The Family Holiday

by Elizabeth Noble

  She and Dad were getting on better, too. He didn’t think they’d get back together or anything like that, but they were talking. They were Team Ethan. More like it used to be.

  He hadn’t seen Saskia that whole time, in real life, or on social media. He’d been blocked on all her accounts. He imagined Rupert standing over her, foaming at the mouth, making her delete him over and over again. No Facebook, no Instagram, no Snapchat. He hadn’t heard her voice. He had videos of her on his phone. Zooming in and out on her face, laughing. In one she blew him a kiss, sunlight making her squint. He had watched them all incessantly at first. Now he could hardly bear to.

  He’d probably stuffed up the exams. Mum kept saying it was okay. That he’d be fine. That, even if he wasn’t fine, if he got five A–C grades he could just move on to his A levels and put them behind him. He wasn’t sure he believed she and Dad really wouldn’t lose their minds if he got five Cs. He’d been predicted a mix of As and Bs. Like, ten of them. Maybe some A*s on a good day, some of his teachers had said, in the final parents’ evening before study leave. Not that he hadn’t tried. There’d been whole days when he’d buried himself deeply in revision. Just to distract himself.

  Saskia was cleverer than him, maybe way cleverer. She was – she had been – talking about Oxbridge, or Durham. Her dad had been at Oxford, and she knew he wanted her to apply to his old college, if she had the grades. But she said if she went at all, she’d be more likely to choose Cambridge, and make somewhere just hers, not a family thing. She knew what she wanted to do – political sciences, something like that. She listened to Radio 4 and read her dad’s copy of the Spectator. Ethan had joked that he got smarter just being with her.

  They’d been at some of the same exams. Seeing her walk in had been a jolt. She’d had loads cut off her hair, and it sat just on her shoulders now. She’d smiled at him, a pinched, regretful smile, but he couldn’t read anything more in her face. She looked pale and worried. But her mum had driven her to all of them, and come back to collect her. His mum had offered, but he’d said no, that the fresh air and short walk would clear his head before and after a paper. Maybe he’d hoped he’d get to see her, to talk even. But Claudia was there, hovering in her estate car, and Saskia came in just before the exam started, and scuttled off the moment the papers were collected. She always sat behind him in the rows of desks lined up in the sports hall, near the exit, because of their surnames, and he was glad about that. He wouldn’t have been able to concentrate if he’d been able to look at her. He always spun around, the moment the invigilator took his paper off his desk, but she was always gone.

  He missed her. He missed the way she smelt, and felt, and sounded. In bed, at night, when he couldn’t sleep, he went over conversations the two of them had had, played his memories of her in his head, tried not to feel resentment towards her for following her parents’ diktats so faithfully.

  He might have stayed in the room all afternoon, but hunger moved him. He and Mum had stopped at Chieveley Services for sandwiches and coffee, but that had been ages ago. In the kitchen the welcome pack yielded a box of shortbread: he took three, and wandered onto the back patio, squinting at the sun like a nocturnal animal.

  Outside, Hayley, his sort-of cousin, was swinging on a chair on the patio, reading a book. Every other swing, she let her toes catch on the paving, then pushed herself off again. Her toenails were neon green, and her legs were very brown. She looked at him over the top of the paperback as he walked past, and threw himself down onto a second swing chair. He nodded to her, but didn’t take off his headphones. He tried to keep his chair still, but it resisted him.

  After a minute or two, Hayley laid her book on her stomach and looked at him purposefully, so he slid the headphones onto his neck.

  ‘What are you listening to?’

  ‘Oasis.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Aren’t they old?’

  ‘They’re brilliant.’

  She raised a cynical eyebrow, but didn’t argue.

  It was his turn to ask a question. She was sort of waiting for him to say something. ‘What do you like, then?’

  ‘All kinds of stuff. Grime. R&B. Ariana Grande …’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  She smirked. ‘Just testing. Not Ariana Grande.’

  ‘Thank fuck for that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t let Mere hear you say that. Major fan.’

  Ethan grimaced. ‘What you reading, then?’

  Hayley picked up the book, held it out towards him. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird. Do you know it?’

  ‘“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it …”’

  Hayley sat forward excitedly. ‘Wow! You do know it.’

  ‘Yes.’ He was glad of it, too. He knew Hayley and her sister were at a fancy private school in Surrey. At their mum’s wedding to his uncle, he’d thought he’d got a touch of smug arrogance off them – he couldn’t have pinpointed what or how, but he knew enough kids like that to recognize it. It might have been shyness, he supposed.

  ‘Did you do it for GCSE this summer?’ She’d realized, and Ethan felt deflated. He’d quite liked her being impressed.

  ‘Yeah. But I’d read it before.’ This was not true, but definitely impossible to prove.

  ‘Me too.’ This, he suspected, was the truth.

  ‘And you’re reading it again?’

  ‘I like rereading. And this is my favourite. I’m going to call my daughter Scout. If I have one …’

  Even in his soppiest thoughts about Saskia, or their dopiest conversations, they had not covered baby names. ‘Cool.’

  ‘How’d you do, do you think?’

  Ethan shrugged. ‘Really trying not to think about it.’

  ‘Me too.’ He didn’t believe that. She looked clever. Private-school kids got spoon-fed everything, didn’t they? Off a silver spoon.

  ‘Which question did you do?’

  God. He wished he hadn’t started, but now he had to finish. The excruciating conversation about which question they’d both answered lasted a few minutes, then petered out, mercifully.

  Ethan wondered if it would be rude to put his headphones back on.

  Hayley carried on swinging. ‘Have you got a girlfriend?’

  He eyed her suspiciously. Did she know? But she didn’t look sly. Just nosy. And did he? He supposed not. ‘Not right now, not really … You?’

  ‘Girls’ school.’

  Which was not really an answer.

  He was about to slip his headphones back on and put them both out of their misery when he heard his mother shouting from inside the house for help to unload the car. He nodded at Hayley, not sure they had made much progress, and escaped.

  27

  In the kitchen, Heather had definitely taken charge. The boys had carried the shopping in, and now Scott was loading tonic water, white wine and Diet Coke into a drinks fridge in the corner by the window. Nick and Dad were nowhere to be seen, and Ethan had made himself scarce too.

  ‘I see gender roles are very much alive and well in my family.’ Laura hadn’t meant it to sound quite so snippy.

  Heather smiled at her, but it was brief and not entirely genuine. ‘Or maybe they thought it would be too crowded in here.’ She’d made Laura feel petty.

  To show she didn’t really mind, Laura grabbed a few boxes of cereal from the table in the centre of the room where the boys had left them, and began to put them into an empty cupboard.

  ‘Oh, Laura, I think it might actually work better if we just, you know, left the cereals out on that dresser – where the gap is? That way everyone can help themselves in the morning and not get in the way of the kettle and the coffee machine, right?’

  She might very well be right. But she was annoying as well.

  ‘What would you like me to do?’ And this time Laura had meant her voice to sound just a tiny bit sarcastic. If Heather heard it, and Sco
tt certainly did – he stiffened – but, then, he’d been hearing it for more than forty years, she chose to ignore it, flashing a megawatt smile at Laura.

  ‘You know what, Laura, you’re just so sweet. But I’m fine to do this. Honestly. I’m all unpacked upstairs. You haven’t had a chance. Let me do this.’

  She’d brought an apron – a chalky white linen apron, the kind like a pinafore. An apron. She unfolded it, slipped her arms through the straps and smoothed it down. ‘If you want to do something, maybe you could make us all a nice cuppa.’ It sounded odd in her accent. Very Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.

  Scott coughed. Laura wasn’t sure which one of them was getting a warning.

  She took a deep breath and picked up the kettle, wonderfully uncrowded by cereal boxes. ‘Great idea.’

  It might be a very long ten days.

  In the late afternoon, groceries put away, Laura took a long bath, which she never did at home. She hadn’t been very good at keeping still lately. Buzzed around like a demented fly. She tried to read a book but couldn’t concentrate. An interiors magazine she’d found downstairs in the sitting room didn’t interest her either. Her attention span was pathetically short. She threw it onto the bath mat and lay back in the hot water, her eyes closed, concentrating on breathing slowly in and out. Not engaging with the thoughts.

  The water had been too hot, and the air outside was still very warm. She couldn’t be bothered to dress up. She ran a brush through her hair, and pulled on a linen shift that she should have hung up when she unpacked, but she didn’t bother with makeup or jewellery, although she would undoubtedly feel dowdy next to Heather. And old next to Hayley. She didn’t really care.

  Ethan was in his room at the top of the house. She’d tried to coax him out, but he said he’d come down when the food was ready, and his face was set in a way she knew made it pointless to argue. Poor angry, lost kid. She wanted to hug him. All the time. And she had to stop herself.

  Downstairs, in the kitchen, Charlie was pouring gin and tonic, taking the business of slicing lemons and adding a sprig of rosemary to the glass very seriously. He held up the bottle. It was Homebrew 2. Laura smiled, and put her arm around his shoulders briefly.

  ‘Mixologist!’

  ‘Trust me – they taste great. I meant to bring some juniper berries too.’ They clinked glasses and Laura sipped.

  ‘Where is everyone?’

  Charlie shushed and pointed at the sitting room. Laura stuck her head around the door and saw Nick’s kids sprawled across Meredith, thumbs in, in front of the television, watching Frozen.

  ‘I think Heather and Hayley are still on the tennis court.’

  ‘God. So keen.’ But she tried not to sound judgemental. She didn’t want to rock any boats.

  ‘And your brothers are having a testosterone-off at the barbecue. Why do you think I’m making so busy with the gin?’

  Outside, too many cooks were definitely spoiling the broth. Or, at least, worrying the fire. They’d always been this way, her brothers. She’d been born almost exactly between the two of them, and had played referee over and over throughout their childhood. Scott was clever, Nick dogged and determined. They both seemed pretty certain they knew best about the damn barbecue, although the bickering sounded more good-natured than snarky.

  She left them to it and came back inside. Then, having made her contribution by artfully pouring gourmet salad from a plastic bag into a large glass bowl, searching out a breadboard and a serrated knife for the four French sticks, she poured herself a second large gin and tonic, which might or might not have been a good idea, and snuck away. She walked past the climbing frame to the bottom of the garden, where there was a gate. The pool and the tennis court were the other way, so no one had explored in this direction. She could hear tennis balls being thwacked, and Heather offering enthusiastic encouragement. She looked back to see if she’d been missed, but she hadn’t. Before she’d wandered outside, Charlie had taken his gin to the sofa, where Bea was earnestly explaining to him who Olaf and Anna were looking for. Opening the gate, she wandered through and, skirting the edge of a small field, made her way to what was obviously the vegetable garden the brochure had boasted of. There was an old-style greenhouse, and a load of neat raised beds formed from railway sleepers. It was all very Marie Antoinette, and she wondered who ate the produce. Maybe they were supposed to, and the bagged salad from the supermarket was an affront.

  There was a mossy Lutyens bench bathed in the last of the apricot evening sunshine. Laura plonked herself down in the middle of it, drew her legs up underneath her dress to sit comfortably cross-legged, and rested her cool glass against her sternum, letting the sun warm her face, her eyes closed. Being still.

  When she opened them again, it was because she had sensed that someone else was there. She saw the shadow of a man, at first, and then he came fully into view. He was smiling. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you. You look very peaceful.’

  She uncrossed her legs, and sat upright, feeling self-conscious. ‘It’s fine.’ She hadn’t meant to sound so brittle. She forced a smile.

  ‘Are you staying at the house?’

  She wondered if she wasn’t supposed to be there. ‘Yes. Sorry. I arrived earlier. I’m with the Chamberlain family.’ She sounded foolishly formal.

  He walked towards her with his hand outstretched. She moved forward to shake it. Just before she took it, he looked at it, wiped it against the shorts he was wearing. ‘Sorry. Sorry. I’m filthy.’

  ‘It’s fine.’ She smiled, and they shook hands.

  ‘That’s two fines and two sorrys so far. We must both be English.’

  He was laughing at her, his voice full of amusement. ‘Sorry.’ Now they both laughed.

  ‘I’m Joe.’

  He was nice-looking. Handsome. Mel might even have said he was a ‘phwoar out of ten’, which was a favourite expression of hers. Not crazily younger than her, but a bit, maybe. It was harder to tell with blokes. Life was a bit less cruel to them on the looks front. He had a deep tan, but white lines around his eyes – from squinting without sunglasses on, or maybe from smiling. There was blond hair on his chest – it was sprouting out from the V of his T-shirt. He was good-looking enough, she realized, to make her very slightly regret not blow-drying her hair and slicking on mascara.

  ‘Laura.’

  ‘It’s good to meet you, Laura. Enjoying everything so far?’

  She nodded enthusiastically, endlessly polite. ‘Absolutely. It’s a beautiful place.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Do you …?’ She didn’t want to ask him if he worked there. Which was ridiculous. God, she was bad at small-talk. Casual conversation. It wasn’t rocket science. She felt awkward.

  ‘Do I work here? Yes. Among other things.’ He apparently didn’t find it a strange question at all.

  She nodded. That was a bit enigmatic. But he wasn’t weird – if her radar was still at all reliable. He was one of those quietly confident people she rather envied. Daphne would have described him as comfortable in his skin. You could just tell, right away.

  ‘I live over there,’ He gestured behind him. ‘On the farm. Looking after this garden is a sideline, really. I do it because I enjoy it.’

  ‘I can tell. It’s great.’

  ‘You’re a gardener?’

  She shook her head. ‘I kill stuff. Houseplants, mainly.’ She shrugged ruefully. ‘But I like to see a beautiful garden. My dad grew a few veggies, when we were kids, but nothing like this. It’s fantastic.’

  ‘Ah, it’s going over a bit now. Looked its best in June.’

  She couldn’t think of an interesting response.

  ‘Have you come in search of something for supper?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘There’s some chard that’s just right. Lovely in a salad. Some tomatoes too – come on.’

  She followed him. ‘Sounds amazing.’

  ‘Tastes better than what you can buy in plastic.’
/>   Laura thought guiltily of the bagged leaves.

  ‘I didn’t bring anything to put things in … Stupid.’ She might as well go along with his suggestion that she had been foraging. Better that, perhaps, than aimlessly wandering. Or hiding.

  Again, he was amused by her. His eyes twinkled. ‘No problem. I’ll find you a trug. Hang on.’

  He disappeared briefly into the greenhouse, emerging with a small basket. ‘Here you go.’ She took it and walked behind him – the path here was too narrow to go side by side.

  He didn’t talk much while they harvested the food. The tomatoes smelt amazing, their red skins still warm. She liked that he was quiet. It didn’t feel weird: he just wasn’t one of those people who needed to fill every space with inanities.

  When they’d finished filling the trug, he stood up and back. ‘There. That looks good.’

  ‘It looks delicious. Thank you.’

  He gave a small bow, an old-fashioned gesture. ‘You’re very welcome. Enjoy.’

  She took two steps backwards from him, then slowly turned and made her way towards the gate that led to the others.

  ‘Will I see you down here again?’

  She spun around. He was standing on the path, watching her. ‘We’re here for ten days.’

  ‘So, yes.’ He smiled, and the white lines disappeared into his tan. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

  She turned back towards her family. She was through the gate before she realized she was smiling.

  28

  It was dark outside, with an unpolluted starry sky. Dinner had been eaten and cleared away, many hands making light work. The others were still congregated around the large wicker table on the patio, but Nick was upstairs, watching his babies. They’d fallen immediately to sleep. He’d been happy to relax the routine and abandon bedtime, but they’d had other ideas, exhausted by swimming and running around the lawn, so enormous compared to theirs at home. So he’d brought them up, and made them all brush their teeth, and now they were in his king-size bed, duvet thrown back, thumbs in. He’d lift them later, and carry them to the room next door. It was ironic. They’d been split up at home, and now here they were reunited – the two rooms were joined by double doors, open now – there was a single day bed in the corner of the other space, with a trundle pulled out and made up for the girls, and an ornate metal cot for Arthur. He supposed for visitors with fewer children, this served as a sort of private sitting room. Now, within just a few hours, it looked like a post-rummage jumble sale. Meredith had supervised the retrieval of swimwear, and then pyjamas. Everything else he’d packed for the week appeared to be strewn across the floor between the two spaces. He’d have to move everything to close the doors. So, yet again, they’d all be together. He wondered what Fran would say.