As the coughing slowed, Nick scanned the room. ‘What the hell happened?’ he asked.
‘He fell in.’ This was Ethan, staring at his feet.
‘No shit, Sherlock. How?’ Nick’s voice sounded harsh.
Meredith had come back now. She was still crying. ‘Is he okay? Nick? Is he okay?’
‘Ssh.’ Heather stood up, and went to her daughter. ‘He’s going to be fine, darling. He’s okay.’
‘It’s my fault.’ Her shoulders heaved, her face was stricken. ‘I went to the bathroom with Lila. Just for a second.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ Heather smiled at her, her eyes full of concern. ‘It’s okay, baby girl.’ Meredith buried her face in her mother’s chest, and Heather kissed her tenderly.
‘I was asleep,’ Charlie said, wringing his hands. ‘He must have gone right past me.’
Ethan looked up. Heather met his gaze at once, and her eyes narrowed in a way he hadn’t seen before. She was biting her lip. Nick’s face, too, was furious.
‘But why wasn’t the pool closed?’
It felt like everyone was looking at him at once. Like he’d just been outed in an Agatha Christie novel. Granddad. Uncle Scott. Nick. Heather. Now Meredith.
The enormity of his stupidity and what it had almost meant hit him hard. He thought he was pretty much as miserable as he knew how to be, but it was like he was in a lift shaft, hurtling down to a new, dreadful low. ‘It was me.’
‘What the hell were you thinking, Ethan?’
‘I – I wasn’t,’ he admitted. ‘I just went to get my trunks.’
‘You left the cover off and the door open while you went to get your trunks?’ It was said more as an incredulous statement than as a question.
‘I’m sorry.’ Ethan preferred to stare at his feet, but he forced himself to drag his gaze up to meet Nick’s eyes. He saw an expression and an intensity there he’d never seen before, and he almost physically shrank from it.
‘You’re sorry? Do you have any idea how idiotic that was? Do you have any idea what almost happened here?’
Ethan couldn’t answer.
‘Do you? Do you?’
Nick’s words rained on him like blows. He actually flinched under their power as if they had been. He felt himself getting smaller.
‘Nick.’ Scott had stepped forward now, but it was Charlie speaking. ‘Nick. Calm down.’
Nick stopped him with a raised hand. ‘No, Dad. I won’t calm down. Arthur could have drowned.’
‘I know. But –’
Nick rounded on his father. ‘No but, Dad. Don’t defend him, not in this. He’s not a kid. Is he? He wants to be taken seriously, then he goes and does this.’ Nick was standing up now, still holding Arthur tightly. ‘How fucking irresponsible.’
‘I wasn’t thinking –’
‘You don’t say.’ Nick’s contemptuous sarcasm penetrated further, even, than his anger.
Ethan felt like nothing at all. He wished his mum was there, then hated himself for the pathetic, pitiful desire to bury his face in her skirts, like Meredith was doing with hers right now. He was a worthless coward.
Nick turned his back on Ethan, and walked in the direction of the house, holding Arthur tightly to him. ‘I’d better see the girls.’
Charlie smiled tightly, sadly, at Ethan. Scott touched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Better get yourself dried off, Ethan. Warmed up.’
Ethan nodded wordlessly.
Heather was following Nick out of the pool house, still concentrating her attention on Arthur. ‘I don’t like that cough, Nick. Don’t you think you should take him to the emergency room?’ She corrected herself unconsciously. ‘A and E. To A and E. We don’t know exactly how long he was in the water. And we don’t know if he has any water in his lungs. That can cause a problem, if you don’t treat it.’
Nick turned to look at her sharply. ‘How do you know?’
‘Water-safety course. With swimming lessons. When Hayley and Meredith were little. It’s called secondary drowning, I think. And then on The Affair, on HBO a couple of years back. They had one. It’s incredibly rare. But he’s still coughing …’
‘If you think we need to.’
Heather nodded decisively. ‘Just to be sure. I’m certain he’s completely fine. But you should hear that from a doctor, not from someone who did a course ten years ago or more. Right?’
Nick deferred. ‘Okay. You’re right.’ He rubbed his face with his free hand. ‘Christ.’
Heather squeezed his arm. ‘It’s okay. Look. You go and get Arthur dressed in something warm. You should change your shirt too – you’re pretty wet. I’ll come with you. I’ll drive. Give me your car keys – we’ll put his car seat in our car.’
‘What about the girls?’
‘Scott and Charlie can take care of them. My girls are here too, to help. They will be absolutely fine.’
He gave her a weak, smile, grateful for the direction. ‘Okay.’
Ethan heard the gravel crunch. He went to the window in time to see the back of Heather’s car turning out of the drive. He’d come straight up here. No one had been near him since. At some point Meredith had appeared on their landing, and stood briefly, glaring at him resentfully until he kicked the door shut against her. Dressed now, but still shivering, Ethan sat on the edge of the bed, with his face in his hands, willing Arthur to be all right. He was too shocked to cry.
He wanted to talk to Saskia. He wanted to talk to her so badly. And where the hell was his mother?
41
Never get into a car with a strange man. Except he wasn’t strange. And this wasn’t a car. It was a truck. A truck that was currently lost, and parked at a service station – the kind with a Little Chef, not the kind with a Harry Ramsden’s and an M&S food hall.
‘Have you heard of sat navs?’ She was teasing.
Joe looked up from the road atlas, and smiled. ‘I told you, I’m a Luddite.’
‘So you spend a lot of time in lay-bys, then, do you?’
‘I’m normally much better than this. You must have put me off.’
‘Oh, my fault, is it?’
She arched her eyebrows. This was flirting, she realized. How absolutely ludicrous. And lovely.
She’d bumped into him by chance. Well, if it could technically be chance that she was walking beyond the garden in the direction he had vaguely pointed in, when they’d first spoken. She wasn’t exactly looking for him, but she’d remembered the direction. Thankfully, he didn’t seem suspicious that she was seeking him out. He had greeted her warmly – as though her being there was almost expected. Told her he lived ‘over there’ and pointed again. She had nodded, and exclaimed politely, which was neither acknowledging nor denying that she already knew.
‘I’m always rushing when I bump into you,’ he’d said, although, to her, it seemed a very rural and laid-back interpretation of rushing. Everything about him seemed to be slower-paced than she was used to. She had the sudden thought that perhaps he was slow in bed, too. And shook her head, because it was so inappropriate and random and because she hadn’t thought about being in bed with anyone in for ever. But the thought persisted. And she engaged with it …
‘Where to?’ A bit brazen. Had she had too much English summer sun?
‘Oh, one of my other sidelines.’
‘Sounds mysterious. People-smuggling?’
He’d laughed. ‘Nothing so illegal. Pedestrian by comparison.’
‘So tell me? Otherwise I’ll have to make up all kinds of things.’
He shrugged his shoulders, then obviously decided to tell her. ‘I work with wood. Specifically, furniture. I’m a trained joiner. I make my own pieces from scratch. But I also – Have you heard of upcycling?’
‘Yeah. Making old stuff usable again, right?’
‘Exactly. Taking unfashionable, or damaged, or just unwanted old stuff and making other stuff out of it.’
‘Very twenty-first century.’
He smiled. ‘I like to
think I was into it before it became fashionable but, yeah, I guess. Sustainability, less waste, all that good stuff …’
‘Very PC too.’ Heather would be all over that, she thought. Immediately the prospect of Joe meeting Heather made her nervous. She was so pretty and youthful and sexy. She was thinking like a schoolgirl, for God’s sake.
‘If you like. For me, it’s just better, the old stuff – better made, more substantial, higher quality. I can’t bear it being thrown away and replaced with stuff that comes in a flatpack or from bloody Amazon.’
‘Fair enough. A friend of mine moved house recently and she had two tables that didn’t fit the new place, one a Victorian mahogany leafed table and the other an IKEA she’d screwed together fifteen years earlier. She was offered more for the IKEA one than the antique.’
‘Exactly. That’s crazy, right?’
‘I did think so, when she told me.’
‘And it can be very creative. I enjoy it – love it, actually.’
‘Gardening, and furniture restoration.’
He nodded. ‘That’s me. Love what you do, never work a day in your life. So, I buy bits online from eBay, sometimes from house clearances, places like that, collect them, work on them, sell them on …’
‘And that’s where you’re going?’
‘Yep. Just north of Cirencester today. To collect an old Welsh dresser and a sewing table I bought.’
‘Okay, then.’ She prepared to let him go.
He did that hesitating thing he’d done in the greenhouse. Then seemed to decide something. ‘Wanna come?’
She was surprised – it must have shown on her face. Was that what he’d been going to say in the greenhouse? A red spot sprang up on his chest, where the two top buttons of his shirt were undone, at her hesitation. ‘Of course you don’t. You’re on holiday. You’re walking … Stupid idea.’
‘I’d love to.’ For a second that was the answer she gave out of kindness, to cover his obvious embarrassment, to be polite. But only for a second. She wanted to go.
‘Really?’ He seemed gratifyingly pleased.
‘Why not?’
They stood smiling at each other for just a moment longer than was normal.
‘I’ll throw in a cup of tea and a piece of cake if you help me lift stuff into the back of the truck.’
She giggled. ‘Ah, an ulterior motive!’
‘You didn’t think I just wanted the company, did you?’
It was the lightness that was so intoxicating. That was how she explained it to herself. There’d been no light relief in her life for so long. Regular phone calls with Mel’s gentle teasing and distracting stories from the pub: that was as flippant as it had got lately. Everything else was like wading through a treacly swamp, and she was tired of it. She wasn’t going to see this guy after she left, so why not? It was harmless.
Laura had a horrible feeling that, as wretched as the last few months had been, there hadn’t been nearly enough fun and lightness in her life before then either. It hadn’t been a priority. She could, and probably would, blame Alex, but she’d been complicit. She wasn’t a spontaneous woman. She might say she had been, more, when she was younger, but it wasn’t really true. She was a planner, risk averse. And look where that had got her …
So it seemed to make sense, with just her phone and her sunglasses, to accept this invitation from a man she’d spent, oh, probably all of fifteen minutes with in total, to go and look at old furniture God knew where. She was still Laura, though, so she messaged her dad. Ethan, although his phone seemed to be spot-welded to his hand, rarely read her messages. Gone out. Home for supper. Xx
Eventually they’d found where they needed to be, Laura navigating with the ancient road atlas on her lap, both of them concentrating. It was oddly comfortable to be quiet together, the silence punctuated only by her directions.
En-route home, task completed, journey straightforward, things were chattier. It had been vague between them until now but, by mutual agreement, they wanted to exchange facts, to know more about each other. They threw quick-fire questions at each other.
He’d grown up in Suffolk. Only child. His father had died ten years earlier. His mother had remarried a family friend and lived on the north Norfolk coast and played a lot of bridge. Lots of aunts, uncles and cousins. He’d done an engineering degree at university but he’d hated it – the subject, not the life. He’d lived and worked in London for a few years, but he liked his life better here and now, and he didn’t miss the city.
His stock answer to the favourite-film question was Goodfellas, but his actual favourite film was Moonstruck, and his desert-island album would be Diamond Dogs. He liked reading, he said, and he loved cooking. ‘And my one wish is for world peace.’ He said this in falsetto, with a terrible cod-American accent.
‘Sorry. I’m being nosy.’
‘Me too. It’s good. This is like speed-dating.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’ She heard the flirtation in her own voice and, once again, was surprised by it.
‘I did it once. A mate dragged me along. It was horrendous.’
‘And this is like that?’ But she was teasing.
‘Correction. This couldn’t be less like that.’
She felt herself glowing at the compliment.
‘What about you? Same questions? Two minutes to answer.’
She laughed, flustered. ‘Um. Um.’
‘I’ll have to hurry you.’
‘Okay, okay. Big family. All staying in the house. Read English at uni. Should’ve read history. Or politics. Big crush on Norman What’s-his-name on the BBC.’
‘Really?’
‘Really! Favourite film Jack and Sarah.’
‘Never seen it.’
‘It’s lovely. Triple-hanky job. Richard E. Grant too.’
‘Another crush?’
‘You know it.’
‘Music?’
‘Radio. All sorts. Abba.’
‘No one’s perfect.’
‘Oy!’ She hit his arm playfully. ‘Oh, and Peaky Blinders.’
‘Cillian Murphy?’
‘Tom Hardy.’
‘You’re incorrigible.’ Joe laughed easily.
‘You have to have a crush.’
‘Jeanne Tripplehorn,’ he answered. I look nothing like her, Laura thought. ‘You.’ He was looking ahead, at the road. ‘Well, until I heard about Abba.’
‘Ever been married?’
‘Once.’ He paused, and she wondered if she’d gone too far. ‘To a woman named Rachel. We were married for three years. We’ve been divorced for seven or so.’
‘I’m separated.’ She had hardly ever said it out loud, and he hadn’t asked.
‘I figured.’
She stared at her hands on her knees.
‘Are you okay?’
She turned to look at him, but he was gazing at the road ahead. She was touched by the simplicity of the question, and the tone in which he’d asked it. ‘I think I’m going to be.’
She hadn’t been home for supper, like she’d said she would be. They’d stopped at a pub with a big beer garden where they had wood-fired pizzas, carried on talking, and laughing. It was almost dark when he pulled into the driveway. He’d offered to drop her at the house, but she’d said she’d rather walk through the garden, not really ready for everyone to see who she’d been with, so she came in through the back, dawdling in the moonlight, puzzled, as she approached, by how still and dark the house seemed at barely nine o’clock.
‘I had a lovely time. Thank you.’ It was an oddly formal thing to say.
‘Me too.’ He took her hand, leant forward and kissed her cheek, very slowly and very softly, lingering so she could smell him.
She kissed his in return, quicker because she was suddenly nervous. ‘Night.’
Scott was sitting alone in the kitchen in the quiet, with a glass of whisky. It was just getting dark but he’d only put on one sidelight. Laura could read the immediate change of energy in the hous
e. No one else was around. Scott explained briefly. Nick and Heather had come back from the hospital an hour or so before she’d come in, and Nick had taken Arthur straight up, he said. Bea and Delilah were already asleep.
‘Poor Nick. Poor Arthur. How the hell did that happen?’
Scott made no bones. ‘Ethan left the cover off.’
‘Fuck.’ She’d had a sixth sense, the second Scott had said Arthur had fallen into the pool.
‘It was just for a minute – he went upstairs to get his trunks.’
‘Oh, my God. Where is he now?’
‘In his room.’
‘I’ll go up.’
‘Up to you, but I’d maybe leave him.’
A sharp remark about parenting advice bubbled into her throat but she didn’t voice it.
‘Everyone else seems to have retreated to their own space,’ he explained. ‘There were quite a few recriminations, quite a lot of shouting.’
‘Of course.’ She could imagine. The glow of a gorgeous afternoon was fading rapidly. All-too-familiar guilt flooded into its space. She should have been there, instead of gallivanting around like an irresponsible teenager. She felt old again.
‘Hospital?’ She was still struggling to understand what had happened. ‘Was it bad? Is he okay?’
Scott patted her shoulder. ‘He’s fine. Heather thought they should just make sure – get him checked out. They had a longish wait in A and E, and he was tired and a bit overwrought. But he’s physically perfectly fine. Don’t worry. It’s over.’
‘Thank God.’
‘Where’ve you been, Sis?’ But his tone wasn’t accusatory.
She sank into a kitchen chair and he poured Laura her own small tumbler of whisky. She drank it in one. ‘Just out.’ She hadn’t the energy, suddenly, to explain. Hadn’t Dad told them she’d sent a message? She’d come in high as a kite, as happy as she could remember feeling in ages, but the news had slammed her back down to earth. She was furious with Ethan, and sorry too. Maternal guilt seeped through her, irrational as it might be. If she’d been there, it wouldn’t have happened. Ethan had needed her.
‘Ethan.’
He wasn’t asleep, but he lay still, kept his eyes closed.
‘Ethan?’ The whisper was a little louder, but he still ignored her. He didn’t want to talk. Not now. He’d wanted her, badly, earlier, but she hadn’t been there. And now he didn’t. Didn’t want her. Didn’t want to speak.
The Family Holiday Page 21
