The Vacation

by T. M. Logan

  I settled back to wait, one hand unconsciously tapping the outline of the condom in the pocket of my shorts.

  Who would respond to the message? How would I feel when I knew? Was it better to know?

  Or did I still have time to walk away?

  No. This had to be played out, all the way. It was better to—

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a small movement to my right, deeper into the woods. A rustling, the snap of a twig. An animal? Or someone whispering in the trees?

  I shifted position slightly to get a better look.

  Another rustle from my right, closer now, another flash of movement at the edge of my vision. I squinted into the trees. A bird, maybe? Cat?

  More silence. Sweat prickled the back of my neck.

  I checked my watch again. The fifteen minutes were up.

  Maybe she wasn’t coming. Maybe Sean found the message and warned her off.

  A sound. Steps, hurrying up the path from the gorge below.

  A figure appeared. A petite woman in a wide-brimmed straw hat, black hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, phone in hand.

  It was Izzy.

  41

  Izzy stopped in the clearing and turned around as if looking for someone, staring through the trees to left and right. She was breathing heavily.

  She looked out at the view, hands on her hips, shoulders rising and falling with every breath. Her head moved in a little semicircle, taking in the rock formations on the far side of the gorge, the fields and forests and hills rising into the distance beyond.

  For a few seconds I was too stunned to do anything.

  CoralGirl was not supposed to be Izzy. It was supposed to be Jennifer. Or Rowan.

  But now I thought about it, the pseudonym was a clue in itself. CoralGirl. Coral Island was a place in Thailand—I couldn’t remember its real name—but Izzy had spent a year there, teaching, not long ago.

  With my phone raised, I zoomed in and pressed the button to take a picture. The camera clicked with its shutter sound. Shit. I ducked down but she didn’t seem to have heard it.

  I studied her for a moment. Anger boiled in my stomach, my chest, my throat.

  Izzy! Not Rowan. Not Jennifer. Does this make sense? Of course it does. You had your suspicions about her coming back to the UK. This is why she came back. She’s known Sean longer than me, longer than any of us. They grew up together, went to school together, they’ve always had that shared history, in-jokes and mutual friends from Ireland and their stupid teenage pact that they would get together at forty if they were both still single.

  Well, guess what, Izzy? He isn’t single.

  I stepped onto the path in front of her.

  Izzy took a step back in surprise.

  “Jesus!” she said, her hand flying to her chest. “Oh, Kate, you startled me.”

  “Sorry.”

  She gave a nervous laugh. “What are you doing, jumping out on people?”

  “Fancied a walk.”

  I looked into her eyes, willing her to give up, to give in, to admit what she was doing there. To concede defeat, make it easier on both of us. I didn’t want to force it out of her, but I would if I had to. I stood across the middle of the path, blocking her way.

  “You looked as if you were waiting for someone?”

  “Me? No, just getting my breath back after that climb up from the gorge.”

  “I know what you were doing,” I said tonelessly. “You were looking for Sean.”

  She looked nonplussed, her brow furrowing.

  “Sean? No. I thought he was up at the villa?”

  “He was,” I said, crossing my arms. “He is, I mean.”

  “So I wouldn’t be seeing him down here then, would I?”

  “Apparently not.”

  She was giving absolutely nothing away. Not a flicker. Not even the tiniest hint that I had caught her in a lie.

  “Are you all right, Kate?” she said.

  “I saw you stop in the clearing and assumed you were looking for someone.”

  “Looking for my lost youth, maybe.” She took her hat off and fanned herself with it. “Twenty years ago I could have skipped up that cliff path without breaking a sweat. But now I feel like I might need CPR—the path’s a killer on the way back up. Absolutely beautiful rock pools at the bottom of the gorge, though. Have you been exploring yet?”

  “Not yet. I thought you were with Jennifer and Alistair and the boys?”

  She nodded, gesturing down into the gorge with a thumb.

  “I was. Volunteered to come back early to make a start on getting tea ready.” She checked her watch. “You can help me if you like.”

  I held her gaze.

  You’re not going to admit it, are you? Not even now?

  “Of course.”

  We made our way back up toward the villa, through the vineyard, the ground hard and uneven under my sandals. Izzy was chatting, talking about everything and nothing in a constant nervous stream, but I couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying.

  Izzy was there. Izzy came to the rendezvous. She responded to a message she thought Sean had sent. Or was it just coincidence? Had she really left the gorge early to make tea? It was the kind of thing she would volunteer to do. And where had Rowan disappeared to?

  We were halfway back to the villa when Izzy put a hand gently on my arm and gave me an inquisitive look.

  “Don’t you think, Kate?”

  “Think what? Sorry, I was miles away.”

  “That Jennifer’s eldest is a bit of a strange one?”

  “Jake?”

  “He just seems a bit … out there. Like he’s operating on a different plane to everyone else.”

  “That’s teenage boys for you.”

  “Do you think he realizes that Lucy is out of his league?”

  I turned to her in surprise, not sure if this was just another way for her to divert attention away from her secret meeting with my husband.

  “Lucy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t think … I’ve always thought of them more like siblings.”

  “Kate, haven’t you seen the way he looks at her?”

  “How does he look at her?”

  She laughed.

  “With his tongue hanging out, mostly.”

  “Really?”

  “Believe me, he’s crushing hard on her.” She picked a bunch of grapes from a vine as we passed, putting one in her mouth. “He’s been showing off to try and impress her since we got here. That whole standing on the edge of the cliff thing, the day after we arrived? He was trying to impress her. Why else would he do something like that?”

  “He’s always been a little bit strange, I suppose.”

  “And letting Daniel tag along with their little gang?”

  “I thought that was quite sweet of them, allowing him to join in.”

  “But you know they’re only doing it to get in Lucy’s good books, right?”

  “Oh.” I felt a protective pang for my son, always the last to be picked for every team. “I thought they were just being nice.”

  “Afraid not.” She popped another grape into her mouth. “It’s all about hormones—there’s always an ulterior motive, right?”

  All of a sudden I couldn’t wait to get away from her. It felt as if she were taunting me, goading me, trying to provoke a reaction based on what I had just discovered.

  You’re right, Izzy.

  And I’ve figured out your ulterior motive.

  42

  We separated when we got to the arched gateway that led from the vineyard into the gardens, Izzy heading straight up to the villa and the kitchen. I took the white gravel pathway to the right, toward the pool, glad to put some distance between us.

  Sean was in the pool, splashing around with Daniel, Lucy, and Odette plus an assortment of inflatables, the kids squealing and laughing as they played a game of piggy in the middle. I took the long way around the infinity pool, to pass by where Russ was stretched ou
t on a lounger with a John Grisham novel and a small green bottle of French beer.

  “Nice to see the kids playing so well together,” I said.

  “Hmm,” he said, taking a swig from his bottle.

  “Oh, where’s Rowan? I was going to ask her something.”

  “She went to make some calls, I think.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the house. “Work stuff.”

  I went back to my sun lounger on the other side of the pool. Sean surfaced from the deep end, brushing his hair back off his forehead.

  “You were gone a long time, Kate,” he said, batting a beach ball back toward the children.

  “Had a bit of a lie down in the bedroom. To cool off.”

  He eyed me for a long moment, neck-deep in water.

  “You still look a bit hot, love.”

  I put a hand to my cheek, feeling the heat radiating from my skin. I was still hot from hurrying back up the hill.

  As calmly as I could, I said, “Where’s your phone, Sean?”

  Daniel clambered onto his back, hanging on with one hand and slapping the water with the other.

  Sean said, “My what?”

  “Your phone.”

  “Why?”

  “Thought I heard it ringing.”

  He looked at me again, with something in his eyes I couldn’t quite work out.

  “Dunno. It’s there somewhere. Underneath the lounger?”

  I looked.

  “Nope.”

  “Is it under my book, on the table?”

  I moved his book, hat, and T-shirt from the table.

  “It’s not here, Sean.”

  “Uh-oh,” he said, an undertone of regret in his voice. “Oh no. What an eejit.”

  “Who’s an idiot?” Daniel said indignantly.

  “I am. You’re never going to guess what I’ve gone and done.”

  Still standing in the deep end of the pool, my husband reached down into the water, into the side pocket of his swimming shorts, and pulled out his phone.

  * * *

  “It says here,” Daniel said, studying his iPad, “that if you put it in a bowl of rice for eighteen hours, then it will come back to life. The rice takes all the water out of it, or something.”

  Sean’s cell phone lay, lifeless, on the kitchen table next to him. It had refused to switch on since being submerged in the pool, refused to power up, refused to do anything. He picked it up and pressed the Power button again. Nothing.

  “I think it’s a bit beyond that, Daniel.”

  “But you need a phone, Daddy. You can’t not have a phone.”

  “I didn’t have a phone when I was your age. I survived.”

  “Yeah, but that was like the olden days.”

  “The eighties.”

  “Was that before or after the Vikings?”

  “The New Romantics, you young whippersnapper.”

  “Oscar in my class dropped his phone in the toilet once and he made it work again with rice.”

  “But I bet it was only in the water for a few seconds. That’s a bit different to me being underwater and swimming around with the phone in my pocket for like ten minutes.”

  “Can’t believe you jumped into the pool with it.” Our son turned to me, smiling. “Can you believe it, Mummy?”

  I knew why Sean had done it. He knew, too. But it didn’t matter. This charade of ours was all for the kids’ benefit.

  “It is a bit of a Daddy thing to do,” I said, as cheerfully as I could manage.

  We both knew it wasn’t an accident—I couldn’t ask him about the messages now, and that was that. Now that his phone was broken, I couldn’t access them unless I could get his login and password for Messenger online, and that was never going to happen. My guess was that after I left the poolside he’d checked his phone and seen the message. It seemed that he’d not been in time to warn Izzy off, though.

  But I didn’t want Daniel to be exposed to the corrosion that was eating away at his parents’ marriage. Not yet. He needed to be protected for as long as possible.

  43

  Sean

  “How long have you got?” Sean said, looking over his shoulder.

  “Not long. Keep your voice down.”

  “I wanted to—”

  “Not here,” she said softly. “Where’s Kate?”

  “Busy with the kids.”

  “We can talk downstairs in the wine cellar. Follow me.”

  She led him across the kitchen to an alcove lined with jars and tins of food, with a door at the end. She went to it and pulled the door open, switching on the light and gesturing to him to follow.

  A flight of concrete steps led downward into the bowels of the villa, the air cool and earthy away from the fierce heat of the evening. They walked side by side, hands almost touching, down a long passage carved out of the rock, lined from floor to ceiling on one side with rack after rack of dusty wine bottles.

  She stepped back into a shadow, beckoning to him.

  “So how are you doing?”

  He moved toward her, closing the distance between them. He put a hand on her arm, the skin warm and smooth beneath his fingers.

  “Kate knows,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “No. She doesn’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I just know.”

  “She’s convinced herself that something is up.”

  She moved closer, lowering her voice.

  “That’s not the same thing as knowing. Not by a long way. What has she said to you?”

  “It’s just getting more and more complicated. I constantly feel like I’m going to fuck up and it’s all going to come crashing down.”

  “That isn’t going to happen.”

  “I don’t know how much longer I can do this for. I feel so guilty about it.”

  “You think she’s never kept secrets from you?”

  “No. Not like this.”

  “Really?” She took his hands between hers. “This is not your fault, Sean.”

  “That’s not strictly true, is it?”

  “We’re human, you and me. Just like they are, just like everyone else. Humans make mistakes. We just have to decide how we’re going to deal with this one.”

  “You think this is a mistake? What we’re doing?”

  She smiled up at him. “This? No.”

  “I think we should come clean. Work out a way forward that involves the least pain for everyone involved.”

  “We’ve talked about this already. This is the best way.”

  “Keeping her in the dark like this,” he protested, shaking his head. “It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

  “Fair? Who said life was fair?”

  “We can’t keep it secret forever.”

  “Why not? Why shouldn’t we?”

  “Because sooner or later she’s going to find out. Someone’s going to find out, and when that happens it will only be a matter of time.”

  “She can’t ever find out. And she won’t if we’re careful.”

  “I’ve told you, I’m no good at lying. Especially not to her.”

  “It’s all about practice, Sean.” She smiled. “The more you do it, the better you’ll get.”

  “I’m just not sure how long I can keep going on as if everything’s normal. I’ve never done this before.”

  “I don’t exactly make a habit of it, either.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  She moved closer, placing a hand on his chest, feeling the muscle hard and flat under her fingertips.

  “Let’s just keep on doing what we’re doing,” she said. “There’s too much at stake to do anything else. Surely you must see that, Sean?”

  “I do,” he said quietly. “Absolutely.”

  TWO MONTHS EARLIER

  Her mum’s banging on the bedroom door.

  “You’re going to be late for school.”

  “I don’t care,” she shouts through her tears. “I’m not going.”

/>   “Don’t be ridiculous, of course you’re going.” Her mum’s incredulity is clear, despite the locked door between them. “You’ve got exams to prep for.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  She doesn’t want to go to stupid school anyway. She doesn’t want to do anything. Doesn’t want to leave the house, or leave her room, or even get out of bed. Not now. Not ever. Not after what he’s done.

  Her phone is on the pillow beside her, its screen black. She can’t bring herself to unlock it, to look at anything, because she knows what she’ll see.

  She wants to stay in this room and never come out.

  She closes her eyes and pulls her knees up under her chin, the pain in her head like a black hole swallowing every thought. How could she have been such an idiot? How could she have got him so wrong? How could he be such a bastard? Why did he do it? What had she done to deserve it?

  She buries her face in the duvet.

  Her mum is knocking on the door again.

  WEDNESDAY

  44

  Daniel

  Mum was right, Daniel thought. It was good to play with the bigger boys.

  Even if he was still slightly terrified of them, Jake and Ethan didn’t send him away, like his sister and his parents did. Jake was tall—nearly as tall as Daniel’s dad, who was more than six feet—and his brother, Ethan, wasn’t far behind. They seemed like miniadults to Daniel, huge boy-men as big as teachers or parents.

  And they were cool. Like the cool boys at school, the ones everyone wanted to hang with but everyone was a bit scared of, too, the ones who were good at football and funny and wanted to talk to girls.

  Daniel wasn’t into football. He liked Minecraft, and Lego Star Wars, and funny videos on YouTube.