A Wedding at the Beach Hut: The escapist and feel-good read of 2020 from the bestselling author of THE BEACH HUT

by Veronica Henry

  ‘I reckon I’d like to have a look at it,’ she said with a smile. ‘I reckon it might do us very nicely. Maybe the time’s right for a new start?’

  29

  That evening, Jake texted Robyn a row of palm trees and emojis with sunglasses on.

  Mission accomplished! Meet you in the Ship Aground? Xx

  That meant he’d managed to get the last of the tiles down and the pool area was finished, but for the last of the plants. Robyn knew he’d be relieved to get the money in. Jake worried more than she did about cash flow. He’d had a couple of bad debts before they worked together, and he still didn’t trust people to pay, although he knew Bruno was good for the money. It took the pressure off them a bit.

  They weren’t having their usual beach-hut barbecue this Friday as Rocky had dismantled everything and there was wet paint everywhere, plus he’d taken the loo out to replace it.

  ‘I was going to replace the lid, and the cistern, and the wonky handle and then I thought I might as well do the whole thing.’

  ‘This wedding’s going to end up costing a fortune. The idea is to keep the budget down, Dad,’ laughed Jake.

  ‘It’s an investment,’ Rocky reassured him. ‘And the toilet’s on me. Never say I’m not generous.’

  Everyone was being so kind. This was the sort of wedding everyone should have, thought Robyn, where everyone mucked in and did what they were best at.

  She pulled up outside the pub and parked. The Ship Aground had been part of her life as long as she could remember, and although it would never win a Michelin star, the grub was plentiful and good value and their knickerbocker glories were legendary. Though she wasn’t sure she was quite in the mood for its upbeat vibe this evening. There was always loud music and lots of people. All she really wanted was a long bath and an early night so she could get up early and go and help Jake at the Linhay.

  But Jake wanted to wind down and have a few beers with his friends, and rightly so after what he’d achieved. Robyn still felt guilty about taking the day off to go shopping, but Jake insisted that her mum needed the trip as much as anyone, and it had been good to be all together, giggling in John Lewis. Though she’d had a struggle to stop her mum buying the whole of the baby department.

  ‘Let’s wait until we’ve chosen the colours for the nursery,’ Robyn suggested, and Sheila had made do with piles of leaflets.

  Nurseries. Babies. Mothers.

  Robyn rummaged in her bag and pulled out her phone to look at the email again. She had never been as near to her birth mother as she was now. They were one step closer to making a connection. As the adopted one, it was up to her; those were the rules. She would have to make the first move; Emily wouldn’t have been given her contact details.

  Warning bells were going off in Robyn’s head. Now she knew her mother wanted to make contact, surely she should take some time to work through the implications? Perhaps she should have some counselling? To prepare her for an emotionally challenging experience. To manage her expectations. To steel herself for disappointment.

  There was no time for that. Now they were connected, Robyn felt an urgent need to get this all over before she was married and the baby was born. If she didn’t do it now, she would never do it. It felt very private, and intimate. And at the moment, the only person she wanted to share this journey with was Emily. Every time she felt tempted to tell someone else, she was terrified of the fallout. Everyone had their own worries and problems. She owed it to them to sort this out by herself.

  She sighed. She should be in the pub by now. Jake would be wondering where she was. She pulled up a blank form on her email and began to compose a message. It needed to be brief and yet say so much. She was very mindful that it might be a shock, and to make it a tentative reaching out. Even then, she was going to have to be patient. It might take Emily time to respond. She might not respond at all.

  She read through her words.

  Dear Emily,

  I’m writing to you via the register who have given me your details. I was very glad to know you might want to get in touch but I shall leave it up to you.

  With my very best wishes

  Robyn

  Emily would know who she was from her signature: Mick and Sheila had kept her birth name and its unusual spelling. She kept the message deliberately brief and vague, in case the email got into the wrong hands, or Emily had changed her mind.

  She looked out of the window for a moment. Darkness was falling and a mist was coming in off the sea. She shivered. Was she taking a huge risk, getting in touch with a total stranger?

  Except she wasn’t a stranger. She was her mum.

  Before she could talk herself out of it, she pressed send, then got out of the car. The mist hit her in the face, wrapping itself around her.

  ‘What have you done?’ it seemed to say. ‘What have you done?’

  She hurried through it, wiping the droplets of sea from her hair and her face, and pushed open the door. Inside, the pub was heaving. She could smell sweat and beer and salty skin and chips. A classic Friday night at the Ship Aground. Thin Lizzy was blaring out. The Everdene boys were definitely back in town tonight. They were a tangle of sun-bleached locks, six o’clock shadows and tattoos, with Jake in the middle of them.

  They all jumped up when she arrived, and there were kisses and congratulations, both for the baby and the wedding. It was the first time Jake had been out with them all since he’d proposed: his college buddies, his surf buddies, the guys who’d seen him through his teens and his twenties. Robyn felt a ripple of affection for them all. They’d made him the man he was today.

  ‘You’re going to kill me,’ said Ethan, who was coming back from the bar with a tray of pints.

  ‘Why?’ said Robyn, wary. Ethan was wilder than Jake, much more headstrong.

  ‘This lot want a stag do.’ He nodded his head and half a dozen hopeful faces beamed back at her. ‘We want to do that zip-wire thing in Exeter. Next weekend.’

  Robyn made a fake throwing up face. ‘I can’t think of anything worse.’

  ‘I’ve made a provisional booking. And I’ve found an Airbnb so we can stay over and have a few beers.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We just need your permission.’

  Robyn looked over at Jake who was squirming. ‘Sorry,’ he mouthed at her, and shrugged, tipping his head towards all his friends with a sheepish grin.

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘My permission?’

  ‘He didn’t want to go ahead and say yes without your say-so.’

  Was she supposed to say no? Of course not. The weekend would be Jake’s idea of heaven, galumphing about with his mates doing dangerous things.

  ‘Well, yes, of course he can go. Because once the baby’s here he won’t be allowed out again. Not for a few years, anyway.’

  Six faces looked at her. She nodded at them, keeping her face serious.

  ‘So it will be his last night of freedom, really.’ She smiled brightly.

  They all looked a bit shifty, awkward at what she was saying.

  ‘So he better make the most of it,’ she finished.

  They all nodded earnestly. She burst out laughing. They’d truly believed what she’d said, as if she owned Jake in some way, and was going to lay down the law.

  ‘Course he can go! Jake never has to ask my permission for what he wants to do.’ She held up a finger. ‘But if he falls off and breaks something, I will kill you all. And that’s a promise.’

  There was a burst of clapping and cheering. She sat in the middle of them while Ethan went to the bar to get her a lime and soda, singing along with them all to the retro tunes on the sound system, roaring out ‘Roxanne’ and ‘Born to be Wild’ and ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’, Jake’s broad arm around her. Everyone she knew seemed to be in the pub that evening. She felt safe, and happy, and excited about the
future. The Linhay. The wedding. The baby.

  Until she stepped back out into the cold night air and remembered what she had done.

  30

  1988

  The baby was two weeks late. Everyone was worried. There was a heatwave, and the air was stifling. Emily had swollen up until she was unrecognisable and barely able to walk. She couldn’t sleep or breathe easily. They took her in to induce her, and she lay in a hospital bed while the hours ticked by painfully slowly, pessary after pessary doing nothing.

  She saw other women lumbering past her cubicle, sweaty and inelegant. Some had been here for months on bedrest. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could bear it. It was worse than prison. The Neighbours theme tune drove her mad. Everyone was glued to it.

  In the end, she was put on a drip and filled with a hormone that brought on labour almost instantly. The pain was like being hit by a train. One epidural and fourteen hours later and the baby was still nowhere to be seen. She could sense the staff getting anxious, and so was her mother. Vivian was supposed to be her birthing partner, but she hated seeing Emily in pain. She wondered if she should have asked Olivia Bembridge, imagining her cool, calm presence.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, as a midwife looked at the graph on the heart monitor.

  ‘I think we should consider a section,’ she replied, paging the consultant.

  ‘Section?’ asked Emily, wondering for a moment if they were locking her up in a madhouse. Then she realised. A Caesarean.

  The baby was in distress. The atmosphere changed suddenly, a sense of urgency in the air, a swiftly choreographed ballet coming into play: a surgeon, an anaesthetist, theatre sisters … Emily was afraid, but not for herself, as her bed was whooshed into the theatre and a dark green screen placed over her stomach. She lay helpless, a peculiar tugging sensation inside her as they worked. There was tension, concentration, bright light and then suddenly … A small bundle held aloft with triumph. Smiles. Relief.

  ‘A little girl,’ the nurse told her with a smile. ‘We’ll get her weighed and cleaned and you can hold her. Have you got a name?’

  Emily hesitated. It felt odd, giving the baby a name she might not keep. But she’d had one in mind all along: a name that she thought was pretty but strong.

  ‘Robyn,’ she said, when the nurse came back a few minutes later with the baby wrapped up in a blanket. She looked at her daughter’s pink puckered lips and tiny seashell ears and the wisps of dark hair on her head that matched her perfectly arched eyebrows and she knew, in that moment, that they belonged together and that no matter how wonderful the farm in Devon was, no matter how many ponies her prospective parents could give her, no matter how little she had, she could not give her up.

  She didn’t say anything at first. There was too much going on. They were stitching her up, then she was taken to a private room with baby Robyn next to her in a plastic see-through crib. She couldn’t sit up yet as the epidural hadn’t begun to wear off. Her mother came in, anxious.

  ‘It’ll be time to hand her over soon, darling.’ She stroked Robyn’s hand gently, trying to smother her own distress.

  The plan was for the baby to go to foster carers who specialised in newborns. But Emily didn’t think they could possibly know what her baby needed. Already Robyn would only settle when she was in her mother’s arms; when Emily asked for her to be plucked out of her little bassinet.

  ‘I’m not handing her over,’ she told Deirdre matter-of-factly when the social worker came to see her.

  She could feel the consternation between Deidre and her mother. She knew they couldn’t force her to give the baby up.

  ‘Darling, I know it’s upsetting but we have agreed it’s for the best.’

  ‘We also agreed I could change my mind if I wanted. Remember?’

  It had been made clear all along that it was her decision.

  Emily felt determined. And strong. Everything that had been so confusing was now quite clear. Robyn had given her the clarity she needed.

  Vivian hesitated, the dilemmas circling in her mind. Was it best to take the baby away regardless and make a clean break? Or give in to Emily and let her come home with Robyn? She knew, in her heart of hearts, that if Neal saw the baby he couldn’t turn it away. He wasn’t a monster.

  Vivian turned to Deirdre. ‘This is awful. I can’t have anything to do with this. It was easy to make a decision when it wasn’t a real baby.’

  Deirdre nodded. This was always a traumatic part of the process. It was vital to be empathetic, but firm.

  ‘Let’s see how Emily feels after a good night’s sleep. Her hormones are everywhere, don’t forget.’

  But after a night’s sleep, Emily felt even more determined not to relinquish Robyn. They were as one. She had never felt so strongly about anything or anyone. Except maybe Jonathan. Robyn was a little piece of him. The closest she would ever get to him. How could she possibly let that go?

  Two more days went by. She wasn’t recovering very quickly from the Caesarean: she found it very painful to walk and pick up the baby, and feeding was difficult. Her breasts were swollen and rock hard and Robyn could hardly latch on, which meant she got hungry. Emily began to feel more and more anxious, especially when a midwife offered to take Robyn off and give her a bottle. She refused. She wouldn’t let Robyn out of her sight, more and more convinced there was a plot afoot, and that they were going to trick her into giving Robyn up somehow. She had to be careful. Ever watchful. Every soft tread, every concerned voice, every helpful pair of hands was a threat. When she did sleep, she had terrible dreams the baby had been taken away and she woke up screaming, which wasn’t what they wanted on the ward.

  ‘I want to leave the hospital,’ she told her mother when she was still in after nearly a week. ‘I want to go home.’

  Her parents reluctantly agreed that she and the baby could come back to Manor Close while they talked things over.

  ‘I can’t force the decision on her,’ said Neal, distraught for his daughter, praying she would see sense.

  ‘I know,’ sighed Vivian, agonised by the complexity of the situation.

  And so it was that Emily found herself back in her bedroom, a Moses basket on a stand underneath her favourite poster of Robert Plant. The bookshelf containing her Lord of the Rings trilogy had been cleared for nappies.

  It was surreal. Her body coursed with a mixture of pain, love and milk. Her scar felt as if she had been branded whenever she got up to walk. But it was a small price to pay for the bundle that was Robyn. Every time she looked at her dear little face, she melted.

  ‘We’re so worried about you,’ said her mother, when she found Emily lying on her bed with the baby on her chest, sobbing uncontrollably. She felt overwhelmed. With love, but also the responsibility of doing what was right, even down to whether she’d done her nappy up too tightly. ‘The health visitor says baby blues are quite normal, especially after a Caesarean, but they shouldn’t go on too long.’

  She went to lift the baby but Emily held onto her. She didn’t want anyone else touching her. She was a tigress: possessive, protective.

  ‘Emily, darling, you need to rest. She’ll be all right with me.’

  ‘No.’

  She clung on. She felt as if her parents had her under surveillance; that the kindness they were showing her was just a front to lull her into a false sense of security. She wouldn’t let them help. She wouldn’t even let her mother take the baby for a walk while she got some much-needed rest. She got agitated when the health visitor came round, and even more so when Deirdre came to talk to her about her decision to keep the baby and whether it was really the right decision. She felt as if she was looking for signs of inadequacy, so she put up even more of a pretence, which then exhausted her.

  Her love for Robyn fed her determination to keep her safe. Vivian’s own words came back to her, when she’d first
told her she was pregnant. ‘I’m your mother. It’s my job to look after you.’

  The baby was thriving, but Emily became less and less able to cope. She barely slept, always on high alert, watching for signs of intervention. She became increasingly paranoid. She was nervy and jumpy, thinner than ever. Getting washed and dressed was overwhelming; something she could barely manage. Her room became a squalid mess and she wouldn’t let her mother in to help tidy.

  Her friends from school came to see her, but the visits exhausted her and she spent the whole time they were there fussing over Robyn, not allowing any of them to hold her. Emily could see them looking at each other in concern and she worried they would tell her mother, so she chivvied them out of the house before Vivian came back.

  When they’d gone, she sobbed her heart out, looking at the sweet gifts they had brought – velour all-in-ones and cuddly animals and brightly coloured toys for Robyn to play with.

  She heard her mother on the phone to the social worker, creeping along the landing and straining her ears to catch her whispers.

  ‘I’m worried sick. She’s not herself at all. She’s really not fit to look after her, but she won’t let us help.’

  Emily’s mouth was dry. This was serious. The authorities were going to step in any moment and separate them. She knew it.

  ‘The thing is, she’s not all that stable. There was the incident with the girl, last year. I worry she’s a danger. To herself. And the baby. I’m worried she might do something unpredictable.’

  Emily’s heart turned over as she heard her treacherous mother betray her. She was doing everything in her power to get the baby taken away. Twisting things. Making things up. Making the staircase incident seem pre-meditated. Using it as proof of her instability.

  She crept away, glad she had eavesdropped for now she knew what her mother’s plan was. She was cleverer than she was, though.

  She sat on the bed, looking at Robyn while she slept. And it dawned on her that there was one person in the world who would help them. Who would care about the baby as much as she did, once he saw her. She was his double, after all, with her wise eyes and her dark curls. To Emily, Robyn was like a mini-shadow of Jonathan – there was as much of him in her as there was her, and the love she felt reminded her of the feelings she’d had for him. It consumed her. And it completed her, for the baby seemed to be compensation for losing him. She had poured all that unused love she had for Jonathan straight into Robyn.