An Almost Perfect Holiday

by Lucy Diamond

  Oh God, it was painful, it really was, seeing how desperate Amelia was for Will’s approval. How she blossomed at his smile of agreement, his murmured ‘Absolutely.’

  Come on, Will, thought Maggie. Give her more than that. Tell her how great she is. She’s waited all these years to hear those words from you. But Amelia was already speaking again.

  ‘I hope this isn’t, like, super fangirl-ish or whatever, but I really love your work,’ she went on, emboldened. Enthusiasm shone from her eyes. ‘I’ve actually picked Photography as one of my GCSE options, I can’t wait to start the course. So I’d love some tips from you or—’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ Will said distractedly, as Rain flung herself against his leg and demanded to be picked up. ‘Hey, watch it, tiger!’ he laughed, not noticing that Amelia had stopped talking.

  As he leaned down to scoop the toddler into his arms, Maggie noticed two things: one, that she felt a pain like a knitting needle stabbing into her side to see her ex cuddling a small daughter with such tenderness, when his eldest child was trying her hopeful, bravest best to form a relationship with him. The second thing she noticed was that his black hair appeared to have a tiny grey line at its roots. Will dyed his hair? For some reason that cheered her up immensely. Even the knitting-needle stab seemed to ease just a smidge.

  ‘Amelia’s got a real talent,’ she felt compelled to add, nonetheless. ‘She certainly doesn’t get it from me!’ So just look at Amelia for a moment, you prick. Look at her properly and take her seriously. Would it kill you to put that other child down for five minutes, when we’ve come all this way?

  He turned his gaze on her and, for a terrible moment, Maggie thought she might just have said all of that out loud and blushed furiously.

  ‘So you’ll pick her up . . . what, Friday?’ he asked, joggling Rain on his hip. She had gorgeously springy russet curls that bounced with every joggle, and giggled at the bouncing, poking him lovingly in the cheek.

  ‘Kiss Daddy,’ she announced, leaning in for a rather slobbery face-plant.

  Friday? Wait . . . what? Maggie was on holiday mode, where time had already lost its importance as a concept, the days of the week melding into a pleasingly indistinguishable blur, but even so, she was pretty sure Friday was fairly distant from now. ‘Isn’t it only Monday today, though?’ she asked. Will must have got it wrong. Too busy being organic and mindful to check the calendar, she expected. ‘I was just assuming she’d be here for one night and then—’

  ‘Please, Mum,’ Amelia said immediately. ‘Can’t I stay till Friday? We do have a whole week of the holiday left after that, so . . .’

  Maggie opened her mouth to argue, but the pleading light in her daughter’s eyes was impossible to ignore. ‘Well . . .’ she began. Ever since they had left home, she seemed to have been making one weedy protest after another and losing every time, she realized, her heart sinking. By the time it was Friday, though, half their holiday would be over.

  Celeste was scooping dusty-looking tea leaves into a health hazard disguised as a teapot and Maggie’s eye was caught by the chunky silver bracelet on her wrist. One that resembled a manacle. Clearly Will wasn’t all that original with his gifts.

  ‘They haven’t seen in each other for almost ten years,’ Celeste said mildly. ‘Can’t you spare her for four nights?’

  Maggie’s hackles rose in disbelief. Er . . . Yeah! Correct, Celeste. It had been almost ten years. And whose bloody fault was that?

  ‘Believe me, sweetheart, I am delighted that Will has finally seen the light and decided to get to know Amelia after so long,’ she said through gritted teeth. She could feel Amelia frowning at her – Maggie never usually called people ‘sweetheart’ or pet names, and this one had come out with a properly sibilant hiss of contempt. ‘And about time too! He’s missed out on so much over the years, believe me! However, seeing as we are currently on holiday, I—’

  ‘Mum, it’s fine, don’t make a fuss,’ Amelia said, and Maggie’s words faltered, then died in her throat. Where was the justice in the world, she thought, when her only child was siding with him, with them, when for so long Will had been completely absent from the picture? She actually felt as if she might be sick with the sheer wrongness of it all.

  Will put his hands up. Like it or not (not, thought Maggie), he still had the charisma she had fallen for in the first place. He still had that crooked smile, that insouciant manner; the magnetism that drew people in. Everyone had always wanted to be Will’s best friend. ‘Listen, I don’t want to come between the two of you,’ he said. ‘We don’t argue in this house. Bad for the vibes.’ He gave Amelia his special twinkly grin to show he was joking, that he didn’t really believe in ‘vibes’, and Maggie saw her melting a little in adoration. Oh, sod off, Will. ‘So if your mum says you have to leave tomorrow, then . . .’

  Right. You shit. In other words, he was assigning himself the role of easy-going Good Cop, and leaving Maggie to be the uptight bad guy. Thanks a bunch, mate. Rule number one of parenting: solidarity with other parents. Especially when it came to the woman who had spent the last fourteen years raising your first-born. What a creep he was. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to shove his good vibes somewhere extremely painful.

  They all knew she had lost, but she gave him a hard, appraising look nonetheless, one that left him in no uncertainty about what she thought. ‘Friday it is,’ she said, her heart cracking a little as Amelia gave a cheer and clapped her hands together. ‘If you’ve got enough clean clothes to last that long, that is . . . ?’

  Amelia rolled her eyes. ‘You’re so funny, Mum. Bye, then!’

  Celeste smiled sweetly, mashing tea leaves in the pot. ‘Bye, Maggie. Good to meet you.’

  So Maggie was to be dismissed then, just like that, before the tea had even been poured? Well, fine. She wanted to go anyway – or rather she needed to, before she did anything embarrassing, like angry crying. ‘Bye, love,’ she said to Amelia, ignoring Celeste. Her eyes smarted and she gave a quick watery smile before turning for the door.

  ‘Safe journey,’ said Will, following her out down the hall. ‘Hey,’ he added as she reached the front door, then hesitated. For the first time since she’d arrived Maggie sensed a new uncertainty about him; a glimpse of the real Will behind the confident persona. ‘Thanks for this. It’s really good of you,’ he said.

  She hoped her resulting snort was suitably contemptuous. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is, isn’t it?’

  ‘I know I don’t deserve this,’ he said. Was that actually a humble note in his voice? He was looking . . . well, kind of shell-shocked actually. As if he was struggling to conflate the beautiful young woman now in his kitchen with the teeny daughter he’d left behind. ‘I’m ashamed of myself, Mag. I totally let you down. And Amelia too, obviously.’

  She was not going to forgive him in a single moment, just because he had discovered his own guilty conscience. However hangdog those glossy brown eyes of his might be. ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘You did. And you need to tell her that. Make it up to her.’

  ‘I will. I want to,’ he said. He sighed, shuffling his feet together in the doorway. ‘She seems amazing, by the way. You’ve done a great job. We really appreciate you letting her stay with us, getting to know the family.’

  She wished he hadn’t said ‘the family’ like that. Up until then, she had almost been starting to warm back up to Will, just a tiny bit, remembering all the things she had liked about him – liked very much for a long time. With those two short words, though, it was as if a door had been slammed in her face. The family that neither Maggie nor Amelia belonged to, was what he meant. The family that he had bothered to make a go of.

  ‘Right,’ she said, swinging her face away. ‘I’ll be in touch with Amelia about when to pick her up on Friday, et cetera.’ With that, she walked stiffly back down the drive, feeling him watching her all the way.

  God, she’s not aged well, she imagined him thinking. When did Maggie Laine get so old and borin
g?

  She got into the car, trembling all over. Why, when it was her leaving Amelia now, did she feel as if she was the one who’d been abandoned?

  Chapter Twelve

  With Lorna’s kind maternal gaze fixed on her in concern, Olivia tried to pull herself together. ‘I’m finding . . . I’m finding life a bit tough at the moment,’ she confessed. She had been on the verge of saying that she was finding motherhood tough, but at the very last second remembered who she was talking to. How crass it would have been of her, how insensitive, to have sat there complaining about being a parent, when Lorna and Roy were sitting opposite her on the twentieth anniversary of their only child’s death. Lorna and Roy, who would have given anything to have their son back.

  Guilt wormed inside Olivia that she could have driven away from her own boys with such comparative ease yesterday. It had been such a strange moment, though, sitting there on her sofa, clutching her spoiled photograph of Aidan and remembering that summer when everything had changed. And then, noticing the date on her phone, her mouth had dropped open as she worked out that the very next day would be twenty years exactly since the accident, that fateful car journey.

  ‘Oh, Aidan,’ she’d gulped, pressing the photo to her heart. Twenty whole years. She couldn’t believe it. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  She had been a different person back then. A girl, still finding her place in the world, with her head full of dreams. Now look at her: a hopeless, hapless, fat housewife. Good for nothing. She wished she could run away to that old life of hers, turn the clock back and do things differently. If only she could start all over again!

  Glancing back down at the photo, she had remembered the afternoon it had been taken: how she and Aidan had been mucking about on a boat in the estuary. A perfect summer’s day, just after they’d finished their A-levels when the world seemed wide and welcoming, opportunities stretching before them far out to the horizon. Happier times. And now look at his picture – ruined forever.

  Then she’d found herself thinking about the moments in the car before he’d died; what she’d said to him. How he’d looked at her. The instant when the wheels went skidding off the tarmac, the sound of her own screams echoing around them, the meaty smack of his head against the steering wheel . . .

  She’d whimpered in distress, tearing her gaze away from the photograph, but it was as if his eyes followed her, cold and accusing. You did that to me, they said. It’s your fault I’m dead. She remembered the moment of silence after the impact, as if the night was holding its breath in shock. His terrible staring eyes, fixing her with reproach as she sat beside him screaming. Thank goodness for the paramedic who had eventually pulled the lids gently down, like blinds on dark windows.

  Twenty years ago, almost to the day. The past had called out to her, too loud to be ignored.

  An hour or so after she’d left, her phone had begun buzzing with texts from Mack, but she couldn’t bring herself to open them; she had turned the phone off again after sending a brief I’m okay holding message in reply. It wasn’t until she’d arrived in Falmouth that evening that she realized she’d left her wedding ring by the kitchen sink, where she’d taken it off to wash up. He was probably imagining the worst – but even so, she just felt numb about the situation: she didn’t even miss them. There was white noise in her brain where any normal mother would have been thinking incessantly about her precious children; static where any normal wife would feel concerned about her husband. Olivia just felt too used-up to care any more; too broken and tired.

  So no, it was probably best that she didn’t mention any of this to Lorna, on reflection. And no, she wouldn’t confess in blank emotionless tones that she actually had no desire to go hurrying back to Bristol today; no inclination whatsoever to walk back through her own front door, knowing that she’d be immediately swallowed up in toddler chaos and her own feelings of inadequacy. Right now she couldn’t imagine herself ever being able to deal with it again.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ said Lorna. You could see the confusion on her face, ‘I’m sorry to hear things are difficult. You’re not a terrible person, though, whatever’s happened. I know you, Olivia, and you’re not.’

  ‘Is there anything we can do to help?’ asked Roy.

  ‘Not really,’ she said. They didn’t know her, she thought. For one thing, they wouldn’t be so sympathetic if they knew what she’d done twenty years ago. But Lorna and Roy were the last people she wanted to hurt. Back when she and Aidan had been an item, Olivia had loved going round to his house for tea or Sunday lunch, because they would both make such a fuss of her, especially Lorna. It was the first time in years that she’d felt properly mothered, and she had drunk it up like someone dying of thirst.

  Innate politeness forced her to pull herself together now, remembering that Lorna and Roy did not need to be burdened with her misery, today of all days. ‘But thanks anyway.’

  ‘Maybe you just need a break,’ Lorna said, her brow furrowed with concern. ‘Is there any chance you could take a few days off, recharge your batteries? Because . . .’ Then she stopped and looked at Roy. ‘I was just thinking: Mawnan’s empty, isn’t it?’

  He nodded. ‘I was thinking the same. We’ve become property tycoons, the pair of us, believe it or not,’ he explained to Olivia, then gave a self-deprecatory chuckle. ‘Well – I say that, but we’re just running a few holiday cottages, that’s all. Three altogether, barn conversions that—’

  ‘And we’ve had a cancellation,’ Lorna interjected, before Roy could go off on a tangent. He was rightfully proud of their little lettings business, but give him five minutes and he’d be talking you through the entire process, complete with drawing out the floor plans on a napkin. ‘A dear little cottage, minutes away from us, if you want it. All newly decorated. Sea views. Your own kitchen and living room.’

  ‘It’s empty until Friday,’ Roy put in. ‘You’d be doing us a favour, really.’

  ‘You’d be very welcome,’ Lorna agreed.

  They were both beaming at her, delighted with their own idea. Olivia blinked, unable to respond for a moment as she took in what they were offering. It was peak holiday season and every last guesthouse and B&B in Falmouth would be stuffed to the gills. Where else could she go? A hideaway, a sanctuary, a cottage of her own for a few days would be a million times nicer than sleeping in the car again, facing the music at home or answering tough questions at her dad’s place. At Lorna and Roy’s holiday cottage she could prolong any big decisions, at least for a short while. She would have privacy. A bed to herself.

  ‘There’s even a pool,’ Lorna added proudly, as if Olivia needed any more persuading.

  Olivia could hardly take it all in. She felt stunned with gratitude that they were willing to scoop her up like this, that they could provide the exact thing she needed. With quiet, empty rooms and the luxury of time to herself, it would be a holiday from real life. God knows she needed one. ‘Yes, please,’ she said.

  Mawnan Cottage turned out to be the loveliest place imaginable. Originally a stable, it was built of stone and still retained its chunky original door, but inside was a haven of cool greys and crisp white, spotlessly clean, with a huge comfortable sofa and a huge comfortable bed. All for her. She became quite overwhelmed as Lorna showed her round. ‘I can’t – this is too much. At least let me give you some money,’ she protested, as they reached the bathroom with its power shower and gleaming bath (with not a squirty toy or Hulk flannel to be seen. She had forgotten such bathrooms even existed).

  ‘Nonsense,’ Lorna told her. ‘Aidan would want us to help his girlfriend, wouldn’t he? Seems daft to leave the place empty anyway. Now then: there’s a new supermarket ten minutes out of the village on the other side, so you can stock up with bits and pieces, and you’re welcome to use all the facilities . . . Make yourself at home, okay? Relax.’

  It was an enormous kindness, of course, but being called ‘Aidan’s girlfriend’ did slightly give Olivia the heebie-jeebies. For the first time since
crossing the threshold of the cottage she hesitated, feeling that it was wrong to take advantage of the other woman’s generosity. Wondering if Aidan might not rather have had her shooed off the premises, had he been capable of expressing an opinion on the matter.

  She tried not to think about that as she went out to buy a few provisions and then, once back in the cottage, ran herself a hot, deep bath full of bubbles. Closing her eyes, she listened to the cry of a seagull through the open window, and the faint comings and goings of other holidaymakers, but it was no good. She couldn’t stop thinking about Aidan. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said into the quiet steamy air after a while. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Shutting her eyes, she slid beneath the surface of the trembling water for a moment, feeling tired, so desperately tired. It had been a strange few days. Already Bristol and her home there seemed to have retreated far into the back of her head, while memories of her life here had crowded in, taking up the space. Aidan’s face, bloodied and battered, floated into her mind, his eyes the blue of an autumn sky even in death, his expression one of disbelief.

  She surged up through the bath-water, cringing and trying to shake the image from her head. Oh God, she thought. What was she doing? What was she doing here?

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘So, what’s the dirt then?’ said the face on Izzie’s phone screen, waggling a suggestive eyebrow.

  It was the following morning and Izzie was up in her room, FaceTiming her friend Lily. Having listened to lurid details of Lily’s antics with her boyfriend Jordan for some time, the conversation had recently turned to Izzie, and her low rating on the Summer of Yes leaderboard. ‘Anything happening with the Sexy Older Man?’ Lily asked before Izzie could reply.

  Ugh, not this again. ‘Don’t call him that!’ Izzie spluttered. ‘You make him sound like a pensioner. And nothing’s happening with him, funnily enough. Seeing as he’s my mum’s boyfriend and all. Jesus!’