The Family Holiday

by Elizabeth Noble

  Be less Alex’s wife, Ethan’s mother, and be more Laura. Whoever Laura was. She’d been interesting, hadn’t she? Funny, sometimes. She’d had lots of mates. She’d sung in karaoke bars, learnt to speak Italian at evening class because it sounded so lovely, and gone abseiling to celebrate turning thirty. She was still Laura. She had to be.

  16

  Nick texted Fran just before he put the kids into the car: Got time for a coffee after drop-off?

  Her reply pinged onto his screen just as he finished doing up the various seatbelts and slid into the driver’s seat. Absolutely. Nelly’s at 8.45? Gets me out of boot camp. Xx

  He smiled. I could do 9.45 if you want to do the class?

  Instant response. Coffee. An emoji of a steaming cup. Then a tick. A blonde in an aerobics leotard. A poo. A yellow crying, laughing face.

  He sent back a thumbs-up.

  Miraculously, despite delivering the children in reverse order to his afternoon routine – Bea first, then Delilah, and Arthur with Karen last – he was at Nelly’s first. He ordered two lattes and a pain au raisin, and took his tray to the table in the window, choosing the ancient wing-backed armchair facing the park. Fran burst in a minute later, dressed in leggings, trainers, and an ancient grey sweatshirt that swamped her, her hair piled on her head.

  ‘Do you ever actually go to that boot camp?’ Nick smiled at her.

  Fran laughed, then took a large bite out of his pain au raisin. ‘Almost never.’

  ‘Oy! That was mine. I’ll get you your own.’

  ‘Only wanted a taste …’

  He pointedly moved his plate to the other side of the mug.

  ‘Boot-camp clothes are basically just the acceptable version of pyjamas. I once tucked a nightie into some trackies to do the school run, and your wife said I’d crossed the slummy-mummy line, then shared with me the genius of athleisure wear. She used air quotes and a ham American accent when she said it. “No one knows whether you’ve just been exercising, are just heading to exercise or don’t intend to get any more exercise than chewing a pastry.”’

  ‘Genius.’

  She reached for the pain au raisin again. Nick handed the plate to her.

  ‘So what’s up?’

  ‘Need more free advice.’

  ‘My speciality.’

  ‘Need a nanny.’

  Fran picked up her cup, and held it in both hands, taking a slow sip, waiting for him to expand. He felt embarrassed, although he knew he needn’t. ‘I’m … not coping very well. Ed and Maureen have been on at me, for the sake of the kids, to get some full-time, live-in help. I can’t seem to do it all by myself. Work is piling up. I need to go back to the office, really. Or think about doing something else. They’ve given me a long rope, but they’re getting fed up with me being absent. And I think the kids are being short-changed. I am just about managing, Fran. But that’s it.’

  ‘So it’s a good idea, right?’

  He rubbed his hand across his face. ‘It feels …’

  ‘Feels what?’

  ‘It feels like I’m trying to replace her. It feels disloyal, somehow.’

  ‘Well, that’s ridiculous.’

  ‘And I feel like I’ve failed.’

  ‘And that’s even more bloomin’ ridiculous. Where are you getting this crap?’

  He smiled. ‘Say what you think, why don’t you?’

  ‘All right. I will.’ Fran sat forward in her chair, and rested her elbows on the table. The sleeves of her enormous sweatshirt completely covered her hands. ‘I think it’s the most sensible suggestion you’ve made in a while. Everyone needs help, you big idiot. This shit is hard. You’ve got three children under the age of six and a full-time job, and you’re trying to do it all on your own. Before you even start to deal with the grief that the four of you feel, which is actually a bit of a full-time job in itself. You get someone in who can help you with the practical stuff. You probably should have done it ages ago. You get your arse back to work, where the people are. Then when you’re with the kids, you can be properly with them, instead of trying to do ten things at once. And you’ll have a moment to catch your bloody breath.’

  ‘Okay.’ He smiled weakly at her. ‘Done?’

  ‘I’m not, actually. This disloyalty crap. What do you think Carrie would say about that, Nick, if she heard it?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I’ll tell you what she’d say. She’d say get your head out of your arse.’

  He laughed. ‘That’s exactly what she’d say. You knew her so well.’

  ‘She’d say hire the best nanny you can find, get her in as soon as possible, go back to work, stop feeling inadequate –’

  ‘Okay, okay. I get it.’ Nick sipped his coffee.

  ‘Then she’d probably say, on second thoughts, make it a manny. Or at least an ugly girl with a flat arse.’

  Nick snorted into his coffee. For a second he could see her precious face, nose wrinkled in thought, eyes sparkling with her own joke, saying exactly that. He’d got the summer holidays sorted. Cobbled together. Just about. He promised himself he’d bite the bullet and sort it out properly for September. Promised Carrie too.

  17

  It hadn’t been like her dad Rupert had said. Not at all. He’d completely twisted it. Up in his room, lying on the bed he was almost too long for now, Ethan kicked against the pine footboard until his toes hurt. He wanted to hit something so hard that he’d skin his knuckles. He was embarrassed, humiliated, furious and frightened. He wanted to climb out of his own skin and disappear. This was a nightmare.

  He’d thought they were all right, Claudia and Rupert. He thought they’d thought he was too. Most of his conversations with Claudia had been about food, and his apparent hollow legs, and most with Rupert about football, which Ethan didn’t know much about. Still, they’d been okay. Strict. Maybe like his own mum might have been if she hadn’t been so distracted, but probably a bit more so. She had all these rules, Sas, when she was allowed to text, curfews, stuff like that. Her mum always had to ring the mum of a kid who was having a gathering or a party to find out whether there’d be adults present, what the booze policy was. Saskia hated that. Ethan and she weren’t allowed in her room, and when they were in the TV room, Claudia was always making excuses to come in, and always left the door open when she went out again. Trying to be casual.

  He’d hardly recognized the bug-eyed loon Rupert had been downstairs just now. His angry red face, his puffed-up chest. He’d come up close to him, trying to make himself as tall as Ethan, although he was still at least four inches shorter, and Ethan had seen the strings of spittle on his lips, felt his breath on his face before Claudia pulled him away. For a moment, Ethan thought he was going to hit him. His hands were balled into tight fists by his sides. Ethan had brought his hands up to protect himself. Mum had been screeching that he’d better not dare. ‘God, Rupe. No. No.’ That had been Claudia, who was crying noisily. It was all so completely messed up.

  He didn’t know how they’d all got there. It didn’t make sense to him. He’d wanted to talk to Saskia, although it had been made abundantly clear that that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. He wondered if he’d ever see her again. They’d been going out for five months. Girlfriend and boyfriend. And they’d been ‘a thing’ before that, for a few weeks. His mates who’d had sex with girls had done it much sooner. Or said so. He and Saskia had waited. They’d talked. They’d talked about waiting, for Christ’s sake. They’d messed about, of course, done other stuff. But not that. They had resisted. It all felt grown-up. Saskia had gone to the doctor on her own and got the pill – the doctors weren’t allowed to tell Claudia, she’d told him.

  He knew they’d lied. Saskia to her parents, him to his. It had been easier for Ethan – they’d gone to his dad’s. Mum hadn’t known his dad was away. And Dad hadn’t exactly known he was there. But he’d given him a key, hadn’t he, to his new place? Given him a brief, manly hug and told him he was welcome anytime. Ethan hadn’t believ
ed him – he knew Dad didn’t really want him hanging around at his new place, not when he was there, but his conscience had been pretty clear about letting himself in when he knew Dad was away, shagging Genevieve in a swanky country hotel.

  He didn’t even have his own room at his dad’s. He’d been glad, as he led Sas up the wide staircase to the guest room. It was like a hotel, with a wide, smart bed, and a bathroom of its own. Nothing like his room at home. No posters of Cheryl Cole or class photos from primary school. No worn Man United duvet cover and toast crumbs, definitely no sticky tissues – and God knew there’d been a lot, with all the resisting. She’d loved it – exclaimed over the white orchid on the bedside table, and the grey silky bedspread. Some of the chat had been nerves, he knew. He felt them too. They’d gone quite far – as far as they dared – at parties and in their living rooms, quick fumbles between parental interruptions. This was entirely, completely different.

  And he’d taken a bottle of wine from the rack in Dad’s kitchen, screw top, so he didn’t have to mess about with a corkscrew, and, yes, they’d both had a glass, quite a big one, but she hadn’t been drunk, and neither had he. It took more than that. Much more for him. Rupert said he’d ‘plied her with alcohol’. Made him sound like some creepy bloke in a club. He’d hated that. Anger had given him a rush of courage, and he’d tried to sound cool. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he’d said, ‘it was Rioja, not Rohypnol.’ That was when he’d thought Rupert Reed was most likely to hit him.

  He knew it had been smart. He was trying to save face. As wretched as Mum and Dad splitting up had been, this, her parents showing up and accusing him like that, was the single worst thing that had ever happened. Since Saskia, the anger had receded. But here it was, flooding back, bringing with it the self-loathing. They were determined he’d done something wrong. Something very wrong.

  They thought he’d committed rape. The horrifying thought that Saskia might have accused him of it exploded in his brain, white bright. It wasn’t true. He knew that. How frightened of this awful man would she have had to be to lie about it? He couldn’t believe she’d do that. It was her father, her shitty father. He’d twisted it. He’d warped it.

  But it hadn’t been. How could it have been? They loved each other, didn’t they? They’d done everything right. He’d been gentle and careful and thoughtful. And it had been beautiful. Wasn’t that what they were supposed to want for her?

  Downstairs, he heard more angry, hissing voices. Heard the front door slam. ‘You haven’t heard the end of this,’ Saskia’s dad was saying. He couldn’t hear what his mother said in response. Outside, a car pulled out and seemed to speed away. Even the car sounded angry. He waited for his mum to come up, but she didn’t.

  Long, long minutes later, he crept out of his room to the landing. He could see his mum sitting on the stairs. She’d retreated from the closed front door, backed up a few yards, and was sitting, her head in her hands. She looked … defeated.

  ‘Mum?’ His voice sounded choked. He took the first few steps down towards her. ‘I’m sorry, Mum.’

  She turned her head, and he could see that she had been crying. ‘Oh. My love.’ She stood up, and opened her arms wide. He flew down the last stairs into her embrace. She put her arms around him so tightly it was almost painful.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Mum.’

  And then they both just cried, and held each other, in the quiet hallway. Neither of them quite knew which one was holding up the other.

  18

  The day Carrie died had started like any other. That was the way all of the day-they-died stories started, wasn’t it? Because, of course, they did, and, of course, it had. Because if you knew how that particular day ended, you’d do almost every tiny thing differently. You’d hold her in the middle of the bed, where the two of you always woke, back to back, but still touching. You’d forgo the familiar comforting bum-bump routine you’d developed to make sure you’d both heard the alarm or the baby, whichever was first. A lazy hand swung backwards to pat whichever part of the other person was nearest before you threw off the covers and forced yourself to sit up and rub your eyes, the better to greet an ordinary day.

  You wouldn’t shout semi-crossly when she asked a question you couldn’t possibly be expected to hear because the shower was running and the radio was set five clicks higher than you’d ever set it. You’d eat at the table, not standing at the island, spooning Cheerios in with the urgency of a man with places to be and the manners of a Neanderthal. You’d tell her things. Say things. Important things. No one ever said important things at a weekday breakfast unless they were domestically important – did you put the bins out? Is the Sky guy coming today? Have you remembered it’s parents’ evening tonight? Did you pick up my dry cleaning, honey? That was his important thing that morning. She was his wife, the mother of his children. A clever, funny, fiercely bright, amazing woman. And that was his important thing that day.

  She had, of course, collected his dry cleaning. It was hanging on the back of the coat-cupboard door. Had he registered irritation that it hadn’t made its way upstairs, where he’d wasted a few seconds looking for it? Would he have dared to be irritated about that? He might have been, because he didn’t know what day it was.

  How would you say goodbye to someone if you knew it really was goodbye? How would you ever let go? You’d do every tiny thing differently. And you’d never give her the bloody car keys.

  At first he’d thought he’d lost them all. When he took the call, he’d thought his whole family was gone. No one would tell him. No one knew. So he’d felt the strangest sense of relief, even in the first dreadful moments of knowing he’d lost her, that he hadn’t lost them all. The relief was a chink of light in the crushing darkness of that knowledge, and it was brief, and then it was gone.

  It was 6 August. Arthur had turned one a month or so earlier. Bea was four, and Delilah was two and a half. They’d just been away for the first time as a family of five. He’d only been back at work for a day or two. It had been a great week in a hotel in Newquay. Nothing too ambitious. The weather had been unusually good, and they had filled their time with sandcastles, rockpools and ice creams. The hotel had been one of those clever places totally geared up for young families, with waffle machines in the dining room and baby listeners in the bedrooms.

  Several times he’d taken the three children to breakfast on his own, and left Carrie to sleep. He’d known he’d be all right – it was a safe-space dining room, with patient, non-judgemental staff happy to help. He was supposed to be an equal parent, confident and competent, but in truth the three of them and just him still scared him a bit. The noise, the potential for mess and the infinite possibilities of domestic disaster. It was okay here – lots of new-men dads all in the same boat. And the lie-ins had paid off. Arthur was the worst sleeper of the three children, and Nick’s work meant Carrie had borne the brunt of it while she was on maternity leave. She was due back at work in September and was tired in her bones: he’d wanted to let her sleep until she was woken by her own body clock, not someone else’s. She relaxed, and was revived. She laughed a lot, and looked at him in the way he loved most.

  Their room had had a small balcony that faced the sea, and all three children had slept better than ever before, exhausted by playing in the fresh air. After they’d passed out, impossibly adorable, Nick and Carrie had drunk a little on that balcony. Carrie had just discovered Aperol Spritz, and he’d packed the wherewithal to make it for her in the room: she’d have two after dinner, and be tipsy, and remind him very much of the Carrie he’d married. Golden from the sun, where he was just pink.

  And so, after that lovely week, he’d been a little bit resentful of going back to work. A little bit grouchy. After he’d tracked down his clean shirt, and shovelled in some Cheerios, he’d kissed her forehead. Not her mouth. And he’d gone to work, where he was instantly buried in backed-up emails. He hadn’t thought about her again. Until he’d got the call.

  Afterwards, he c
ouldn’t really remember the journey to the hospital. How he’d staggered out of his office, said something – what? – to the nearest colleague, left the building. He must have hailed a cab. Maybe someone had followed him out and done it for him. He couldn’t remember what he’d said. Just that the taxi driver – a burly Asian, with a neat row of photographs of his own kids taped to the roof of the cab – didn’t let him pay for the ride. Called him ‘mate’, and wished him well. And that random empathy had nearly made him sob.

  There’d been a queue at the desk in A and E. A young woman with a bandaged hand. A milky-eyed old man in carpet slippers. They were both directed to the chairs by the window, with the vending machine and the three-year-old copies of National Geographic. He’d felt a stab of envy at their waiting-room status as he was ushered immediately beyond the desk. They were waiting because they could.

  Carrie had been driving. Less than five miles from home. She was a good driver. Slower than him. Careful. It didn’t matter, though, any of that, if the person in the other car was none of those.

  She hadn’t told him she was dropping Arthur off with a friend so she could take the girls to soft play for a couple of hours. It was minutiae. Tiny detail. No need for him to know. She hadn’t even known when she’d said goodbye. She’d been speaking to her friend Susie on the phone after he’d left – Susie had said she’d have Arthur while Carrie took the girls: soft play was impossible with a baby in tow, and it was such a wet day, and they loved it so … They’d have talked about it later. How it smelt of feet and how Bea had helped Delilah climb a rope net, and how the soft-play centre charged five pounds for a cup of chips because they had a captive audience.