The Holiday

by T. M. Logan

  Jake had his back to us.

  He was standing right on the edge.

  ‘Jake!’ Jennifer shouted. ‘Stay still!’

  Her shrill voice sent birds scattering from the canopy of branches above us.

  Ethan sat cross-legged a few feet from the edge, mobile held up, snapping pictures of his older brother.

  I looked wildly about me for Lucy, heart leaping against my ribcage.

  There. She was sitting on a large flat rock to the side of the gorge, barely seeming to notice Jake posing for the camera. I perched on the rock next to her.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, without looking at me. ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’

  I gestured wordlessly towards Jake, and we watched as Jennifer walked slowly towards him, hands out, as if she was approaching a skittish animal.

  ‘Jake,’ she said, a wobble of panic in her voice, ‘just take a step back from the edge, darling.’

  In response, Jake struck a new pose, holding his arms out to each side, raising them to shoulder height like a diver getting ready to leap. He tilted his head back and looked at the sky.

  ‘If you look up,’ he said to no one in particular, ‘it feels like you’re flying.’

  ‘Jake, please.’ Jennifer’s voice cracked. ‘Please come away from the edge.’

  The breeze ruffled Jake’s red T-shirt, the tips of his flip-flops sticking out into open air.

  ‘You know, I thought this place was going to be really dull but this,’ he indicated the drop into the gorge at his feet, ‘is properly cool.’

  ‘Listen to me, Jake, I just need you to take two steps back, OK? Two steps towards me.’

  He turned slightly to look at his mother, seeming to lose his footing a little, arms flailing to keep his balance.

  ‘Whoa!’ he said with a laugh. ‘That was close.’

  Jennifer took another step towards him, her face a mask of terror. ‘Jake, I’m begging you. Just one step back.’

  He held out his hand and let a smooth, round stone fall from his palm. There was no sound, no impact, for what seemed like forever. Then a sharp echoing crack as it struck the rocks below.

  ‘Sick,’ he said.

  Jennifer moved another step closer to her son. ‘Didn’t you hear me shouting for you, Jakey? I was looking for you.’

  He leaned forward slightly, peering down into the gorge.

  ‘There are some rock pools down there, Ethan. We should check them out.’

  I took a step towards Jake, feeling a sick, lurching sensation in my stomach as I neared the edge: vertigo by proxy.

  Jennifer held both hands up in silent alarm. I froze.

  She turned back to her son. ‘Don’t look down, Jake,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  He turned back to look at her, blond fringe falling over one eye.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you might lose your balance. Better to keep your head up, look at the horizon.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Please, Jake,’ Jennifer said, her voice taut, ‘just don’t, OK?’

  He gave Lucy a grin full of bravado, then turned and looked straight down into the gorge.

  19

  Jake leaned forward slightly to look down and then jerked straight again, knees wobbling, arms windmilling at his sides for balance.

  Jennifer’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Jake!’

  He stepped back from the edge abruptly, turning to give a little bow.

  ‘Ta-da! You see? Safe.’

  Jennifer grabbed his arm and pulled him further away from the bluff.

  ‘Don’t ever do that again, Jake! That is so dangerous. I was so scared.’

  ‘Don’t overreact, Jen, it’s just a bit of fun.’

  He shook her off and went to stand with Ethan, who was holding up his phone.

  ‘Nice one,’ Jake said, scrolling through the pictures his brother had taken. ‘Might post a few of these. Send them to me, yeah?’

  I put an arm on Lucy’s shoulder.

  ‘Luce, you must promise me never ever to go near the edge here, do you hear me? In fact, you shouldn’t come down here at all until the barrier is fixed.’

  She shrugged my hand off and stood up.

  ‘You don’t have to treat me like a five-year-old.’

  ‘I’m just worried about you, that’s all.’

  She walked over to where Jake was checking the pictures Ethan had taken of him on the cliff edge.

  Jennifer and I moved closer to Jake as if we might have to grab him back from the edge at any moment: mother tigers circling the errant cub. I touched her gently on the arm.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jennifer said in a monotone, her eyes not leaving her sons.

  She didn’t look OK. The deep flush in her face had spread down to her neck and chest, her whole body shaking with adrenaline.

  ‘This drop-off is pretty scary,’ I said.

  ‘It’s so dangerous!’ she said, her voice rising. ‘How could Rowan have not told us about this? How is it even allowed?’

  ‘We’re all fine,’ I said, giving her a quick hug. ‘We’re all safe. Jake’s safe.’

  I inched slowly and carefully to the drop-off, taking small steps in the dusty soil.

  Where we stood was an overhang, projecting out into nothing but thin air. I put my left foot sideways onto the edge and peered carefully into the gorge below: it was a straight drop down onto smooth, bare rock, scrubby green bushes sticking out here and there from the rock face on the way down. At the bottom, there was a thin stream running from one rock pool to the next, clear blue water sparkling in the late afternoon sun.

  I had another sudden, powerful wave of vertigo, my stomach turning over so hard I had to step back and crouch down on the dusty ground, touching the earth with my fingertips.

  ‘Jesus,’ I breathed, ‘that’s some drop. It’s got to be a hundred feet.’

  ‘Having the kids anywhere near it is pretty damn terrifying,’ Jennifer said.

  ‘I’m an adult and it gives me the heebie-jeebies too.’

  ‘I can’t believe Rowan didn’t tell us about this.’ There was an accusatory tone in her voice. ‘We should make it off-limits to all the kids, or can we fence it off with something?’

  ‘I’ll ask her to call the maintenance company in the morning, see if they can send someone out straightaway.’

  ‘Boys?’ Jennifer said to her sons. ‘You’re not to come down here on your own until the barrier is fixed up again. OK?’

  Ethan gave her a quick nod and a smile.

  Jake gave no sign of having heard her at all.

  20

  Jennifer

  Jennifer paced up and down the big bedroom’s marble floor, arms crossed tightly across her chest. She had taken one of her pills but it didn’t seem to be having any effect – sometimes they were like that, instead of wrapping her in a favourite warm blanket (which was the way Alistair had described the dosage to her) there was just a slight softening at the edges of her anxiety, a slight blurring, but that was all. Nothing more. It wasn’t enough.

  This holiday was a bad idea, she decided. It was as simple as that.

  Maybe not a bad idea in itself – in theory, it was a lovely idea – just not right now. Not with things how they were. In fact, it was pretty much the last thing she needed at the moment, with everything else going on, all the other complications that life with two teenage boys could throw your way.

  Jake and Ethan were at the stage in their teenage lives when they were pushing boundaries, testing themselves and others. Like the whole thing with them calling her Jen now, instead of Mum. She didn’t like that, not one bit, but Alistair had positively encouraged it as a move away from childhood into early adulthood. ‘It’s a measure of maturity,’ he’d told her. ‘It empowers them: when the child moves into adulthood it no longer sees the parents as “parents”, but rather as equals.’ Sometimes she wished her husband could see
the children as theirs, as different and special and unique, rather than as just two more patients to be scrutinised and counselled according to the textbooks. Their boys were not long into their teens, but it seemed they were already lifting themselves out of the nest and sniffing the air. It wouldn’t be long until they spread their wings and took flight.

  That didn’t bear thinking about.

  She stopped pacing.

  ‘He was this close to the edge,’ she said, holding her thumb and forefinger a millimetre apart. ‘I only just got to him in time . . . he was so close.’

  ‘I know,’ Alistair said.

  ‘Then how you can be so relaxed about it, Ali? Have you even been into the woods here yet?’ She pointed in the direction of the vineyard and the woods beyond. ‘There’s a 100-foot drop straight down to the gorge. Anything could have happened when the boys went down there; I just can’t believe Rowan didn’t tell us about it before we arrived. And Jake was standing on the edge as though he had no fear at all.’

  Alistair sat back in the armchair, crossing one leg over the other.

  ‘He has no fear because the teenage brain has an undeveloped appreciation of consequences. He is impulsive and intense – and sometimes spontaneous to the point of being reckless. We know this already about our son.’

  ‘Well, that’s really helpful,’ she said, her voice loaded with sarcasm. ‘I feel so much better now.’

  ‘What I mean is, I’m not relaxed, Jen. I’m focused. I’m looking for a solution.’

  ‘The solution is simple: we ban them from going into the vineyard and the woods.’

  ‘Ban them? How would we make that work, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ali, but we need to do something! I’m worried about him, worried about all of the children. Daniel’s only nine. He’s very impressionable.’

  ‘Ethan’s got a sensible old head on his young shoulders. He won’t let anything happen. And besides, exploring is a natural part of growing up. Physically, mentally, spiritually. They have to find out who they are and where they fit in the world.’

  ‘Christ! You’re bloody impossible sometimes. These are our children we’re talking about – here, now, today – not some case study you’re presenting at a conference in six months’ time.’

  ‘Come and sit down for a minute, Jen.’

  She ignored him and resumed her pacing. She wished for a time when Jake had listened to her, really listened, his little face turned up to hers, absorbing every word she said. When she had been the only female in his life.

  More and more often she found herself longing for the time when her boys were little. Full, golden days that had stretched out with endless promise, days of playing and stories and bath times and naps and going to the park with the double buggy. Long days that were pure and simple and planned out from start to finish. What in the world could compete with a beautiful, sleepy, contented baby dozing on your chest? Nothing. Nothing at all.

  At the time, other mothers had complained of the routine, of the long hours, of the sleepless nights. But not Jennifer. She missed those days with an ache deep in her chest, a physical pain that sometimes kept her awake at night. Life before her boys was a blur, as if it belonged to someone else entirely – as if those years weren’t really important enough to remember. Sometimes she would watch the home videos of when they were little, toddling and laughing and playing up to the camera, and she’d find herself with tears running down her face.

  She longed for the days when they relied on her completely, when she was the centre of their world. For the last few years, as her boys had grown bigger and taller and more distant, it felt as though a vacuum was growing inside her, a hollow space that Jake and Ethan no longer wanted to occupy.

  She longed to feel whole again, for something to fill the void that was left behind.

  Her mobile pinged with a new message and she checked the screen, firing off a quick message in reply before stowing the phone in her pocket.

  ‘I can’t be passive about this, Ali,’ she said. ‘I can’t just sit and watch like a spectator.’

  ‘Why do you feel that way?’

  ‘You know why, after what happened.’

  ‘Let’s talk about Jake, then. Let’s break his behaviour down and think about how we can best respond to—’

  ‘Do you have to be so damn analytical all the time? Can you not just think like a father, rather than a therapist?’

  ‘I can do a better job as a father if I use what I know. My professional knowledge.’

  Jennifer turned to look at her husband, who was sweating lightly in a maroon vest top and blue shorts.

  ‘Sometimes I wish that you were a traffic warden, an estate agent – a damn bus driver.’

  ‘If I’d been a bus driver we would probably never have met, my dear.’

  It was true, she supposed: that was how their paths had collided in the autumn after graduation. At first she’d thought her black mood was some kind of post-university slump, the inevitable dip caused by the end of three intense years living with her three brilliant new best friends. They’d all returned to their respective home towns – initially, at least – and Jennifer had felt a loss of something so fundamental, so important, that she didn’t know if she would ever find it again. It wasn’t that she missed her middle-school friends back in California; that was a long way behind her by then, and she’d already started to think of herself as more British than American. But it felt like an ending to the best three years of her life. Summer came and went without the black cloud lifting, and when a routine visit to the GP ended with her breaking down in tears and sobbing her heart out, she was referred for counselling.

  It wasn’t love at first sight. That wasn’t how Alistair affected her. But slowly, over the weeks and months, she began to look forward to seeing him more and more. She would feel a little lift, a little brightness, when her Wednesday sessions came around with this calm, kind man who seemed to have all the answers, who could relax her, who was the first man who actually listened to her. The first man who understood her. Almost ten years older, already married and divorced, he had a wisdom about him, a tranquillity, that she found intoxicating. He was a scholar, a thinker, a lifelong student of the mind. He had answers for questions she’d not even realised she had.

  And then, one February Wednesday, she had made a decision. She bundled herself up in her thickest coat, gloves, scarf and boots and settled herself on a park bench across the street from his practice, after her session was over. When he came out to buy his lunchtime sandwich from the little deli on the high street, she followed him and just ‘happened’ to bump into him as he sat at the window seat with his pastrami-on-rye.

  That was how it started.

  They had sailed pretty close to the wind in terms of his code of professional ethics because in the early days there were times when they had got a bit carried away. But he’d avoided trouble by having her assigned to another therapist, so that their burgeoning relationship could be above board, out in the open. Everything had happened quickly after that. Moving into his flat, then a little house together, a baby, then another, a bigger house, then a civil wedding with two of the cutest little pageboys you could ever wish for. Jake, her sweet, sensitive, complicated firstborn with a head of golden hair, and Ethan, who was just . . . Ethan. Her sensible second child.

  She knew mothers weren’t supposed to admit that they had favourites. Of course they said they didn’t. But deep down they all knew; they were just prevented from saying it out loud because it was part of the carefully constructed fiction that parents maintained. Like how you were supposed to say that day care was just the same as parental care, as if somehow letting your babies be looked after by total strangers was just as good as looking after them yourself. Just as good for your baby’s development, just as good for socialisation and motor skills and language acquisition. How was that even logical? How could it even be half-true?

  It was one of her biggest regrets – now, more th
an ever – that she’d decided not to do the logical thing ten years ago and home-school Jake and Ethan. For once in his life, Alistair had put his foot down when it came to the boys and insisted that they go to a regular school, so Jennifer had done the next best thing and got herself a job there, in the office, so she could be near them. So she could look after them.

  Because, of course, it was true that a mother’s care was better than a stranger’s.

  And of course it was true that every mother had a favourite.

  It wasn’t Ethan’s fault that his brother had stuff going on that needed his mother’s attention. That was just how things were. She’d read somewhere that second children were more resilient than firstborns because they had never had the experience of being an only one. Ethan was pragmatic, like his father – he just got on with things, even as a baby he’d been the same. He didn’t mind not being the centre of attention; he was much more self-contained than Jake.

  Jake was her special one.

  At first, she’d thought Alistair was laid-back in his parenting style just to balance her out. To create an equilibrium between them – her responsible parenting on one side of the scales, his let them get on with it approach on the other. But over time she’d realised it wasn’t anything deliberate on his part, it was just the way he was. With everything. Which was fine when the boys were little, but now it seemed almost irresponsible.

  Alistair sat forward in his seat, clasping his hands together.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘How about this: we all go down there, all four of us. We walk down into the gorge, talk to the boys, find out what they’re thinking, make sure they’re aware of the dangers of the terrain and the consequences of a fall from that kind of height. We talk it through with them, articulate it clearly, ensure they’re fully cognisant of all the facts, ask them to stay away from the danger. That’s really all we can do.’

  ‘That’s not enough, Ali.’

  ‘What do you suggest, Jen? They’re bigger than me, bigger than both of us: we can’t physically prevent them from leaving the villa. They’re almost adults; we need to start treating them accordingly. We can’t track them, follow them around twenty-four hours a day.’