Clara laughed. ‘I see you’re still sticking to the healthy-eating plan, then?’
‘Of course,’ Jasmine raised her voice above ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, which was belting out from the juke box. It was one of the newest records on the Crumpled Horn’s Wurlitzer, and therefore got a considerable share of airplay time. ‘I’m no great shakes on the gas ring – and Eddie Deebley’s fish suppers and the Crow’s Nest’s doughnuts manage to supply everything I need.’
‘Not everything, surely?’ Ewan raised a piratical eyebrow. ‘Doesn’t Andrew provide something?’
‘Not much, believe me.’ Jasmine hauled the carrier bag off the top of the bar. ‘And possibly not even that for very much longer . . .’
The veranda was empty. So was the hut. Happily, Jasmine clicked off the top of a bottle of Old Ampney, opened two packets of crisps, and as a sop to gentility, quartered the pickled egg on a saucer. Then, slumping in one of the canvas chairs and propping her feet up on the veranda rail, she gave a sigh of contentment.
She was just dabbing up the last of the crisp crumbs with a vinegary forefinger when Andrew’s head appeared at the top of the beach steps. The rest of him soon followed and he looked at the midnight feast with some disgust. ‘Haven’t you saved me any?’
‘Nope. Sorry. I thought you’d gone.’
He collapsed into the chair beside her. ‘I went for a walk along the beach. I needed to do some serious thinking.’
Jasmine swallowed a mouthful of beer. ‘And have you?’
‘I have. I may have been a little hasty earlier. While you were out, I – um – took the liberty of counting your takings for this evening . . . No, let me finish. Not a particularly good night, was it? But even so, you’ve made a profit. And the nights that you make a profit outweigh the ones when you don’t.’
‘Yes, so?’ Jasmine was coldly furious that he’d ferreted around in the bedside drawers. Still, it was her own fault. She should be more careful.
‘So, even if you’re investing your inheritance money in the stadium, that will make you a shareholder. Which, in turn, will bring in some sort of income. Even if you haven’t enough capital left to invest in the dealership, your financial status will be considerably enhanced by your annual profit margin, and–’
‘Andrew! For God’s sake stop talking like The Money Programme and cut to the chase.’ The lights from Eddie Deebley’s Fish Bar bounced across the black sea; the scent of frying and vinegar wafted on the air. Despite the crisps and pickled egg, Jasmine’s stomach rumbled. ‘What exactly are you trying to tell me?’
He leaned forward, the moonlight making his cropped fair hair look prematurely grey. ‘That I think we should look for a house now. Together. With the preservation order on these huts, you could make a small fortune if you sold – and I’ve got my savings. We could definitely afford something on the Chewton Estate.’
‘Dear God!’ Jasmine rocked forward. ‘I’ve only just managed to escape from there! Do you honestly think I want to entomb myself back in the Peyton Place of Ampney Crucis?’
Andrew blinked. ‘I don’t understand . . .’
‘My mother and father don’t sleep together! My mother is having an affair – something I thought you might know about, seeing as you spend far more time there than I do!’
Andrew, strangely, Jasmine thought, began to laugh. ‘Your mother? Oh, God, Jas! No way!’
‘She is! I’m sure she is! And don’t forget, you said everyone at the damn dealership thought she was top totty or something disgusting!’ Jasmine sucked in her breath. This was appalling. She’d honestly thought she’d break off the engagement tonight and now Andrew was trying to weigh her down by tying her ankles to bricks and mortar. She clutched at the final straw. ‘And I can’t possibly think about marrying you – or anyone – not while my mother is –’
‘Yvonne,’ Andrew interrupted, ‘isn’t the guilty party, Jasmine. Oh, dear me, no. I can’t believe that you think – look, I never wanted to say this, but everyone else in Ampney Crucis knows what’s going on with your parents’ marriage. I can’t believe that you don’t.’
Chapter Fifteen
‘We’re all going on a summer holiday . . . la-la-la!’ Daff trilled, her face covered by a head scarf, as Jix and April bundled her out of the door of number 51 and shoved her into the back of the hired Toyota people carrier.
Cair Paravel and Bee were already installed, along with carrier bags full of food, Thermos flasks of iced water, all the beach toys that the charity shop could provide, several changes of clothing, bathing costumes, large towels, and a map of the Dorset coast.
They’d argued the toss over the driving duties, and eventually decided that Jix should take the wheel there, while April did the return trip. It would be impossible, April reckoned, as she leaned over, checking everyone’s seat belts and door locks, to gauge which of them was the most excited.
Just as Jix started the engine, Joel and Rusty appeared hand in hand on the doorstep and waved them away, and, despite it being ridiculously early in the morning, Sofia and Tonio, in some very glam nightwear, leaned from the upstairs window of the Pasta Place and called their good luck greetings. Waving like mad, knowing that she’d hold her breath until they’d left the High Street, and the stadium, and the grey parts of Bixford behind,
April couldn’t believe that they were, at last, on their way.
Cair Paravel, obviously experiencing an emotional dilemma, thumped his tail ecstatically while at the same time emitting low rumbling growls at the back of Daff’s head. This however, left Jix’s mum unfazed: even before they’d cleared Bixford South, she was handing out egg sandwiches, and Beatrice-Eugenie, with Cair Paravel now sprawled on top of her, had her nose pressed excitedly to the window, claiming to be able to see the sea. With a huge sigh of relief, April leaned back in her seat and finally exhaled.
Jix, moving the car through the early morning traffic of East London, looked across at her and grinned. ‘Never thought we’d do it, did you?’
‘No. I must admit I’ve had kittens for days, just waiting for something to go wrong.’
‘Martina was the worst.’ Jix indicated to leave the city. ‘I thought she’d sussed something.’
‘Me too. God, I still can’t believe the paddy she threw when I asked for a couple of days off. You’d think there was no one else in the country who could shake a bloody cocktail.’
That, April reckoned, was actually an understatement. Martina had screamed and threatened and blustered, and finally, when April had calmly pointed out that she was entitled to twenty-two days leave a year and had so far only taken ten of them and she’d take it to the union, caved in. As April had never belonged to a union in her life, this had been a bit of a wild card, but Martina had obviously had unpleasant dealings with unions in her past, and went pleasingly white-lipped at the threat.
Jix said he’d had similar problems with Oliver, but surprisingly Sebastian had intervened on his behalf, and said that Jix should certainly take some time off because he’d worked diligently for the family for so long – and how would they ever replace him if he decided to go?
Sebastian had been particularly annoying about the whole thing and, having discovered from the Gillespie Stadium office wall chart that Jix and April were having the same time off, had jumped to all manner of erroneous conclusions. He’d made some very uncool remarks regarding romantic liaisons, which of course they had both strenuously denied, claiming that the days off were simply a coincidence.
April still found Sebastian’s volte face a little disconcerting. He’d been continually friendly, sitting at the Copacabana’s bar and telling April about his days – and nights out with Brittany. Jix said he’d been much the same with him. They were convinced that he knew about Bee and Cair Paravel and was simply lulling them into a false sense of security. They knew they couldn’t trust him. As April had said, Sebby was a Gillespie, and everyone knew that the Gillespies were all born untrustworthy.
Anyway, despite
everything the Gillespies had thrown at them, they were off, on their way to Ampney Crucis, for Cair Paravel’s first public performance. For ages, ever since they’d decided to enter him for the race, it had been difficult to explain to Daff what they were doing. Naturally, neither of them had wanted to leave her behind, but they had both felt that the agoraphobia would only be exacerbated by the trip.
Jix had looked very doubtful when April had suggested the possibility of fetching her along too. ‘I don’t know what’d happen to her with all that vast expanse – you know, sea and sky and beach and stuff. I honestly don’t think she’ll be able to cope.’
But Daff had said as long as they could park the car somewhere near the sea, and she kept her seat belt on while she gazed through the windscreen, she felt that she’d have a whale of a time. They’d explained that the race meeting was at night, and therefore she might be left alone for hours, but again, Daff had maintained that with something to eat and drink, a fairish supply of word-puzzle books and the car radio for company, she’d think she was in heaven.
The journey was taking far longer than they’d anticipated, mainly because Bee, Daff and Cair Paravel all seemed constantly to want to go to the loo. April grinned to herself as Jix resignedly pulled into the fifth set of motorway services; and while she went through the rigmarole of seeing to Bee and Daff – who had to be guided into the Ladies with the scarf over her head, which meant that they miraculously jumped the queues of bladder-bursting holidaymakers who obviously all thought she had something contagious – Jix led Cair Paravel round and round identical ornamental flowerbeds.
It certainly wasn’t, April thought as once more they all fastened themselves back into the people carrier, the way the racing greyhounds arrived at Bixford. They, the elite of the doggy world, travelled in kennelled and cushioned luxury, at exactly the right temperature, with precisely the correct amount of meat and vitamins inside them. Cair Paravel, merrily chomping on egg sandwiches and desperately trying to worry the life out of the back of Daff’s head, was panting like a steam train and had become feverishly excited.
With Jix in his faded jeans and tie-dye vest and bangles and scarves, and her in her skimpy denim dress and the pink sandals, April was also well aware that they looked nothing like the bejewelled upper echelons of the game, who arrived at the Gillespie Stadium in matching designer bomber jackets with the name of their dog embroidered in neon threads across the back. She and Jix, Daff and Bee looked for all the world like the Raggle-Taggle Gypsies-O about to go mad at the seaside.
April and Jix had spent the last week teaching Bee the route by rote, and since they’d left London she’d been chanting, ‘M25, M3, M27 to Cadnam roundabout, A31 through New Forest, then look for a signpost.’ By the time they reached Basingstoke, it had started to get a bit wearing.
‘Oh, my!’ Daff, mercifully interrupting Bee and, ignoring Cair Paravel’s teeth which were bared in a manic grin against the back of her neck, leaned forward as they purred through the New Forest. ‘This is wonderful! So many trees! All enclosed! Oh, I could live here!’
Jix and April looked at each other in delight. It was wonderful, April thought, simply to see Daff so enjoying herself. The escape, albeit a brief one, from Bixford – even if Cair Paravel made a complete ass of himself on the race track – had done them all the power of good. And supposing, just supposing, that he behaved himself, and ran properly, this could be just the start of days out such as this. They could pile into whatever transport they could find, and travel the country. And after next month, April thought blissfully, when she’d been to the Corner Gallery at Swaffield and told Noah about his daughter, then he could join them too.
Sighing with deep contentment, she wriggled down more comfortably in her seat, sang along to ‘Postman Pat’, and knew that she hadn’t been this happy for years.
Ampney Crucis was probably like none of them had expected. Certainly, when April had visualised it, she’d known it would be small, but had imagined it to be a scaled-down Bournemouth or Southend: very lively, with tons of attractions for the tourists, and shops and amusement arcades and funfairs and – well – a typical brash British seaside resort.
The minute that Jix turned the Toyota on to the Ampney Crucis road, April fell hopelessly in love.
The narrow road wound away downhill towards the signposted village, shaded beneath overhanging chestnut trees; and the roadside verges were head-high with curly acid-green ferns, which escaped the confines of their white picket fences and brushed against the windows of the people carrier. One side of the road was woodland, with sandy pathways just visible, twisting up and down beneath the trees, and a stream bubbling and crashing alongside them. Opposite, there were houses, a higgledy-piggledy mixture of tall red-brick villas and tiny cottages, all with picture-book gardens. On the horizon, past the few shops, there were pine trees towering into the very blue sky. Banks of gorse and bracken flopped indolently across pavements, and even the air was calm, floating in through the open windows with a sort of heavy languor.
Jix, driving slowly, looked across at April. ‘There’s no traffic. No people. It’s like – like a film set . . .’
‘No it isn’t – it’s like heaven.’ April felt the lump growing in her throat. This was it. The place she’d come with Noah and Bee, once they were a real family, once September was over, and find the roses-round-the-door dream home.
Daff was staring out at the quiet streets, the tiny shops, the square grey church as they passed. Tears slid down her plump cheeks and April touched her gently. ‘Daff? What’s up?’
Nothing, sweet. I’m just being silly . . . It’s so lovely – like you see on the telly – like villages I thought I remembered from the past, but thought I’d probably got confused about. Oh, you know, rose-tinted glasses and all that. My mum and dad brought me to places like this when I was young Bee’s age, and I’ve never forgotten them, but this – this is even better than that.’ She sniffed. ‘It’s the most perfect place in the world.’
Cair Paravel, who had been sleeping since the New Forest, snoring, his whiskers twitching, woke up and rumbled a warning growl at Daff.
She dabbed at her damp eyes with a tissue. ‘See! Even he agrees with me.’
April had the map on her knees and as the people carrier approached a crossroads in the centre of the village, she tapped Jix’s arm. ‘Left, I reckon, if we’re going to see the sea. The greyhound stadium is further on, but we’ve got plenty of time to discover that later.’
As they turned left, the light changed instantly. The sky was luminescent, and where the end of the road dropped away, there was a sense of nothingness. April tried to swallow the lump in her throat again. The wind-stunted pine trees on either side of the street swayed slightly, dipping away on the near horizon, forming a tiny valley at the edge of the cliffs. There was a pub called the Crumpled Horn on one side of the road, and a traditional beach cafe on the other, and then nothing but this image of pale, quivering infinity.
‘Mummeee!’ Bee’s shriek shattered the silence. ‘Is that it? Is that the sea?’
Jix turned round. ‘Yep, Bee, that’s the sea. You can just see it through the trees, can’t you? It looks like the sky’s turned to liquid, doesn’t it?’
April chewed her lips. Jix’s voice was husky. It would never do for them all to be in tears at the same time.
The cliff-top car park was almost deserted. Still, April reckoned, as it wasn’t quite nine o’clock this was probably to be expected. No doubt as the day progressed, hundreds of cars would line up along the shingle and tufty grass – and hopefully some of them would stay on for the greyhound meeting. Nearly nine o’clock. Still more then twelve hours to go before Cair Paravel hit the race track; twelve hours, April thought blissfully, unfastening her seat belt and unbuckling Beatrice-Eugenie, to explore this little piece of paradise.
With Cair Paravel clipped securely to his lead, and Daff ensconced behind the steering wheel, staring out with no fear at the vastness in front
of her, Jix, April and Bee wandered to the edge of the cliffs.
The vast, quiet beauty took April’s breath away. The sun was climbing steadily in a cloudless sky, already tingling her shoulders, and below her, a set of sand-encrusted wooden steps twisted their way down the cliffs towards a row of brightly coloured wooden beach huts.
‘Blimey!’ She nudged Jix. ‘Look at them. Aren’t they the business? God, imagine how brilliant that must be – having one of those for your holiday, sitting in splendour. Oh, and look! There’s some more steps leading down from them to the beach, and – my God – look at the colour of that sand!’
She wanted to jump up and down and shout with delight. Never, ever had she felt this sense of freedom. The coastline curved away in both directions, disappearing round gorsy headlands, forming a perfect curve of pale golden sand. The sea, like shot silk beneath the sun, was splodgy with moving colour – green and grey and turquoise and pale blue – flecked with spindrift foam where the gentle waves formed and fell over an ocean bed gully. With a pang of recognition, April thought it was exactly like Noah’s painting – the very painting that had made it possible for them to be here in the first place.
She’d have to tell him. In September she’d tell him about this place, and how exactly right he’d got the ocean’s colours – and then she’d bring him here to see it for himself and she knew that he’d fall in love with it, and Bee – and hopefully with her all over again – and the dream would become a reality.
Putting this future bliss on hold, April hauled herself back to the present. Cair Paravel had his snout lifted to the air, inhaling the new scents greedily, his whippy blue tail doing its rotor blade impression. Bee was wide-eyed and speechless. Jix looked much the same.
‘Shall we get all the gubbins, then?’ April asked. ‘And make our way down to the beach? We might as well pick a good spot while it’s quiet.’
Jix, his hair blowing in the breeze like a television shampoo advert, eventually dragged his eyes away from the view and looked embarrassed. ‘Yeah – it’ll be brilliant . . . Um – did your parents take you to the seaside when you were a kid?’
Nothing to Lose Page 17
