by Lucy Diamond
Her finger hovered above the Send button. For years afterwards, even when she was a grown woman with a job and a flat and a boyfriend of her own, Izzie would remember with a choking nausea that moment of hesitation when the future held its breath and waited for her choice. But a weird sort of momentum had taken hold of her and she felt powerless to stop it. Send, she decided, pressing the screen.
There followed a few seconds’ silence, as if her friends were collectively gasping and reading the message again to check they weren’t hallucinating – and then in poured the responses like an avalanche:
Ruby – NOOOOOO. WHAT?????
Tej – are you serious?
Izzie – hell, yeah
Lily – OMG
Alice – WHOA
Ruby – you broke the frickin leaderboard!!!
Miko – what was it like?? This is George the sexy older man, right?
Izzie – yep. Fucking amazing!
Tej – tell us everything. EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!
Izzie let go of her phone and fell back on her bed, her heart pounding as if she’d been running hard and fast. How do you like me now, girls? Is that wild enough for you?
Sweat popped out on her forehead, both from the stuffiness of the room and the acid guilt curdling her stomach. She felt as if she was either about to throw up or collapse in hysterical laughter. Lying so outrageously felt exhilarating and kind of crazy too. She loved thinking of their shocked faces, trying to comprehend what she’d done. What she hadn’t done, more like, but they didn’t need to know that. If her friends called her bluff, she’d just laugh and express incredulity that they’d believed her at all. You really fell for it? You really thought I would? Thanks a lot, guys. Unbelievable!
She heard the door close in the room next to hers and then George’s footsteps on the landing. ‘Seren?’ he yelled. ‘Seren, where are you?’
Izzie’s phone was still chiming and buzzing with new messages and questions, but she typed Got to go and then muted her notifications, not wanting to get entangled with elaborations. She’d tell them later that it was all a joke. Probably anyway. For now, though, the lie felt like a small, private strike back. A tiny victory that George didn’t even know about. ‘I win,’ she said under her breath.
‘What, so she lied? An out-and-out lie? Are you serious?’ Em couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had eventually come in from the pool with vague thoughts about being hungry, only to see that it was almost five o’clock and she was shrivelled up like a prune. Then, as she towelled herself dry in the bedroom after a quick shower, George had come in to find her, stormy-faced.
‘Everything all right?’ she’d asked, her stomach turning in dread. Oh no. Don’t tell me, she thought. Charlotte was so incensed with the way her daughter was being treated, she had insisted that George remove her from the house immediately and return Seren to the safety of Cheltenham. George had agreed that yes, Em and her family were a dangerous influence on his precious girl, and he was about to dump her and the holiday in one fell swoop. He hated her and never wanted to see her again!
His eyes were dark and severe, with none of their usual sparkle; she had never seen him look so forbidding. Back as a little girl, her childhood dog, Brandy, had always let out a nervous whimper whenever he felt he might be in line for a scolding, and Em could feel the same animal instinct inside her too, to make a similarly pitiful noise. Don’t be cross with me. I’m sorry. Whatever it is, I’m sorry! But in the next moment George sank onto the bed with a sigh and she realized that his bad mood might not be directly connected to her after all.
‘Well, I had an interesting chat with Charlotte,’ he said heavily. ‘Turns out Seren didn’t tell the truth this morning about Izzie pushing her. She made the whole thing up.’
‘What, so she lied? An out-and-out lie? Are you serious?’ Okay, she had not been expecting that.
‘Yeah.’ He scratched his chin, a rueful look on his face. ‘Charlotte got it out of her, with a few stern questions. Apparently it’s happened before too. Getting other girls in her class told off, pretending they hurt her or scribbled on her artwork, when it turned out not to be true. Eventually there was this huge backlash at the end of term, when several parents complained to the teacher about Seren’s behaviour.’
‘God,’ said Em, trying to take all of this in. ‘So at the beach today . . .’
‘Fake news. Well, presumably she did actually fall in the pool, but Izzie didn’t push her.’ His voice was becoming grimmer by the second, his face sagging as he spoke. ‘I feel bad for instantly believing her now, thinking the worst of Izzie . . .’
Her daughter’s newly proven innocence made Em instantly generous. ‘Of course you believed her,’ she soothed. ‘Look, we’re always going to be biased towards our own kids, that’s just part of the deal here, isn’t it?’
‘I’ll apologize to Izzie, obviously. And Seren will too.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I’m a bit stunned by all of this, I have to say.’
He looked so downbeat, so disheartened by his daughter’s mendacity, that Em felt sorry for him. Thank God her kids had always been straight with her. She hated the thought of them lying about anything. No wonder George seemed so stricken. Wrapped in her towel, she went over to hug him. ‘Kids, eh?’ she said, her voice muffled by his shoulder. Then she snorted. ‘That seems to have become the catchphrase of this holiday.’
‘Charlotte said to apologize too,’ he said as they drew apart. ‘Seren’s just finding it hard, she thinks, us being apart. It’s the first summer she’s had where she’s been shuttled back and forth like this; she’s probably thinking about other holidays where we were still a family and . . .’
‘Charlotte doesn’t have to apologize for anything,’ Em said quickly, seeing George becoming more miserable by the second. ‘And neither do you. If Seren says sorry to Izzie, we can clear the air, start again. Right?’
He nodded. ‘Right. I’ll bring about the truce, get the peace treaty signed and sealed and then how about I take us all out for pizza tonight?’
Em began combing her wet hair and smiled at him in the mirror. ‘Sounds like a plan,’ she said. He left the room and she heard him knocking gently on Izzie’s door.
There. Over. Sorted. Even better, her own child wasn’t in the wrong for once. She picked up the hairdryer, feeling as if they might just have turned a corner. Smooth roads and happy holidays ahead, she thought.
Chapter Twenty
‘Are you sure this is safe?’ Maggie asked with a nervous laugh. ‘I’m not about to plunge to an early death or anything?’
The man tugging on the straps of her harness to check they were secure paused to consider her question. He was in his mid-twenties, she guessed, burly to the point of almost bursting out of his green ‘forest ranger’ uniform, and had a dimple in his cheek when he smiled. ‘Let’s see, it’s Wednesday today, isn’t it?’ he said in reply. ‘Nope. No early deaths booked in for today, you’re all safe.’
‘Ha-ha,’ said Maggie apprehensively. ‘That was a joke, right?’
‘Let’s hope so!’ he replied. ‘Okay, you’re all set. Last question is: do you want a push or are you going to jump?’
Maggie stared down at the forest canopy below. TAKE THE PLUNGE! read the sign in front of her. Strapped into a harness, holding tight to a cable, she was standing at the top of a zip-slide, having impetuously picked this as the bravest and most un-Maggie-ish thing she could do today. But now her stomach was saying, Don’t do this and her head was saying, You could die and . . . Actually this was a ridiculous idea. What had she been thinking? She didn’t need to throw herself off a tiny timber platform 150 feet high to prove anything to anyone, she—
‘You’re not scared, are you?’ said the man, who looked a lot like Helena, now that she peered at him more closely. Wait, that was weird. What was she doing here? ‘Okay, I’m taking your silence to mean you want a push,’ said Helena. ‘Ready . . .’
‘No!’ yelped Maggie, because she hated
the thought of being pushed.
‘Steady . . . GO!’
‘WAAAARRRGGHHHHH!’ Maggie screamed as she was shoved off the platform.
Then she sat bolt upright in bed, panting. Sweat broke out on her forehead. It was just a dream, she told herself shakily. Just a dream.
She blinked a few times and the morning swung into focus. Oh yeah. Now she remembered. Today was the first day of the rest of her life. So what was she going to do?
A few miles away, Olivia was clambering down a wooded slope. She was making her way tentatively, legs trembling with the exertion, when she skidded on some loose stones and had to clutch at a sapling to stop herself plunging all the way down. As she clung to the tree, her heart pounded, but she kept her balance and let out a shaky breath. This was not how she usually spent her Wednesday mornings. Then again, this was not a usual kind of day.
She had woken up following the luxury of another full night’s sleep. Her fourth day in Cornwall and already she felt like a different person from the frazzled, crying woman who’d driven, shouting aloud, down the motorway. The white noise had quietened to a faint hiss of static in her head, but family life in Bristol still felt distant, as if it belonged to somebody else.
How are you? When will you be home? We all love and miss you so much, Mack kept texting, with accompanying photos and little videos of the boys. Any time she dared turn her phone on there would be another flood of new messages. But looking at them and the pictures was like gazing at another person’s life. What did it mean, the complete lack of compulsion she felt about returning – her blank feelings of nothingness? Was she a monster? Or just malfunctioning?
Her relationship with Mack been so easy before the boys were born. They’d each had their separate jobs and friends and hobbies, but always clicked back like jigsaw pieces whenever they were together. She’d find her gaze drawn to his across a party and feel a throb of joy that she’d be going home with him later, that he was her other half. But then, with the arrival of their sons, it was as if they’d been cast into different corners with new labels slapped upon them. He was now the Big Provider, still with his own job, friends and hobbies, while she’d been given the role of Loving Homemaker, who had time for nothing and no one outside the home, least of all herself. They had been winched further and further apart until he seemed far out of reach. It was hard to remember now how they’d been as newly-weds; even harder to remember how it had felt to be her own self, Olivia, before she’d become Mrs Jim Mackintosh and Mum.
Until yesterday, that was. Yesterday, when she had been forced right out of her numbness, by almost colliding with Em’s daughter Izzie on her bike down at Swanpool. And even though it had been a shocking experience – she could almost hear the brakes of her car still screeching in her ears – Olivia hadn’t panicked or gone to pieces. She hadn’t dwelt on the what-ifs and what-might-have-beens at all, despite the fact that car accidents had always been a terror of hers, still there in the back of her mind even after the many thousands of miles she must have driven by now. She’d actually coped pretty brilliantly, if she said so herself. She’d kept a cool head and looked after the girl when she dissolved into a panic attack, and got her home safely afterwards. It had felt really good, actually. Like she was a proper, responsible adult with some agency – a person who did things. Maybe not as worthless as she had been thinking.
Then there had been the time spent at the pool as well. Having the chance to swim a few lengths alone, enjoy the relaxed feeling of floating in water, chatting to a friendly woman. Nobody needed their armbands fixing or saving from a potential drowning incident. When was the last time she’d been able to swim like that? Certainly before the boys were born. She hadn’t done any form of exercise since then, unless you counted walking to the local shops and back, hauling along a double-buggy.
Afterwards she had eaten her roast dinner (delicious), drunk a massive glass of Sauvignon Blanc (ditto) and then lain on the sofa all evening, watching cookery shows and soap operas, deliberately not switching on her phone. She would return Mack’s calls soon, she vowed. Just . . . not yet.
Olivia carried on down the wooded slope now, placing her feet with care. Here she was, just her and her bad memories, in the very place they had happened. Because today she was going to rip off the scab and feel the pain of the truth, for the first time in two decades. It was the least she could do.
Hesitating between the trees, she stared around her. Was this the spot? Right here? It was hard to tell. The night had been dark and the car had rolled over a few times before smashing into the tree with one final terrible crunch; remembering those fractured jumbled moments now and trying to relate them to her surroundings was impossible. Her legs were shaking, she realized, and she sat down suddenly in front of an oak tree. The ground was soft and springy beneath her and she leaned against the thick gnarled trunk to catch her breath. There. This would do. It was as good a place as any.
‘Hello again,’ she said. There was the faint hum now and then from the road above as a vehicle droned by, and sporadic birdsong from the trees, but otherwise it was quiet. Peaceful. The light was green and dappled through the leafy branches and her gaze was caught by an ant nearby, carrying a seed on its back. Tiny flies circled mesmerizingly in the air a short distance away. This miniature world was going about its creeping, murmuring business, wholly uninterested in her. She stretched out her legs in front of her, hands in her lap, and shut her eyes. Remembering.
It had been an ordinary day when she’d bumped into Pete in town. The exams were over and she was trying to get a holiday job for the summer. Aidan, of course, had already found a bar job at the golf club, but Olivia had left it to the last minute and was now dropping her details in at some of the hotels and B&Bs, in the hope that someone needed a waitress or chambermaid. She was getting nowhere and feeling increasingly fed up, so when she’d heard Pete calling, ‘All right, Liv?’ across the street she’d been glad of the distraction.
If college rumours were to be believed, Pete lived on his own, his dad having died, and his mum having gone off with a new bloke in Penryn. Whether this was true or not, there was something a bit damaged about him anyway, a bit broken. You could see it in his eyes. Takes one to know one, Olivia’s wise old Devonshire gran would have said and, indeed, she did feel a connection between them, an understanding that she could never feel with Aidan, who had his comfortable home and such kind, loving parents. One thing had led to another that day anyway, and she and Pete had ended up drinking beer and setting the world to rights in the sunny little courtyard of a pub full of tourists. Several hours later, the sun and alcohol having gone completely to her head, Olivia hugged him as they said goodbye, just in the way that she would have hugged Nina or Spencer or any of her friends. The difference this time was that suddenly she and Pete were kissing and it was so passionate, so sexy, she felt her stomach turn over like a flipped pancake.
Stop! she wanted to protest.
Don’t stop! she wanted to beg.
‘Listen, a few of us are off inter-railing in August,’ he murmured, his arms still slotted around her waist as they eventually drew apart. ‘Why don’t you come with us?’ His hip ground against hers. ‘With me.’
‘Oh!’ she had said, taken aback. Didn’t he know? ‘I’m going out with Aidan. I mean . . .’
He’d raised an eyebrow as her words trailed away. He had very expressive eyebrows, she remembered, and this one seemed to hint at disbelief and all sorts of badness with a single lift. ‘Still?’ He’d laughed. ‘Didn’t feel like that to me just now.’
There was a wildness about Pete that made her shiver even now, years later, to recall him. He reminded her of a hunting animal, bold and impulsive, eyeing her with a predatory air. Somehow the effect was seductive, though. Magnetic. By contrast, Aidan seemed more like a domestic pet: a soppy Labrador or Golden Retriever, who would lick your face and sit when told. Pets were overrated, in Olivia’s opinion.
‘It didn’t feel like that to m
e, either,’ she found herself replying huskily.
He’d laughed approvingly, the night air full of danger and temptations, and she’d just about had the wherewithal to get herself home then, before anything else happened. All the same, the encounter had left her whirling. Excited.
In hindsight, she should have glossed over that day as a mistake – a lesson not to go drinking in the afternoon with a handsome bad boy – and moved on, but it had turned into this doomed romantic melodrama in her head. It wasn’t as if she’d ever particularly fancied Pete until that moment, but suddenly he was forbidden fruit; he had made a play for her, and she was flattered by the attention, giddy with the turmoil this had provoked in her heart. Imagine what would happen if they were inter-railing together, all the passion promised by that one single kiss! She would be ripping his clothes off in every European town and city they travelled through, collecting decadent new experiences like stamps in her passport.
And then, in the car with Aidan on the way back from the gig, it had all come to a head. ‘I’m not sure if we’re really right together any more,’ she had said, carelessly and – yes – cruelly. He had been getting on her nerves all evening. First, the way he’d tucked his shirt into his jeans like some kind of mummy’s boy. Also, the careful way he’d locked up the car and double-checked it in Truro – like anyone would want to nick that Gran-mobile! Even his natural chivalry wound her up, opening the door for her, buying her a drink – tiny acts of love that damaged, dirty Pete wouldn’t think to bother with. God, it was so annoying! Why did he have to be so nice? Nice was boring.
Poor Aidan. Poor nice, kind, doomed Aidan, who only had moments left to live at this point. He had turned towards her, his astonished face yellow under the street lights. ‘What are you saying?’ he’d asked, and the fear made his voice tremble like a vibrato. (Pathetic! Pete would never have acted so wimpishly.)
