Summer at Shell Cottage (14 page)

Libby had been looking forward to the holiday for AGES.
She absolutely loved the seaside and was definitely going to live there when she was a grown-up.
At home in Oakthorne,
her bedroom was at the front of the house and all you could see from the window was the boring road outside and houses and cars, and everything seemed sort of dirty and dull.
But when they stayed
at Shell Cottage, the window in the children’s room not only had a lovely big wide ledge that you could sit on and make things, or maybe write stories if you felt like it, but also had a view
of the beach.
Sand dunes and sea and sometimes little boats.
When you were falling asleep, you could hear the sea saying
shhhh-shhhh-shhhh
, and she liked to imagine mermaids out there,
leaping and playing and having adventures while she slept.

Libby was also looking forward to seeing Granny again.
While it was really, really sad that Grandad was dead, and wouldn’t be there on holiday any more (especially as he told the
best
ever bedtime stories, with proper voices and everything), Granny had always been her favourite anyway.
Libby
loved
Granny.

Most grown-ups made a beeline for Teddy –
Oh, isn’t he adorable?
What a little sweetie!
That hair!
– which was really seriously annoying, but Granny always seemed to
notice Libby and have a smile for her.
She remembered things, too, unlike Mum, who never seemed to listen to anything Libby said.
Granny would ask, ‘How did that gymnastics contest go, then?
Tell me those judges gave you first prize, Libby, my darling, or I’ll have to have a word with them.’
Or she would say, ‘How are those sunflowers coming along that we planted?
Don’t forget to water them!’
and ‘Did you and Eloise make friends after your argument?
Oh, good!
I
am
glad.’

Granny was the best gardener ever, too.
Libby hadn’t been very interested in plants and nature and stuff when she was little, but on her eighth birthday, Granny had given her a special
mini gardening set with packets of seeds to plant, and she’d taught Libby to spot all sorts of weeds – chickweed and groundsel and bindweed (Granny’s arch enemy, she called it)
and even dandelions, which were right little buggers, excuse my language.
Every time Granny came to the Castledines’ house, she would jump up after ten minutes and go outside – ‘I
can’t resist!’
she’d cry, even if Mum started saying, ‘Really, there’s no need, honestly, you don’t have to’ – and Libby would always hurry out to
help her.

Sometimes if it was too rainy for even Granny to want to go out, then they did baking instead: fairy cakes and scones and chocolate biscuits.
Granny would sing funny old songs and let Libby do
all the interesting bits like breaking the eggs and weighing all the ingredients, and she never got cross, even when the mixture was spilled.

Libby knew that Granny had been sad ever since Grandad died.
The last time she’d visited the Castledines’ house, she’d just sat in the kitchen the whole time, looking unhappy
and old, and didn’t once leap up to inspect the garden like she usually did.
Even so, Libby was not at all prepared for the Granny who awaited them at Shell Cottage.
Not only was she all
cross and sort of wild-looking, but she didn’t seem to listen to Libby when she told her about the end-of-term play and the baby strawberries she’d grown at home.
Worse, she shouted at
Mum (Granny
never
shouted – well, only at bindweed and slugs sometimes), and then she actually threw a load of flapjacks in the bin!
Nice flapjacks, too.
Really yummy ones!
Teddy
wanted to go and get them out of the bin when nobody was looking and Libby was so longing to have another one herself that she only just remembered about there being germs in bins at the last
second and she had to reluctantly tell Teddy that she supposed they probably shouldn’t.

She didn’t even cheer up when Uncle Robert arrived halfway through dinner, with Harriet and Molly, and they were all together around the table.
Granny smiled a little bit but it was a
strange, not-truly-happy sort of smile.

Poor Granny, Libby thought that night as she lay on the narrow single bed, listening to the faint rushing sound of the sea and the gentle snoring of her brothers.
She hadn’t even really
laughed at any of Libby’s jokes – not a proper laugh anyway.
Was it because of the chopped-down apple tree?
she wondered.
Was she missing Grandad very, very much?
What if
she
was going to die soon, too?

Libby tossed and turned, unable to drift into sleep.
Shhhh .
.
.
shhhh .
.
.
said the sea soothingly and she stared up at the shadowy ceiling trying not to think about the horrible
ghost story Dexter had insisted on telling them earlier, the torch held spookily under his chin.

Maybe there was something she could do to cheer up her granny, she thought drowsily.
Maybe she could think of a way to make her happy again.

Shhhh .
.
.
shhhh .
.
.
said the sea again, and Libby closed her eyes and fell fast asleep.

Freya was up first, thanks to Teddy, who liked to start every morning, holiday or not, on the dot of six, tugging impatiently at his mother’s arm as if he had at least
twenty-seven thousand interesting things to cram into his day, and didn’t intend to waste a second about it.

She made him breakfast on automatic pilot, and herself a coffee, then left him to it and padded out into the garden.
The rising sun had painted the sea in glittering swathes of tangerine and
fuchsia, and the dull red-wine hangover that had been her waking companion seemed to subside obligingly as she breathed in the cool, fresh morning air.

Last night, she’d had two glasses of Rioja at dinnertime – ‘Well, it’s the holidays, isn’t it?’
– and both Libby and Teddy had commented when she said
goodnight to them that evening.
‘Poo, your breath is gross,’ Libby had said, backing away and wrinkling her nose, while Teddy collapsed dramatically onto the bed, pretending to be
knocked out by the smell.
‘Yuck, Mummy, don’t kiss me,’ he’d said reproachfully, opening one eye.

Freya had laughed it off, but her laugh hadn’t sounded very convincing.
She’d gone back downstairs and had another glass to absorb the sting, and then another.
She could feel
Harriet’s eyes on her a couple of times, questioning and – she winced at the memory – concerned, even, but Freya had smiled brightly on each occasion and made a point of laughing
uproariously at the next funny story in their conversation.
See?
I’m fine
, was the subtext.
Nothing to worry about here!

The wet grass tickled her ankles and clung damply to her flip-flops as she walked across the lawn, over to the destroyed apple tree stump, so forlorn and battered.
Crouching next to it, she
reached out a hand and touched the splintered bark.
‘Hi, Dad,’ she said.
‘If you can hear me, that is.
If you’ve dropped in for a visit.’
The base of the tree was cold
and rough beneath her fingers.
‘I wish you were with us.
I could do with one of our chats right now.’

She wrapped her arms around herself, trying not to think about just what an understatement this was.
Since Vic had returned from his training course, he and Freya hadn’t really talked at
all.
Well,
he
had talked, obviously: about Geezer Dave and all the other people who’d been there, and the riot training they’d done, and how he was being put forward for a
Police Bravery Award that autumn, and how Tony and his wife wanted to take them both out for dinner as a thank you, and all the rest of it.
The starring role of Victor’s stories was
inevitably Victor himself, although when it was her turn to talk, Freya did the opposite and positioned the children at centre stage.
And so she had talked of Ted’s first wobbly tooth and
Libby’s end-of-term play and Dexter’s request for the new 18-rated
Call of Duty
game that
all
his friends had, apparently.
‘I’ve told him he can’t
have it, just for the record,’ she had added, in case this wasn’t clear.

That was it, though.
General conversations, nothing more.
No inkling about how she really felt.

She sighed.
‘I can’t talk to any of the others,’ she went on.
‘I can’t even talk to Vic, Dad.
I just feel so .
.
.
lost.
Like I’m about to go over a cliff.
Dad, please, if you can hear me, if you’re out there somewhere, then – ’

She broke off, struck by the words that were coming out of her mouth.
She was a
doctor
, for goodness’ sake – she knew better than anyone that when somebody’s heart
stopped, their brain died soon after, and it was all over.
Gone.
There was no afterlife, in her opinion, no heavenly postscript where souls lounged around and chewed the fat up in the clouds.
And
here she was, speaking to her father, who was long since dead and cremated.
As if he could hear her!

The weirdest thing was how comforting it felt.
How it had brought her a small shining fragment of solace, just for a few still moments.

Then the peace was broken by a delighted whoop from the house.
‘Ants, Mum!
Come and look at all these ants!’

Later on, after the ants had been helped outside and Teddy’s trail of sugar swept up from the floor, Freya found herself with two minutes to spare while Victor supervised
the children’s teeth-brushing.
Up in her bedroom, she typed the number for the children’s hospital into her phone, wondering if they would tell her how little Ava was doing, if she was
on the mend or even back home already.
She knew the chances of being given this information were about as slim as a supermodel, though.
Close relatives only, they would say, and Freya wasn’t
sure she had the necessary chutzpah to try and pass herself off as a concerned grandmother or auntie.

She deleted the number and fired off a text to Elizabeth, her boss, instead.

Hi.
Just wondering if any news on Ava Taylor?
Freya.

She’d only just pressed ‘Send’ when the two younger children burst in, Libby singing ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’
loudly and tunelessly as she danced around the room and
out again, but Teddy in a sulk because he had been deemed too small to accompany his siblings, dad and uncle on that morning’s surfing lesson.

‘It’s not fair!
I
am
old enough!’
he said as Freya pulled him in for a cuddle.
His little warm body was rigid and protesting at first but then he leaned against her
and a sob burst out of him.
‘It’s not FAIR.’

Freya smoothed down his unruly curls, which promptly sprang back up again.
‘You can help me do some shopping instead.
Harriet and Molly are coming too.
Would you like that?
You can choose
all
the puddings.’

A tear glistened in his lashes as Teddy considered the suggestion.
‘Just me choosing?
Not the others?’

‘Just you.
Whatever you like.
They might even have – ’ she paused for dramatic effect – ‘chocolate ice cream.’

Teddy’s sweet tooth made the decision.
Who cared about surfing when the delights of the Co-op pudding aisle lay in his control?
‘Okay,’ he said.

Unfortunately, Teddy’s good cheer was short-lived and came to an abrupt halt as he saw his wetsuit-clad brother and sister depart excitedly with Daddy and Uncle Rob soon
afterwards.
His grump lasted all the way into the Ivybridge post office, as Freya paid to put up a hand-written ad for a cleaner in their window.
He sulked around the first few aisles of the
supermarket too, kicking at the wheels of the trolley with his arms folded crossly around himself, his lower lip sliding right out just in case nobody had noticed he was in a bad mood.
‘Tala
manca
,’ Freya heard him muttering darkly under his breath.
‘You total Pritt Stick.’

Dexter and his rhyming slang again.
The perils of having an older brother who was a self-appointed Cockney rebel.
Freya let the muttering pass without comment but felt her patience stretching
thin, especially when he kicked out at a crate of apples and accidentally caught an old lady on the ankle.
‘Teddy!
Behave yourself!’
she hissed.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she
added to her son’s victim.
‘Are you all right?’

‘Why don’t we go and look at the ice cream now?’
Harriet suggested, ‘and Mummy can catch us up in a bit.’
She shot a questioning look at Freya, who nodded
gratefully.

‘Good idea,’ she replied, heaving a raggedy sigh of relief as Harriet took Teddy’s hand and led him away.

Harriet was a nice woman, it had to be said.
Easy to get along with.
Back when she and Robert had got married a few summers ago, Freya had been quite startled by just how many female friends
Harriet had – a great swarm of women, thronging protectively around the bride with wide lipsticked smiles, laughing about hen night shenanigans.
The ‘gal pals’, as Harriet
referred to them in her speech, which had been greeted by raucous cheers.
Freya could see why Harriet was so popular, though.
She had a friendliness about her that invited confidence, an untroubled
air of a woman who saw the good in everyone.

In contrast, Freya seemed to have lost the knack of making and keeping ‘gal pals’, her busy schedule meaning that her social circle had shrunk like expensive knickers in a hot wash.
Her closest friend from university, Mel, now lived in Liverpool with a long-standing partner, Janie, and their friendship had dwindled to occasional emails and Facebook exchanges –
‘It’s been ages!
We must meet up soon!’
‘We really must!
Definitely!’
But somehow they never did.

You’d have thought that having children would be the ultimate door-opener when it came to making new acquaintances, but the school playground had always seemed a hostile environment to
Freya, filled with small, tight clusters of women who all knew each other and each other’s children and spent great chunks of the week at each other’s houses, by the sound of things.
Working full-time meant that Freya was rarely there anyway, but on the odd occasion she came to pick up the younger two, she found herself on the edge, ignored each time.
Sure, she had done her
best to ingratiate herself, always smiling hopefully when anyone glanced in her direction, but she had discovered too late that offering unsolicited medical advice to a parent having noticed their
child’s ringworm or impetigo was not the most successful way to strike up a new friendship.

Freya loaded the trolley with fruit and vegetables, fresh pizzas and garlic bread, and a couple of chickens for Sunday.
Sausages.
Pasta sauce.
Arborio rice for a risotto with any roast chicken
leftovers.
Squash for the children, cereal, more tea and coffee.
Cheese and yogurts and bacon.
Steaks for a barbecue.
Toilet roll.

She caught up with Harriet and Teddy, who were having a very earnest discussion in front of the ice cream freezer.
‘Thank you,’ she mouthed to Harriet, as Teddy pointed out his
chosen products with the satisfied air of a boy who’d done his bit for family enjoyment and confidently predicted many well-scraped pudding bowls ahead.

‘Any time,’ Harriet said, ruffling Teddy’s hair.
‘He’s gorgeous.
Aren’t you, Tedster?’

The gorgeous boy squirmed away and went to inspect an end-of-aisle display of summer toys: footballs, water pistols, inflatable lilos and the like.
‘Gorgeous, and hoping for a water
pistol, alas,’ Freya said dryly, shaking her head no at him as he held one up.

Harriet smiled, then looked back at Freya.
There was a delicate moment of silence, then she asked, ‘Listen .
.
.
is everything all right?
Tell me to butt out if you don’t want to
talk, but .
.
.’

Freya felt her face stiffen.
Was everything all right?
Well, now, Harriet,
she imagined saying,
I might have inadvertently caused a baby to die at work.
I’m scared of Victor
finding out what a screw-up I really am.
I miss my dad desperately and am worried about Mum .
.
.
Yeah, sure, everything’s brilliant!

She forced a rigid smile instead.
‘I’m fine,’ she said brightly.
‘Everything’s fine!’

Just then Teddy emerged from the far aisle, where he must have slipped away unnoticed.
He was carrying a huge bottle of Bombay Sapphire and looking very pleased with himself.
‘I got your
favourite one, Mummy!’
he yelled at top volume, lifting a hand to wave and accidentally letting go of the bottle, which smashed to the floor.

Oh Christ.
Kill me now
, thought Freya, hurrying towards him, scarlet-faced.
Just kill me now.