The Beach Hut Next Door

by Veronica Henry

  When he arrived, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was petite and pretty, but with a panther-like stealth that made him dangerously attractive in a dissolute rock-star kind of way. Dressed in skinny leather jeans and a white shirt, he obviously came from a privileged world – he spoke like the people who had surrounded her when she was younger, in a clipped, languid drawl. Kiki had left that speech pattern long behind. It didn’t do to talk nice in the circles she moved in. But it reminded her so much of her mother when he began to talk that she thought she was going to cry. She moved to the back of the room so no one could see how emotional she was – it was a sign of weakness to show cracks. She pulled herself together and listened to what he had to say.

  He spoke passionately about his drug abuse, about the privileged background he had nearly thrown away, about his art and how it had been a curse at first, but ultimately a blessing. As she watched him talk, she felt something inside her. Now, she recognized it as hope; a tiny little flame that, as he spoke, burned brighter. She wanted more than anything to be part of the world he spoke of. To feel what he was describing. It was like nothing she had felt before, a lure greater than any narcotic.

  When he’d finished speaking, everyone in the room was given a blank canvas and a palette of paints. Normally Kiki would be gossiping and laughing with the other girls, causing as much disruption as she dared without actually being disciplined. But today, she stood in front of the easel and stared at the whiteness. It made her fingers itch and something inside her stirred. She felt like a horse in a starting gate, pawing at the ground, ready to be let loose.

  Sebastian came and stood next to her. She felt his aura, felt it flow into her as she picked up her brush. Kiki, who had never felt anything with her heart or her soul, felt almost as if she had been taken over.

  ‘What shall I paint?’ she asked, hoping he wouldn’t ask her to copy the boring bowl of fruit that had been placed on a table in the middle of the room.

  ‘I want you to paint what you feel inside,’ he told her, and she had looked into his bright-green eyes and felt purpose.

  She didn’t think about it. She just plunged her brush into the paints and attacked the canvas. She wasn’t painting anything other than her feelings: rage, confusion, frustration, mostly, with a smattering of grief; a dramatic swirl of dark red and purple and navy blue with a tiny black heart lying at its centre.

  When she had finished, she stood back and he came and stood beside her. He gazed at what she had done and frowned. Oh God, he thought it was awful, she thought. Of course it was. A load of blobs with no real thought attached to them smeared all over the canvas.

  ‘Who taught you?’ he asked.

  ‘Taught me?’ she laughed. ‘I’ve never picked up a brush in my life.’

  ‘That’s amazing,’ he told her. ‘This is stunning.’

  ‘Shut up.’ She nudged him with her elbow.

  ‘How did you do it? How did you know what to paint?’

  She shrugged. ‘I just painted what I was feeling. Like you said.’

  ‘Wow.’ He turned to look at her, his eyes serious. ‘This is what every artist tries to achieve. The ability to just paint without thinking. To put your soul on the canvas. It’s brilliant.’

  Kiki didn’t know what to say.

  ‘You need to do something with this talent,’ he told her. ‘When you get out of here, write to me. I know it’s probably not the done thing, but I don’t care.’

  He told her his address, which she committed to memory. And the day she left the prison, she sent him a postcard to tell him she was out.

  It was only later that she came to realize just how very important and influential he was, and how lucky she was that he had swung it for her to get into art college, writing an effusive reference to go with her application. But as someone pointed out later, he would never have done it, put his name on the line and risked his reputation for her, if she hadn’t had the potential.

  At art college, she blossomed and bloomed and flourished and channelled her energy into painting huge canvasses that were brave and bold and confrontational. She hated intricacy and fuss. Her paintings made a statement: simple, almost naive, yet they left you in no doubt as to what they represented. She never hid behind detail. And like them or hate them, her art was undeniably hers, for her life had given her work something unique. And people wanted her work. She was astonished to find that she could command quite a good price. Enough for her to make a living, which was unusual for an artist these days.

  She had made a point of not keeping in contact with Sebastian. She never wanted anyone to accuse her of exploiting her relationship with him. She didn’t even invite him to her degree show, because she thought it would be showing off. Nor did she invite him to any of her private views or mention him in her interviews or artistic statements. It wasn’t that she wasn’t grateful – far from it – but he had done enough. He had given her the key that day and she never wanted him to think she was using him.

  And now, as her entourage dispersed and she was left at the beach hut, she couldn’t believe how far she had come. She’d turned her life around so it was unrecognizable. She sat on the steps and looked at the scenery around her, the dunes and the bay and the horizon, and the people on the beach all with their own story.

  She took a small sketchpad out of her bag, and began to draw. After an hour, she was satisfied with what she had done. It wasn’t her usual style, because it was small, but it still had the looseness and positivity that was her trademark.

  She turned the paper over and wrote on the back.

  Dear Sebastian

  This is to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for everything you did for me. If it wasn’t for you, I might not be here now. I think you know better than anyone how the darkness can swallow you up. But you brought me into the light. This is a picture of where I am now, at Everdene Sands. I’m artist-in-residence for the summer, living in a beach hut. I would never, ever have believed I could be in such a good place. In that one afternoon, you turned my life around.

  I just wanted you to know that, and to say thank you.

  With very best wishes

  Kiki

  Then she slid the drawing into an envelope and wrote his address on the front, the address she had never forgotten. She wondered what he would do with her little painting – whether he would toss it to one side, or pin it on his kitchen wall. She didn’t much care, as long as he appreciated just how important what he had done for her was. She hoped that she would be able to do the same for someone else this summer.

  She licked the flap of the envelope and sealed it tight.

  To inspire someone, she thought, was probably the greatest gift a person could give.

  ELODIE

  Six months after the proposal, the day before Elodie and Jolyon’s wedding, The Grey House shimmered on the cliff, serene in the sunlight of a June afternoon, as if it knew how very important the next day was and that it had to prepare to look its best. Gardeners had clipped and mowed the lawn and hedges and borders; an army of staff had polished and dusted the interior. The windows shone, the furniture gleamed, not a speck of dust loitered. Vases waited for armfuls of flowers earmarked by Lillie to be cut at daybreak, and in the kitchen the shelves in the larder and fridge groaned with delicacies. Everything that could be done had been done until the day itself dawned.

  The early afternoon was peaceful, and everyone was out. Some of the household had gone to the tennis club for lunch. Others had made the trek to Bamford, the nearest big town, making last-minute purchases, having haircuts or merely contemplating their existence. There was something about an impending wedding that made people look more closely at where they were in their own lives: to analyse their mistakes and resolve to make changes, for better or worse.

  Elodie had managed to play everyone off against each other so that she could be on her own. She wa
s finding being the centre of attention rather tiring: she couldn’t move without someone asking her to make a decision when, actually, she knew everything was going to be perfect, whether the cake came before or after the speeches, or whether the floral arrangements in the house matched the ones in the church. She’d never been one for a great fuss, but as Lillie and Desmond’s only daughter it was inevitable that the wedding was going to turn into something of a showcase – for Desmond’s desire to show off his wealth, and Lillie’s never-ending quest for perfection.

  Elodie knew Jolyon felt the same as she did, although Roger and Jeanie seemed to have been swept up in the frenzy. A little bit of her thought they were probably playing the game out of gratitude. There was no doubt that Desmond had saved the Jukes from bankruptcy and steered them back into the black. The shops were booming, thanks to his investment of both money and time. In less than twelve months they were all turning a healthy profit. So the Jukes were making as much fuss of the wedding as the Lewis’s, caught up in guest lists and present lists and any number of trips to Gieves and Hawkes for morning suits. Roger had driven to France for the champagne: twelve cases of vintage Dom Perignon. No one asked quite where he got it from because that was the sort of person Roger was. You didn’t ask.

  Elodie just wanted to curl up in her bedroom on her own before her life changed for ever. Not that she was going to have any second thoughts – far from it – but because she wanted to revel in it, to remember for the rest of her life just how it felt to be on the brink of marriage to the person you loved and trusted and cared for most in the world. She was so lucky to have found Jolyon. She shivered sometimes when she thought how easy it would have been for them to have missed each other. If her father had settled on some other business to expand his empire. If Jolyon had refused to come down with his parents that first weekend. If, indeed, he’d already had some other girlfriend who’d overshadowed her.

  She ran up the stairs, relishing the quietness of the house. It seemed impossible to imagine that tomorrow it would be teeming with guests, caterers, flower-arrangers, hairdressers … the travelling circus that came with a wedding.

  She was puzzled when she heard voices. She was certain everyone was either out at lunch or running errands, before they all met back for a rehearsal at the church at five o’clock. She stopped at the top of the stairs while she took stock of where they were coming from: her parents’ bedroom, she thought. Not burglars, surely? Burglars didn’t speak in low, conversational tones while they were ransacking a house – or laugh. She felt a sharp spike of fear, nevertheless. Something told her she didn’t want to investigate any further; that she wasn’t going to like what she discovered. Yet her feet found themselves walking along the carpeted corridor until she stopped outside her parents’ door.

  She could smell them, before she actually identified them. She could smell her mother’s scent and Jolyon’s cologne: the cocktail of Ma Griffe and Lentheric hit her in the back of the throat and made her want to retch. She held onto the doorjamb. Maybe Lillie was helping him with his morning suit, ensuring the perfect fit? Or giving him a talk about how to make her daughter happy for the rest of her life?

  She heard Lillie’s laugh. The throaty, wicked one she used with men. And her low Gallic murmur: ‘Darling, I know it’s torture. But it’s the only way. You will have every excuse to be near me, and no one will ever query what you are doing here.’

  Jolyon’s voice was tense. Unhappy. ‘I know. I know!’

  ‘Don’t feel guilty. Elodie still has you. She has what she wants.’

  ‘I feel … an utter heel.’

  Lillie gave a dismissive French ‘pffft’.

  ‘It’s all very well you dismissing how I feel.’ Jolyon sounded angry. ‘I love Elodie.’

  ‘Not as much as you love me.’

  Time shimmered in the corridor, the doors all shifting slightly in Elodie’s eyeline.

  ‘True,’ sighed Jolyon. ‘But if it wasn’t true it would be so much easier.’

  ‘Easy is boring.’ Lillie’s boredom threshold had always been dangerously low. ‘In a year’s time Elodie will have a baby. She will be as happy as can be. Then she will have another. And another. She will be more lucky than I was.’ At this, Elodie imagined downcast eyes and a trembling lip. ‘She will live an enchanted life here. It is the perfect place to bring up a family. In the meantime …’

  The ensuing silence could only mean one thing. Eventually she heard Jolyon give a heartfelt groan.

  ‘What else is to be done?’ Lillie was getting exasperated. ‘This way everyone is happy. You, me, Elodie, Desmond …’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sure your husband would be delighted—’

  Again that French exhalation of dismissal. ‘All Desmond was ever concerned about was getting his hands on your shops.’

  ‘So this is a marriage of convenience?’

  ‘Jolyon, Jolyon. How many times have we had this conversation? You love Elodie. You’re not being forced into anything.’

  His voice was choked. ‘I feel as if I am.’

  ‘Then don’t go through with it. But if you don’t, you’re a fool.’ Lillie was running out of patience. ‘This is the best way. The only way.’

  Elodie clamped her hands to her ears. She had heard enough. She crept backwards along the corridor, slipped into her bedroom, pushed the door to and threw herself onto her bed.

  She felt all the happiness and enchantment and excitement of the past year drain out of her, like sand out of an upturned shoe. Instead, a cold, black dread settled upon her, squeezing her heart like an iron corset until she could barely breathe. The deceit and the betrayal were too huge for her to take in. Jolyon, her dear darling Jolyon, whom she adored; whom she couldn’t wait to marry, and who she thought had adored her …

  And her mother.

  Her own treacherous, self-serving abominable mother.

  Elodie had never had any great illusions about Lillie. She had always known she liked her own way and wasn’t terribly bothered how she got it. She had always known she couldn’t resist proving her attractiveness to men. Yet she had always felt close to Lillie, although they were so different. She had never dreamed in a million years she would stoop this low. She had thought that a mother’s unconditional love, and need to protect her child – her only child! – would take priority over her vanity and need to be adored.

  She bit on her knuckles to stop herself crying out. She didn’t know whose betrayal hurt the more. The two people she loved most in the world …

  And her father. He wasn’t complicit in their treachery – Elodie was certain he would have no idea – but all Desmond was interested in was money. Of course he’d wanted her to get married! Of course he had encouraged it at every opportunity, throwing her and Jolyon together at the earliest chance. She thought now, looking back, it had been her father’s plan from that very first weekend. The melding of two dynasties via a marriage – it was archaic. And although it wasn’t official, she had been an unwitting pawn, which was arguably worse than if it had been openly arranged between them.

  She looked up. Her wedding dress hung on the wall, wrapped in cellophane on a padded hanger. It seemed to mock her, white with innocence. All that time Lillie had spent at the dressmaker with her! Making sure she had the perfect wedding dress. The hours she had spent with caterers, florists, wine merchants, scrutinising every last detail, forgetting nothing in her quest for a fairy tale.

  And in one split second, the fairy tale had been blown apart.

  Elodie tried to think straight. What if she hadn’t chosen to come back that afternoon? How long would she have lived in ignorance of what was going on? Would she have lived out her entire married life in oblivion? Raised a family without knowing that her own mother was having an affair with her husband?

  She stared at the ceiling. How long? How long had this been going on? Which of her happy memories was she a
llowed to keep? The moment on the beach she first met Jolyon? Their first moonlit walk? Their first moonlit kiss? How had he looked into her eyes so many times and told her that he loved her, knowing what he knew? Whose idea had it been? Who had made the first move?

  She felt cold with misery and hot with fear. She curled up into a ball. She had to keep herself quiet. She mustn’t make herself known. Elodie wasn’t going to burst in on them and ask them to explain themselves. She didn’t like drama or confrontation. And she had to ask herself why and how this had happened. She had to try and understand, before she decided what to do.

  She stared at the ceiling. The room felt airless. It wouldn’t be long before everyone else began to drift back. There would be tea on the terrace, then they would all head up to the church, to meet with the Reverend Peters, run through the order of service, who was to stand where, who was to hold what … She didn’t have much time to decide what to do. If anything.

  Her bridesmaids, two friends from school who were arriving later this evening and staying at a local bed and breakfast, would be no help. And this wasn’t the sort of dilemma you could drop on someone and expect sage advice. The only person Elodie would have trusted to give a sensible opinion was her mother. Lillie understood the subtleties and nuances of surviving adult life. Yet she was the last person on earth she could ask. She felt a sudden surge of something boil up inside her. Not hatred. Elodie didn’t have it in her heart to hate anyone. Anger? Rage? She couldn’t be sure because she’d never felt anything like it before.

  She couldn’t think about Jolyon. She just … couldn’t. Something dark and icy and cold gripped her when her mind ventured towards him, so she shut the thought of him out.

  Hot and cold. She felt hot and cold. She hugged herself and shivered, yet she felt feverish. She was in shock. Mrs Marsh, she thought. Mrs Marsh would make her hot, sweet tea. But the thought of facing anyone made her stomach churn, just like the sea when the tide was on the turn, swirling into little eddies which seemed to have no sense of direction, yet had no choice in the long run about where they went.