by Zoe Cook
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for all of this, for everything…’
‘It’s nothing,’ Claire smiled at her, ‘You’re my little sister, it’s my job!’
Lucy tried, again, to convince her sister that she was fine now, that she didn’t need her to stay. But Claire wouldn’t agree and told her she’d sleep on the sofa and see how she was in the morning. Too tired to argue, Lucy made her way to her bedroom. Claire had clearly tidied it while she was with Scott in the lounge. The bed was made, her clothes folded away, and sitting on the chair at her dressing table was the box she’d been looking through the night before. On top of it there was an overturned photograph, which Lucy picked up. It was the image of Tom from the beach. Lucy thought back to the evening before and realised with plunging horror that she must have fallen asleep with the picture left out. Claire would have found it when she was clearing up and Lucy could imagine what conclusions she’d have drawn from that. She must think I’m pathetic, Lucy thought.
10
Claire stayed almost a week in the end. She took time off work as holiday and moved in with Lucy, cooking her massive carb-laden meals and watching her eat them. They drank sugary tea from Lucy’s vintage harlequin-coloured, gold-rimmed teacups and watched their favourite rom-coms in the evening. In the daytime, with Lucy at work, Claire cleaned her flat from head to toe, polishing the bathroom bin, dusting skirting boards – the works. Lucy protested that she didn’t need to do all this, that she should go home to her own flat, which she shared with her lovely boyfriend Tim in Harrow. Claire insisted, of course, that she wanted to stay. It was clear how worried she was, but she didn’t ask any probing questions, and instead left it to Lucy to get back to strength, hoping she’d start talking at some point.
As Claire packed the few things she’d turned up with after Sophie’s phone call on Wednesday morning, Lucy watched her and her meticulous ways with admiration. She was the most practical and careful person Lucy had ever known. She looked after everything properly, had bags that matched shoes and gave an impression of togetherness that Lucy envied but which made her feel chaotic by comparison.
At the front door, with Tim’s car engine running, Claire pulled Lucy in for a hug and checked for the fortieth time that she was going to be alright.
‘You are in charge of your life,’ she said to Lucy, seriously, ‘And it can be whatever you want it to be.’
Lucy smiled at her sister’s sentimental ideas and nodded in faux agreement. ‘Lucy,’ Claire implored, more seriously than before, forcing Lucy to hold her eye contact. ‘I really mean it. And there’s something I need to tell you,’ she continued, with an expression now that Lucy couldn’t quite place. Was it worry? ‘I called Tom,’ she said, matter-of-factly, but too quickly. ‘I know what’s happening this summer. I know he’s asked you to be there. And I think you should go.’
With that, Claire disappeared into the darkness. The passenger door shut and the horn beeped a goodbye. Lucy stood on her front step, heart racing, tears threatening yet again, and a surge of anger, fear and something that felt like excitement trembling through her body.
11
Hideaway Bay, 2003
‘Do you fancy a surf?’ Tom asked from his seat in the sun on Lucy’s decking.
‘Could do,’ Lucy said, considering whether she could be bothered with the walk back into town and trying to remember if she’d washed her wetsuit.
‘It looks like there are some great waves,’ Tom said, pointing to the sea as if Lucy needed the visual clue. She sat herself on his lap and kissed his hair.
‘We can go if you like, or I might just sit and watch you. I don’t think I want to get wet again and I need to write to Claire.’
‘How is she?’ Tom asked, slipping his hand around Lucy’s waist and taking a sip of orange juice. ‘Or where is she, more to the point?’
‘Thailand now,’ Lucy said, ‘then she’s off to New Zealand, though I’m not sure exactly when.’
‘I don’t really know why you’d need to go to Thailand when you’ve got this on your doorstep,’ Tom said. It was an attitude that grated with Lucy; his lack of desire to leave Cornwall, seemingly ever.
‘I think it’s pretty important to see the world, Tom,’ Lucy said, more sternly than she’d intended. ‘I don’t want to sit around here for the rest of my life.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ Tom said, rolling his eyes. ‘I meant why would you go now, in the summer? You want to get away from this place in the winter, when it’s bleak, when everything closes and everyone’s miserable and there’s nothing to do.’
‘Oh, yeah, well, I guess,’ Lucy said, standing up and stretching her arms up to the sun. ‘It is pretty nice here at the moment.’
Tom and Lucy walked back down into town hand in hand, talking from time to time about the café and the season ahead. Bookings were looking good according to the hotel owners and the campsite was set to be busy. Lucy knew the café struggled over the early months of the season to cover its costs. It was a difficult call deciding when to open after the winter and plenty of days saw them make a loss. Lucy worked a shift there from time to time for a bit of cash and she felt guilty taking her wages at the end of a day when they’d only served half a dozen cups of tea and a handful of toasted teacakes. The summer itself was a different ballgame, of course. The whole town exploded into life from late June, especially when the weather was good. The campsite at the very edge of the beach brought in a university crowd, which spent plenty of money in the pubs and on surf-hire, while the upmarket hotels dotted along the cliffs, with their sweeping sea views and elegant furnishings, attracted the kind of guests that the town really needed, the guests that spent a small fortune on food and drink, souvenirs and clothes, hair and beauty appointments, and, well, just about anything. One of the most contentious issues in the town was that of development, with frequent proposals from huge corporations wanting to build super-resorts and massive hotel complexes in the green spaces that still existed around Hideaway’s cliff tops. The divide of opinion was pretty simply split between the businesses who would profit hugely from the increase in footfall year-round and the business owners who feared their own hotels, B&Bs and apartments simply wouldn’t match up to the new wave of developments. The latter tried to scare residents into believing that holidaymakers who came for the big resorts being proposed would simply sit in their complexes and spend all their money right there, that very little would trickle into the town. Lucy could see both sides. Tom was adamantly against the whole idea. His issues were more philosophical than the majority of the objectors’ issues. He simply didn’t want Hideaway Bay sold to the highest bidder. He didn’t want the feel of the place changed. Lucy was coming round to his way of thinking more and more this year. The spring they’d just had in Hideaway had felt so blissful and easy, the town was in good spirits, the weather was amazing and the whole place had just felt positive since the New Year. It would be a shame for anything to compromise that.
‘So has Claire met anyone?’ Tom asked. He was nosey about people’s love lives; it was a trait that always surprised Lucy.
‘I don’t know,’ Lucy said, ‘I doubt she’d tell me. Anyway, I’m sure she’s far too busy using her time more productively. You know what she’s like, she’s already done a yoga course and some kind of meditation retreat. She’s hardly living the gap-year dream, is she!’
Tom laughed. It was true that Claire was the more straightforwardly sensible of the two sisters. Even their mum wondered where her eldest daughter had inherited such a level head. Lucy’s family were go-getters. Her dad could seem like a straight-laced finance-type, but that was just how he made his money. And boy, did Steven make his money. When he was in Hideaway he was always on the go – surfing, sailing, windsurfing, kayaking. And their family holidays were legendary. They never seemed to do anything anyone might consider normal. They’d be hiking some mountain with Richie strapped to Steven’s back, or combining a safari trip with aid work in South Africa. Lucy,
of course, considered this pretty normal – it was what she’d always known.
‘I wish she would meet someone,’ Lucy said, after thinking about it. ‘It might lighten her up a bit. Even her emails are written like A-level essays. It sounds like she needs to drink a few cocktails and let her hair down.’ She smiled to herself at the unlikely image.
‘Maybe she’ll surprise you,’ Tom said, as they reached the beach. ‘Talking of A levels, are you still sticking with your subjects?’
‘Yeah, I think so,’ Lucy replied, not wanting to talk about it. Thinking about going back to school in September did not fill her with joy.
‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it all, actually,’ Tom said, looking down at the floor. Lucy could sense his nerves.
‘About what? A levels?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were set on sciences in case you want to do marine biology.’
‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘It’s just, I’ve been thinking about it all and I don’t really think it’s right for me.’
‘Oh, right,’ Lucy replied. ‘You seemed so set, I’m surprised. What do you think you’ll do instead? I suppose you’re good at English, maybe you could wait until you get your results in a few months and decide from there –’
’– no, I mean,’ Tom hesitated, making Lucy nervous too now. ‘I mean, I don’t think I’m going to go back at all. I don’t think I’m going to do my A levels. I don’t think I need them.’‘What?’ Lucy said, raising her voice in disbelief. ‘That’s ridiculous. Good one. Good luck convincing your parents with that.’
‘They agree,’ Tom said, kicking a line of sand ahead of them. ‘I’m going to get more involved with the businesses. I’m going to help them out. They don’t want to do all this forever and it will all be mine one day anyway, so –’
’– so you’ll just give up on anything else at the age of sixteen and decide to stay here for the rest of your life? Are you fucking crazy, Tom? You’ll have no options at all.’
‘I know that’s how you see it, Luce,’ he said as she pulled her hand away.
‘This isn’t what we talked about,’ she said, quietly, feeling foolish now. ‘I thought we were going to get our A levels and then travel, you know, actually do something. Why did you let me talk about all that when you were planning to just sit here in Cornwall and work in a fucking café?’
‘We can still do that,’ Tom said, reaching for her hand again. She tugged it away from him.
‘Yeah, or we can say that we will and then end up not doing it, because you’ll never be able to tear yourself away from this place,’ Lucy spat at him. ‘You’re pathetic sometimes, Tom, a massive fucking let-down.’
‘Lucy!’ he called after her as she walked away, rage burning her cheeks.
12
London, 2010
Lucy examined her freshly dyed, chest-length blonde hair, curled from the midsection, and reapplied her peach lip gloss in the mirror of the ladies’ loos. The last show in this long-running series of Cook My Dinner really did feel like cause for celebration. The eighteen-week run had been a particularly stressful one, with fallouts between Spectrum and the broadcaster leading to plenty of unpleasant meetings and phone calls that Lucy was often caught in the middle of. The show was one of Spectrum’s trademark productions and they’d been making it at their onsite studios for almost six years, with a variety of different presenters. The current ‘talent’ was a particularly difficult character, Gareth Bell, a former Michelin-starred chef who’d fallen into disrepute years before following a tabloid scandal involving cocaine and prostitutes, and who Emma had whole-heartedly believed she could rehabilitate onto daytime TV. He was also incredibly cheap to book, which was always appealing to Emma, but the relationship hadn’t worked out quite as she’d hoped and his tendency for arriving on set half cut had caused some challenging production issues. He was sticking around for the wrap party tonight and Lucy had been tasked with checking this with him earlier in the day. From what she could tell, he was already halfway drunk and it was only 7pm. His speech would be interesting.
The show’s daily guest was also due to stay for the celebrations. Warren and Charlie had gone all out for the last show in the series and had found someone who wasn’t an obscure soap character, or someone Lucy needed to Google (you NEVER ask a booker who the name on the board actually is). Today’s guest was Lawrence Shield, a member of chart-topping boy band The Team, and the most famous one at that. Emma was embarrassingly excited that Lawrence was staying for the party and hadn’t left him alone. She was still fawning over him as Lucy left the toilets and headed to the bar. She ordered a pineapple martini, which came in a plastic glass, decorated in carnival-coloured circles and finished with an umbrella. She had hardly touched alcohol since the fainting incident and had expected to feel better for her abstinence. The lack of hangovers had been a nice break, but other than that, she just missed the taste of wine and cocktails; the pineapple martinis were going down well. Lucy felt a hand on her back and turned to see Helen from the edit standing nervously behind her.
‘Hey, Helen,’ Lucy smiled. ‘You okay?’ Lucy wasn’t sure if she’d spoken to Helen properly before. She’d said hello a few times whilst she was up in the edit running errands for Emma, but couldn’t picture Helen outside of the dark suites at all.
Helen had dressed up for the party and was wearing a calf-length leather dress and studded jacket. Lucy hadn’t noticed her gothic style before.
‘I’m, um, I’m a massive Teamer,’ Helen looked at the floor as she spoke.
‘Sorry?’ Lucy replied. ‘You’re a what?’
‘Oh,’ Helen laughed nervously, shifting her weight from foot to foot. ‘It’s what we call ourselves, ‘teamers’, The Team’s super-fans.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Lucy replied, bemused. ‘That’s cool.’
‘I wondered if you think it’d be possible to get a picture with Lawrence?’ Helen looked up at Lucy now, hopefully.
‘Oh, of course!’ Lucy replied. ‘I can’t see that being a problem. Just go and ask him, he’s lovely.’
‘I can’t,’ Helen’s eyes returned to the floor. ‘Please, would you ask for me? I’m too nervous.’ Lucy looked at Helen and felt a patronising pity for her. She was a large girl, probably the only girl at the party bigger than a size ten; Emma oversaw the recruitment at Spectrum and heavily policed what she called ‘the look’. Lucy wondered how Helen had slipped through the net and immediately hated herself for the thought. Helen had never been part of team drinks, team evenings out or any socialising at all as far as Lucy could remember. Maybe she’d never wanted to, but had she ever been asked? She’d probably worked there for a year now and Lucy had never spoken more than three words to her. She didn’t fit in with the group Lucy hung out with and so Lucy had never made any effort to include her. Never invited her to join them.
‘Of course I can ask him,’ she smiled at Helen again earnestly and hoped suddenly that Helen didn’t hate her for being the cliquey bitch she’d probably always seemed to her.
Lucy was used to politely interrupting Emma’s conversations and edged her way in to the group Emma was talking to, waiting for an opportune moment to get her boss’s attention.
‘Emma?’ she spoke quietly as the conversation continued among the rest of the group. ‘Helen from the edit would love a picture with Lawrence. Can I borrow him for a minute?’
‘Who?’ Emma replied at full volume, not taking her eyes off Lawrence.
‘Helen,’ Lucy repeated, ‘she works in edit one.’
‘I have no idea who you mean,’ Emma insisted, and Lucy recognised the rising irritation in her tone.
‘That’s her, over there, in the, er, black dress,’ Lucy gestured towards Helen, who was still at the bar, trying to look away.
‘Oh, dear God,’ Emma turned back and looked at Lucy. ‘How on earth did she get a job here? She doesn’t have the Spectrum look at all.’ Emma laughed at her own cruelty. ‘She’s a beast!’ she exclaimed, causing the rest of the g
roup to stop their conversations momentarily before laughing awkwardly.
‘She is not to come anywhere near Lawrence,’ she whispered fiercely to Lucy. ‘She is not to speak to him, she is not to ask for an autograph. I will not have her embarrassing me. What the hell is she wearing? She looks like an S&M hippo!’ This line gave Emma enormous pleasure and she began laughing again.
‘Emma…’ Lucy began, but Emma’s attention had turned again to Lawrence, who she was giggling at now like a school girl. Fury burned on Lucy’s cheeks. How could she walk back to Helen now? What was she supposed to say? She ducked back out of the group and walked in the opposite direction, away from Helen, who she knew must be looking at her, wondering what was going on. Lucy ordered another two pineapple martinis at the mobile bar, downing one on the spot. Out in the cool air of the car park, she took a cigarette from Charlie’s outstretched pack. She told Charlie what had just happened with Emma and Charlie laughed, rolling her eyes. It wasn’t the reaction Lucy had expected.
‘It’s awful, Charlie,’ she said, seriously. ‘What do I say to the poor girl? It’s vile. I can’t bear it.’ Lucy could feel her pitch rising with frustration. ‘Lawrence is lovely. He wouldn’t mind at all,’ she went on. ‘Just because Emma is a nasty bitch, why shouldn’t Helen have a picture with him? Because she’s fat? Because she’s not ‘got the Spectrum look’?’ Lucy couldn’t contain the anger in her words. ‘Woah! Calm down,’ Charlie had picked up Lucy’s martini and was holding it out for her.
