The Summer Island Festival

by Rachel Burton

  But he hadn’t turned up at the beach hut the next day. She’d waited for him all morning. She hadn’t seen him again until it was time for him to leave. She’d been too angry with him to do more than accept his chaste kiss and his promise of calling her as soon as he got to America and she’d been too upset about her father leaving to think about anything at all.

  She had loved Luc since she was eleven years old and she had thought that everything would be all right. She’d still been young and naïve enough to think that they could somehow maintain a relationship and the Atlantic Ocean in between them wouldn’t be an obstacle.

  She had left for Cambridge early, gone before Luc had touched down in Tennessee, long before he could call her. Cathy had seemed glad of the excuse to drive Willow to Cambridge, to get away from the Island for a few days.

  Willow had always known deep down that it was more than just what had happened on that last day that had made her cut off contact with Luc, that there was a deeper reason as to why she never gave him the benefit of the doubt or a chance to explain. That summer when Luc left, when her father left, had shattered the life that she had taken for granted and it had stopped her wanting to be part of that life anymore. It was only now that she realised how angry she had been with her father too and how much damage that anger had done over the years by her not acknowledging it.

  ‘I was so angry that summer before I went to university,’ Willow said to her mother now. ‘I was so angry with Dad for leaving, at Krystal for taking him away—’

  ‘That’s not quite what happened,’ Cathy interrupted.

  ‘Why did he go then?’ Willow asked. Cathy had always sworn that Don didn’t leave because of Luc’s mum but Willow had always had her doubts about that, no matter how much her parents denied it. She couldn’t think of any other reason why he would have gone then, at the same time as Krystal and Luc.

  ‘It was complicated,’ Cathy said quietly and Willow sighed. Her mother had never wanted to talk about the past, however much Willow questioned her. She’d always been fascinated by her mother’s life before she was born but Cathy had never really wanted to answer her endless questions.

  ‘I felt as though Dad was abandoning me,’ Willow confessed. ‘Dad and Luc.’ She paused. ‘Skye was leaving too and her parents were moving to Bournemouth and the Island just didn’t feel like home anymore.’

  ‘Your father never abandoned you,’ Cathy said.

  ‘I know. I know that now.’

  When Willow looked back on that summer, she knew that she hadn’t been abandoned. Everyone was leaving to pursue their own dreams, to spread their wings and live their lives. Somewhere beneath all the anger and self-pity, Willow had been doing the same when she went to Cambridge. When she’d left the Island she’d been looking for her own tribe, somewhere she fitted in, with other people who were good at maths and weren’t obsessed with guitar strings and chord structures.

  ‘I left early because I didn’t want to stay here without Dad and Luc,’ Willow said. ‘And I’ve always assumed that the reason you were happy to take me to Cambridge was because you didn’t want to be here then, either.’

  Cathy didn’t reply. She didn’t need to.

  Willow had hoped that everything would happen instantaneously, the moment she arrived at Cambridge. She’d thought doors would open and new friends would appear. But the truth was that she’d spent most of her first year feeling homesick for somewhere she didn’t even want to be, missing Luc, regretting not saying goodbye to him properly or waiting for him to call, and worrying about her mum all alone. She’d drunk too much and kissed too many strangers and hadn’t worked as hard as she should have done. It hadn’t been until the end of her first year when Charlie had asked her to go to the May Ball with him that she’d started to feel as though she could move on, as though she could find a new way of being.

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been back to the Island for such a long time,’ she said. ‘But you know how much Charlie hated it here.’

  Cathy laughed gently. ‘He really did, didn’t he? Do you remember that time the tide came in and he got trapped at the far end of the beach?’

  ‘He had to be rescued.’ Willow smiled. Charlie hadn’t understood Willow’s life on the Island, the quietness of it, her mother’s handmade mandolins. It was the polar opposite of the world in which he’d grown up, with his expensive education and his barrister father. ‘He only likes beaches if the sand is white and the sea as warm as a bathtub.’ Willow tried not to think about how she should be on honeymoon in the Maldives right now.

  Willow had fallen into Charlie’s way of living and between them they’d earned money and accumulated all the trappings of success – the life that Charlie had planned, the life that they had both said they wanted. And instead of going to the Island to visit Cathy over the years, Charlie had paid for Cathy to visit them, for premium hotels, front-row theatre tickets and teas at the Ritz.

  ‘I don’t mind that you didn’t visit,’ Cathy said. ‘I’m not going to pretend that I was very comfortable with all those theatre trips and fancy hotels, but I thought you were happy and that’s all that mattered to me. But now I can see that you’re not happy and I wonder if you ever were.’

  ‘I thought I had everything I ever wanted,’ Willow replied echoing the words she had said to Skye.

  ‘Everything you wanted or everything Charlie wanted?’ Cathy asked.

  How had Willow never seen this before? How had she never realised that in her quest to find a life away from the Island she had let Charlie take control of everything?

  But if her life in London didn’t fit and life on the Island didn’t fit, then what was she supposed to do?

  ‘You never talked about what happened between you and Luc at the end of that last summer,’ Cathy said, asking about those months she had never wanted to talk about. ‘You don’t have to tell me, but I think I’ve got a good idea of what went on. The point is, have you let go of all that and moved on?’

  ‘Of course I have,’ Willow replied with more conviction than she felt. ‘It was years ago.’

  ‘Have you really dealt with it though?’ Cathy persisted. ‘Or have you just buried it down to get on with your life with Charlie? Because if you have I wouldn’t be surprised if it all reared its ugly head again right before you were about to get married.’

  ‘There was nothing to deal with,’ Willow said dismissively but she knew her mother was right. If there was really nothing left to deal with why did her stomach flip over every time Luc Harrison smiled at her?

  ‘Did you watch American Stars?’ Cathy asked.

  ‘Some of it,’ Willow replied not wanting to admit that she had watched every episode in secret on her laptop when Charlie wasn’t there, not wanting to admit that her thoughts had been turning to Luc a lot recently, more so than they had done for years.

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I thought he deserved to win.’

  Over the last year Luc had been everywhere she turned. It had been the strangest feeling to hear people at work talking about this musician called Lucien Hawke and knowing that he was the boy she had grown up with. Willow had never told anybody about Luc after she left the Island and, when one of her colleagues worked out that they were the same age and grew up in the same place, she had just dismissed him as somebody she’d known at school, somebody who wasn’t really in her group of friends. She’d ignored the gnawing feeling of guilt she’d felt whenever she’d said it. Luc had meant everything to her once and, try as she might, he ended up being impossible to forget.

  ‘What did Charlie think?’ Cathy asked.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About your childhood friend on the TV show.’

  ‘He didn’t watch it,’ Willow said quietly. ‘I’ve never told Charlie about Luc.’

  ‘You’ve never told him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Luc was my past and Charlie is my future.’ She paused. ‘Was my f
uture.’

  ‘The past comes to catch up with us all in the end, Willow.’

  ‘That’s very cryptic. What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you still love Charlie?’ Cathy asked.

  The fact that Willow paused was answer enough. She certainly thought she loved him, but somehow that hadn’t been enough in the end. It had seemed enough when she’d accepted his proposal on that Cornish beach, it had seemed enough when his mother had taken over the wedding planning and had told Willow that the church had a waiting list of well over a year. Willow hadn’t really wanted that church, Charlie’s mother had, but Willow had wanted everyone to be happy, so she’d agreed. She thought she loved Charlie enough for it not to matter.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Willow replied, even though she was fairly sure she did know because all she could think about was Luc Harrison leaning against the doorframe of Skye’s shop with his thumbs tucked into his pockets, that lazy smile playing on his lips. ‘I thought I did, but how can I when I couldn’t bring myself to marry him? When I’ve embarrassed myself and him in front of all his family and friends.’ The feelings of anger and shame roiled in Willow’s stomach again.

  ‘Perhaps because someone else still has a piece of your heart,’ Cathy replied. She had a strange faraway look in her eye and for a moment Willow didn’t think she was talking about Charlie and her anymore. But who else could she be talking about?

  ‘Mum—’ she began.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ Cathy interrupted as though she’d suddenly come back down to earth. ‘Are you going back to London next week as planned?’

  ‘I don’t have a lot of choice,’ Willow replied. ‘I need to go back to work.’

  ‘You don’t want to take some leave?’

  She could take some leave; she’d got enough owing to her. But she’d worked so hard to get where she was and she was reluctant to let that go, to seem weak in the face of adversity. Working in the City required extra fortitude, especially for women. But at the same time she didn’t know if she could go back, if she could face what was waiting for her, and all because of an instinctual impulse that struck outside a church in Surrey last Saturday morning.

  But maybe her mother needed her help. Cathy seemed to have a lot going on, problems with the festival for starters, not to mention that the next few weeks were the busiest of the year for The Music Shop. If Willow had to take leave for reasons other than purely selfish ones then perhaps work, and Charlie, would understand?

  ‘Do you need my help?’ she asked.

  ‘Well,’ Cathy said slowly. ‘If you decided to stay for a while you could carry on helping me out in the shop while I sort all this out.’ She waved her hand at the paperwork in front of her. ‘The Big Festival starts next week and the shop is going to get really busy.’

  ‘I found out this morning that I can still string a mandolin almost as well as you,’ Willow replied.

  ‘Of course you can,’ Cathy said, and Willow felt a sudden sense of belonging – something she hadn’t felt in years.

  Coming back to the Island hadn’t been anything like she’d expected – she’d thought she would hate being back and be desperate to leave, desperate to go back to her life in London. But far from being the claustrophobic small town that she remembered, so far Seaview had helped her to breathe and to be. Its big skies and beautiful beaches had made her realise that it was her life in London that felt too small, too tight.

  Everything about being back had surprised her, from Skye’s warm welcome to the way all her mother’s friends had treated her as though she’d never been gone. Instead of remembering all the things she’d hated about the Island, her memories had come full circle to the good things – the music, the friendliness, the sound of the waves.

  And Luc.

  She hadn’t expected to see Luc again.

  ‘So are you going to stay?’ Cathy asked interrupting her thoughts.

  ‘I’m going to think about it,’ Willow replied.

  *

  Willow’s parents first started The Seaview Folk Festival in 1990. She and Luc were two at the time so it had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember. It began as a few friends coming together to play at the end of the festival season and rapidly grew into something so much more. Within a year the famous open mic night at The Three Doves pub had begun and, by the time Willow was four, the last night of the festival had moved to the beach and a portion of the profits were given to local charities.

  It had always stayed relatively small for legal reasons. After the early days of the original Isle of Wight festival had wreaked havoc on the Island, in 1971 Parliament added a section to the Isle of Wight County Council Act stating that no open-air gatherings of more than 5,000 people would be allowed on the Island without a special permit and it was 2001 before the more famous Isle of Wight Festival started up again. Cathy and Don had always kept the numbers small; that way they were always guaranteed the necessary licences.

  Until this year anyway.

  Don had first come up with the idea of the festival just after Willow had been born. Both Cathy and Krystal were stuck on the Island with new babies while Don was on the road with whatever band needed a touring guitarist. They were both bored and missing touring, so Don had the bright idea that they should try to set something up locally. Nobody ever anticipated what a huge success the folk festival would come to be.

  Coming back during the planning stages of the festival, Willow felt as though she had stepped out of an ordered life, a life filled with routine and discipline, and stepped into the chaos that was life on the Island. She tried not to think about Luc’s crooked smile and his green eyes and instead she concentrated on scrolling through her phone, reading the messages Charlie had left, noticing that he hadn’t been in touch for the last three days.

  She knew she wouldn’t be ready to go back to London in a week’s time, but if she stayed on the Island there was so much uncertainty. She’d have to see Skye again and she’d have to talk to her about that afternoon in the pub. She owed Skye an apology for that at least. Luc would be here all summer as well and it would be impossible to avoid him as he was so involved with the festival. Could she spend a summer with him and not talk about what happened when he left?

  And on top of everything else there was this mess with the festival. She wanted to find Roger Beck and tell him exactly what she thought of him. While that wouldn’t help her mother’s cause, it would help her get rid of some of her own frustration.

  The festival had always made Cathy so happy and Willow had to make sure that it went ahead. She had no idea how, but she’d have to work it out because she knew that cancelling the festival would break her mother’s heart.

  Willow thought about that faraway look in her mother’s eye when she’d spoken about someone else having a piece of her heart. Cathy was ostensibly talking about her still having feelings for Luc, but was there more to it? Did someone still have a piece of her mother’s heart? Someone who wasn’t her father?

  Sometimes Willow wished that she had spoken to her mother more about what happened when she and Don had separated, but she’d been so wrapped up in herself and her feelings for Luc that summer, so wrapped up in dreading him leaving, dreading never seeing him again, that she hadn’t noticed anything else.

  And now she had to make a decision – whether to stay on the Island and help her mum make sure the festival went ahead or go back to London, back to the job she loved and had worked so hard for, back to her house and her mortgage.

  Back to Charlie.

  Logically there was no decision to make here – she couldn’t afford to take the summer off. She had some savings but they wouldn’t cover the huge mortgage that she and Charlie had on their central London apartment and she had every intention of paying her way, whatever might happen to her relationship. She had to go back to work.

  Didn’t she?

  She couldn’t let herself get sucked into the music and the gentle, slow pace of life. She coul
dn’t let herself be lulled by the lap of the waves on the shore and the screech of the seagulls over the cliffs. She had to remember why she left in the first place. They were all different people now; they had all moved on. Skye’s life might be here but Willow’s was in London. And Luc’s life was clearly in America if that phone call was anything to go by.

  Before she made any decision though she had to speak to Charlie.

  When she finally called him the next morning his mobile rang out. It didn’t go to voicemail and the ringtone sounded strange, as though he was abroad. But where would he have gone? He didn’t answer the landline in their flat either and Willow hung up before the answer machine kicked in. She didn’t want to listen to the sound of her own voice on the outgoing message. Her voice from a previous time, a happy time, the night they’d moved into that flat.

  ‘We haven’t seen him,’ Charlie’s secretary told Willow when she tried to call him at his office. ‘Nobody has heard from him since before the…’ She stopped abruptly.

  ‘The wedding,’ Willow finished for her. Charlie’s secretary mumbled in agreement and hurried to get off the phone as though she was embarrassed to talk to Willow, as though her inability to get married was contagious.

  She could call Charlie’s parents but she didn’t relish the thought of having to listen to them as they told her about all the shame she’d brought on the family and the money she’d wasted.

  So she took the coward’s way out and sent him an email.

  8

  Luc

  Luc walked away from Seaview to the far end of the beach and thought about all the gigs he used to play with his mum and Cathy when he was a kid, the pubs he’d played in over his last couple of summers on the Island, the night he’d won the open mic competition at the Three Doves when he was only sixteen.

  What had happened to that Luc? Where had he gone?

  His phone rang and his agent’s number flashed up on the screen again. He couldn’t ignore the call again. He had to admit that he had nothing, not even the opening bars of a song.