The Beach Hut (15 page)

From day one, it was an unspoken war between her and the Milton-in-laws, as she called them. She certainly couldn’t call on David to defend her, not openly. He basically wanted a nice time, and not too much responsibility, and no confrontation. He was spineless, she soon realised. He didn’t have the power of his own convictions. Chrissie wanted a nice time, too, but she realised that it didn’t just fall into your lap like it had his. Her dad hadn’t called in a favour from a friend because she’d muffed her exams and couldn’t get into university. She’d fought her own battles from day one.

She had her babies three in row - Jack, Emma and Hannah - and it was while she was still on maternity leave that she had the light-bulb moment which was hopefully going to give them the life they both aspired to. Chrissie was ambitious, but she knew that motherhood and sales were mutually exclusive. If you were on a sales team, the hours were punishing, and the paperwork that had to be done in the evening was even more punishing, so while she was at home with the babies she looked around for a solution. It wasn’t long before she spotted a launderette for sale in the local paper. She shot round there immediately, the youngest two in a double buggy and Jack tagging along behind, taking a pile of dirty washing as cover, and watched the comings and goings. It was run down, half the machines were out of order; it was grimy and soulless. But it had potential as a little goldmine.

She went to the bank, produced a deposit from her own savings and negotiated a loan on the basis of a business plan she bashed out on the home computer. Then she contacted the owner of the launderette and offered him a laughable price, cash, no questions asked. Instinct told her he was in a tight financial spot, and she was right. Two months later she had the keys.

She turned it round in an instant. Bright blue and white paint, new machines, music in the background, comfy chairs, a drinks machine. By the end of the year, the launderette was in profit and she was scouring the papers for suitable premises for the next one. Then she expanded into dry-cleaning - more upmarket, but equally profitable. She was the Queen of Clean. And even though it was hard work keeping on top of all of it, she was her own boss, and every penny she made went into her own pocket. She made a quiet fortune. She was making twice as much in a year as David. Not that she ever shoved it down his throat or flashed it around. She treated the family to a luxury BMW estate and herself to a zippy little Audi TT, then reinvested the rest in two more properties. She kept the extent of her success very quiet, because she knew what the Miltons were like. They loved to speculate and ruminate, and somehow her success would be used against her, another source of disapproval, as if it wasn’t ladylike for a woman to make money. And she didn’t want to demean David - she still loved him, for his easy grace and charm, his obliging nature, his skills as a father. Even if they didn’t always see eye to eye - occasionally the imbalance got to him, and he would lash out, but their rows didn’t last long. Deep down he worshipped her, loved her for all the reasons the rest of the Miltons looked down on her, and that made her love him all the more. But an imbalanced marriage is always a difficult one.

It would be very interesting, she thought, to see how the family would treat her now that Graham was no longer around to spearhead the anti-Chrissie campaign. And now that it was obvious she was the only one with any cash floating around - she might not gloat about it, but they all knew she was minted. She smirked slightly into her champagne, then told herself off. It wasn’t nice to revel in other people’s misfortune, but she wouldn’t be so gleeful if they hadn’t all taken their lead from Graham.

 

After the birthday tea, Chrissie and David went back to Ocean View, the bed and breakfast the family used when there wasn’t enough room for everyone in the hut. They were going to have a lie-down before they got changed and met the others for dinner.

David was visibly shaken by his mother’s news.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s quite clear what we’ve got to do.’

‘Is it?’ asked Chrissie warily.

He spread out his hands to indicate how obvious the solution was.

‘We’re going to have to raise the money to buy it. We can’t let it slip out of the family. We were the first people to have a hut on this beach. It’s our legacy.’

‘And how do you propose we raise the money?’ asked Chrissie. ‘Your mother’s asking for offers over a hundred and twenty grand. We can’t just stick that on the mortgage. It’s big enough as it is.’

David looked at her. She shook her head at him.

‘Your salary won’t cover it, David. We’re at four times already. We’d be mad to go any higher, even if they’d give it to us. Which they probably won’t. Don’t you read the papers?’

He looked away for a moment, then cleared his throat awkwardly.

‘I was thinking . . . as it’s an emergency . . . you could . . . sell one of the launderettes?’

Chrissie put her hands up. She feigned surprise, although secretly she had been wondering just how long it would take him to pluck up the courage to ask.

‘Oh no. Oh no no no no no.’

‘Why not? It’s a good investment - these huts keep their value, even in a recession—’

‘That’s not the point. The point is the launderettes are only valuable as a package. They’re all propping each other up. It’s a deck of cards. Take one out of the equation and you put the whole lot in jeopardy. ’

‘I don’t see how.’

Chrissie bit her tongue. Of course he didn’t. That’s why he wasn’t a businessman but a mere employee in someone else’s company.

‘It’s our family duty,’ he carried on.

‘Rubbish,’ replied Chrissie crisply. ‘Our duty is to our kids, and if I’m going to sell one of the launderettes to fund a holiday home, it’ll be in Spain or Cyprus or Majorca - somewhere we can go all year round. Not the bloody freezing west coast of England.’

‘But the kids love it here.’

‘The kids would love it anywhere there’s water and other kids to play with. It’s not a tragedy, David, it’s a fact of life.’

He stared at her.

‘You really are a hard-nosed bitch, aren’t you?’

She shrugged.

‘If that means I’m not sentimental, then yeah.’

David was trembling with emotion.

‘Is that really how little you value this family?’

She took in a deep breath. Maybe it was time to voice some home truths.

‘I value them about as much as they value me,’ she answered. ‘Don’t you think that’s fair?’

She saw him roll his eyes.

‘You’ve always had a chip on your shoulder about not being good enough.’

‘Actually, no, I haven’t.’ She felt a surge of anger. She didn’t want to get into this - when she’d watched Graham’s coffin disappear into the ground, she’d hoped for a fresh start. But it seemed his prejudice lived on, and she bloody well wasn’t going to keep her lip buttoned any longer. ‘I’ve always thought I was good enough for you. It was your ignorant pig of a father who decided the moment he set eyes on me that I wasn’t good enough, and he made damn sure I knew it until the day they put him in that bloody coffin. And the rest of you took your lead from him. Sneering, smirking, nudging each other—’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You all think you value good manners so highly, but between you, you’re the rudest bunch of people I have ever met. I was brought up to make people feel welcome, make them feel good about themselves. But you and your family have done their best to make me feel an outsider. I’m not a
Milton
- because I didn’t have my own silver napkin ring at home, I didn’t go to a posh school—’

‘You see?’ he broke in. ‘Chippy.’

‘I am not fucking chippy!’ She picked up a shoe and threw it at him. He sat up in alarm, blinking.

‘Jesus, Chrissie.’

‘You make me so
angy
—’

‘Well, you’ve just proved it, haven’t you? If you were well brought up, you wouldn’t scream like a fishwife and throw your shoe at me.’

Chrissie drew herself up with all the dignity she could muster.

‘At least if I die,’ she managed to say, ‘I won’t leave you in the financial shit. What kind of a man leaves his wife penniless? A total loser. And, I can assure you, no gentleman.’

She was going to go too far. She could feel it. She looked up at the ceiling, prayed for the strength to stop there, to keep her mouth shut. By now David had rolled off the bed and was getting to his feet, looking upset. She’d gone too far already.

‘How dare you speak about my father like that? Have you no respect?’

Chrissie narrowed her eyes.

‘Actually, no, I don’t. I never did, and I certainly don’t now he’s dead. I’m not going to pretend.’

‘In that case, maybe we should just get a divorce. If that’s honestly how you feel.’

David always trotted this out when he felt threatened and undermined. He didn’t mean it. It was just her cue to tell him how much she loved him. Today she wasn’t going to play.

‘Try that, and I’ll run those launderettes into the ground before you can say knife. And half of nothing is precisely nothing.’

David looked completely shell-shocked and for a moment Chrissie felt ashamed. He looked like a little boy lost. About fifteen years old. As if his whole world had fallen apart. She shouldn’t have shouted at him like that, but years of being marginalised had made her feel indignant. Why shouldn’t she be able to voice how she felt?

Because she was the one who was in the position of strength, that was why. The Miltons had only marginalised her because they felt threatened. She might hold her knife like a pen - well, not any more - but she had what they all wanted. The ability to make something of herself, to take risks.

Chrissie walked across the room and ran her fingers over her husband’s chest. He might be a bit of a loser on the business front, but he was still sexy. Sometimes she wanted to tell him just to shut up and look nice.

‘Move on, David,’ she murmured. ‘That’s how life works. You can’t cling onto things.’

‘You don’t understand, do you? What it means to lose something that’s been in your family.’

‘Maybe I don’t, no. The only thing
I’m
going to get left is a couple of racing pigeons and a shelf full of Lladro—’

‘That hut is part of our heritage. It’s in our blood. It should be handed down to generation after generation of Miltons . . .’

Chrissie stared up at the ceiling.

‘David?’

‘Yes?’

‘Get over it.’

She turned away. She slid out of her robe and squirted a handful of body cream into her hand then started to work it into her skin.

‘Anyway, if you love it down here so much, you can always hire one.’

David glared at her.

‘You really, really don’t get it, do you?’

She stood in front of him, her magnificent breasts glistening with recently applied lotion.

‘David. It’s time for a new beginning. Goodbye Everdene, hello the rest of the world. Now for fuck’s sake get dressed for dinner.’

David flopped onto the bed with a groan and buried his face in the pillow. Chrissie pulled a dress out of her suitcase and shook it out. He wasn’t going to make her feel guilty. Every summer they were held to ransom by the bloody beach hut. She didn’t have an issue with the next generation enjoying it. They were all great kids, they all mucked in together, and she didn’t begrudge the cousins time together, not for a second. But David and his brothers were completely dysfunctional. Competitive, argumentative, jealous, always homing in on each other’s anxieties. Graham had seemed to thrive on it, almost seemed to goad them, while Jane ran around trying to placate everyone but at the same time desperately not being seen to take sides. Chrissie refused to get involved. Occasionally she was tempted to pull the pin and throw in a hand grenade and wait for the explosion, but she didn’t want to descend to their level. Instead she drank wine, read books, surfed on her laptop, made phone calls to her friends, painted her nails, but the whole set-up made her feel slightly ill.

It was definitely time for a new start.

 

The Miltons totally dominated the tiny French restaurant at the foot of the hill that led out of Everdene. They’d had a huge long table: all the kids sat at one end and devoured Martine’s legendary roast chicken and
frites
while the adults went for the
à la carte
. The food was good - honest, well-cooked bistro fare and despite, or more probably because of, Graham’s absence, the mood was convivial, helped along by plenty of Kir Royales.

After
tarte au chocolat
, Chrissie went outside onto the terrace for a cigarette, and wasn’t surprised when Philip joined her with a Cohiba. They sat on a bench next to the patio heater put there for the smokers - being French, Martine understood the need.

Philip was drunk. Four Kir Royales, the lion’s share of the red wine, and a hefty Calvados he was cupping in his right hand. Chrissie was more than relaxed, but hadn’t tipped over into the danger zone.

‘Well,’ said Philip, blowing out a plume of richly scented cigar smoke. ‘Bit of a blow, Mum’s announcement. ’

‘It’s not really surprising, is it? Given the shit your father left her in. Makes total sense to get rid of it.’ Chrissie knew she was being brisk, but she had to make her feelings clear from the start.

Philip turned to look at her. He wore a smile that was more of a smirk - he could never smile without seeming patronising, because he genuinely did think he was better than most people. If David had got the looks, then Philip got the brains. He’d been to Oxford, and now he was a professor of English at a university in the Midlands. Lots of kudos, lots of people licking his arse, but not a lot of money. Especially not once you’d taken school fees out of the equation. Philip and Serena didn’t believe in state education. They believed in giving their children the best possible start in life, so the two of them went to a horribly expensive private school. Chrissie couldn’t understand how they could rationalise the expense, which took up at least half of Philip’s salary. She was sure Harry, their eldest, would have got into medical school wherever he had been educated.