Pippa's Cornish Dream

by Debbie Johnson

  Her eyes flashed up at him and she smacked his hands away from her face.

  “Escape it? Collateral damage? What language are you speaking, Ben? You’re not in a courtroom now, and you’re not in jail! Nobody is forcing you to be here, and there doesn’t have to be damage at all! All this time I’ve thought this was what we both wanted, and then you go and say something like that? Are you already planning your great escape, then? Digging a tunnel all the way to the M5? Wondering if I’ll sue you for emotional harm afterwards?

  “You know what? You’re impossible! I haven’t got a clue what you want from me. You said you wanted sex, I gave you sex. I love giving you sex. You said you didn’t want anything serious, I gave you light-hearted. Then when I’m busy being light-hearted and enjoying it, you go all heavy on me, acting like I’m going to commit suicide the minute you take your admittedly gorgeous arse back to London!

  “I don’t know what this is! I don’t know what we’re doing! I know you don’t want anything long- term. I know I’m too messed up to even try it…so why can’t it stay like this? It’s so bloody…perfect! Why do we have to talk about it? Why do we have to consider the collateral damage? I know you’ll be going. I know! And I don’t want to think about it. I just don’t! Maybe that’s childish, but as you keep reminding me, I am only a child, aren’t I?”

  He wanted to hold her, to comfort her, but her anger was fizzing through her body so hard she was practically popping with it. And anyway, what could he say? What would make it better? There was truth in everything she said. Casual words had spilled from his damaged ego and he’d hurt her. Infuriated her. And he was impossible. He knew that. Pippa had never made a single demand on him – other than sexual – and had presented him with the perfect escape from real life. But now he was starting to wonder, at what cost, to both of them?

  “I’m sorry, Pippa,” he said, keeping his distance despite the fact that his fingers were twitching to touch her. “I’m sorry I spoiled the moment. I should have just let you do your happy dance. But all those things – about me, about my past – they’re still true. I still don’t feel ready for anything more.”

  “That,” she replied, narrowing her eyes, hands on hips, “is perfectly obvious. And I’d like to point out, Ben Retallick, that I haven’t even asked for anything more! Not once, you arrogant pig! Your head is so far up your own backside you can’t see out – you’re so worried about protecting your precious feelings, aren’t you? All because one bitch of a woman screwed you over. Has it ever occurred to you that I’m not ready for more either? That I have my own doubts and fears? And not just because of me and the way I feel, but because I have an entire family to look out for? That I have a four-year-old who thinks you’re cooler than Star Wars Lego and twin girls who have crushes on you the size of Pluto, and a teenaged oaf of a brother who looks up to you? That even without considering my own bloody emotional state, I have all of that to think about?

  “You, Ben Retallick, can be a perfect moron sometimes – all I wanted was some fun. Some pleasure. I’m not some neurotic girl who’s hoping to marry you. I know this isn’t real. All I wanted was to enjoy the time we have left together – is that really so bad?”

  She ran off down the hill, hair streaming behind her, bare feet padding through the long grass.

  Ben stood where he was, knowing that she needed time to cool off. And he needed time to think. At least, he thought, wryly, I’m a perfect moron. If you’re going to do something at all, at least do it well…

  Pippa sat in the school assembly hall, her senses assaulted by the familiar smells of cooked dinners, PE lessons and cleaning fluids. No chalk these days, though, which she always thought was a shame.

  She’d attended the same school until she was eleven, and sitting here, legs crossed, perched on one of the tiny plastic chairs, always made her feel about eight years old. As though she should be wearing her uniform and plaits and being careful not to run in the hallway. Some of the staff from her time were still here, in that timeless, ageless way that teachers have. They never had first names and they never existed outside the classroom. She still remembered the shock of seeing Mrs Clements in the local Tesco when she was little – she was convinced they all had camp beds set up at school and never left the building. School was a tiny, perfect world, totally self-contained.

  Now, though, she was here as a grown-up. As a parent, despite the fact that she’d never given birth in her life. It was Consultation Night, and she was here to consult, waiting to meet the Reception class teacher who looked after Scotty. The twins were done and at least, she thought, she didn’t have to deal with Patrick’s teachers any more. Wow, that had been a barrel-load of laughs – walking into the local comprehensive that she’d only left the year before herself, listening to sympathetic teachers break the not-so-shocking news that her brother was unlikely to be getting a clean sweep of A-stars in his GCSEs. They’d meant well and tried to help, but it had still been awful. You shouldn’t be going to parents’ evenings at eighteen, you just shouldn’t.

  Now, a few years on, she was more accustomed to it. Didn’t feel quite so squeamish as she wriggled on the baby chair. Felt a bit more able to ask questions without putting her hand up first.

  Her meeting with the twins’ teacher had gone well. They were communicating, playing with others, and they only reverted to their secret language when one of them was upset. All good news – apart from the fact that they’d both been telling Miss Rowley about their new friend. Their new friend who was really tall and loads of fun. The new friend they called Prince Charming. The bloody man was everywhere – there was no escape. Miss Rowley thought he was imaginary and Pippa did nothing to disabuse her. Maybe he was. A group hallucination.

  She’d calmed down after her blow-up on the hill. And really, she was a bit embarrassed about it now. Everything she’d said – okay, yelled – had been true, but it was still embarrassing. Juvenile. She’d acted like an angry teenager, while Ben stayed so calm, so distant. So completely walled-off. He was obviously used to hysterical females and none of it had seemed to faze him. While she had steam pumping out of her ears, he’d stood there, watching and listening and refusing to be dragged into it.

  She’d taken the sensible route and simply avoided him for the rest of the day. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have anything else to do. There were so many chores piling up – paperwork and housework, and the little DIY tasks that he’d been taking on without being asked. Her ironing pile was the size of Mount Vesuvius, and the shower needed unblocking, just for starters. With a houseful of hairy oiks, it always seemed to need it, and an hour on her hands and knees deconstructing some minor plumbing had been exactly what she needed to take her mind off things.

  She’d been spending so much time with Ben, she knew, that she’d been neglecting her duties. Life had always been busy, and now she was fitting in several hours a day for sex and flirting as well. And as there were still only twenty-four available to her. It couldn’t go on like this. A break from reality was fine for a few days, but this had been too long. Too long without focus, without her usual work ethic. Her usual routines and discipline. And if all those plates she was spinning over her head crashed to the ground, it wasn’t just her life that descended into chaos – it was the kids’ as well.

  Finding out that the twins had taken their hero worship into school hadn’t helped, and she had the awful feeling that Scotty was the same. Even Patrick was going out with him tonight, to the pub to watch the football. It was as if Ben had become the sun and they were all revolving around him. Especially her. She’d dropped everything to become his satellite and couldn’t for the life of her think of a way to break free of his orbit. Quite frankly, she was terrified.

  She was brought back to the moment by the sound of chairs scraping and nodded pleasantly at the departing parents in front of her. Two of them, obviously, wearing wedding rings and holding hands. In their early thirties. The way parents should be. Not like her, a messed-up scrap o
f a girl with a head like blancmange. Poor Scotty had definitely drawn the short straw there.

  She walked over to Mrs Pollock, settled herself in the midget chair. Put on her professional kind-of-mother face as the teacher pulled Scotty’s books from a massive cardboard box.

  “Hello, Miss Harte,” she said, smiling. She was lovely, Mrs Pollock. A woman in her fifties with the world’s biggest bosom. Seriously, it was enormous, and looked so comfortable even Pippa had the urge to rest her head on it and cry. She knew Scotty did, and occasionally wondered if he’d develop some kind of nanny-fetish when he was older.

  “Scotty is doing really well, overall,” she said. “His reading is coming on and his numeracy is very promising. He’s still on the shy side, but over the last few weeks I’ve noticed a real difference in him. He’s started to really come out of his shell. Do you mind me asking if there have been any changes at home?”

  “Um…no, not really,” said Pippa. Unless you counted the arrival of Prince Charming, and the fact that his big sister was busy getting bonked all over the place every night. Please Lord, she thought, don’t let him know about that…and even more please, don’t let him have mentioned it to his teacher. It brought a whole new meaning to the word “inappropriate”.

  “It’s just that he’s drawn this. We asked them to do pictures of the best thing they could hope for – we had all kinds of things, as you can imagine,” said Mrs Pollock, “a lot of games consols and bouncy castles and puppies and princess carriages. Scotty’s was a bit different, though. You’ll see what I mean.”

  She opened up the exercise book and spread the pages wide, holding them down with her fingers so Pippa could see them on the other side of the desk.

  She peered down. It was a pencil drawing of a family. A stick woman with lashings of yellow hair, with the scrawled letters Pip underneath. The twins, who for some reason both had eyes bigger than their bodies. Patrick, with a bright-red face and boots so big they looked like clown feet. Scotty himself, holding what appeared to be the Olympic torch but which was probably meant to be an ice- cream cone. And a man standing in the middle of it all, taller than everyone else, so out of proportion he looked like a giant. With a scribble of black hair and a huge, upturned smile. Beneath it, in his just-forming letters, with the “a” back to front, Scotty had written one word.

  Dad.

  Chapter 10

  When she woke up the next morning, Pippa immediately realised something was very wrong. She was alone.

  Feeling a flood of panic, she glanced at the alarm clock on her bedside cabinet. 8am. At least two hours past her usual Scotty wake-up call, and still no sign of him.

  She jumped out of bed, dragged on a dressing gown and ran along the hallway to his room. Flinging open the door, she saw his messy, slept-in bed, the gaggle of soft toys and action figures he cuddled up with every night scattered across the room. His pyjamas, in a huddle on the floor, next to his little slippers. But no Scotty.

  Pippa trotted down the stairs, stubbing her toe painfully as she went, and followed the sound of voices to the living room.

  She breathed a hefty sigh of relief as she saw Scotty sitting next to the twins on the sofa, laughing at the cartoons on the television. All three of them were dressed in their school uniform and had bowls of cereal resting on their laps. They slurped and chewed in unison, so distracted by Kung Fu Panda they barely noticed her.

  Patrick was standing behind the couch, staring in confusion at the pile of bobbles and hair slides he held in his hand, hitting himself repeatedly on the head with the hairbrush like a mental patient.

  “Sis, thank God!” he said, looking up as she entered the room. “Daisy and Lily say they want bunches – what the hell are bunches? And how do you use all this elastic stuff? I haven’t got a clue and they’ve threatened to call Childline unless I get it right…how do you do all this every day? I told them to eat their breakfast in the kitchen and they just ignored me and put the bloody telly on! All of them have lost a shoe and the twins say they need £1.50 each for a smoothie at lunchtime – I think they’re swindling me…we’ve only been up an hour and I’m knackered! Was I like this?”

  Pippa smiled, feeling her body relax now she knew everyone was safe, well and apparently surviving without her.

  “Believe me, Patrick, you were much worse! I seem to remember one morning Mum found you eating your Weetabix in the pigsty…”

  She walked over, took the bobbles from his hand and started to drag the brush through Daisy’s hair. Without pausing from eating her breakfast, she immediately started to yell “ouch!” at the top of her voice as Pippa detangled her wild blonde tresses.

  “Oh stop moaning,” she said, trying to be as gentle as she could. “Do you think Rapunzel complains every morning when she gets her hair brushed?”

  “No,” murmured Scotty. “Rapunzel is perfect. Daisy’s just a big fat cry-baby.”

  Pippa ignored the ensuing verbal battle and managed to get both the girls’ hair into passably neat ponytails. There were milk stains on Scotty’s shirt, but apart from that everyone was decent enough to pass muster at the school gate. And at least they’d eaten something other than chocolate – which she’d have put good money on Patrick giving them for breakfast. She was obviously under-estimating him again.

  Hair crisis averted, she turned to face her brother, who was looking about a decade older than usual.

  “Now, do you mind telling me what’s going on? Why are they up with you? Why are you up at all? Have you done something terrible you’re scared of telling me about? You haven’t got someone pregnant, have you?”

  “Ha! You’re one to talk! And no, I’ve done nothing, for a change. So get off your high horse – we just thought you’d enjoy a rest. And the chance to get ready.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, preparing for battle. She wasn’t quite sure she trusted the new, improved Patrick just yet. Years of mischief couldn’t be wiped away by a few weeks of good behaviour. There was too much water under that particular bridge for her to forget everything because of one little sleep-in.

  “Who is ‘we’?” she said. “And get ready for what? Do I have an appointment with PC Winnerley today?”

  “Oh, give me a break – I haven’t done anything, honest! ‘We’ is me and Ben. We went the pub last night, didn’t we, to watch that crap match? Met Mr Jensen there, though, had a bit of a laugh. Got the phone number of that new barmaid. Reckon I’m well in there. Anyway, Ben thought you might want a bit of a rest. Personally I think you’re a bit of a layabout, but the old geezers were of the opinion you work too hard. So tonight, you’re going away. With Ben. And Mr Jensen’s coming over here and we’re looking after the kids.”

  “I am not! And you are not!” she said, outraged at the thought of the three of them plotting behind her back. At the thought of Ben discussing her at all. At all of it. It was wrong, and it was out of control, and she had a headache, and the toe she’d stubbed was throbbing, and she thought she might cry.

  After her outburst on the hill and Scotty’s fantasy family drawing, the last thing she wanted to feel was ganged-up on. And even more out of control.

  “Yeah, you are. I know I’m a bit of a liability, but Mr Jensen’s raised five kids. It’s not like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And you keep going on about me growing up and taking a bit of responsibility – how am I ever going to do that if you keep treating me like the village idiot, sis? You’re going away. A night of Scrabble with Ben. Get some of the triple-letter words, like, maybe that one that starts with ‘s’ and ends with ‘x’…”

  She thumped him, hard, with the back of the hairbrush, realising that she was laughing. She didn’t want to laugh. She wanted to be angry. To be upset. To stay in the saddle, firmly perched on her high horse, thank you very much.

  But he was funny, Patrick. She’d forgotten how funny he could be. She’d forgotten how good he could be to be around. Some sister she was. He was also right…he’d never learn, never get a chanc
e to prove himself, if she never gave him the opportunity to try. Had she become so trapped in her own martyred world of self-sacrifice that she’d held him back? Had she turned him bad by being too good? Ouch! The thought made her brain hurt, but she had to acknowledge the possibility. And maybe – just maybe – give him the chance he said he needed. He’d done this, for her – no matter how hard he was trying to sound flippant, he’d organised it. So she could relax. It wasn’t his fault that Ben was causing her more of a headache than a heart flip at the moment.

  She couldn’t say no, she knew. Even though she’d probably regret it. She’d probably come home and find the twins drinking cider straight from the barrel, and Scotty riding SpongeBob around Bottom Paddock in his Spiderman costume. At the very least she’d come home to a load of empty pizza boxes and an almighty mess to clear up.

  That, though, she could handle. She’d been tidying up their mess for years. It was the rest she wasn’t sure about. A whole night with Ben. A whole night with the man she’d called a perfect moron the day before. A whole night to talk and laugh, and enjoy that Scrabble word Patrick had mentioned. A whole night to fall even deeper into the hole she felt herself slipping into.

  Because while parents’ night had shown her how much the kids loved having him in their lives, it had also reminded her of how much she felt the same.