An Almost Perfect Holiday

by Lucy Diamond

  The rest of her daughter’s words percolated through belatedly. So Will was in Devon, the neighbouring county. In Newton Abbot, presumably. And suddenly Maggie had flashed right back in time to the weekends they’d spent there at Philippa’s house in years gone by, when she was young and life was still carefree: tramping through verdant countryside with Philippa’s dog Bonnie, stopping now and then at a riverside pub along the way; the comfortably scruffy kitchen with its battered black range-cooker and the bunches of herbs drying along the wall. She could vividly remember being curled up on the baggy old sofa with Will in the evening, the smells of red wine and wood smoke in the air, feeling blissfully happy. She had never allowed herself to feel so happy with a man again. For a second, the memories pained her. She felt as if her heart might rupture, even thinking about that time.

  ‘So . . . can I, then?’ Amelia asked, impatient to have her question answered. ‘Go and stay with him?’

  There were so many reasons why Maggie wanted to say no. No, this is our holiday and we’re meant to be having fun here in Cornwall together. No, because Will’s a bad person and you’ll get hurt, and then I’ll be livid and quite possibly murderous. No, because this has been sprung on me and I can’t make a decision like that on the spur of the moment, here at Pendennis bloody Castle, with a coach load of tourists milling around us.

  But Amelia was looking at her with such hope and determination that all such words stopped in Maggie’s throat. ‘Okay,’ she heard herself saying, ‘on one condition. That I take you there. It’s my final offer, take it or leave it.’

  Amelia looked as if she was about to protest, but Maggie’s expression was so steely, so stern, that she must have changed her mind. ‘Cool,’ she said. She even added a meek ‘Thanks, Mum’, before beaming and giving a little skip. ‘I’ll give him a ring,’ she said and, before Maggie could say anything else, she’d whipped out her phone and punched in a number. ‘Hi, it’s me, Amelia. So tomorrow’s looking good.’ She grinned. ‘Yeah, I know. I can’t wait!’

  Chapter Nine

  Olivia had been having a trying weekend ever since Mack had left for his stag-do. On Saturday morning she’d taken the boys to the playground, hoping they would wear themselves out with all the fresh air and charging about, but a mere ten minutes after arriving, an older boy had pushed Harry down the slide too hard, making him bump his head and cry; and then Stanley, fired up by injustice and fraternal solidarity, had punched the other boy and they’d ended up grappling in the sandpit. Olivia had raced over to separate them, but had clearly been so ineffective that the older boy’s mum felt the need to intervene too, with a few choice remarks about Olivia’s children for good measure. ‘Come on, Arthur, let’s stay away from these nasty boys’ had been her parting shot, arm around her smirking son.

  On Saturday afternoon Olivia took them swimming, something they usually did as a family, and always a big treat for the boys. Both Stanley and Harry loved the way Mack would throw them up in the air and catch them in the pool, and would shriek in delight whenever he let them ride on his back, clinging around his neck, their small froglet legs pumping with glee. As soon as the three of them got into the water this time, though, it was apparent to them all that swimming was going to be a lot less fun without Mack there. Olivia was more fearful than her husband, more worried about drowning or choking possibilities, despite the boys’ neoprene swim-vests keeping them safe, and she couldn’t relax into rough-and-tumble games in the way he could. She did her best to entertain them, but it felt forced, artificial, and she kept eyeing other mothers, laughing and playing with their children, and wondered what was wrong with her that she couldn’t behave similarly. Was she boring her own sons? Why had she thought she could manage this alone?

  The excited squeals and shouts of the happy families around Olivia seemed to rebound from the walls, loud and distorted, mocking her own shortcomings. She thought longingly about how, as a teenager, she’d loved to swim in the sea with her friends, how confident and free she’d felt when buoyant and weightless in the water. This was hell in comparison. ‘Shall we go?’ she asked the boys when they started splashing each other peevishly, and felt guilty at just how relieved she was when they said yes. Unfortunately she’d somehow managed to lose her locker key and the three of them had to stand around, shivering and goosepimpled, in the chlorine- and pee-scented changing area while a member of staff did his best to track down and open the locker with all their towels and clothes. People were staring at her nosily as they went past, and Olivia felt her cheeks burn particularly hotly when Harry started to cry. Yes, I am the most terrible mother. No, I don’t deserve to be responsible for any children. Yes, you’re right to judge me – I am totally doing the same thing myself.

  By the time they were finally dressed and leaving the leisure centre, still a bit damp and cold, Olivia felt as if she was having to hold herself together very, very tightly to avoid some public crying of her own. Then, on the way out of the car park, she managed to clip a bollard with the car and it was the final straw. The breaking of the dam. Tears spurted from her eyes, a strangled howl burst from her throat and then she was sobbing with such abandon that she had to indicate and pull over for a moment in order to gather herself and blow her nose.

  ‘Mummy’s CRYING,’ said Stanley in interest, while Harry, rather more callously, drummed his feet against his seat and wailed, ‘I’m HUNGRY.’ Then a car beeped impatiently behind her and Olivia had to gulp back her sobs, put her hand up – Sorry – and move on.

  Sorry. So sorry. It seemed as if she had been saying that word for years. Would a time ever come when she didn’t feel sorry?

  Saturday night, she had got them into bed as fast as possible, then lay on the sofa staring dumbly at bright, flickering television programmes. It was the first stretch of time she’d had to herself all day, but she barely had the energy to lift her head. She tried Mack’s number but he didn’t answer, and she couldn’t think of another person she felt like talking to. Sometimes motherhood seemed like the loneliest place in the world, Olivia thought. She’d lost touch with her work friends – they didn’t seem to have much in common any more – while lots of the women she’d met when the boys were tiny babies were now back at work and busy trying to juggle everything. Whenever she did see them, they would all keep telling her how lucky she was, having Mack earning so much money that she wasn’t forced back into an office. Then, after a glass of wine, they’d start confessing their guilt at not being a full-time mum like her, how terrible they sometimes felt when dropping their little ones off at nursery. It was as if nobody could win the game. (Olivia had once admitted that actually she sometimes longed to drop her boys off at a nursery for a whole day, and the others had looked at her with such raised-eyebrow condemnation that she had felt herself turn bright red.)

  Now it was a grey, drizzly Sunday and she and the boys had so far weathered the baking of biscuits (flour everywhere), some arts and crafts (glitter everywhere), the bad-tempered building of a looping train track (resulting in a fight), followed by a picnic under the kitchen table for some reason (Olivia no longer had the stamina to say no). They had watched some telly. Played some games. Been out for a quick walk to the swings when the drizzle held off for half an hour. A mere ninety minutes remained before Mack was due to return, and Olivia was hanging by a single fraying thread by this point, desperate for him to come home and take over.

  Washing up in the kitchen with one eye on the clock while the radio burbled companionably, she found herself relishing this brief respite, pretty much the only time she’d had to herself that entire day so far. But then, from overhead, there had come the inevitable sound of an almighty crash and a yell, followed by breathless sobs.

  ‘MUMMY!’ shouted Harry and she raced upstairs and into her bedroom to find Stanley flat on his back there with a crumpled photo in his hand, and one of her drawers pulled out beside him.

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ she cried. ‘Stanley, are you all right? Boys, you’r
e not even supposed to be in here – you know that!’

  Stanley sat up, apparently only winded, but tearful and shocked. ‘We was looking for some treasure,’ he said, wiping his nose on his arm. ‘And Harry said “Mummy’s bedroom”—’

  ‘No, I did not!’ yelled his brother in outrage.

  ‘And we looked in the drawer and found a picture, but Harry said—’

  ‘No, I did NOT!’ yelled Harry, before he even knew the accusation.

  ‘Open another one and – yes, you did! He did, Mummy! And it fell out and I bumped and – GET OFF ME! OW! He hurt me AGAIN!’

  And now they were grappling and rolling around the floor like bear-cubs, the crumpled picture Stanley had been holding discarded, so that he could land a punch on his brother’s head. Olivia barely registered their shouts of protest and war, because on seeing the dropped picture, she’d let out a cry of dismay herself.

  ‘Oh, boys,’ she said wretchedly, her hand swooping for the photo, which was now completely ruined. She must have sounded particularly anguished because they actually stopped brawling for a moment to stare at her. ‘Boys, this is . . .’ She couldn’t speak for a moment because she was staring down at the picture of her first love, the teenage boy who had captured her heart so completely back in Cornwall, and she found herself overcome with desolation at how far away those carefree days now seemed. How had she turned into this frazzled, miserable housewife since then? ‘This was Mummy’s special photo,’ she said, trying and failing to swallow back the sob that was building in her throat. If only you could reverse through time, she would go now and stay there, she thought. Do everything differently.

  The boys, unperturbed, merely resumed their scrap, rolling and bowling around on the floor, and she stepped over them and retreated to the living room, where she sank into the sofa and cried. Not just a tear or two, not just a whimper, but a proper shoulder-shaking weep where her feelings completely overtook her. Where she felt as if she might never stop crying.

  It was no good, she thought desperately. She couldn’t do this. She simply couldn’t do this any more. Other women had their own mums popping round, helping out and dispensing loving advice. They had sisterly wisdom passed on to them, kind mothers-in-law even, who would descend and provide practical assistance (albeit with judgemental looks at the laundry pile and dusty skirting boards, if the women she’d overheard complaining at toddler group were to be believed). Olivia had no such support network, though – no mum, no sisters and few friends she felt able to confide in. On days like these, she always felt so alone. Even her own mother-in-law descending from Scotland for her annual visit, raising a disapproving eyebrow at the state of her fridge drawer – Are the boys getting enough nutrition, do you think, dear? – would have been welcomed as company right now.

  The boys’ fight rumbled on into the same room as her and then two things happened, one after the other. The first was that a small wooden block, hurled by Stanley, presumably at his brother, missed its target and hit her smack on the head. ‘Ow!’ she yelped as pain buzzed through her temple. ‘Be careful!’ And then her phone chirped with a text from Mack – Back in an hour – and as she looked at it, she noticed what date it was that day. It was the shove she needed. The sign.

  I’m going, she thought. Right now. I’m out of here. He’ll be back soon. He can have them.

  Everything happened very quickly after that. She couldn’t even remember some of the details; it was like coming up on a nightclub drug, fast and vivid, the rest of the world blurring about her. There was the writing of a note to Mack, although she had no idea now what gibberish she might have written. She had calmly taken the boys round to her neighbour, Brenda, asking if she could just keep an eye on them for half an hour or so, until Mack got home, while she popped out.

  (Popped out, indeed. You look after them, because I can’t any more was more like it. I’ve given up, Brenda. I’ve thrown in the towel!)

  And then she’d stuffed some clothes in a bag and she was in her car, heading for the motorway, like a dream where she was running away, where she was escaping, only it was real. She was doing it – it was happening this minute. She felt drunk on adrenalin, wild but strangely still at the same time, as if there was a silent scream in her head that nobody else could hear. Something had taken hold of her.

  As she drove on, she expected sirens to pursue her at any moment, she expected other drivers to see her and sound their horns in alarm – She’s getting away! That woman there, that mother just walked out on her children, and now she’s getting away! – but nobody stopped her. Nobody took any notice of her. She was so used to being the very visible mother of twins, with people smiling and commenting on them wherever she went – ‘Double-trouble!’ – but all of a sudden it was just her. A pale, plump woman hurtling along the motorway while her life collapsed behind her.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said aloud and then she was shouting and crying like a maniac, and had to pull over at the next services because she was shaking so much. What was happening to her? Was this what a nervous breakdown felt like? What was she doing?

  She should go home, she knew that. She should go home and just knuckle down to the job of being Mum, like every other woman managed to do so well. Do the sensible thing. There was still time, if she turned around now and headed back, to rip up the presumably garbled note she’d left and collect the boys from Brenda’s; Mack never needed to know about this alarming interlude.

  She hesitated, her hands on the steering wheel, tears wet on her face. Home or away? she thought, stricken by doubt. Onwards or back?

  Her dad’s face flashed into her mind, and then her brother Danny’s, but she ruled them both out in the next moment, because Cornwall was calling to her loudest of all, like the seductive song of a mermaid. The past engulfed her and there was no turning back. The boys would be fine without her; they would probably be better off in fact. And so she started the engine again, released the handbrake and carried on westward-bound, trying not to think about anything much at all.

  It was only when she’d got as far as Exeter that a new thought struck her. It’s happened. I tried so hard to be the perfect mother this time, to do everything right, but instead I’m as bad as my own mum. In fact I’m worse.

  Say what you like about Sylvia Asbury – and plenty of people had done, on the small housing estate where the family lived – but she had managed a while longer than Olivia at least. She’d notched up ten whole years of motherhood in fact, before washing her hands of the job. There had been no warning, no build-up to her departure – she had simply disappeared into thin air.

  On the day it happened, Olivia had been annoyed at first, having to wait and wait outside school with her younger brother, as all the other mums arrived and took their children home. It wasn’t as if Sylvia had ever been particularly reliable – she was often late, for one reason or another, but on this particular day she simply didn’t come at all. They had stood there together, she and Danny, where they always waited near the netball hoop, and the playground emptied out until it was just the two of them left, the November chill sliding insidiously through their thin coats. It was a horrible feeling, being forgotten; to this day, Olivia still felt anxious having to wait for anyone, never quite able to shake off that worry of having been overlooked, left behind.

  Eventually a kind teacher noticed them still there and asked if they were all right; did they want her to phone Mum to see what was going on? Olivia had felt embarrassed – she’d been a shy child and hated being singled out for any kind of attention, and so she mumbled an excuse, before grabbing Danny’s hand and making a brisk exit. She was ten, she knew the way home and was sensible about crossing roads, although Danny had whined all the way back about wanting a lolly, until Olivia had felt like slapping him.

  It was only when they arrived home to find the house empty, and nobody answering the door, that Olivia felt the first pricklings of fear. She could remember even now the hollow feeling in her stomach as she’d knocked an
d knocked, then pressed her finger to the bell in a long loud DRRRRRRRRING. Something had dropped away inside her stomach, a hot, loose sensation of uncertainty. Mum wasn’t there. Nobody was there.

  After a short while they’d gone round to the back and peered hopelessly into the kitchen window, but still there was no sign of Mum. Alarm started to punch holes in her and a bad feeling poured in – the conviction that she must have done something wrong, that this was her fault. She and Danny had sat there, shivering like two little orphans on the back step, for nearly two hours as the freezing darkness gathered like clouds of ink around them, until Olivia’s dad had finally come home from work and found them.

  Nothing had ever been the same, after that. The family had broken, never to be fully repaired. There had been no reconciliation, no attempts to explain or reunite. Nothing at Christmas or birthdays – not a word. Rumour had it that Sylvia had moved to Redruth, there were sightings now and then, according to the neighbours’ gossip, but it might as well have been the moon. The police added her name to the register of missing persons, but said there was nothing else they could do. Was she alive? Was she dead? She had simply gone and not come back.

  It was the waiting that was the worst. The gradual crumbling away of hope, year after year. Olivia’s dad was angry and drunk for a while, and his Devonshire parents came to look after the children and the house, as their son fell apart before their eyes. Within two years he had pulled himself together and married again, though: to Gail, a quiet owlish sort of woman, who didn’t like to have Sylvia’s name mentioned in the house. Olivia couldn’t give up so easily and, with the advent of the Internet, continued to search for her mother, a sighting, a reference. Nothing. It was like an ache inside. A hole that could never be filled.