One Lucky Summer

by Jenny Oliver

  ‘For God’s sake. Can you just be quiet? For one second, just be quiet?’ Ruben finally snapped. Standing up, his hands raised in the air.

  Olive flinched.

  Zadie stopped, mouth open.

  ‘Just …’ Ruben paused, took a breath; he felt Marge next to him pause her tapping on her phone. He pushed his hair back with both hands. ‘Just give me a break.’ Then he held a hand up as if holding Zadie back and said, ‘And, please, don’t call me Dad.’

  He saw Olive close her eyes in disappointment. Dolly put her head down and focused on the fire. Ruben felt ashamed but he didn’t care, a primal self-protective instinct had taken hold.

  Zadie swallowed, eyes wide and round. ‘But you are,’ she said softly.

  ‘No,’ Ruben shook his head. ‘I’m not. Not really. I don’t want this,’ he pointed between them. ‘I didn’t ask for this. I was perfectly happy before you came along. I don’t want to be anyone’s dad. All right?’

  Silence in the garden.

  Fox was watching them intently. Ruben wanted to tell him to bugger off, instead he sighed. Then he kicked an ornamental stone urn and really hurt his foot but couldn’t acknowledge it. ‘Just leave me be,’ he said, hand raised in finality, picking up his wine ready to stalk off into the darkened garden and nurse his throbbing toes.

  Zadie however had other ideas. Head held high, she said into the silence, ‘No. You don’t get to have the last word.’

  Ruben thought of the time she said she’d been taunted quoting Shakespeare. She was stronger than she looked.

  He paused, the pain in his foot was excruciating, as were all the disappointed adult eyes looking at him – or feigning not looking at him. ‘Just leave it, please.’

  Zadie carried on regardless, chin wobbling a touch but stoic in her delivery. ‘My mum warned me not to have anything to do with you—’

  ‘Yes, I know that,’ said Ruben, putting his wine back down on the table. ‘Because I’m a terrible person. You should have listened to her.’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t,’ said Zadie, ‘because I would have never believed her if I hadn’t seen it for myself. Sometimes, like right now, you are a terrible person. But you shouldn’t give up, you should try and do better!’ she said with the dramatic urgency of a Head Girl. ‘You can’t be happy being a disappointment.’

  Ruben put his hands in his pockets and nodded. ‘I am, I’m afraid,’ he said, as if he’d made his peace with it. The whole fatherhood thing was a weight around his neck that he was now determined to shake off. He did not need this complication in his life. She was better off without him.

  Zadie was aghast. ‘No!’ she shouted, stamping her foot. ‘This is not the way it’s meant to be.’ Her voice caught then.

  ‘Zadie, I’m sorry,’ said Ruben, refusing to look at anyone else round the fire. This was for the best. A clean break. Harsh but fair, as his father would say. ‘But this isn’t Love Island or whatever. You can’t force a relationship. It’s just not going to happen.’

  ‘But we had fun, in the sea. Didn’t we?’

  Ruben stood with both hands in his pockets looking down at the ground. He felt like a real asshole.

  Zadie didn’t know what to do now. She looked confused. Couldn’t formulate the next part of her argument.

  After a moment’s pause, Olive stood up and said, ‘Zadie, shall we go in the house. Get a glass of water?’ while shooting daggers at Ruben.

  But Zadie shook her head, wiped away a tear with the palm of her hand, and said, ‘Barry asked me why I wanted to meet you when I already had him as a dad, and do you know what I said? I said because you can never have too many people love you.’

  Ruben’s face went even more rigid than before.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you something, Ruben, I don’t think you’re a terrible person, I think you’re a scared person. Shall I tell you why I think that? Because we did have fun together and for some reason you’re afraid to admit it. You’re no better than the boys from my school on the pier when I was doing my Shakespeare. They’re bullies. And bullies are weak. My mum’s told me so many times that they’re weak because they’re scared. And it’s just like you. You’re nothing but a scared old man. I don’t know why but you’re scared of being my dad. Maybe you’re scared of having too many people love you. Or just one person love you!’ Ruben could see her little chest rising and falling as she got more wound up. ‘And I’ll tell you one more thing,’ she went on, tears in her eyes now, ‘if you did know your Shakespeare, you’d know this – to thine own self be true, Ruben. That’s what Barry always says.’ She stared him right in the eyes, her voice catching slightly as she said it again, ‘To thine own self be true.’ Then she stomped past him into the house.

  ‘Bravo!’ Marge’s voice cut in from behind him as she clapped wildly.

  Ruben couldn’t look at anyone. He could feel his jaw so rigid it might snap. He could feel Olive glaring at him in disgust.

  This was unfair. He hadn’t asked for any of this. Why did he feel like such a callow, pathetic bastard?

  Through gritted teeth, Olive said, ‘I’ll go in and check she’s OK.’

  Ruben’s fists were clenched tight by his side.

  Marge folded her arms tight over her chest, bracelets all clacking together into the silence. ‘Deary me, Ruben. Deary me.’

  Fox and Dolly didn’t say anything.

  The black cat stalked its way smugly into the sitting room.

  Then after a couple of minutes’ silence, Olive suddenly burst outside in a rush of panic. ‘She’s gone, Ruben! She’s not in the house!’

  And Ruben felt a lurch of fear in his chest like nothing he’d ever felt before.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  They organised themselves into various search parties to look for Zadie.

  Fox was to go alone because he had the best tracking skills. Dolly and Olive would go together – while reluctant, they would pair up for the sake of Zadie. Marge would stay at the house in case Zadie came back. Ruben would also go alone because he refused to go with anyone and no one seemed particularly keen to pair up with him.

  Dolly walked at such a pace that Olive struggled to keep up. Not that she’d admit it. Together they took the path that led through the woods in the direction of the cottage. Neither of them discussed a route, it just seemed to be where their bodies took them.

  Olive said, ‘Have you seen the cottage since you’ve been back?’

  Dolly said, ‘No.’

  They walked on in silence. Feet crunching over forest leaves. The woods were spooky in the dark. Dolly used the torch on her phone to light the way. Olive followed behind, flinching at animal noises, thinking how the tables had turned. Now Dolly was the strong, brave one. Hiking into the darkness, Dolly didn’t show an iota of fear, just boldly marched on shouting Zadie’s name every few steps. Olive almost found herself missing the little girl who had clung to her hand.

  ‘So,’ Olive said to Dolly’s back, ‘what’s the story with you and Fox?’

  ‘There’s no story,’ Dolly said, voice expressionless, like she was determined to remain robotically neutral. ‘We work together. He’s my boss. Kind of.’

  Olive said, ‘Oh right,’ leaving it at that.

  But Dolly immediately stopped and turned, so Olive nearly walked into her. ‘He’s completely not my type.’

  Olive thought of big, burly, gorgeous Fox with his almost shaved head and tattoo. Surely he was everyone’s type? ‘I didn’t say anything!’ she said, almost laughing because Dolly’s reaction was so uncalled for.

  ‘You thought it though,’ said Dolly, turning to walk back through the forest, faster now so Olive really had to trot to keep up and not be left behind to the wolves or whatever lived in the dark shadows. ‘You have no idea what I was thinking,’ said Olive, defending herself even though it had been exactly what she had been thinking.

  Dolly paused again. ‘Olive, I know exactly what you’re thinking all of the time.’

  Olive just
raised her hands like she couldn’t argue with such reasoning.

  They crunched along the path some more. Shouted for Zadie. The sound of the sea got louder. The noises of the forest made Olive hurry.

  ‘What about you?’ said Dolly. ‘How’s “The God of Science”?’

  Dolly had met Mark once. At a disastrous birthday dinner for Aunt Marge where Dolly had shown up an hour late fresh from some terrifying shoot-out, her adrenaline was so high she proceeded to talk really fast and loud for the entire meal, drank too much and then when the come-down hit she fell asleep in her chair. Mark had found her brash and obnoxious. Olive wasn’t sure what Dolly had thought of Mark but the fact she fell asleep at the point he managed to get a word in edgeways suggested boring might be one of her adjectives.

  ‘We split up,’ said Olive. ‘Just the other day actually.’

  Dolly paused walking, as if she knew at this point she should say something sympathetic, but then she carried on. ‘Sorry,’ she said a couple of steps later.

  Olive said, ‘It’s fine. It’s just a bit weird.’

  Dolly said, ‘Yeah.’

  The cottage looked different in the darkness. More menacing. More eerie.

  Dolly stopped short when she saw the state of it, the graffiti and the metal hoarding round the edge. ‘Oh my God.’ She glanced at Olive, who nodded sadly, wanting somehow to shield her sister from the heartbreak of seeing the derelict house.

  Dolly took a shaky breath. ‘What’s happened to it?’ Then she marched forward, yanking open the metal barrier just as Ruben had done. She shouted Zadie’s name.

  Olive didn’t want to go in again, she took a few steps towards the beach and called for Zadie but the darkness was too unnerving and she ended up following Dolly inside.

  The smell was engulfing. Mouldy and wet. There was no end to the weirdness of being back in what had once been their hallway. So hauntingly familiar underneath all the destruction. Olive looked for Dolly in the kitchen and living room, but when she heard creaking of the floorboards above, realised she had headed straight upstairs for their bedroom.

  Olive could feel her own reluctance holding her back on every step. An old picture of their mother’s hung at an angle on the landing. Olive found herself straightening it. When she got to their bedroom, she took a moment, trying to reorient her senses before poking her head round the door. Dolly was sitting on the edge of her twin bed, reaching behind to trace the outline of a popstar on a poster ripped from a magazine on the wall. She caught Olive’s eye and said, ‘I don’t even know who this is, but I remember loving him!’

  Olive could barely breathe, the room was packed full of so many memories. The notches on the doorframe that charted their height. The Blu Tack where other posters had been. The wallpaper with the little blue flowers. She went further in and saw on her own bed one of the two matching quilts their mother had made still draped over the mattress. She reached out a hand to touch it. The material was nibbled with moth holes and coated in a sheen of dust. The quilts had been on their beds forever. They wrapped themselves in them on Christmas morning when they opened their stockings and lay snuggled underneath them on the couch if they were ill.

  Dolly’s eyes widened when she saw it. ‘You left yours here?’

  Olive said, ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  Dolly was incredulous. ‘I can’t believe you could leave it. I have mine on my sofa still now.’

  ‘I think I was just too busy packing everything else up,’ Olive said, conscious that this wasn’t totally true, that part of her had left it out of sheer annoyance and whenever she’d seen Dolly’s she’d felt a little stab of regret.

  Dolly pursed her lips, ‘Of course you were.’

  Olive tipped her head, narrowed her eyes as she looked at her sister. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Who do you think packed this place up? Who do you think packed your suitcase and made sure you had your quilt? Who do you think left her things behind so that you could have your things because they wouldn’t all fit in Marge’s car?’

  ‘OK fine,’ snapped Dolly. ‘You. Perfect you! Saint Olive. Honestly, if I could go back and not be who I was then, I would do it in a heartbeat. Do you know how shit it is being the weak, pathetic one and being blamed for it for the rest of your life?’

  Olive swallowed. Dolly had never said anything like that before. As Olive sat down on the bed opposite, she found her instinct was to protect her. ‘You weren’t weak and pathetic, Dolly, you were just young.’

  ‘I wasn’t young though,’ said Dolly. ‘I just wasn’t tough. I was “the emotional one”.’ She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. ‘God, you know when you and Dad went off on your adventures, I would stay at home and practise not crying. And I couldn’t do it. I can sure as hell do it now though, I’ll tell you that.’ Dolly laughed, hollow and bitter.

  Olive felt a pang for the fact what she was saying was true. They had consciously left her, she was a burden. She watched Dolly stand up, walk round the little room opening cupboard drawers that had long since been emptied, and the ancient wardrobe door that fell off its hinges. Inside were a couple of old shirts and then Dolly laughed, reaching to the back to pull something out on a hanger. An old pair of flowery dungarees.

  ‘Oh my God. I can’t believe these are still here! See, people won’t even steal them.’ Dolly held them up against her. The colours faded, the fabric moth-eaten. She glanced up at Olive. ‘I mean they are awful, aren’t they?’

  Olive smiled. ‘They were sweet.’

  Dolly sat down on the bed again. ‘You would never have worn them!’ She sighed, pushing a stray hair back from her face. ‘Christ, I wore shit like this while you were having a deep life-changing love affair with Ruben!’ She chucked the dungarees on the bed.

  Olive frowned. ‘You were just a kid.’

  ‘I wasn’t that young Olive. I was just stupid, forgotten Dolly. I spent my whole time wanting what you had.’

  ‘Oh rubbish, you had a great life.’ Olive couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘I made sure you had a great life. Everything I did was to protect you. I was the one who sat up with Mum when she was puking her guts out on booze. I was the one paying the bloody bills. I made sure you had a childhood.’

  ‘Well maybe if you’d let me carry some of it then I could be a martyr about it now, too,’ Dolly snapped.

  Olive narrowed her eyes. ‘That’s unfair.’

  But Dolly carried on, ‘And then I would have never done stupid things like try and kiss Ruben or tell Dad to go to the orangery so he found out about Mum’s affair. And you wouldn’t have blamed me!’

  ‘I didn’t blame you!’ Olive’s voice rose in frustration.

  ‘You did blame me!’ Dolly hit the dusty bed with her hand.

  There was silence in the room. The waves rolled on the shore outside.

  Olive expected Dolly to carry on shouting, to hurl another couple of insults, but instead she just stared at her, held her gaze with sudden calm, unwavering eyes. She saw her take a breath in through her nose and out through her mouth, she could almost see her brain thinking, forcing herself back from the brink, then after maybe three or four seconds, she stood up and came and sat next to Olive on her bed.

  Dolly reached out and took Olive’s hand. A gesture that had never happened before. Her fingers were long and thin. Her skin cool where Olive thought her own palms were hot and sweaty from the stress of the situation. Dolly took another deep breath and looking Olive straight in the eye said, ‘You did blame me for Dad ending up at the orangery and seeing Mum and Lord de Lacy together. I know you did because I saw it in your eyes.’

  ‘I didn’t!’ Olive denied it vehemently.

  Dolly looked at her, eyes knowing and kind. ‘You’re really going to tell me you didn’t?’

  Olive had to look away, press her tongue against the roof of her mouth to stop the emotion. She felt suddenly like the roles had reversed. That she was the naughty child and Dolly the grown-up. She wanted to keep lying. To maintain
the pretence but she couldn’t, not under Dolly’s serene, all-knowing gaze. She closed her eyes. Then she nodded. ‘OK. I did blame you. I did and I shouldn’t have done.’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t have done,’ said Dolly calmly. ‘Because from that point on you hated me, and you also mothered me, which is a tough combination. As well as losing everything we had, I also lost you. You were so angry with me and I know I didn’t cope well at Marge’s but,’ Dolly swallowed, ‘I don’t think it was all my fault …’

  Olive pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. She thought of how angry she got when they were living at Aunt Marge’s house. Picking everything up, washing, ironing, making the packed lunches. All of it tainted with a mist of injustice; a vehemence aimed at her sister that if she’d just kept her mouth shut, none of this would have happened. Olive had been so full of anger, at everyone. Not least herself for not having clocked her mum’s affair earlier.

  Dolly carried on, ‘The time we spent at Aunt Marge’s together was pretty bad, Olive. You were always telling me what to do, always cross with me, but at the same time you could barely look at me.’

  Olive replied, defensive, ‘I was trying to talk you into going to school, to stop hanging out with those idiots! Of course I looked at you.’ But she knew she hadn’t. She remembered sighing a lot. While Dolly had physically spiralled out of control when they’d lived with Aunt Marge, Olive had always prided herself on maintaining a taut control. Of carefully refusing to think of the alternatives – the ones that Dolly would sob about. Sometimes she caught herself wondering how different life might have been had she run away with Ruben, how they might have been living in a cosy flat somewhere blissfully in love, but she swiftly quashed those daydreams, never admitting them to anyone – even herself when Ruben asked her just the other night.

  Dolly was watching her.

  Olive looked down at the bare damp floorboards, she thought about her chat with Aunt Marge in the shed, when she’d said that her parents’ faults were their own responsibility. It made Olive wonder if, perhaps with the absence of anyone else to blame, she had blamed Dolly, taken all her frustration out on her. It was an uncomfortable realisation. She shifted in her seat as she looked back at her sister, at their touching hands. She saw their different skin tones. Recognised the shape of her sister’s nails. Remembered the little scar on the back of her hand. And she said, ‘I’m sorry I was a bitch to you at Aunt Marge’s. I’m sorry I blamed you. I shouldn’t have done.’