‘I wouldn’t subject Her Majesty to your dining habits.’
‘It’s a waste of washing-up,’ he said.
‘Only if you scratch yourself with the fork so that I have to wash it.’
He just smiled over his overfull bowl.
Something felt different this morning. Not just the breakfast ritual, but something. Harriet wasn’t always attuned to other people’s feelings – she’d been told that often enough to believe it was true – but she could feel this. And Billie wasn’t up yet, so the change was in James.
He was too willing to do what she asked. He hadn’t put up a fight when she’d told him they were going shopping today. Something was up. ‘I thought we might go for afternoon tea, too.’ That would get a rise out of him. It wasn’t the tiny portions of cake or even the crustless sandwiches with fancy fillings that he objected to. It was having to sit in opulence. You’d think she was asking him to bathe in pig shit. Afternoon tea was that loathsome to her husband.
‘Whatever you like,’ he said.
‘You’re not going to object to my scheduling a schedule to keep to a schedule? Did you get a terminal diagnosis you’re not telling me about? Trying to make amends before you meet your maker?’
‘It’s called compromise. Most people would call that marriage,’ he said with a smirk.
‘Most people don’t have our marriage.’
He kissed her forehead as he went to rinse out his bowl. ‘I’ll give the fork a wash, shall I?’
What, no prison guard comments? Something was definitely up.
She’d carried on with her afternoon plans anyway, but now she felt bad as she watched James sitting with his knees squeezed close together under the small table. His farmer fingers barely fitted into the delicate teacup handle. He could have crushed it in his palm, but he was doing his best. He popped another egg and cress sandwich into his mouth. Down in one. Harriet pointedly nibbled her ham and cheese as the pianist began another tune.
James whispered something. He’d been doing that since the frock-coated waiter had shown them to their table.
‘Pardon?’
He raised his voice about two decibels. ‘The scones are good.’
‘Evidently.’ At least he’d enjoyed those. She surveyed the bits of cake strewn across his side of the table. He slid his plate over, trying to hide the smear of mustard, but that only exposed the smear of jam. The waiter had been around twice already with his tiny silver crumb duster.
So much to talk about, yet they’d been commenting on sandwich fillings for an hour. She realised she’d just heaved a colossal sigh when James said, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Thinking about Billie, that’s all. I’m trying to work out when we should have known. A child shouldn’t have to come out to her parents. That’s something we should have picked up on. We were clueless. I was clueless. You too, I’m guessing.’
James nodded. Thank God it wasn’t only her. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’
‘She doesn’t look gay,’ Harriet mused. She knew how utterly ridiculous it was to even think such a thing. Just because a girl didn’t love pink or wear dresses or play with dolls didn’t mean she was gay. She knew that, and yet she couldn’t help thinking it.
‘I’m not sure there’s always a gay look,’ he said.
‘Yes, I know that.’ She wasn’t thinking logically. James didn’t need to point it out. ‘I don’t understand why she waited so long to tell us when she must have known for ages.’ Harriet didn’t dare try on the answer to that question. It didn’t look good on her. Maybe James would give her something that was a better fit.
‘At least she feels comfortable telling us now,’ said James.
‘Only out of spite, though. It came out in a row, remember?’ A row with Harriet, not James. Billie hadn’t told them willingly. She’d been goaded by her mother.
James fitted another mini scone into his mouth, but at least he swallowed it before speaking. ‘Well, we know now, so we can give her all the support she needs. We can do that, can’t we?’
‘Of course I’ll support her.’ He wasn’t questioning himself.
They both glanced at a table where the waiters and waitresses had gathered to sing a discreet ‘Happy Birthday’. The girl looked about Billie’s age. Harriet tried not to be jealous as she hugged her beaming mother.
‘She didn’t let on that time you talked to her about sex?’ James asked.
‘You don’t think that put her off?’ Harriet had been accurate and anatomically correct in that lecture. It was simply a biological process, after all. Though the illustrations might have been a step too far. ‘I mean, it is a weird business when you actually describe it. Not that it’s weird with you. Or that I described sex with you.’ Maybe she had messed that up.
But James didn’t think so, and that did make her feel a little better. She still should have known before Billie told them.
She pushed her plate away. ‘I couldn’t eat another bite.’ He just stared at her. ‘What are you looking at?’
‘You,’ said James. ‘It’s been nice seeing you happy here. In London, I mean, not right now. Now you look a little sick.’ He leaned over the table, pointing to the leftover sandwiches, whose edges had started to curl. ‘I can get these into my pockets.’
She shuddered to think of all the farm germs in those pockets. ‘We’re fine leaving them here. I never knew you liked them so much.’
‘I’m partial to anything someone else makes for me.’
That was true. Harriet couldn’t recall James ever complaining about a meal. ‘Bea does an afternoon tea, you know. Scones and sandwiches and everything. I go there sometimes after Zumba. Not for all that, just for a coffee. But we could do tea there some time. If you want.’ In all the years they’d lived in the village, they’d never been for tea together. James didn’t immediately strike one as the pinkie-finger-in-the-air type. Maybe she’d underestimated him.
‘Whatever makes you happy. It’s nice to see you like this.’
‘I’m always happy in the city,’ she told him.
‘But I don’t see you in the city.’
‘That’s because you never want to come here.’
‘I’m sorry. I’ll do it more.’
‘But you’re just doing it for me, not because you want to.’
‘Exactly.’ He squeezed her hand.
That felt good.
Chapter 22
Wednesday
Sophie jerked open the fridge door but there was nothing obvious to have for lunch. Only the remnants of PorkLoinGate.
Yet she wasn’t keen on eating cereal like yesterday, and they were low on milk anyway. The car keys were on the worktop. Why shouldn’t they go out? Dan would probably be in that office all morning.
She knocked. ‘Dan?’
‘Not now, Sophie!’
She could only just hear him beyond the solid oak door. ‘But—’
‘I said not fucking now. Jesus, what part of busy do you not understand?’
Sophie crept from the door. Why the hell didn’t she know by now what would set him off? At least the children hadn’t heard him.
Her hands trembled as she grabbed her handbag and went to fetch them from the barns.
There wasn’t a leaf big enough to carry these feelings away downstream. She hadn’t even done anything wrong; only knocked on the door to tell him where she was going. The fault was his.
She couldn’t let Dan be hazardous to her health any more. She wouldn’t.
Her hands had steadied by the time she reached the barn door. She listened to the children inside, chattering away to the goats – Artemis and a few others who were in quarantine. Then Katie began laughing. When Oliver joined her, it began to forge something in Sophie. She didn’t want them to have parents who weren’t kind and respectful to each other.
She might not be able to change the way Dan behaved – that would be up to him – but she could change how she reacted.
Sophie’s rolling-over
days were numbered.
Marion truly didn’t seem to mind having Oliver and Katie underfoot every day, but that might be because she’d put them to work mucking out the enclosures. Sophie couldn’t get them to pick up their socks off the floor, but for the goats they’d shovel dung. She’d have another go at the socks when they got back to London.
‘Who wants to go to the falconry centre?’ she called.
‘Me!’ Marion said along with the children.
‘You’re welcome to come,’ Sophie said. ‘That would be really nice, actually.’
‘Thanks, but I’ve got work to do. You have fun, though.’
That was exactly what Sophie planned to do.
A warm wind from the open car windows blew everyone’s hair all over the place while they sang along to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. She’d managed to put Dan’s outburst miles behind them. Even in spite of him, she’d felt better these past two weeks than she had in years. When was the last time? Maybe back during her first years working in London, when the world seemed open, fresh and all hers. Or at uni, surrounded by loads of friends, learning so many new things that she could almost feel her brain sparking with the activity.
She squirmed to realise that none of that happened with Dan. He would say their wedding day should be on her list. It would have been, if it hadn’t been such a stressful time. Dan might have left the organising to her, but it wasn’t like he didn’t have a lot to say about every one of her ideas. Sophie saw pretty quickly that she didn’t fit in very well with his vision, between her unsophisticated family and the wedding dress she chose (he overruled that for something more tasteful) to the terrifying idea of spending their honeymoon at an exclusive resort in the Seychelles where she’d have to dress up for every meal and probably wouldn’t know what half the things on the menu were anyway. She had let him down so constantly that by the time their wedding day dawned, she couldn’t wait to get it over with.
‘Will we see bald eagles?’ Oliver pointed towards the illustration on the falconry centre sign.
‘I don’t know, maybe. It’s false advertising if not, promising birds that aren’t even here. The picture should at least be accurate.’ That kind of detail orientation would warm Harriet’s heart. If Sophie cared a bit about Harriet’s heart.
She shoved those thoughts from her mind.
They had to walk up a steep slope to reach the ancient-looking yellow stone building where the tickets were sold. ‘One adult and two children,’ she told the boy at the till. Despite it being summer, he wore a grey knitted beanie with his long blond fringe sticking out from it just so.
‘You could book the experience, and then the admission price would be included,’ he told them. ‘Then you’d get to fly the birds, too. We haven’t usually got tickets on the day but there’s been a cancellation.’
Oliver gasped. ‘Yes, please, can we, Mum, please?’
Look at that absolutely innocent face. Crafty upselling.
As they wandered around the enclosures looking at the birds, which she had to admit were impressive, she glanced at her phone. No missed calls. Not that she really expected Harriet to ring her back.
The sun shone on the semicircle of rustic wooden benches where people had started to gather at the back of the property. The murmur of conversation died down as a middle-aged man strode to the centre of the semicircle. He looked perfectly at home in his blue tartan shirt and flat cap. Perched on his gloved forearm was a breathtakingly beautiful bird. His deep-brown feathers glinted in the sunlight as he gripped the man’s rough leather glove. Sophie stared into his unflinching gaze. He seemed to frown at her. No, it was probably just a case of resting bird face.
‘Are you sure you want to have that bird land on you?’ Her children acted like she was mad for even asking. What could be more fun than being clung onto by a deadly animal while their mother had a heart attack from worry? Nothing, clearly.
Katie gloved up first, then Oliver. Despite Sophie’s worry about her children being carried off into a faraway nest to become breakfast for eagle chicks, they loved it.
Then it was Sophie’s turn. ‘Actually, I’m fine, thank you,’ she told the flat-capped man. Her heart was already in her throat from watching her children. Perspiration started beading on her forehead. Pretending to sweep her hair back, she dashed it away. ‘I’ll just watch.’ She should probably try to get a refund since she wasn’t getting within ten feet of that bird. She’d seen enough David Attenborough programmes with Oliver to know what those deadly beaks and razor-sharp talons could do.
‘He won’t harm you.’
That was patently not true, when he’d just explained how these birds might live at the centre but they were still very much wild animals.
Yet she lived with a python, and no one could argue that those weren’t wild animals, even if Spot did mostly lie curled up on her lap when she watched Loose Women.
Besides, this holiday felt like the place to try new things. Hadn’t she run an entire charity event? A few dog-slobbered cupcakes didn’t change the fact that it had been a success. She’d had snails on her face. Surely a bird on her arm wouldn’t be as bad. She just had to remember not to fling it off.
She sidled up to the man, who shimmied the bird from his glove to hers. ‘It’s not very heavy,’ she said.
‘He’s full-grown,’ he assured her. She gazed at the bird’s glossy feathers. She was actually doing this! When Dan had suggested the falconry centre, she never imagined wanting to get anywhere near one of the big birds. Yet there she was, staring wild nature in the eye. Well, side-eyeing nature anyway, in case it got cross.
When the man blew his whistle, the bird pushed off from Sophie’s arm. Everyone squinted into the sky to watch it gracefully circle the property. How wonderful to be a bird, she thought. Except for catching live rodents and tearing them up into little pieces for dinner and living on top of the whole family in a cramped nest. Still, the flying would be nice.
Later, as they finished looking at the enclosures, she glanced again at her phone. If she was honest with herself, she did miss talking to Harriet. This would be the exact kind of thing they’d text about. Harriet would probably send back a dossier on the subject. She smiled. Then she remembered that she was cross.
It was lunchtime when they got back to the house. ‘We’re home!’ Sophie called as she unlocked the front door. ‘Drop the bags in the kitchen,’ she told the kids. ‘I’ll put them away.’
Oliver and Katie did exactly as they were told. Sophie heard the distinctive pop of a glass jar breaking as the shopping bags hit the tiled floor. Katie’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Sorry, Mum!’
‘It’s all right, it was my fault. I didn’t mean you should literally drop them.’
Sighing, she wet a sponge. Beetroot juice was already leaking from the bag.
‘Who was murdered?’ Dan asked as he stepped around the widening puddle.
So, he was in a good mood now. ‘Professor Beetroot in the kitchen with a glass jar. Did you have to work all morning?’
‘Yep. Just taking a break now.’ He glanced over when her phone lit up. ‘Text from Owen,’ he said, as if she wasn’t perfectly capable of reading.
She scrolled through the full message. ‘He wants to have some people over for his birthday. That’s okay, isn’t it? I’ll let Harriet know.’
‘You two are talking a lot. What are you, best friends now?’
Not lately, she thought. She carefully lifted the sodden loaf of crusty bread from the bag. ‘We picked up some lunch. As long as you like beetroot juice with your sandwich. I got ham and cheese. And some nice steaks for tonight.’
‘I’m making pasta later.’
‘Oh, well, I didn’t know. I didn’t see anything in the fridge. It’ll keep till tomorrow, won’t it? The children saw the gas grill outside, so I thought we could do a barbecue.’
Something funny passed over Dan’s face. ‘Anything else you’d like me to change for tonight?’
‘Don’t be like
that, Dan, it’s just a suggestion, because the weather’s gorgeous. Make your pasta if you want to.’
‘It’s not my pasta, it’s our pasta. I’ll barbecue.’ He made it sound like he was having to repaint the house.
‘Never mind, I can do it,’ she snapped.
‘You cannot. When have you ever barbecued in your life?’
He was definitely in a funny mood. ‘It’s not rocket science. I think I can manage to turn on the grill and cook the meat. I’m familiar with how cooking works.’
‘What are you doing shopping, anyway? I was supposed to do that.’
‘Well, you didn’t do it, did you? You’ve been in that office all week. I only picked up a few things.’
‘That’s pretty ungrateful, Soph.’
‘I’m grateful. I just mean that you don’t have to do everything for me. I can do things myself, too.’
‘Pssh, no you can’t, silly bean, but it’s sweet that you want to try.’
Sophie’s mouth dropped open. ‘Don’t patronise me, Dan.’
He shrugged. ‘I just said I’ll take care of it, but if you want to try then I’m not going to stop you.’ She wanted to wipe the condescending look off his face. ‘I’ll be here to pick up the pieces. You didn’t need to, that’s all.’
‘Why are we fighting when it’s no big deal? It was on our way back.’
‘What did the kids do while you had your treatment?’
The treatment! She’d completely forgotten. ‘I cancelled it.’ She’d have to use her credit card tomorrow to pay for it. She didn’t need Dan being any tetchier than he was.
‘Where were you, then?’
‘I took the children to the falconry centre. You were right, it was fantastic.’ She held her breath. He wouldn’t be placated by the praise, but sod it. If he hadn’t barked at her earlier, then he could have come with them.
‘How could you do it without me when you know I wanted to go? I was the one who suggested it.’
‘What am I supposed to do, sit around all day hoping you’ll come out of that office so we can do something together? I did try to tell you but you shouted at me. It’s our holiday, too, mine and the kids’, and we do want to do things with you, but we can’t when you’re working all the time. We’ve only got a few days left here. I’m sorry, but if you’re not going to participate in this holiday with us, then we’ll have to do it on our own. I don’t want to, but I will.’
The Staycation: This summer's hilarious tale of heartwarming friendship, fraught families and happy ever afters Page 21
