The Beach Hut Next Door

by Veronica Henry

  ‘You were going to let Murphy hang for this.’ Vince had never felt fury like it. Not for a person. For the sea, yes. But not for another person.

  He grabbed her arm and pulled her round. Her face was almost devoid of expression, a blank mask; her eyes stony.

  ‘You don’t believe there was anything wrong with those texts, do you?’ he said. ‘It was a very convenient way to ship Murphy out. To let him take the blame for the failure of your marriage.’

  ‘No. No, of course not.’

  ‘But why would you attack him for it, when you were doing worse? Unless you wanted it as an excuse.’

  Again, the sulky sixth former look. Vince felt a strong urge to shake her. He remembered the last time he had seen her, and how gorgeous he had thought she looked. At the opening. The opening when the girl had taken Murphy’s number.

  And when Anna had gone back early because Lyra was poorly.

  Another penny dropped.

  ‘She wasn’t ill at all that night of the opening, was she? Lyra? You got to Everdene and decided to hightail it back to your lover. You couldn’t resist the pull of a free night with him.’

  ‘Now you’re being ridiculous. I would never use my children like that.’

  But she wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  ‘I worshipped you,’ said Vince, in wonder. ‘I worshipped the bloody ground you walked on.’

  ‘More fool you,’ said Anna.

  ‘This will kill him.’

  She pressed her lips together. Her chin was trembling. But, Vince realized, there wasn’t a hint of remorse. She looked angry. Angry that she had let herself be caught out.

  ‘Are you going to tell him?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Vince. ‘I am.’

  ‘What about the girls?’

  Vince didn’t want to think about the girls. Yet they were the only ones that really mattered in this whole sorry mess. He looked away; looked at their matching spotty mackintoshes hanging on the peg by the back door.

  Then he looked back at Anna.

  ‘You should have thought about them before you started sleeping with the help.’

  Anna gasped. ‘What gives you the right to judge?’

  ‘My friendship with Murphy.’ Vince stared her out. ‘Which goes back further than your marriage.’

  Anna put her hands flat on the slate work surface to try and steady them. Her white gold wedding ring and matching solitaire engagement ring sparkled defiantly. The bracelets she’d been playing with at the opening night hung on her wrists. Vince imagined Murphy choosing them, having them wrapped; handing the box to her one Christmas morning.

  ‘What can I do to persuade you not to tell him?’ Her voice was low; there was a wheedling note to it that turned his stomach.

  ‘I came here to plead Murphy’s case,’ said Vince. ‘To beg you to have him back because I know that, despite his flaws and faults, he is a good man. A man who would never actually be unfaithful, despite what you might think. Though I think you know that. It’s you with the morals of a snake.’ He rubbed his chin. He could feel the stubble scrape his fingers. ‘You better tell matey to come out of hiding. He’s wasting valuable gardening time.’

  Anna stood up. She wrapped her arms around herself and stalked to the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘You can come down,’ she called up. ‘He knows you’re here. So you might as well get on with what you’ve got to do.’

  She stalked back into the kitchen and sat down, crossing her arms.

  A moment later footsteps came down the stairs and the guy Vince had seen once or twice before walked through the kitchen and out of the door that led to the garden. There was a cocky carelessness to his gait that Vince didn’t much like.

  ‘Does he do this with all his clients, do you think?’ he asked Anna, and got a filthy glare in return.

  Suddenly she didn’t seem so ethereal. She was hard. Her white-blonde hair had a flatness to it; her skin was not so pearlescent. And Vince felt sure he could smell fear on her; something rather sharp that was not to his liking. She tucked her hair back behind her ears, a gesture he had once found charming. Now, it indicated nervousness, and he found it irritating.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and now she seemed near tears. Vince suspected they weren’t real; just her next ploy. ‘It’s just hard, you know, being here on my own while he gallivants about the place.’

  Vince looked around the kitchen, with its gleaming surfaces, its sleek appliances. ‘Not that hard,’ he said.

  Anna looked defiant. ‘He likes getting attention, Murphy. But he’s not very good at giving it.’

  ‘Unlike your man out there?’

  Silvery tears began trailing down her cheeks, like raindrops down a window.

  ‘Please don’t tell him.’

  ‘What was your plan, Anna? To kick him out and take him for everything? I suppose you thought you’d get the house? At what point were you going to move him in?’ He jerked his head towards the garden.

  ‘It’s not like that!’

  ‘Course not. It never is.’ He stared at her. ‘You’re not the person I thought.’

  Anna stared back. ‘None of us is,’ she whispered.

  Vince sat down on a chrome stool and put his head in his hands for a moment. He wasn’t sure what to think. Murphy was no angel, but he would be gutted if his family was torn apart. He was simply a born flirt, and while that wasn’t necessarily right, Vince genuinely didn’t think Murphy did any more than just that – Anna had hit the nail on the head when she said he needed attention. While Anna – Anna was clearly guilty of something more serious. Vince didn’t know what the man in the garden meant to her, or what they had planned between them, if anything, but they hadn’t been upstairs playing chess.

  Finally, he looked up.

  ‘Get rid of him,’ he told her. ‘Tell him to get out of your house and never come back.’

  She nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘Now.’

  Anna shut her eyes for a moment, and took a deep breath, but there was no mistaking the authority in Vince’s voice.

  She walked out into the garden, over to the bed where her paramour was forking over the earth. Vince watched them talking, saw the bloke gesticulating, objecting; Anna pleading. How could he have got her so wrong? How could he have wasted all those years, worshipping her like a complete idiot?

  He stood by the door as the gardener headed back to the house. He wanted to punch him for his swagger. For taking Murphy’s money at the same time as shagging his wife. What kind of a bloke did that?

  Vince stood up and put a hand on his chest as he passed him.

  ‘Don’t you dare touch her again.’

  ‘Or what?’ The bloke smirked. He was strong, but Vince knew he could take him on.

  He smirked back. ‘Or you’ll be sleeping with the fishes.’

  The bloke turned to Anna. ‘I’ll come back for my barrow.’

  He managed to make it sound smutty. Anna didn’t reply. Vince looked at him in distaste. He was the archetypal bit of rough on the surface, easy on the eye, but he was obviously a total dick. What did Anna see in him?

  Moments later, the front door slammed and they heard the Hilux start up.

  Anna ran her hands through her hair. She looked as if the air had been sucked out of her; drawn and deflated.

  ‘So what now?’ she asked.

  Vince felt a sick sense of unease in his stomach. He wished fervently he had stayed in Everdene and let Murphy sort his own life out. He had uncovered something far more unsavoury than the initial problem. Which now, on analysis, hadn’t really been a problem at all. Not compared to the scenario he was now dealing with. He felt so many things: revulsion for Anna, pity for his friend, shock. Regret that he had opened such an unsightly can of worms.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied.
He didn’t want responsibility for what happened next. Why should he be the judge and pass sentence? ‘I guess you tell Murphy that everything’s OK. That you forgive him.’ He couldn’t help a cynical laugh.

  She shot him a look.

  ‘You’re not going to tell him?’

  What would his friend want him to do? Vince tried to imagine. Would he want the truth, or would he want a lie? He thought, very probably, that for all Murphy’s bravado and ebullience, the truth would kill him. To know that his wife had been cuckolding him with the gardener?

  ‘I can’t tell him,’ he told Anna. ‘I just can’t. And your marriage is your responsibility. You’ll have to find a way to get through this yourself. It’s going to need work.’

  Anna shuddered. ‘Ugh. Counselling? Such a middle-class cliché.’

  ‘Almost as clichéd as shagging the gardener.’

  She sagged, sitting down hard on one of the bar stools.

  ‘Are you going to hold it over me for the rest of my life?’ She gave him a sour look.

  Vince wondered how he could ever have thought her beautiful. ‘You say that like I forced you into it.’

  She put her face in her hands. ‘Oh God.’ She looked up. ‘I’m going to have to tell him. Otherwise we’ll be living a lie.’

  Vince didn’t answer for a while, as he turned the dilemma over in his mind.

  ‘Maybe it’s better to live a lie?’ he said finally. ‘I guess it’s called damage limitation. I don’t know that Murphy would be able to handle it. I really don’t. But I suppose it depends how you feel in your heart. Whether you’re prepared to put the work in, work out what was missing and why you did it. And do something about it.’ He gave a wry grin. ‘I sound like some self-help manual. I don’t know, Anna, to be honest. It’s a mess, I know that.’

  She chewed on the edge of her thumbnail. ‘I still love him. I know that.’

  ‘And matey? Do you love him?’ Vince nodded to the barrow outside.

  Anna scoffed. ‘No. No of course I don’t. That was about … sex. Sex and attention and … danger?’ She laughed, but it was mirthless.

  Vince stood up. ‘I’m going to go. I’m going to leave you to decide what you do. I’ll just say we talked, and I managed to convince you there was nothing to those texts.’ He looked at her. ‘Because there wasn’t. You know that, don’t you?’

  Anna shrugged. ‘It’s still not right.’

  ‘But it doesn’t give you an excuse to do what you did. Two wrongs don’t make a right.’

  ‘I’ll call him. When you leave, I’ll call him. Get him to come home. We can talk it all through.’ She stepped towards him and held out her arms. ‘Can I talk to you? If I need to?’

  Vince held her, but reluctantly. All those times he had longed to pull her to him, and now he felt awkward. He couldn’t wait to let her go.

  ‘Course. Call me whenever you like.’

  ‘Thanks. And I’m sorry …’

  ‘Don’t apologize to me.’

  ‘No, I mean I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into it. It must be difficult for you.’

  ‘Hey. What are friends for?’ He supposed he was her friend too. He picked up his keys and walked out of the kitchen. She didn’t follow him to the front door, and he was grateful. He couldn’t get away fast enough.

  In the car on the way home, Vince felt strange. A mix of emotions and questions whirled round. Had he done the right thing? Should he have let Anna get away with it? Should he have told Murphy? Did he really trust her not to cheat on Murphy again? Was her affair a one-off, borne out of a need for attention she wasn’t getting, or were the reasons for it darker? And did Murphy’s behaviour have some bearing on that?

  It wasn’t his place to play God, Vince decided. Murphy and Anna would have to sort out their marriage for themselves. He would always be there for his mate. And he would give Anna the benefit of the doubt, for the sake of the children if nothing else. He didn’t have the right to be judgmental and tear the family apart. Not really.

  Once he came to terms with making the right decision, a huge sense of relief settled on him. Because, he realized, there had been a significant side effect to all of this: the part of his mind that had always been occupied by Anna was free. He no longer worshipped or longed for her. When he thought of her now, he felt a mild distaste. Not the agonizing torment of unrequited love. It was almost as if a curse had been lifted. He could live his life like a normal person now.

  He felt slightly elated. He turned up the radio and put his foot down, letting the car eat up the miles. He couldn’t wait to get back, sit on the step of the beach hut with a beer, watch the sun go down into the sea knowing that the next day he would wake up with optimism.

  As he came back down the hill into Everdene, suddenly the sea looked bluer and the sun looked shinier. Everything sparkled. He stopped the car for a moment and looked down at the bay. Suddenly, he realized he could now make decisions on behalf of himself. Everything was to play for. He was no longer tied down by his obsession. He was free.

  ANGE

  Every year, when the day dawned, Ange woke with a horrible stone of dread in the pit of her stomach. She had to go, and she wouldn’t dream of not. It was more than Dave’s job was worth to miss it. It was a tradition, the Annual Partners’ Picnic (their capitals, not hers). They got a proper posh invitation, the kind you were supposed to put on the mantelpiece, but they didn’t have one so she stuck theirs on the fridge with a Homer Simpson magnet. Crowfield and Sons hired a beach hut for the day on Everdene Sands, and organized a minibus to take everyone. It was a posh minibus, with leather seats, and it meant everyone could have a drink. When they got there, the men played cricket on the beach while the wives … Well, the wives sat and gossiped and drank champagne.

  Ange found it torture. She really did. She’d far rather be playing cricket with the blokes, but that wasn’t done. Oh no. For a start, the wives had to dress up. For a picnic on the beach! The others would all be immaculate in their tiny linen frocks, their make-up perfect and their hair blow-dried to within an inch of their life. Dave had offered to buy her something new if she wanted it, but she didn’t. She wasn’t bothered about wearing the same dress that she’d worn the year before. She only had one, because she didn’t really do dresses – she was a leggings and baggy T-shirt girl. It was all she could do not to rebel and stick on her leggings that morning, but she couldn’t let Dave down, so she pulled the dress out of the wardrobe and put it on. Annoyingly, it showed up the burn marks from the afternoon she’d spent in the garden the weekend before, when she’d forgotten to put sun cream on, but she didn’t care. Just because the others all had perfect spray tans, didn’t mean she had to have one.

  The problem was, Ange wasn’t Crowfield’s idea of a partner’s wife. Any more than Dave was their idea of a partner, but they’d had to make him one because he was such a tour de force in the sales department. He had the patter, and he could talk the talk anywhere. Since he’d been in charge, sales of ball bearings had quadrupled, and nobody knew quite how he did it.

  Ange knew how. It was because he was a grafter. It was because he did his homework on people, and what they needed, and worked out the best way to woo them. She’d watched him on his laptop late into the night, crunching numbers, working out how to do deals. Caring. Nobody else at Crowfield cared as much as Dave did. They were all too busy choosing their next Range Rovers or booking skiing holidays.

  Ange knew she didn’t fit in. She didn’t do ladies’ lunches, or play golf, or have Botox. She was a manageress at the bingo hall. She didn’t do it for the money, because Dave brought in a good whack; enough for both of them. She did it because she loved it, and the other wives just didn’t get why you would work if you didn’t have to. She was only part-time, but she really looked forward to it. She’d go mad if she woke up every morning and didn’t know what to do with herself, like them. They w
ere obviously bored out of their brains – you could see it in their eyes – but they’d never admit it.

  They obviously thought Ange was a bit common. Well, maybe she was, but at least she knew how to have a good time. That was why Dave loved her. She didn’t walk around as if she had a bad smell under her nose. And she liked a laugh, which they didn’t, by the look of them. Oh, and she was overweight, which was probably the biggest crime in their book. In Ange’s view, they all looked as if they could do with a good meal. They picked at their food, and they all had personal trainers, and went running, and did yoga classes. Torture, if you asked Ange. She liked her grub and she wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

  Which was why she had been appointed catering monitor at the picnic. She’d done it for the past six years. The other wives all brought hampers, great big wicker things with leather handles, filled with bone china and cut glass to serve the food on. You didn’t need proper plates and glasses on a picnic, for heaven’s sake. You only had to wash them when you got back. What was the point?

  This year, though, she’d decided to do things differently.

  When they arrived at the beach hut, Ange was already red-faced and perspiring from the walk. The others were all as cool as cucumbers in their huge black sunglasses. They spread out their tartan picnic rugs and unfolded their deckchairs, then took off their dresses to reveal miniature bikinis, mostly black with big silver buckles. Ange felt awkward, as ever, not sure where to sit or indeed, even how. They all managed to sprawl elegantly. She looked as if she had collapsed in a sweaty heap.

  She looked around. The scene looked like an advert – the shabby chic beach hut with the bunting hanging over the front, and half a dozen beautiful women lounging in front of it. Only Ange was out of place; the fly in the ointment. The one the photographer would be waving out of the picture.

  She dug her bare toes into the sand, enjoying the feeling of the grains running over her skin. She wished she’d taken time for a pedicure. The others all had immaculate toes, cherry red or dark plum. Yet another fail, she thought. But really, when you thought about it, what was the actual point of painting your toenails?