by Emlyn Rees
‘I quite like the idea of retiring to a small island,’ Kellie said, joining him in the bathroom. ‘It’s romantic.’
‘And totally impractical, but he’s so stubborn there was no telling him.’
‘I’d like to see it one day. It’s beautiful, right?’
‘If you like that kind of thing, but to be honest, at this time of year it’s just barren and bleak and windswept, and there’s absolutely nothing to do. For city people like us, it’s just . . . I don’t know . . . you’d find it much too low level. Boring.’
Kellie put her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his back, as he started to brush his teeth. She didn’t want to argue with him. He always seemed to forget that she’d grown up in Australia and was used to wilderness. It didn’t matter. She liked him referring to them as an ‘us’.
‘You never talk about your family much, apart from what happened to Stephanie. How is she?’ Kellie felt for Elliot’s elder sister. She wished she could reach out to her, but she knew that even thinking this was overstepping the boundaries of her current relationship with Elliot. It was so frustrating to be so central to his life in some ways and entirely excluded in others.
‘Coping, I guess. I suppose that’s one good thing about Christmas at Dad’s. It’ll take her mind off things. It might cheer her up a bit.’
‘You can cheer her up, I’m sure.’ Kellie let go of him and looked at him in the mirror, trying to memorise the details of his face, knowing that very soon she’d once again be aching to see him. ‘What about her husband? How’s he?’
Elliot sighed and turned to her. ‘Do we have to talk about them? It’s bad enough that I’ve got to see them all in a little while.’
She picked up her toothbrush, noticing that the contents of her washbag were strewn all over the side, whilst Elliot’s were neatly stashed in his leather bag, which he now zipped closed. Why didn’t he understand that of course she wanted to talk about them? After all, one day they’d be her family too. But she knew it was still too soon to discuss that particular issue.
‘Darling,’ Elliot said, looking at her in the mirror. ‘They’re just family. It’s not important.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Suddenly, she felt like crying.
‘Don’t be like that. Don’t you know I’m going to miss you every second?’
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Perhaps she was being unfair, she thought, as she felt him sigh into her hair. Perhaps it really was going to be worse for him.
‘At least there’s Taylor,’ she said, as he rubbed her back. She pulled away and looked up at him, trying to be brave.
‘I know. I just hope it’s not too late to get through to her before she grows up completely. She’s changed so much since she’s been away at school. She’ll probably go out of her mind without Sky Plus on Brayner, but at least it’ll mean I get to spend some time with her.’
Kellie wondered what Taylor looked like. Elliot hadn’t shown Kellie a recent picture of his daughter, but she’d memorised the details of the cute little toddler framed in silver on Elliot’s desk. She tried to transpose those baby features on to a young girl. She imagined Taylor in braids and braces shyly staring through an overgrown fringe.
‘You’ve just got to be kind to her – and don’t patronise her. Don’t come over the big lawyer. She’ll have to let you in eventually,’ she said.
‘I hope so, I really do. I need to make things right with her. I need her to know that when things change in the new year she’ll still be a part of my life. That she always will be.’
‘She’ll know that. We’ll make her see. I promise.’
We . . . she’d said it without even thinking about it. And he hadn’t even flinched. We . . . that’s what they were: Kel and El. A team.
Elliot hugged her again. She was glad that he trusted her intuition about his daughter. She was looking forward to meeting Taylor and nervous too. Kellie was under no illusion that it might be hard for Taylor to come to terms with her father being with a new partner. She could still remember how angry she’d been at her own parents for splitting up – and she’d been nearly out of school, five years older than Taylor was now. Nevertheless, Kellie hoped she could provide some of the stability and attention that seemed to be missing from Taylor’s life. The girl was only a young teenager. Perhaps they might even be friends, once Taylor could see for herself how much Kellie loved her father. For a moment, Kellie spun off into a mini fantasy, picturing herself and Taylor laughing and linking arms as they walked down the King’s Road, laden with shopping bags.
‘Hey, I’ve got something for you,’ Elliot whispered.
Kellie glanced down between them and felt him press against her. ‘Again?’
She laughed as he lifted her up and carried her back towards the bed.
‘But don’t you have to meet your sister –’
‘You’re more important,’ he silenced her with a kiss, ‘and I’ve got something else for you too,’ he said, as he put her on the bed. She watched him scramble across the room and reach into the pocket of his coat.
She looked up at Elliot, wide-eyed as he returned. He grinned back as she took the small Tiffany box from his hand.
‘Go on,’ he said.
Inside was a beautiful twisted platinum chain, with a heart-shaped diamond pendant on it. It looked incredibly expensive and it couldn’t have been more perfect if she’d chosen it herself.
‘What’s this?’ she asked, unsure of what it meant.
‘I want you to think of it as an anniversary present, just in case you thought I’d forgotten,’ he said.
She flung her arms around his neck. ‘I love it.’
‘And I love you, baby,’ he whispered, ‘and I promise you, we’ll be together every Christmas after this.’
Chapter 2
It seemed to have got much colder, as the boat finally reached Brayner and moored next to the barnacle-covered jetty in Green Bay harbour. Stephanie could hardly wait to get off. She realised that for most of the twenty-five-minute journey from Fleet Town, she’d been holding her breath. She truly hated being on the water, especially in a boat with all her family on board. She took a deep breath now to steady her nerves. The air was so fresh and cold it hurt the inside of her nose.
She shaded her eyes and looked up at the typical postcard shot of Green Bay village, which consisted of around forty houses and cottages, a tea shop, the Windcheater public house, the post office and a youth hostel, which was open in the summer. The only other buildings of significance were the lighthouse behind her, the old school house, with its corrugated iron roof adorned with Christmas lights, and the pretty Norman church. The tourist board couldn’t have designed it any better if they’d tried, but for Stephanie, arriving in Green Bay was always tinged with a certain disappointment. It never matched the rather romantic sun-drenched image she held of it in her memory, especially on a day like today.
‘Be careful!’ Stephanie called, as her son Simon barged past her to be first out of the boat. In a second he was off, running up the steep, cobbled slipway towards the road, where a Santa decoration flapped in the breeze on the iron lamppost.
She could tell, as she watched him ignore her warning and spread out his arms to zoom away, that he was thrilled to be back on the island. Like his grandfather, Simon found the sheer expanse of sky a taste of freedom. It was certainly a different world from the one he was used to in their traffic-clogged, graffiti-adorned suburb of Bristol.
But at least in Bristol, Simon could be contained. She felt her heart lurch as he reached the road.
‘David, can you just leave Nat and watch him,’ she said, irritated that her husband was unsteadily lifting up Nat, their five-year-old daughter, as well as two of the bags and the rucksack, out of the boat. ‘Just give her to me,’ she snapped. ‘Come to Mummy,’ she said, holding out her arms.
‘Simon’s fine, OK? Let him go,’ David said, as Stephanie took Nat from him.
David was tall and s
till as slim as he was when Stephanie married him ten years ago, but he looked bulky in the black North Face puffer jacket. His cheeks were pink from the cold boat ride and his face was creased with laughter lines, but he looked deadly serious as his brown eyes now flashed a warning at her.
Stephanie ignored it. She knew he didn’t want her to draw attention publicly to Simon, but that was because David refused to recognise that there was a problem.
The truth was that Simon was a problem. Or rather, he wasn’t. He was perfect; he was her son – but he did need watching. He did need more attention than other eight-year-olds. He just had so much energy, so many thoughts, that sometimes he had difficulty channelling them all productively. That’s what the child psychiatrist had told Stephanie. He’d outlined a plan for her and David to help Simon focus more on what was going on around him, and to take each thought at a time and work it through. It infuriated her that David didn’t take this as seriously as she did. He was distrustful of psychiatrists. He didn’t think Simon needed one. He thought that if they all stuck their heads in the sand, then the problem would simply go away.
David brushed roughly past her with the bags, as he climbed out of the boat.
‘Does Uncle Elliot have any more treats?’ Nat whispered to Stephanie, giggling conspiratorially. The fake fur trim on her pink suede coat tickled Stephanie’s face and she put her hand out to flatten it down. As she did, she could see that Nat’s tongue was blue with food dye.
Elliot had been slipping both children handfuls of M&Ms the whole way over behind Stephanie’s back, as they’d bumped through the spray. She’d wanted to stop him, but she also knew how pleased the kids were to see their favourite uncle.
‘I thought you were feeling seasick?’ Stephanie said.
‘I’m not now, Mummy. Please,’ Nat begged.
‘No. You’ve had enough.’
Stephanie unloaded the rest of the bags, before helping Nat off the boat. She felt relieved when they were safely on dry land. She turned back and looked at Elliot, who was still talking to the guy in the boat who’d brought them over from St John’s.
Her brother, oblivious to all the stress she felt, seemed happy and relaxed. He looked surprisingly well, Stephanie noticed, feeling envious and affectionate, at the same time. But then, Elliot had always had a charmed life. Still, she was so relieved he’d met up with them all in Fleet Town. Without him to lift their spirits, Stephanie would almost certainly have lost her temper with David.
‘And you can come and take us back whenever we want? I just give you a call?’ Elliot checked with the ferryman. She watched Elliot reach under his buttoned up navy coat into the back pocket of his jeans, bringing out a silver money clip and peeling off a note.
‘Just get on the radiotelephone if you need me,’ the man said. He stood patiently on the boat, as the waves slapped against the slipway. ‘Just ask for Ben. That’s me. Your father will have the number.’
‘Come on,’ Stephanie said to Elliot. ‘It’s freezing.’
He handed over some cash and stepped reluctantly on to the slipway with his expensive-looking leather Gladstone bag. Ben unhooked the rope, and revved the motor, obviously anxious to get going. A cloud of blue smoke sped across the water.
Stephanie rolled her eyes at her brother before grabbing his arm. ‘It’s not going to be that bad,’ she said, before calling out to Ben, ‘Don’t worry. He won’t need to escape, I promise. Thanks for the lift. Happy Christmas.’
Ben waved and the boat turned away.
Ahead of them, Stephanie heard the beep of a car. Her father was pulling up on the small road in front of the cottages in his dark green Land-Rover. He stepped out and waved. Stephanie felt her heart lift as she waved back, undergoing the familiar cocktail of emotions she always went through when she arrived to see him: nostalgic homecoming mixed with anxiety and that slightly shaken feeling, as if she’d wrong-footed herself in a no-man’s-land between her adult life and her childhood self.
From down here, he looked older, his white hair blowing upright in the wind, but he was alive and smiling and that was all that mattered. He opened the double door at the back of the Land-Rover and Rufus, the last remaining offspring of Samson, Elliot’s childhood Springer, leapt out and started racing around in circles of excitement. Stephanie watched her father being almost bowled over by Simon, who became swiftly enveloped in her father’s green padded jacket. Then, before Stephanie could protest, Nat was running towards Stephanie’s father, too.
She watched Nat go, listening to her shriek of delight. She could see in her children’s faces how much they needed a holiday, how desperately they needed a break from her. It made her so sad; she felt the urge to grab them back and hug them both. Their dysfunctional and yet familiar family dynamic was about to be diluted into the greater whole of the Thorne clan. How would she cope, left alone with David without the protection of her children, who were bound to get sucked into the vortex of the Christmas jamboree?
Christmas. She’d been dreading it for so long and now it was finally here, but seeing her father and hearing his laughter borne up on the breeze made her realise that she had to make an effort. She didn’t have to let the old family hierarchy slot back into place. Living under her father’s roof, by his and Elliot’s rules – whose turn it was to lay the table, who was best at being in charge of asking the Trivial Pursuit questions, who got to walk the dog in the morning and who decided what to watch on the box – she didn’t have to let any of this slowly drive her nuts. And she wouldn’t. She’d float through it all serenely, like a perfect, private cloud. She’d resist the temptation to revert to type and start acting like the argumentative teenager she’d once been. She wouldn’t squabble with Elliot about his cigars, or leaving the newspaper on the floor in the downstairs loo, she’d rise above it all. They all could. They could all act like adults. Just for three days. Could it really be that hard?
‘Here, let me help,’ Elliot said, as Stephanie loaded up with all the carrier bags by her feet.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how we’ve managed to bring so much junk for three days.’
She glanced up at him. He had a mole high up on his cheekbone, a genetic legacy from their mother’s side of the family which Simon had inherited, too. It had been the mark of her mother’s beauty and now, in his prime, the small blemish made Elliot more handsome than ever. She noticed the wrinkles around his eyes and the flecks of grey in his hair, but she could still see the boy inside him, the boy who had broken the hearts of all her friends, even though they’d been older than him.
‘You OK, Steph?’ he asked. He had a way of engaging anyone he spoke to with full eye contact, almost as if he wanted to look right inside them. It was a clever trick for getting people to like him – and to tell the truth. So, for a second, she was tempted to tell him how she felt. She wondered whether her perfect brother with his perfect career and perfect family would ever begin to understand how difficult the prospect of this Christmas was for her, but she’d never burdened him with her problems and now was not the time to start.
She nodded and smiled quickly.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s not keep Dad waiting.’
At the top of the slipway, Gerald reached out and plucked a piece of loose cotton from Stephanie’s coat, before hugging her. The gesture reminded her of school photo days, long long ago, and suddenly all his little foibles came flooding back.
‘I’m so glad you’ve made it,’ he said, kissing her on the side of her head, next to her ear, as he always did.
It had been three months since she’d last seen her father, when he’d gone to London to a concert and had stayed with Elliot and Isabelle. Stephanie had driven up from Bristol the next day and they’d all gone out for Sunday lunch in some grim Fulham gastro pub near Elliot’s house, where her father had grumbled about the over-familiar service and the quality of the steak.
He seemed so much more relaxed on his home turf and he looked hearty and well. As he hu
gged her, Stephanie breathed in his scent – a comforting concoction of musty jumpers, dog hair and the aftershave he’d used for years. As usual, the strength of the embrace took her by surprise, leaving her feeling vulnerable and childlike, as if all her achievements, her own family, her position in the surgery, her abilities as an adult, had been suddenly erased.
‘Hello, Daddy,’ she said.
They all squeezed into the cramped Land-Rover, Rufus protesting loudly from behind the bars in the boot as Stephanie corralled Simon on to her lap, losing her argument about seatbelts, when her father reminded her there weren’t any. David sat in the back next to her with Nat on his lap, tickling her so that she kept jerking about, as they bumped along the road.
Elliot sat in the front next to her father. Now she had a chance to observe them like this together, Stephanie remembered how similar they were in their mannerisms, how their heads seemed to tilt towards each other and how naturally a smile came to her father’s lips when Elliot spoke. She fought down her childish jealousy at being left out of their friendship.
As they chatted and Nat squealed with laughter, Stephanie stared out of the mud-splattered window as they drove north, past the churchyard, which was strewn with forgotten gravestones tilting left and right like a flotilla of dinghies flexing their sails before the wind. She remembered walking round there at the end of the summer holidays, the last time she’d been here. The salt air had left the stones’ inscriptions as illegible as smudged pencil marks. Rumour was that some of the graves were of sailors whose ships had been dashed into matchsticks on the other side of the island, on the treacherously rocky shores of Hell Bay.
She thought of her mother’s neat memorial, unremarkable in a row of square-cut polished granite stones at the crematorium in Exeter. She wondered whether she’d ever visit it again. Even now, three years after the sudden, unexpected stroke had killed Emma Thorne in the garden of their old family home, Stephanie missed her dreadfully. Her absence seemed more profound than ever now that they were all together. Stephanie was determined that her mother would be remembered on Christmas Day.
