by Lucy Diamond
Em opened her mouth, then shut it again, feeling miserable. And just like that, a wall had sprung up between her and George. This was the problem with mixing up different families, she thought to herself, sliding a hand into Izzie’s in a show of solidarity as the two of them set off in silent pursuit. When it came to contradicting accounts, like now, there was always going to be a taking of sides; you would be in your own child’s corner every single time. As had just been demonstrated. At least when she and Dom had been together, there’d been no automatic tribalism; they could judge each situation fairly without the tug of loyalties clouding their vision.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll blow over,’ she said to Izzie in a low voice. ‘There’s no harm done, I’m sure.’
Famous last words. With Seren still sobbing and blood dripping onto the sand, George decreed that they should go back and clean her up. ‘She might need a stitch, but let’s see how her leg’s looking, once we’re back and able to assess it properly,’ he said.
Em felt her spirits plummet. A stitch? If Seren ended up in A&E – or, worse, came back from this holiday with a scar – Charlotte would never forgive George or her, especially if it was Em’s child to blame.
The mood in the car was sour, with Seren still sniffling tearfully, and Izzie scowling. George had gone all serious and a little bit cold, and Em felt worse and more responsible by the second. If she hadn’t been so quick to fob Seren off on Izzie, this would never have happened. Why had she been so petty and stubborn about not collecting shells with the little girl? She had behaved abominably!
Back at the cottage, they had barely got through the front door before Seren was saying, ‘Phone Mummy. Phone Mummy!’ again and again. ‘You promised, Daddy! I want to talk to her!’
‘Oh, great, so you can lie to her, too?’ Izzie muttered, scowling, but unfortunately her voice carried to George, who gave her a frosty look.
‘Izzie, that’s enough. She’s only seven and she’s upset,’ he snapped, as they trooped inside. ‘Have a bit more sympathy.’ He turned back to Seren, his features softening. ‘Let’s get that leg cleaned up first, lovely.’
‘She’s so mean to me!’ wept Seren, tears pouring copiously now. ‘Just because I heard what she said. About kissing a man’s boyfriend.’
‘WHAT?’ yelped Jack, honking with laughter. ‘Kissing a man’s boyfriend?’
‘Oh, shut up, Seren, you little—’
‘IZZIE!’ roared Em as Izzie lunged towards the girl. ‘That’s quite enough.’
Izzie’s face clenched and for a moment Em feared she was about to turn on her – she’d always had a hot temper, right from when she was tiny and her favourite word had been ‘NO!’ – but Izzie merely swung away, eyes glittering, and pounded upstairs.
Em tracked down the first-aid kit and George began dabbing some of the sand away from the scrape on Seren’s leg. And it was only a scrape, thank goodness. It had already stopped bleeding, leaving a graze where the top layer of skin had come off. ‘There, all done,’ George said, sticking a plaster on top. ‘I think you’ll live.’
‘I’ll set the picnic lunch up on the table,’ Em said in relief, remembering that Izzie’s moods were particularly volatile when she was hungry. Maybe they could all calm down now, put the drama behind them and eat some sandwiches, which, hopefully, hadn’t become too cardboard-like since she’d made them earlier that morning.
‘I still want Mummy,’ Seren pouted, apparently not in any hurry to relinquish her spot in the limelight. Had this been her own daughter, there would have been an end to the saga now, Em thought privately: she would have been brisk and firm; enough was enough, they would just move along. George was obviously a lot nicer and more patient a parent than she was, though, because he wearily acquiesced to Seren’s demands and began setting up Skype.
Oh dear! Is my baby safe there with such hoodlums? Em imagined Charlotte asking George in concern. She hoped George wouldn’t let slip the tale about the underage drinking and crap shoplifting, just to pile on the bad impression. Bloody hell!
As George waited for the call to connect, Em ducked away before she could see Charlotte’s completely gorgeous, luscious face on the screen – not least because she was wearing her denim cut-offs and an ancient striped FatFace T-shirt that had gone comfortably soft and baggy. My mummy is prettier than you, she remembered Seren saying. Yeah, all right. No need to rub it in.
But – ‘She’s not answering, poppet,’ George said after a few moments. ‘She must be in a meeting or something.’
Seren sighed, her face still wet with tears. Seeing her so dispirited, clutching her bedraggled fox figure, Em felt a pang of sympathy for her. It couldn’t be easy, being on holiday with much older children. Of course Seren wanted her dad to herself. Of course she missed her mum.
‘Come on, lovey,’ she said kindly, putting the sandwiches onto a plate. ‘You’ll be all right. We can give your fox a blast with the hairdryer later, dry him out. Or you could find a nice warm sunny spot for him. Do you want to help me with the lunch things now?’
Seren merely prodded at a rather grey, unlovely tuna-fish sandwich. ‘Yuck. This is squidgy,’ she said, at which point Em felt her patience and sympathy start to evaporate again.
‘Can you wash your hands, please, before you start poking around in the lunch,’ she said, unable to help her voice tightening with irritation. She thought wretchedly of Izzie, fuming upstairs no doubt, and vowed to take her up a cup of tea in a minute. Maybe suggest that the two of them have a Netflix binge that afternoon or something. Christ! Being a parent was hard at the best of times, but ever since they’d arrived in Cornwall she felt as if she’d been getting it all wrong. She was trying to play two different roles – mum vs girlfriend – and it didn’t seem possible to combine them with any success. By avoiding conflict with George, she had let her daughter down. Did everyone find this sort of situation so hard?
Glancing round, she saw that Seren was still investigating the sandwiches, peeling the tops off to check the contents, and Em had to bite back a sharp telling-off. Not now. Don’t make things worse. ‘Hey, I’ve got a job for you,’ she managed to say with forced brightness instead. ‘Could you wash these strawberries for me?’ She dumped the punnet into the colander and pushed it along the table towards Seren. ‘Then we can whip up some cream and have them with the scones. Yum!’
Thudding footsteps were heard overhead – hopefully Izzie coming down again, lured by the prospect of lunch, Em thought – but before she could go and check, Seren had dropped the colander of plump scarlet strawberries all over the floor. ‘Whoops,’ she said and Em had to bite her tongue as she crawled around retrieving them.
It was just an accident, she told herself, grabbing a cloth to wipe up the juicy red smears that now adorned the flagstones. Accidents happened. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll do this – how about you go and shout to Izzie and Jack that lunch is ready instead?’
She and George exchanged a look as Seren left the room. ‘This is going well,’ he remarked, then came towards her and took her in his arms. ‘Kids, eh? Shall we just turf them out in the nearest forest, leave them to it?’
She laughed, grateful for the reassurance of having him hold her, his warm solid body telling her, We’re still a team, you and me. ‘Don’t tempt me,’ she said. ‘Not least because I’d quite like to get you all to myself for a while.’ He slid his hands round to her bottom and they kissed one another for a delicious few minutes, Em pressed against the worktop with the colander of strawberries digging against her back.
But then –
‘Izzie’s not there,’ said Seren, sounding agitated as she burst back into the room. ‘She’s gone.’
Em pulled away from George. ‘What do you mean, she’s gone? She must be in the bathroom.’ Nevertheless a queasy feeling rippled through her and she ran past them both. ‘Izzie? Izzie, where are you?’
No reply came. Jack tramped down the stairs, lifting his headphones off one ear to say, ‘Did y
ou shout for me?’
‘No, I . . . Where’s your sister?’ Em thought about the clumping footsteps she’d heard minutes earlier, how Izzie had never actually appeared. She remembered how upset her daughter had been, the hurt look on her face after George had snapped at her on their way in.
Jack shrugged. ‘I dunno. Why are you freaking out?’
Em didn’t answer, just ran to the downstairs loo, flung the door open – nope – then had a thought and rushed to the hallway where they’d been keeping their bikes. ‘She’s taken her bike. She’s gone off somewhere,’ she said. Her heart was going into overdrive. Oh, help. Poor, upset Izzie, feeling as if no one was on her side. Where was she? Where had she gone? She grabbed her phone and dialled Izzie’s number, only to hear it ringing upstairs in the house. ‘She hasn’t even taken her phone with her,’ she said, anxiety rising.
‘I’m sure she hasn’t gone far,’ George said calmly, but Em was in no mood for calm.
‘I’m going out to look for her,’ she said, voice trembling. For a split-second she found herself wishing that Dom was there; Dom who would take charge and tell her not to worry, who was always able to talk Izzie out of a snit.
‘Wait, shall I—’ George started saying behind her, but Em was too panicked to let him finish the sentence.
‘You stay here in case she comes back,’ she said. ‘I need to find her.’ If she hadn’t been canoodling in the kitchen with George just now, if she’d gone up to Izzie to comfort her the moment it had occurred to her, this wouldn’t be happening. Priorities, Em! Where are your priorities? Her heart still pounding, she snatched up the car keys and whirled out of the house, slamming the door behind her.
Chapter Fourteen
Earlier that morning Olivia had surfaced into wakefulness like a diver swimming up from the depths, a traveller returning from distant shores. She had slept, she marvelled, lying flat on her back in the gorgeously comfortable bed and staring up at the old beamed ceiling above. She had actually slept, for the whole night without a single disturbance. It felt . . . weird. Good, but wrong, as if it had been at someone else’s expense.
Yeah, your husband’s expense, and your kids’, a sarcastic voice in her head pointed out. Do you think they slept well without you last night? Well, do you?
She blinked and rubbed her eyes, jangled fragments of her dream slipping from her mind. Something about giving birth, the shocking sensation of a small warm baby between her legs. How he’d cried out when he was taken away. She shook her head, not wanting to think about any of that, revelling instead in the strangeness of not having to throw the covers off and immediately run to attend to someone’s yelled demands. She didn’t have to make anyone’s breakfast or attempt to squeeze squirming, sausagey boy limbs into items of clothing or sort the never-ending laundry or . . .
She shushed her mind, stopping the thoughts before they could whirl into an exhausting list. Before she could press the bruise of being here and not there. Misplaced. Dispossessed. She wouldn’t think about Mack and the boys, or what might be happening at home. They could recede into the distance for a while until she was ready to conjure them back up, she decided. For the time being she would lie here, her head sinking into the soft pillows, the duvet protecting her from the rest of the world. It was all she could manage right now.
Some time later, after a blissful shower, she put on clean clothes and dried her hair. Even through her numbness, she could recognize that doing these things in peace and quiet felt pretty amazing. A holiday from reality. At this rate, she would never go back. Don’t think about that, she reminded herself.
Toast, hot and buttery, came next, along with a cup of coffee that she would actually get to drink all the way to the bottom for once. Plus the simple pleasure of merely sitting still at the kitchen table, just breathing in and out, whilst doing absolutely nothing. Watching idly as a family in another cottage trooped out laden with a windbreak and picnic bag, the littlest girl holding buckets and spades. Listening calmly as two seagulls duked it out in aerial combat, their harsh battle-cries carrying to her through the open window. She felt like a character in an arcade game, gradually being powered back up to full strength. Perhaps because of this, she took a deep breath and switched on her phone, braced for the bombardment of messages she knew she was in for.
Ping ping ping ping ping. The noise of so many notifications tumbling forward onto the screen was an accusation in itself. All from Mack, all saying pretty much the same thing. What the hell? Where are you? Ring me!
Olivia closed her eyes briefly as the words started to crowd in around her head like angry faces. Then she typed a reply, only marginally longer than the first one she’d sent: I’m fine. Sorry. She pressed Send, then switched the phone off again fast before Mack could ring her, before she had to think about the boys asking, ‘Where’s Mummy?’ in puzzlement. Her heart pounded and she felt the toast churn greasily in her stomach as their confused little faces swam up anyway. Oh God, what had she gone and done? What was wrong with her?
Her head in her hands, she found herself breathing raggedly as if she’d been running or in a fight. Now she was imagining the mums at the Stay and Play sessions she sometimes took the boys to; the judgement in their expressions as they discussed her disappearance. ‘She did what? Just left them and drove off? What kind of mother does that?’ Mouths would be pursed, eyebrows lowered. ‘Always thought there was something a bit odd about her. Didn’t you? Something not right.’
Stop. Stop it! She put her arms around herself for a moment, as if she might break into pieces. Was this how her mother had felt? Had she sat alone tormenting herself with similar guilt and recriminations? Olivia wished she could somehow speak to her, woman-to-woman, and say, Okay, I get it now. I’m in that place too. It was not a good place, though. She felt terrible about everything.
She made another coffee and tried to push away her thoughts again, turn the white noise back up in order to block out the world. Deep breaths. The boys were safe with Mack. She had told him she was okay, which might stop him worrying so much and sending out the search parties. And, she reminded herself, this was the first real time she’d had to herself in three and a half years. Surely she was allowed a day or two to take a breather?
Face forward, her dad had been fond of saying when times were tough. Face forward and find the light. She had the whole day at her disposal. The sun was shining. So what should she do first?
A short while later Olivia was on the road, with the uncanny feeling that she had slipped down a wormhole and gone back twenty years in the blink of an eye. It was all so familiar, yet changed. She knew these streets so well that their maps were imprinted on her mind. She still dreamed about being here sometimes. And now she was back in person again for the first time in years.
After Aidan had died, life in Falmouth had become unbearable. How could she have stayed? Heartache had sent her away as soon as possible, and she’d gone to Bristol to take a business degree (eventually) and build a new life. She had returned to Cornwall for occasional weekends and at Christmas to see her dad and Gail, but steadfastly avoided the old haunts from her teenage years as too painful to revisit.
It had come as a surprise, then, to return to Marco’s Café with Lorna and Roy yesterday and not feel the maelstrom of anguish she’d expected. Sure, it had been an emotional occasion and they’d all been thinking about Aidan, but the physical space, the actual being there, hadn’t bothered Olivia at all. In fact there had been something surprisingly nice about going back. So many good memories of the place had flashed through her head, like a slideshow: the rainy afternoons she’d spent with Aidan and their friends, leaning against him in one of her black mohair jumpers with the sleeves pulled up over her hands on winter days, leafing through the music papers and talking about all the important topics of the hour – the new bands on the scene, the play someone was acting in, hair dye, politics, becoming vegetarian . . . And there had been the laughter too. The feeling that she belonged in a gang. She had
forgotten all of those nice things, she realized.
As a child, her favourite toy had been a wooden marble run that once belonged to her dad: blocks that you built into towers, with chutes and runways attached with hooks to form a course for the racing marbles to whizz down. Sometimes you’d set your marbles rolling – her favourite was one with a pistachio-green twist in the middle, like an unblinking cat’s eye – only for them to come to a premature halt, clicking together like a string of beads at a badly positioned link. You’d have to go back and reset the piece, pushing it more firmly into its hook so that the path was smooth.
It had occurred to her last night, moments before she slipped into blissful deep slumber, that maybe you could do this with life too – go back and sort out the obstacle. Reset the course. Maybe while she was here she could revisit some of her other special teenage places. Turn the trip into . . . not a pilgrimage, as such, but certainly something respectful and meaningful. A small, private tour that said, I remember you. I remember us, I remember life here, for better or worse. There might be some comfort to be had from walking in her own steps once more, twenty years on, and seeing things anew through adult eyes. Perhaps she could even lay a few ghosts to rest as well.
First stop: the yellow-painted house on Bar Terrace where her friend Nina had lived. It had been something of a party house, due to the cellar where their friends’ band had practised and the fact that Nina’s parents were fantastically laidback about all the cider-drinking and smoking that had gone on down there. It was also where she and Aidan had had their first kiss at a New Year’s party when they were sixteen, out in the garden near the shed, with fireworks exploding above their heads. The smell of cordite and alcohol, stars spangling the velvety dark like fairy lights. The start of something magical.
Sitting on the wall now, Olivia allowed herself the pleasure of some happy memories. She’d been shy and giggly back then, laughing with embarrassment when he told her she was beautiful, because she didn’t know how to take a compliment. ‘I mean it,’ he said, just as people started shouting the countdown to midnight. TEN! NINE! EIGHT! ‘Let’s kiss on “one”,’ he’d suggested boldly, and suddenly she wasn’t shy any more; excited instead as the numbers decreased. THREE! TWO! ONE! Her first kiss! And then . . . HAPPY NEW YEAR! Fireworks were zooming and bursting, tearing up the dark sky with crackles and bangs. Their friends were all hugging each other and snogging, and someone was trying and failing to remember the words to ‘Auld Lang Syne’.