Summer at Shell Cottage

by Lucy Diamond

  A sob was building in her throat but she forced it back down. ‘No. Well, yes. I suppose it looked that way from the outside.’ She hung her head. ‘I didn’t let it show, that was all. Inside I’ve been a total mess. I’ve been frightened. I’ve been sad – oh, so sad, I can’t even put it into words. But I just numbed the pain with … with booze, I guess, and did my best to keep up appearances.’

  He said nothing for a moment and the pedalo drifted into the riverbank with a dull thump, jerking them forward in their seats. He shoved them away from the edge and they began pedalling again. ‘I didn’t realize,’ he said, so quietly it was hard to hear him over the splashing water. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘I’m going to change,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m not some complete lush or addict.’ She bit her lip, hating the fact that she was even saying these words. ‘I don’t have a problem or anything, I swear. I’m going to stop drinking from now on anyway. Knock it on the head.’ Again came that terrible acid fear at the thought of boring soft drinks every evening, herbal teas and cordials, instead of blurring the day’s troubles away with an enormous kick-arse gin. God, it was going to be hard. The thought of having to be so strong and resistant night after night after night … it seemed a Herculean task.

  ‘Blimey, Freya, I …’ He sounded bewildered. ‘I didn’t realize things were so bad. I had no idea you were feeling like this.’

  No. And that was the nub of it, right there: his shock that there might actually be something wrong. Like Harriet had said, it was probably her fault too, of course, for maintaining this illusion, for letting the world believe that she was perfectly competent and had life under control. She gazed unseeingly out at the green water. These days everything seemed to be her fault, one screw-up after another. Was there anything she had got right recently?

  ‘I’ve been pretty good at covering up,’ she said eventually. ‘It was only really coming here that made me realize how much. I … I’ve let everyone down, Vic. I’ve let myself down.’

  She risked a glance sideways; he was staring straight ahead as he guided the pedalo around a curve in the river, but looked absolutely stricken. ‘You haven’t let anyone down, Frey. Don’t say that.’

  ‘But it’s true. I’ve messed up work, my job’s on the line. You said yourself, the kids have noticed that I’m drinking too much. How do you think that makes me feel? An absolute failure, that’s how.’

  He was silent for a moment, digesting. ‘What’s actually happened with work?’ he asked eventually. ‘You keep saying you’ve messed up but you haven’t said how. Why don’t I even know about any of this?’

  ‘Well …’ She took a deep breath and haltingly told him about Melanie and Ava, and then, lowering her eyes penitently, about the gin in her handbag (did he still think she didn’t have a problem now? she wondered). ‘I haven’t heard anything back from Elizabeth,’ she said shakily at the end, ‘and I can’t help fearing the worst. I’m scared, Vic. If Melanie wants to take it further, and I end up going to some kind of tribunal … I mean, I don’t think I did anything wrong, but what if they don’t see it that way? I could lose my job.’

  He had gone very quiet since she launched into her little spiel, she thought in anguish. She began pedalling again, but the soles of her pumps were wet and slipped off the pedals. She wished he would say something. Why wasn’t he saying anything?

  Finally he spoke. ‘I wish you’d told me this before,’ he said. ‘Why did you let me go on thinking everything was fine?’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Some detective I am, when I can’t even spot what’s happening under my own roof.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, her voice wobbling. She could no longer remember why it had seemed so important to maintain the illusion of control, other than for her own sense of pride. Because here was her husband looking at her as if he didn’t recognize her and she felt worse than ever.

  They pedalled along in silence for a while and she felt sick with the feeling that she’d let things reach such a crisis point. Where did they go from here? she wondered. She no longer had the faintest idea.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Leo Browne had never been very good at maths (it was his worst lesson by a mile) but even he could add up two and two to make four.

  It had all been so strange and horrible, the day that he and Mum found out about Dad. Leo had been excited about seeing him again – they both were. Mum had put on perfume and spent ages making Dad’s favourite banoffee pie (she had even grated chocolate sprinkles over the top), and they’d both woken up really early as they always seemed to do when Dad was coming back to Devon.

  Leo felt buzzy and jittery while they waited for him to arrive. ‘Ants in your pants,’ Mum said whenever a car went by and he rushed to the window to peer out. Then she put on some music and they both sang along to a song they liked, and Leo made her laugh by doing some cool dance moves. Then she dumped a pile of clean towels in his arms and told him to hang them up in the bathrooms – ‘Come on, hurry up, we want the house to be nice for him, don’t we?’

  Yes. Leo did want that. He wanted it to be perfect, so perfect that Dad would think, actually, do you know what, I like it better here with Katie and Leo than I do in boring old London. He was in the downstairs bathroom, hanging up the soft blue towels, and just resting his face against them a bit, because they were still so fluffy and warm from the drier, when he heard a car pull up and peeked behind the net curtain to see Dad’s Audi in the drive. His heart gave this gigantic trampoline bounce of joy.

  ‘He’s here!’ he shouted, running out at once. But he’d got it wrong, as it turned out. Because Dad wasn’t there at all. And Dad wouldn’t ever be there again either.

  Everything turned weird so quickly It was like a video slowing down, like a bad dream, like he wasn’t even really there, just watching it from somewhere else. That woman – Olivia, Mum said she was called – told them that Dad was dead, and it was like a bomb went off in Leo’s head. Boom. BOOM.

  Dead, she said. Dead. What?

  No, he couldn’t be. She must have got it wrong. Dad was coming to Devon – they had been counting down the days. Leo was going to tell him about being picked for the school cricket team, and how he’d gone out sailing last week and they’d caught loads of mackerel and … There was so much stuff he had stored up to say. And Dad would ruffle his hair and give him a bear hug and later they would go out in the garden and Dad would bowl nine hundred cricket balls at him so Leo could practise his batting and …

  Dead, she’d said. Dead. And he couldn’t help thinking of that sinkhole they’d been shown on a news clip at school, the way the ground had just caved in one day, with houses, cars, people, even a bit of road, all swallowed up in the hole. Next to him, Mum was crying, tears spilling through her hands, but Leo felt as if he was in a sinkhole of his own, that the kitchen floor had just given way beneath him, and he was falling, falling, falling. Plummeting through the earth. His whole body had gone sort of stiff and frozen, like it had when Mr Dale, their neighbour, was hit by a car when he was crossing the high street, and just lay there looking broken, while people started screaming.

  Mum put her arm around him as if she could tell how he was feeling, and he felt her taking a really deep, scared breath, before she said, ‘This is Leo. Alec’s other son.’

  Then it all went crazy. Bad crazy. Olivia clutched at her hair as if she wanted to rip it out and yelled at them, really yelled at them, to get out of her house, to go, to get out right this minute, now!

  They fled. Out to the car and then back home, where they tumbled into their small house, the terrible truth still beating at them like stormy rain. Mum was shaking. She had gone really pale, like she was ill or something, and Leo had tried to make her a cup of tea but he burned his hand and started to cry too. He wasn’t sure if he was crying more about Dad or because his hand hurt so much but somehow he and Mum ended up sitting on the kitchen floor together, arms around each other, both crying at once, their tears mingling in littl
e rivers down Leo’s neck.

  Leo didn’t like thinking about that day. Since then, he had locked it away in the very back of his mind, like a secret in a box. He had even imagined turning a key in the box and hurling the key into the sea, never to be found again. He didn’t want to remember any of it – He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead – all the shouting, all the crying, that horrible empty ache inside him, like he hadn’t had any breakfast or lunch.

  But it was hard to completely block it out. Bits kept leaking back to him. The sinkhole feeling sometimes crept up on him when he didn’t expect it, and he had to hold tight to the nearest thing because he thought he might lose his balance and fall. He dreamed of Dad, of one last game of beach cricket, one last bear hug, one last wrestling match on the sofa, and would wake up with his face wet where he’d been crying in his sleep. He and Mum had their own private goodbye ceremony where they drove out together to Pemberley Point, one of Dad’s very favourite places, then wrote chalk messages on big stones and threw them out to sea. Mum wrote I always loved you. Leo wrote I miss you, Dad.

  Back home again, Mum made them another banoffee pie – they’d left the first one at Shell Cottage – and said this one was just for them now, but Leo didn’t feel hungry, even though banoffee was usually his number one pudding, like Dad. Mum’s mouth went all trembly and turned down at the corners so he quickly ate some anyway and said it was really nice, but it just sat in his stomach like a hard ball of sadness. All he could think about was how much better it would be if Dad was with them too, eating banoffee pie and telling Mum she was a baking genius. ‘Your mother,’ he would say to Leo, ‘is a goddess of a woman. Don’t ever forget that. An absolute goddess.’

  It was confusing, as well as sad. Dad hadn’t been ill, had he? He might be older than Leo’s friends’ dads, but he wasn’t that old, he wasn’t doddering about with a stick and a hearing aid or anything. So why had he died like that, without any warning? Why was that even allowed to happen? When his friend Toby’s grandad had died, he’d had cancer for months, and Toby was always going to visit him in hospital after school. Had Dad been in hospital too? He hadn’t sounded ill last time Leo spoke to him. Anyway, Mum would have said something. She definitely would have. Maybe something else had happened – like Mr Dale being hit by a car?

  Leo felt his eyes get hot just imagining Dad lying crumpled in the road, like Mr Dale had been. One of Mr Dale’s legs had bent right back and you could see the bone sticking out, white and shocking and wrong.

  Maybe he was better off not knowing what had happened. He definitely wasn’t about to ask Mum. Every time Leo mentioned Dad’s name, she started crying again.

  Curiosity got the better of him eventually. Plus something about the whole episode was bugging him, something he’d missed. It was as if he already knew but was being stupid or slow, but that was mad because he didn’t know. How could he? Even though he tried to ignore it, the ‘something’ kept tapping away at the back of his mind, like Marcie Grayson from over the road, who was always knocking at their house, wanting Leo to come out and play. (No way. Marcie was the most boring girl ever. Leo always pretended he hadn’t heard her knocking until Mum got fed up and shouted, ‘Leo Browne, will you answer that door for goodness’ sake, we both know it’s for you,’ and then he had to use all his Jedi mind powers to come up with an excuse really quickly while he was walking to the door.)

  So he sneakily borrowed Mum’s laptop and googled Dad, to see if he could find out what had happened. Just so that he would know.

  Click, click, type, type, type. Click.

  Pages of text sprang up on the screen and Leo leaned forward breathlessly, his eyes scanning the sentences.

  Distinguished novelist Alec Tarrant has died at the age of sixty-four, following a sudden heart attack at home.

  A heart attack. Not a road accident, at least. He let out a long, shuddering breath and read the words again. A heart attack at home. Dying the next day, at the beginning of June, according to the newspaper website. Again, he had that weird sensation, that there was something important right under his nose, something his brain hadn’t quite caught up with. It was like when you were trying to remember spellings for a test, and you knew there was something you’d forgotten, some double letter or weird i before e thing, or … He scratched his head unhappily. Think, Leo. Think.

  He clicked through to another website, one he’d looked at many times before – the Wikipedia page about Dad.

  Alec Tarrant is married to Olivia, and has two children, Freya and Robert, it said. Words he’d read over and over again, his fingers hovering on the keyboard, wondering if he had the nerve to add in the extra, unwritten line.

  He also has a ten-year-old son, Leo. And a girlfriend, Katie. He really loves them and they love him back. A lot.

  ‘Why can’t we just tell people?’ he had grumbled, more than once, when Mum told him they had to keep Dad their special secret.

  ‘Because while it’s secret, we get to keep him,’ Mum had replied, stroking his hair. ‘But if everyone else finds out our secret, then Dad might not come back. The others might not let him. So we stay quiet, Leo. That’s the rule.’

  Leo wasn’t dumb; he understood that, loud and clear, and was so scared by the threat of Dad vanishing from their lives, that he had kept quiet and held the secret tight to himself all this time. Sometimes he typed the words into the laptop – Alec Tarrant is my dad!!! – but he deleted them straightaway. He had never told anyone, not even Max, his best friend. He had kept the secret. Not that it mattered any more, seeing as Dad was dead, and that screaming Olivia lady knew the truth anyway now.

  It still didn’t seem real, that Dad was gone, that they wouldn’t be seeing him again. He had been dead for over six weeks now – Leo had counted on the calendar – and they hadn’t even known! The last time Leo had spoken to him, he –

  Then Leo went cold all over. That was it. That was the weird thing that had been bugging him. The beginning of June, he’d died. The 7th of June – it said so, in the newspaper.

  His heart began to pound. The last time Leo had spoken to him was on the 6th of June – he remembered because it was the day after Max’s birthday. Max had been given a puppy, and Leo had asked Mum if he could have a puppy too, and Mum had said, ‘Well, I’d better talk to your dad about that when he comes down,’ in a twinkling, smiling sort of way, as if to say, she would actually quite like a puppy too.

  But Leo hadn’t been able to wait that long. And so, when Mum wasn’t in earshot, he had picked up the phone and carefully dialled Dad’s London home, feeling all shivery because he knew he wasn’t supposed to. He was breaking the rule.

  Dad had been surprised to hear him. Surprised in a not very good way. ‘How did you get this number?’ he had asked. ‘You mustn’t ring this number again!’

  And Leo was just about to say sorry, and he’d be really quick, and he just wanted to tell him about Max’s puppy, which was the cutest, softest Golden Retriever called Poppy, but then Dad made a strange noise, like he was choking.

  ‘Dad?’ Leo said cautiously. He almost whispered it because he felt scared. Then there was a thump and a loud clatter, and he heard a woman shouting in the background – ‘Alec? Alec!’ – and Leo quickly hung up, feeling really, really guilty.

  He would not tell Mum, he had vowed, slinking into his bedroom and shutting the door. He hoped Dad wouldn’t be too cross next time he saw him. But then he’d forgotten all about the phone call because Max sent him a message on his iPod – Mum says you can come over to play – and Leo was so keen to see Poppy again, that he’d dashed downstairs at once.

  But now it came back to him. The choking sound Dad had made, the thump as if he was falling to the ground. As if he was having a heart attack in his own home. Everyone knew you could have a heart attack if you were really, really angry, didn’t they? ‘Don’t have a heart attack, love,’ Mum had said sarcastically just the other day, when a driver had beeped and shouted at her for not indicating to t
urn right at the traffic lights or something.

  Two plus two. Two plus two. Leo had phoned up when he wasn’t supposed to – he had broken the rule – and Dad had been so furious with him that he’d had a heart attack and died. How did you get this number? You mustn’t ring this number again!

  Dad had died, and it was Leo’s fault. Two plus two made four, and that was a fact.

  Leo lay back on his bed, feeling sick with shame and fear. He thought of the policeman who’d come in to talk at school last term, how he’d impressed on them that bad people always got caught and thrown in jail. ‘Trust me, guys, you don’t want to end up in there,’ the policeman had said sternly, shaking his head.

  Leo didn’t want to go to jail. He didn’t want to leave Mum. But what would she say when he told her? She would hate him for the rest of her life!

  His stomach twisted. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so awful. He could never tell Mum. He could never tell anyone.

  He gave a sob of anguish, and then, because he didn’t want Mum to hear him, he pulled the pillow over his head. ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ he said, his voice cracking on the words. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘Morning! And how are we today? Here – thought you might like these. Fresh from the allotment an hour or so ago and proper delicious too. Shall I put a brew on, then? Oh.’ Gloria paused for breath. ‘Are you all right?’

  In the maelstrom of torment of the evening before, Olivia had somehow forgotten about Gloria, her unorthodox new cleaner. Yet here she was, thrusting a Tupperware box brimful of scarlet strawberries into Olivia’s hands, taking two steps into the hallway then stopping dead to look suspiciously at her.

  Olivia, clutching the strawberry box and gaping like a grounded fish, became conscious of two things at the same time: firstly, that she was still wearing her nightie, had no make-up on, and unbrushed hair. And secondly, that Gloria did not seem particularly au fait with the concept of discretion, and it would probably be all round the village by the afternoon that Olivia Tarrant was having a nervous breakdown. She wished fervently that she hadn’t answered the door in the first place but the house was empty and Gloria had pressed her finger on the bell for such a long time, shouting, ‘Cooeee? Anyone in?’ through the letterbox, that Olivia couldn’t bear it a second longer.