Christmas at the Beach Hut

by Veronica Henry

  Now, standing on the beach at the water’s edge, Lizzy relived the feeling. There were turning points in your life when something shifted, when you just knew something was going to happen, and that moment in the hotel corridor had been one of them. She looked down at the sea, the waves teasing her by coming up as close to her as they dared then trickling back where they had come from. She stepped backwards – she only had her Skecher trainers with her and she didn’t want to get them wet.

  She’d better go to the car and get her stuff then nip to the shop for some supplies. She was longing for a cup of tea. She turned, facing the wind full on, feeling it whip her hair into an even wilder mass of curls and sting her face. She wondered if this day was going to be a turning point too, if it was going to help her become the woman she wanted to be instead of the woman that suited everybody else.

  14

  Simon woke valiantly at half past seven. He cocked his ear for the sound of Lizzy up and about – the kids definitely wouldn’t be up yet – but the house was still quiet. Lizzy must be having a lie-in, though she didn’t care for lying in bed much. Not that she was some paragon of virtue; she simply preferred being up and doing nothing, pottering about in her dressing gown and slippers, drinking tea, listening to Chris Evans on the radio, wandering about in the garden if it was nice. But perhaps today she’d decided on a snooze. He’d nip down and make her a cup of tea. She didn’t need to give him a lift to the office; the Christmas traffic would be mad. He’d get the train.

  He crept down the stairs which led straight down into the living room, ducking his head under the black beam on the way down. He flicked the lights on as he reached the bottom. In the alcove by the fireplace was a splendid Christmas tree in an earthenware pot. Next to it were several boxes and bags full of decorations.

  For all its jolly roundness, the tree seemed a bit resentful at having to stand naked in the corner of the room. Simon frowned. A memory snaked its way back to him: Lizzy had mentioned them decorating the tree with the kids last night. Somewhere amidst the chaos of yesterday it had slipped his mind. She hadn’t mentioned it when they’d spoken.

  No, he thought. She definitely hadn’t. She’d mentioned his mother, though. Last night’s cocktails curdled in his stomach as he recalled the Cynthia Conundrum. There was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t tell Amanda she couldn’t go skiing. He couldn’t tell his mother she couldn’t come for Christmas.

  Lizzy would understand. He knew she would. She would have calmed down by now and resigned herself to it. He was cross with himself for not following up with Amanda, but he wasn’t surprised she’d just gone ahead and done what she wanted without getting back to him. Why did you always forget people’s shortcomings? Some kind of misguided optimism, perhaps.

  Feeling the unsettled self-loathing of the slightly hung-over, he walked into the kitchen. Tea and toast was what he needed.

  As he turned on the light, he frowned. The table was laid and in the middle of it was a dish of lasagne. Was this some sort of trendy Christmas innovation he didn’t know about? Lasagne for breakfast? Something Jamie or Nigella insisted was the new culinary must-eat?

  He went to touch it. It was stone cold.

  At Lizzy’s place was an open copy of Delia Smith’s Christmas, much loved and covered in gravy stains. There was a piece of paper on it with her familiar scrawl. At first Simon thought it must be a list, but on closer inspection he realised it was a letter. He picked it up.

  It was addressed to him and Hattie and Luke.

  Hi everyone. I’ve decided to go away for a few days and get some me-time. Everything you need for the perfect Christmas is right here. Delia is foolproof so just follow the instructions. All the presents are in my wardrobe and will need wrapping – Sellotape and scissors in kitchen drawer. Check the fairy lights before you put them on the tree.

  Love mum (Lizzy) xxxxxx

  He read it, disquiet growing inside him, his hand shaking slightly. He stood for a moment, read the note again and looked around the kitchen, almost expecting Lizzy to be standing there with a grin on her face.

  But she wasn’t.

  He charged up the stairs with the note in his hand, ducking again to avoid the low beam, and bowled into their bedroom.

  The room was painted very pale blue, with a feature wall covered in bird cages and parakeets – Lizzy had agonised for ages over wallpaper samples when they’d redecorated last summer.

  ‘I want it to be like a boutique hotel,’ she’d said.

  Simon wasn’t sure what that meant, but it turned out to mean floor-length curtains, lots of very annoying cushions and a flat-screen telly. But he did his best to fulfil his wife’s dream with his DIY, knowing full well that their clutter would never allow them the ‘boutique hotel’ illusion for very long. Lizzy had loved the makeover, and had made a valiant effort to keep things tidy.

  Now, the room was resoundingly, balefully silent. The curtains were wide open, letting in the first of the slurry-grey light, and the bed was made. He pulled back the duvet and put his hand on the sheet underneath to see if there was any residual warmth. There wasn’t.

  His heart began to beat a little faster, uncertainty and panic pooling in his stomach. He went back out onto the landing and shouted up the stairs.

  ‘Hattie! Luke!’

  Of course there was no reply. He ran up to the third floor and poked his head into Luke’s room but there was no one there, which wasn’t unusual. Luke often stayed over at one or another of his mates. He rapped on his daughter’s door, then opened it with caution.

  ‘Hat – have you seen your mum?’

  The room smelled sweet, a mix of a hundred different scents: sugary perfume and fabric conditioner and incense sticks and hairspray. Hattie was fast asleep. He could just make her out in the semi-darkness, the only glimmer a string of fairy lights across the top of her headboard. She was curled up on one side, her hair spilling across her pillow. She changed the colour of it as often as she changed her clothes these days. Right now it was peroxide white with several glossy blue streaks. He didn’t like to think of the chemicals that had gone into producing the effect. He’d said nothing. With teenagers, you picked your battles.

  ‘Hat! You need to wake up.’ He walked towards the bed, avoiding the clothes and shoes scattered across the floor.

  Hattie stirred with a groan. ‘What is it?’

  ‘When did you last see Mum?’

  She stretched out her arms and lay thinking for a moment. Simon felt a tug of impatience.

  ‘Hat?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Hattie scrunched her face up in thought. ‘Yesterday morning? I went into Birmingham to do some shopping. I called her about … five? I told her I was going carol singing with Kiki.’

  ‘What did she sound like?’

  ‘She sounded … OK. I guess. I don’t know. I was in Selfridges. It was really noisy.’ Hattie sat up and reached out for her phone. ‘Why?’

  Simon handed her the note.

  ‘I can’t see. Can you open the curtains?’

  Simon flicked back the red gingham and looked out of the window at the empty drive.

  ‘Shit.’

  Lizzy’s car had gone.

  He hadn’t noticed last night. He wouldn’t have noticed much last night, to be fair.

  Hattie looked up, frowning. ‘What does this mean?’

  Simon spread out his hands. ‘I don’t know. She’s not here. There’s just a cold lasagne on the kitchen table and that note.’

  Hattie looked baffled. ‘Well, didn’t you see her last night?’

  ‘I stayed out as well. I had a work thing I couldn’t get out of. Then I slept in the spare room.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘She wanted to decorate the tree,’ said Hattie slowly. ‘She told me she was going to do it with you two.’

 
‘Me and Luke?’

  ‘Yes. I wouldn’t have gone if she’d said she minded. Or if I knew you weren’t coming back.’

  ‘I don’t think Luke came back either.’

  Simon could see her processing the information. He longed for her to come up with an explanation for Lizzy’s disappearance he hadn’t thought of. A sudden memory. He felt like a small child waiting for reassurance from a parent. But if anything Hattie looked more worried than he did. Which was worrying in itself, because Hattie never usually worried about anything but herself. In the most feckless and charming teenage girl way.

  ‘Me-time,’ he said. ‘How can she want me-time at Christmas? Christmas is about family.’

  ‘Yes. But we weren’t here. Were we?’

  ‘Is she punishing us?’

  Hattie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She has been a bit funny lately, though. Don’t you think? Not quite herself.’

  Simon nodded. ‘Since the thing at work.’

  ‘I thought she didn’t mind? She told me she didn’t mind.’

  Simon sighed. ‘I think perhaps she did mind. You know how good your mum is at putting on a brave face.’

  This was the whole problem. Everyone assumed Lizzy didn’t mind about things because she was brilliant at looking on the bright side. ‘Never mind, no one’s dead,’ was her favourite saying when something bad happened. She was always there to catch everyone when things went wrong. But maybe there had been no one to catch her. Maybe the redundancy had hit her harder than she let on.

  Hattie picked up her phone. ‘I’m calling Luke. I think he was at Hal’s last night. I saw some of their videos on Instagram.’

  Simon rolled his eyes. Luke and his mates spent hours doing videos of miniature skateboards they rode with their fingers. They built ramps and mini skate parks for them. They had quite a following, and several sponsors, and a lot of prestige from their peers. It was a cult that was baffling to most people, as all good cults should be. Luke would have been up all night, no doubt, garnering Instagram likes.

  ‘He won’t be fit to communicate yet.’

  Hattie dialled anyway.

  ‘Poor Mum. I feel awful. Where do you think she’s gone?’

  ‘Let’s not panic yet. Maybe she’s left the note to make a point and she’s just gone to Waitrose.’

  Even as he spoke the words, Simon wasn’t convinced. The house felt different. There was no energy in it. No Radio 2 in the kitchen, no Lizzy singing along, no rich aroma of freshly roasted coffee curling its way up the stairs. No coconutty steam coming from the shower.

  ‘Luke!’ said Hattie as her brother answered. ‘We’ve got a crisis. Mum’s done a runner.’

  ‘We don’t know that yet!’ Simon hated hearing Hattie vocalise it.

  Hattie covered her mouthpiece. ‘I have to tell him that or he’ll just go back to sleep.’ She took her hand away. ‘Get home as quickly as you can.’ She looked up at Simon. ‘He wants to know if you can give him a lift?’

  ‘My car’s still at work.’ Simon looked at his watch. He should be on his way in by now if he wanted to get it back – he was pretty sure the car park would be locked over Christmas.

  ‘No,’ said Hattie to Luke. ‘You’ll have to walk. Hurry up.’

  She hung up, then looked up at her dad.

  ‘Have you tried calling her?’

  ‘I didn’t think of that.’ Why hadn’t he thought of that? Panic, he supposed.

  Hattie pressed her mum’s number and waited a few moments.

  ‘It’s gone straight to voicemail,’ she whispered.

  ‘Leave a message,’ Simon whispered back.

  ‘Mum? It’s Hattie. We found your note. What’s going on? We’re worried about you. Are you having a meltdown? We’re a bunch of selfish pigs and we don’t deserve you. Come baaaaaaack!’

  She hung up.

  ‘I need coffee,’ said Simon.

  Hattie scrambled out of bed. ‘She won’t have gone far,’ she said. ‘Mum’s not a drama queen. Not like Amanda.’

  ‘Yes, OK,’ said Simon hastily, not wanting to be reminded of his ex-wife’s shortcomings. Hattie and Luke were very wary of Amanda: slightly in awe but also slightly disapproving.

  ‘Is that why you married Mum?’ Hattie asked. ‘A bit of stability after all the histrionics?’

  Simon heaved a sigh. There were a million reasons he’d married Lizzy.

  ‘I married her because she was kind. And she made me laugh.’

  Hattie nodded. ‘Yeah. Mum’s pretty funny.’

  ‘She’s not a practical joker, though.’ Simon frowned. ‘Which is why I’m worried. We need to find her.’

  Ten minutes later, Luke came bursting into the kitchen. It never ceased to amaze Simon how his son had gone from a small boy with short red sticky-up hair to a six-foot warrior with dark auburn curls, inevitably spilling out from under a trapper hat or a beanie or a baseball cap. He wore a rotation of long-sleeved T-shirts with a plaid shirt tied round his waist: a look that gave Simon a twinge of nostalgia for the early nineties. But if ever the kids played Nirvana and he was tempted to sing along, one look from either of them soon stopped him. He needn’t think he still had teen spirit – he was way too old.

  ‘Mum didn’t say she minded,’ Luke said, panic spread across his freckled face. ‘If she’d said it was a problem, I’d have come back. She said the lasagne would keep and we could do the tree today.’

  ‘Is it a Thing, though, decorating the tree?’ asked Simon, slightly mystified. ‘I had no idea it was a Thing.’

  ‘We always do it together,’ pointed out Hattie.

  ‘Yes, but not in a big deal kind of a way. We just all muck in as and when. Don’t we?’ Simon was desperate for reassurance, trying to justify why he had been remiss.

  ‘It must have meant more to her than we realised?’said Hattie.

  ‘She can’t have just run away,’ said Luke. ‘Where would she go?’

  ‘Let’s phone her again.’ Simon picked up his phone and dialled Lizzy’s number.

  Lizzy had given her smart phone back to the hotel when she’d left, and just had Luke’s very old Nokia, which she claimed to love. ‘I don’t have to worry about losing it or smashing it,’ she would say.

  They all jumped as it rang, plugged in to its charger by the kettle. They looked at each other.

  ‘She hasn’t taken her phone with her,’ said Hattie helpfully.

  ‘No shit, Sherlock.’ Luke rolled his eyes.

  ‘Well, she can’t have gone far. No one goes far without their phone.’

  ‘Unless they don’t want to be contacted. Anyway, you know Mum hates mobile phones. She’s always forgetting it or losing it.’

  Simon picked up the phone and scrolled through it, in case there were any clues.

  ‘Her last call was to you, Luke.’

  Luke looked a bit baffled. ‘Why didn’t she say she minded?’ he asked. ‘If she’d said, I’d have come home.’

  ‘Because that’s not what Mum’s like,’ said Simon, furious with himself. ‘Let’s go through everything. See if we can find out where she’s gone.’

  ‘What time did she leave?’ asked Hattie. ‘Was she in bed when you got back last night?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I don’t know. I slept in the spare room, remember. The snoring thing …’ Simon looked abashed.

  Luke gave a snort. ‘You’re such a warthog.’

  ‘Didn’t you go in and say good night?’ demanded Hattie.

  Simon looked at his daughter. ‘Did you?’

  Hattie bit her thumbnail. ‘I didn’t want to wake her up.’

  ‘Well, nor did I.’

  Luke looked between the two of them. ‘You mean Mum wasn’t even here and neither of you noticed?’

  ‘At least we came home!’ Hattie hit back.r />
  ‘We don’t know she wasn’t here.’

  Simon looked around the kitchen, feeling slightly stunned. He looked at the table, imagining Lizzy laying it – she’d put out Christmas napkins with Rudolph on, and proper wine glasses. She’d obviously been looking forward to them all eating together. He felt sick with guilt.

  With Lizzy gone, the house lacked energy and purpose. Not that she was driven or bossy or organising, but she had a spirit. Even now they were all slightly at a loss, the air slack with indecision. He needed to rehydrate and get some food inside him before he could function. He knew himself well enough to recognise that. He picked up the kettle and took it over to the sink, wincing at the roar of the water as it gushed in.

  ‘Can I have a bit of lasagne?’ asked Luke. ‘I didn’t get any dinner.’

  ‘No,’ said Simon, whisking it away and putting it in the fridge. As soon as they found Lizzy, they could all sit down and have it together. ‘Make some toast.’

  He pulled a loaf of bread out of the bread bin by its bag and slung it next to the toaster. He was being short because he was angry, with himself mostly, but also the kids, for being selfish. It wasn’t just him who’d let her down. They all had.

  ‘So what are we going to do?’ Hattie was scraping at the nail varnish on her thumbnail, leaving specks of green glitter on the tablecloth. She always did this when she was nervous.

  ‘I’ll check her emails. And her Facebook.’ Luke pulled out the kitchen table drawer and felt for Lizzy’s iPad with its flowery cover.

  Since they’d got her the iPad for her birthday four years ago, they were used to her having it on her lap while they were all watching telly, choosing plants for the garden or ordering books or looking at photos on Instagram. She had endless crushes on outdoorsy or creative types, preferably both – Monty Don, Kevin McCloud, Rick Stein. She stalked them religiously on the internet, liking their posts and buying their books and attempting to recreate their worlds in her own haphazard, Lizzy-ish way: bouillabaisse and raised beds full of herbs. Nothing ever worked out quite right but she was very cheerful about it and would then move on to the next object of her affection.