeing her marriage from the
sidelines like it was some kind of disaster area.
Which, let’s face it, it was.
Full-blown carnage.
A motorway pile-up.
A meteor strike.

She hadn’t been able to bear looking at Olivia or Freya, not wanting to see expressions of pity or even contempt.
She certainly didn’t want to pick up
What-the-hell?-And-you-
knew
-about-this?
vibes from them either.
(Cringe.) ‘I was going to tell you,’ she replied wearily, twisting the stem of her wine glass between her
fingers.
‘I wanted to.
But I figured that you’d had enough going on today without yet another drama to add to the load.’

‘I can’t believe it.
I don’t understand, Mum.
Why would he make it all up?
And keep on lying like that?
Why?’

Ahh, the very questions that had been seething tumultuously through Harriet’s head since the night before.
She still wasn’t sure how to reply.
Because he’s a psychopath?
Because he’s deranged?
Because real life – and us – weren’t enough for him?
‘I don’t know, love,’ she said despondently.
‘I’ve been trying to
figure that one out for myself.’

Molly’s heart-shaped face twisted.
‘I really liked him, though,’ she said.
She looked as pained as Harriet felt.
‘I really, really liked him, Mum.
He was always so nice
to us.
And funny.
And kind.
I thought he was a good person.’

‘Me too, Molls.
I thought he was the bee’s knees.
And the bee’s elbows, ankles and arse and all.’

Molly leaned her head against Harriet, who slid an arm around her in response.
They sat there like that for a moment: mother and daughter, the betrayed, the ones left behind.
Harriet
couldn’t help thinking of how they’d clung together when Simon left, how they’d even shared her bed for a few weeks because they both felt so bereft without him.
History repeating
itself in the cruellest possible way.

‘What are you going to do?’
Molly asked after a while.
A hank of her long hair was pooling, soft and ticklish, on Harriet’s arm.
‘Are you going to .
.
.
split
up?’

There was a catch in her voice and Harriet was pierced by a shard of terrible, awful guilt that this was somehow her fault, that she’d mucked things up for the both of them yet again;
unable to hang on to a husband for longer than five minutes.
But she’d never asked Robert to be anything other than he was!
She’d never pushed him to be more ambitious or reach for a
target he couldn’t achieve!

The question hung in the air between them.
Were they going to split up?
Oh, help.
When would Harriet feel like a proper grown-up who knew the answers to all the difficult questions?
‘I
don’t know,’ she said again, with the hopeless feeling that she was failing her daughter once more.

‘Mum.
Talk to me properly.
How do you feel about him?
Do you still love him?’

‘I .
.
.’
The question took her by surprise.
‘Um .
.
.’

‘It’s okay, you know.
Say what you want to say.
I’m not a baby any more, Mum, you don’t have to keep hiding things from me because you’re worried I’ll be
upset.’

Harriet blinked and looked at her daughter: this clear-eyed, caring girl-woman who knew her better than anyone.
For all these years, Harriet had been the defender and protector in their unique,
close relationship.
For so long, Harriet had stood in front of Molly, shielding her from troubles as best she could.
But now the scales seemed to be tipping, and here was Molly stepping forward and
coming to stand beside her, announcing her arrival as comforter and adviser in return.
Maybe Harriet didn’t have to hide unpalatable truths quite so furtively any more.
This girl beside her
– this young woman – knew a thing or two about love, after all.

‘I do love him,’ she found herself replying slowly.
The words took her by surprise and she said them again.
‘Yes.
I do still love him.
And not just for me, but for you too.
What he’s brought to our little family.
All the good times we’ve had together.
But—’

‘You don’t have to think about me in all this,’ Molly interrupted.
‘Yeah, I really like him too – liked him, anyway – but I’ll be gone in a few years,
won’t I?
It’s what you think about him that counts.
Whether you can trust him any more.’

Harriet nodded.
That was the big one.
Should
she trust him?
Others wouldn’t.
Others would send him packing, show him the door.
Would it be very weak of her to give him a second
chance?
Did that make her even more of a sucker?
‘You’re right,’ she mumbled.

‘But for what it’s worth,’ Molly went on, ‘I don’t think he’s a nasty person.
I don’t think he was lying in an evil way, like Dad did.’

Harriet opened her mouth to protest – still automatically leaping to Simon’s flimsy defence – but Molly went on before she had the chance.
‘With Robert .
.
.
I think he
lied because he wanted to impress everyone.
Not because he was trying to trick you or hurt you.’
She shrugged.
‘It’s still pretty lame, let’s face it.
But he does love you,
Mum.
Even though he knows he totally screwed up.’

‘When did you get so wise?’
Harriet said, marvelling at this super-smart advice-dispensing daughter who seemed to have all the answers, right when she had precisely none herself.
She
squeezed Molly’s hand.
‘Thank you, lovey.
I think you’re right, to be honest.
I need to talk to Robert and get things straight again although – ’ she glanced over her
shoulder at the door, through which he had strode earlier, full of drink and self-loathing – ‘probably not tonight.
But tomorrow.
I’ll talk to him tomorrow.’

Molly seemed to approve of this.
‘I know he’s been a bit of a jerk, Mum,’ she said, ‘but maybe you shouldn’t be too hard on him.
He’s just a bloke,
remember.’

Harriet laughed, and then Molly did too, and they hugged each other tightly.
But Harriet’s smile didn’t last for long.
Somehow or other, she and Robert needed to get to the bottom of
why he’d been such an idiot – and where the two of them might go from here.

Whether it was straight to the divorce courts, or into last-chance saloon, she still had no idea.

‘You’re singing, Granny!’
cried Libby the next morning at the breakfast table.

Olivia, stirring porridge at the hob, glanced round to see her granddaughter with a bowl piled high with chocolate cereal, beaming across at her.
‘What, darling?’

‘You’re singing again,’ Libby said.
The sun had brought out all her freckles, Olivia noticed, and her hair was fluffed up from being in bed.
There were only the two of them up
in the house so far; the rest of the family were obviously still sleeping off the fraught events of the day before.
‘You always used to sing when you were cooking but you haven’t
lately.
Not for ages.
And today you are!’

‘Today I am,’ Olivia realized, smiling back at the little girl who looked so triumphant to have noticed this.
‘Today I’m singing – who knows what I’ll be
doing tomorrow.
Juggling, maybe.
Ice skating.’

‘Sliding down the bannisters,’ Libby said, eyes lighting up at the idea.
‘Oh, Granny, why don’t you try it?
It’s really fun.’

Olivia laughed.
‘I think I’ll stick to singing for the time being,’ she said, abandoning the porridge for a moment to come round and hug her granddaughter.
Bless her for
noticing the change in her grandmother, when Olivia’s mind had been elsewhere for so much of the holiday.
It was time to put that mistake right, at least.
‘I was thinking,’ she
went on, ‘maybe later today, me and you could do something special together, just us two.
Anything you like – apart from sliding down the bannisters, that is.’

Libby was warm and soft to cuddle, and her hair smelled of strawberry shampoo.
‘Can we make cakes?’
she asked hopefully.
‘We haven’t made cakes in ages.
Proper ones with
icing and sprinkles.’

‘Good idea!
Cakes with icing and sprinkles it is,’ Olivia said.
‘This afternoon at .
.
.
let’s see.
Three o’clock?
Then everyone can have one for afternoon
tea.’

‘And it’s just me, not Dexter or Teddy isn’t it?’

‘It’s just you, not Dexter or Teddy,’ Olivia promised.
‘I’ll do something nice with them tomorrow instead.’
She planted a kiss on Libby’s head.
‘By the way, I’m pretending I haven’t seen all the chocolatey cereal you’ve got heaped up there.
Or perhaps it’s my weak old grandmotherly eyes that are playing tricks
on me.’

Libby giggled and shoved in a spoonful guiltily.
‘Are you coming to the beach today, Granny?’
she asked.

‘Not today, darling.
I’ve got a couple of important things to do first.’

‘And then we’ll bake the cakes at three o’clock?’

‘You bet we will.’

‘Brilliant, Granny.’
Libby beamed again.
‘Knock, knock,’ she said.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Dunnap.’

‘Dunn – ’ Olivia broke off and laughed.
‘Oh, no, Libby Castledine, I’m not falling for that one.’
She poured her porridge into the bowl and added extra sugar,
just for the hell of it.
‘Now then, three o’clock on the dot, I’ll see you back here with clean hands and an apron on.
Do we have a deal?’

Libby held out a warm pink hand.
‘Deal,’ she said solemnly.

After breakfast, Olivia washed and dressed herself, combed her hair and carefully applied her favourite lipstick.
She exchanged a tentative smile with the woman she saw in the
bedroom mirror, hardly able to believe it was almost three weeks since she’d come to Shell Cottage.
She felt a completely different person from the widow who’d arrived then, weighed
down by grief and the lonely, desperate feeling that life held precious little to look forward to.
Back then, she’d known nothing of the storm about to break, of course; had no idea of the
shock that waited for her down in the kitchen of this very house.
Ignorance, while not exactly blissful, had been a protective bubble, blinkering her from the rotten core at the heart of her
marriage.
And for a short while after arriving here, she’d lost sight of the valuable things she still had left to cherish: her daughter, her son, her glorious grandchildren, her gardening
business .
.
.
so much that was worth treasuring.
What was more, she’d forgotten how to smile, let alone have fun.

But that had all changed.
It was as if a new Olivia had been born.
An Olivia who had emerged from the sadness, who was singing in the kitchen again, who had remembered just how much she cared
about her family.
She had been shocked to hear the night before what had been going on under her nose recently: Freya’s drinking (poor, unhappy Freya!), Robert’s turmoil, and then the
dreadful story of what had happened – or almost happened – with pretty young Molly yesterday.
They all needed her, she realized.
She still had a purpose.
Now it was time to step up and
get on with life again, with the same grit and bravery that the rest of her family had shown.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, of course.
She had also made a brand new friend, who made her laugh so hard she worried for her pelvic floor, and who spurred her on to do the most
ridiculous, extraordinary things.
She had become a woman who dared to hope that there may yet be good times ahead of her and was no longer quite so scared of the future.
She refused to be scared of
the future!

That was why she had stuffed the bundled sheaf of paper – Alec’s last novel – into a canvas bag and put it, and herself, in her car.
‘A couple of important things to
do,’ she had said to Libby.
Now there was an understatement if ever she’d heard one.

The first important thing was to read the blasted manuscript, of course.
She could easily have done this at home, sat in a deckchair, or on the sofa in the living room if it
was too breezy outside, but she knew that such a scenario would inevitably lead to a stream of interested questions and speculation from the rest of the family.
(‘Is it any good?’
‘What do you think of it so far?’
‘What are you going to do about it?’)

She didn’t want any of that.
She needed peace and quiet, a chance to settle into the book and give it her full attention without glancing over her shoulder every time she heard approaching
footsteps.
So she started the engine and drove away from Shell Cottage and along the coast road as far as Ennisbridge.
That would do, she thought, turning down the narrow, winding lane that led
down to the heart of the village and the seafront itself.

She parked the car, locked up and headed off with the canvas bag of papers in search of somewhere quiet to sit and read.
It was a humid sort of day, with very little wind, and she was thirsty
already, the bag weighing unexpectedly heavily on her shoulder.
She glanced down at the beach, where she could see the Lobster Pot opening up, and thought for a moment of Mitch, Gloria’s
friend.
Would he be there today?
Would it be very obvious if she took the manuscript and parked herself at one of the tables in the hope of seeing him again?

Yes, Olivia.
Obvious and naff.
Have some dignity, for goodness’ sake.

She went instead to a vintage tea room just off the seafront, which had splendid eau-de-nil wallpaper printed with a repeating gold feather design.
Antique gilt-painted bird cages hung from the
ceiling, the tables were laid with smart white cloths and there was an old dresser against one wall with mismatched crockery.
It reminded Olivia a little of the coffee houses where she and Alec had
met, back in their courting days, and she decided that this made it the perfect venue for today’s task.

She settled herself into a corner table, ordered a pot of tea from the henna-haired waitress in a 1950s frock, and set the manuscript on the table in front of her.
Okay.
Right.
Here we go,
then.

Her hand hovered above the first page but her fingers made no contact with the paper.
She was surprised by how apprehensive she suddenly felt.
Alec’s last book.
Once she had finished
reading this pile of paper, there would be nothing new of his ever to read again.
His life’s work – over.

The finality of it stopped her hand and she sipped her tea, pondering the matter.
Despite everything, she
was
curious to take a peep.
Alec had always been so precious about his work, so
superstitious about not letting anyone read a single paragraph until he was completely satisfied with what he’d written.
She didn’t even know what this book was about.

Well, she thought.
Only one way to find out.

She set her teacup back on its saucer, then picked up the first page, took a deep breath and began reading.
Chapter One .
.
.

Alec’s books were all thrillers along a similar theme.
He had his world-weary Belfast-born detective, Jim Malone: a maverick chain-smoking gumshoe, engaged in a running
battle with the more traditionally minded detective superintendent, although Jim’s quick wits and magpie-like brain always managed to solve the crime and bring about justice by the closing
chapters.

Alec and Jim were like brothers, he used to say when he appeared at festivals or did broadcast interviews.
Jim was like the dark side of Alec, he explained, who said and did all the things that
he, Alec, was too fearful or socially responsible to dare do himself.
‘This way I get the best of both worlds,’ he would say, smiling his charming smile.
(Olivia could picture him now,
leaning forward confidentially, eyes twinkling, giving the impression it was the first time he’d ever admitted this information to anyone.) ‘I stick by the rules and toe the line, yet I
can indulge this other side of my personality and allow Jim to get into all kinds of trouble, so I don’t have to.’

Olivia gave a small snort of derision, remembering this now.
How he’d had the front to say, many times over, that he had stuck by the rules and toed the line, she’d never know, when
he had his mistress and son tucked secretly away in Devon.
Maybe he was more like Jim than he’d cared to admit.

She soon became engrossed in the novel.
The plot centred around a shady Russian oligarch whose money had come from human trafficking.
Two young women had been found dead and the net was starting
to close around the prime suspect.
What interested Olivia more, though, was the sub-plot, which described Jim cheating on his long-standing (long-suffering, more like) wife Margaret, with a younger
woman, Katherine.

As Olivia read on, she no longer heard the sounds of the cafe around her – the tinkling of the bell as new customers came in, the hiss and gush of the coffee machine, the chatter of other
women on nearby tables.
She was deeply in Malone’s world now: trudging through rainy streets in search of the next clue, meeting Katherine in dingy bars and then slinking home to Margaret,
sick with guilt as he lied to her about where he’d been.
Her breathing almost stopped as she got to the part where Malone berated himself for his own weakness.
Margaret was the best and most
loyal woman alive, after all, Jim reasoned.
She had stood by him through the ups and downs of his career.
She understood him like no other person on earth!
So why – why – was he risking
it all for this younger woman, who had bewitched him with her youth and beauty?
What was wrong with him that he couldn’t be satisfied with his wife?
How he hated himself at times!

Olivia’s hands shook as she turned the pages.
Previously Jim Malone had never been one to indulge in such soul-searching.
Was this Alec on paper, spilling his guts about his divided
loyalties?
And how would Jim – and Alec – resolve the dilemma?

She munched through a toasted sandwich at midday and ordered another pot of tea as she read on, becoming impatient with the Russian oligarch plot, uninterested in the poor dead women, obsessed
only with Jim Malone’s love life.
And then, on page two hundred and twenty, it was Jim’s birthday and he had an epiphany.
Margaret brought him breakfast in bed (she did the best ever
Eggs Benedict, apparently; at least Jim appreciated her for that much) then surprised him with tickets to see the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall that evening.
In short,
she was the thoughtful, loving wife she’d always been.
(
Quite
, Olivia thought dryly, wondering where this was going.)