A Pretty Beach Wish

by Polly Babbington

  ‘All the things you like. Roast chicken and lemon meringue pie. I thought I’d go for the jugular and your favourites.’

  ‘My dinner of choice and my favourite dessert? Have you got something to tell me? Should I be concerned? Have you something to announce?’

  ‘Not at all. In fact, the opposite. A nice easy evening with nothing to worry about. No dramas and no complications. No announcements or accidents. Just you and me, the garden, and a nice big jug of Pimms.’

  Juliette put her arms around Luke’s neck and inhaled. Inhaled the Luke smell she loved. It was the same as the roast chicken - like a comfort blanket in the form of scent.

  ‘I’ll go up and get showered. Get out of these clothes. I need it.’ Luke said.

  ‘Bad day?’

  ‘Not really. No different to all the others, just long and full-on.’

  ***

  Juliette and Luke sat under the stars and the dancing lights in the jam jars hanging from the pergola roof at the bottom of the garden. The roast chicken was long gone and they’d both polished off large slices of Daisy's lemon meringue pie. They sat there in silence and Luke smiled as they heard the horn of the last ferry go past way off in the distance.

  ‘What a few months it’s been. What a ride,’ Luke said and patted Juliette on the leg.

  ‘It has.’

  ‘You are looking so much better, Juliette. I’ve been really worried about you. Everyone has, actually, especially Daisy. You seemed so drained and tired.’

  ‘I know. I didn’t expect to deal with the accident as I have. It’s like I was knocked for six by a dirty great cricket bat and didn’t know how to get up again.’

  ‘Hmm, it’s not easy to go through something like that. You’ve been so exhausted.’

  ‘I have, I’m sorry. It was like I’d lost all my energy.’

  ‘I don’t want to speak too soon, but you seem so much brighter tonight. And the meal and all this,’ Luke said, pointing up to the jam jars and down at the jug of flowers which was spilling rose petals onto the tablecloth. ‘You’ve got your spark back.’

  ‘That’s because I do feel better. I think I just needed time to process it all and recharge. It was all so exhausting.’

  Luke nodded. ‘Yeah. The jam jars remind me of the night in Seapocket Lane. Remember that night? The night with the fondue. That was one amazing night.’

  ‘How could I forget that night? Anyway, I wanted to do all this to say thank you. To tell you how much I love you. To say sorry for how I’ve been so wrapped up in myself.’

  ‘I love you too, Juliette, and a few months of you being tired aren’t going to do anything to change that anytime soon. Though if you have a secret spouse in the cupboard, like I did, that might change somewhat,’ Luke said, and giggling Juliette went around the table to his chair and sat on his lap and he kissed her gently and pulled her closer to him.

  ‘Let’s finish this upstairs,’ Juliette said, getting up and pulling Luke up from his chair.

  Chapter 44

  Juliette sat on the little fold-up stool she kept in her storage unit and opened the box full of limited-edition baubles that had recently arrived via her supplier. She pulled one of the small cardboard boxes out and opened it up. Inside was a hand-blown glass bauble, covered in tiny sparkles of silver. The bauble looked as if it had been sugar-coated with a festive shimmering glow exactly as Juliette had proposed.

  Juliette had been musing and planning the bauble in her head for years, and here it was right in front of her. She hadn’t really known how the baubles would turn out and had taken a gamble on them - using the idea she had envisaged in her mind for a long time for her collaboration with Lellery. She walked over to the other side of the unit and flicked on the switch of the fairy lights she kept there to test things out, and held up the bauble. It flickered and almost appeared to dance as the sparkles caught the light. Hanging from a white velvet ribbon, she watched it spin and catch the light. It was perfect. Classy, elegant with an old-fashioned feel and full of festive promise.

  Juliette turned over the bauble and examined the bottom. A Christmas Sparkle and the date were carefully etched into the bottom of the glass. She couldn't quite believe it, it felt as if it wasn’t actually true. How had she ended up sitting in a storage unit in the industrial area of Seafolly perched on a little camping chair examining a bauble she’d had produced for Lellery? Not that she was complaining in any shape or form.

  She sat there with her hand on her chin and pondered it all. Her life in the past year had been on some wild twists and turns with lots of ups and downs, but this one, the one where a top department store wanted to do a collaboration with her, she really hadn’t seen that one coming even in her wildest dreams. She didn’t mind a twist like this - it was absolutely on the nice end of the life spectrum and was certainly better than the other end. The end where her beautiful daughter very nearly lost a toe.

  Juliette took her laptop out of her bag, opened it, and sent an email to Victoria with pictures attached of the bauble. She then took one of the boxes of samples and got the box ready to send up to Victoria for final approval and then all that there would be left to do was get the things produced and get everything ready for Christmas.

  Juliette closed and locked the door to her unit, put her tote bag on her shoulder, and strolled along the corridor and back out into the reception.

  ‘All good?’ the receptionist, Michael, asked.

  ‘Yeah. They’ve turned out brilliantly. I’m so relieved to be quite honest - I wasn’t sure how they were going to look.’

  Juliette put her bag down and took out an envelope and passed it over the counter to Michael.

  Michael frowned, put on his glasses, and read the front of the envelope. ‘What’s this, then?’

  ‘Just a little something to say thank you for what you did for me when Bella had the accident,’ Juliette stated, smiling.

  ‘Don’t be silly! I don’t need a gift. I was glad to be of assistance,’ Michael said as he opened up the envelope for a gift card for Tackle Direct, the fishing shop he could regularly be seen browsing with a cup of tea as he sat behind the desk. ‘Well, that’s just perfect and I know exactly what I’ll be spending it on. I’ve had my eye on a new fishing rod for months,’ Michael said looking up and smiling.

  ‘There you go, I thought there might be something in there to tickle your fancy. Thank you again, Michael. I really appreciate it and so does Luke.’

  ‘It really wasn’t much.’

  ‘Yes, it was, Michael. Having you go in there and pull out the correct products for Luke saved my bacon.’

  ‘Ach. Anytime. How are you and Luke getting on, by the way? It must have been tough with all that stress going on? I remember when my mum was sick - it really put a strain on us. I was miserable to be around, truth be told.’

  ‘Yeah, it was very stressful. Luke was absolutely brilliant though, Michael. Everyone has been, to be honest, even Mr Sparkles has been amazing,’ Juliette said, raising her eyes up.

  ‘They say you can tell a person’s true colours by the way they behave in a crisis.’

  ‘They do, and Luke was a trooper. A kind, capable and lovely trooper.’

  ‘Well, my lovely, you need to keep hold of him then, show him how much you appreciate him, don’t you? Make sure he’s going to stick around.’

  Juliette picked up her bag and nodded, pursing her lips together in agreement. ‘You know, Michael, I actually really do. And I have something in mind to do just that.’

  Chapter 45

  Juliette closed the app she and Bella shared for late night chatting, dropped the phone into her lap, and groaned. Why could Jack Fitzgeralde not leave well alone? He’d kept away for long enough when it suited him, but now he’d decided he wanted to put his hat in the ring for dad of the year. Juliette wasn’t sure what described how she was feeling better; furious or indignant. Actually, it was both with a whole lot of other things thrown in.

  She had stupidly thought
to herself that Jack's surprise debut at the funeral and then the lunch he’d had with Bella in Oxford would be the last they would see of him. She’d actually secretly thought to herself, and hoped too, that he would get bored. But no, he’d persisted, and he really did seem to be demonstrating that he wanted to be part of Bella’s life.

  Juliette pulled the pale blue linen duvet back, slipped her feet into her slippers and put on her dressing gown. Luke was away on a training course and Maggie, who had a friend from school over for a sleepover, was tucked up in bed, and both the girls were long into the land of nod.

  Juliette padded quietly down the stairs, stepped into the hallway, and flicked on the fairy lights in the kitchen. She needed sustenance, comfort, something to get her head around the text conversation she’d just had with Bella. She made herself a whipped cream topped hot chocolate, sprinkled on some chocolate shavings, and took a packet of biscuits out of the cupboard.

  She proceeded into the sitting room and sat down on one of her new pale blue squishy sofas, leant her head back on the cushions, and looked up at the intricate pattern on the huge ceiling rose above her head, letting her mind wander about it all. She needed to decide how to best handle herself in this Jack situation and do the right thing by Bella. She had to keep in mind that it was Bella who was the most important in this situation, and not her. It was not Bella’s fault that Jack had behaved the way he had all those years ago.

  She sat there looking up at the ceiling rose thoughts swirling through her mind and nodded to herself. Yes, it was time. Time to see what she could find out about Jack Fitzgeralde. If he was about to sneak his way back into her life she was going to try and find out a bit more about him. She had always vehemently avoided searching out anything about him on purpose, never sure where it was going to lead, not allowing herself to even go down the route of Jack and where he was at in his life. Not being able to bear that perhaps he now had a family with somebody else. But now push had come to shove, Bella and her well-being was very much involved, and Juliette wanted to be armed and ready with knowledge.

  Bella had just told her all about the lunch she’d had with Jack and how lovely he had been - lovely and charming apparently. Lovely and slimy, more like, Juliette thought as she pulled over her laptop, opened up the lid and turned it on.

  As she listened to her laptop whir, she typed in her password and wondered why the sudden interest from Jack in Bella’s life. Why the sudden interest in how she’d grown up? Why would he have even mentioned that he wanted to visit Pretty Beach?

  Juliette typed Jack Fitzgeralde into the search bar and not a whole lot came up at all. She then looked at Bella’s friends’ list. Yes, of course, he’d already wormed his way in there. She opened up his profile. Did something miss a beat? It absolutely did. That face, the one she’d fallen hook, line and sinker for all those years ago in the Cotswolds. The one she’d dreamt about and fantasised about spending the rest of her life with. The face that had dropped her and her baby like a tonne of bricks and got on with the rest of his life.

  She clicked on his profile wondering whether or not it was on private, and seeing that it wasn’t something went down her spine. Anticipation? What even was it? She started to scroll through the multiple posts. The many, many posts. Wow, Jack Fitzgeralde liked to post a lot. Wow, Jack Fitzgeralde liked himself a lot.

  She scrolled through reams and reams of posts - his new shirts from some fancy shop in Savile row, him in the first-class lounge at Heathrow, his new car which made Juliette smirk to herself, what a surprise a very flash Porsche, in red no less, his very nice new house, his stay in Dubai in an exceedingly tall hotel. She carried on scrolling. Yeah okay, we get it, Jack, you’re good looking, yeah, you’re rich. Whatever.

  The plethora of posts also revealed that he was into car racing, that he sponsored a team... and it appeared that the team was fairly successful. Jack Fitzgeralde on a podium at a racetrack with a huge bottle of champagne. Jack Fitzgeralde with a girl in a tight red dress holding an umbrella over his head. Jack Fitzgeralde with a branded baseball cap and racing shirt in front of a huge car.

  On and on and on it went. And it appeared that Jack Fitzgeralde was very much not short of cash. At least there was that. At least he had appeared back in Bella’s life and was not after something like money, that would have sucked even more.

  It also appeared that those same movie star good looks had not faded over the years. And didn't he know it.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Bella again.

  I bet you’re still up???

  I am. Of course you knew.

  Just wanted to check again to see if you are okay with me seeing Jack? I’ve been thinking about it more and I’m worried it’s going to make you sad and upset.

  All good, Bella. I’ve already told you that.

  There was no way that Juliette was going to tell Bella that she’d, spent the last hour down a social media rabbit hole and now had even more reservations about Jack than she had had when he’d appeared out of nowhere at her parents’ funeral.

  And you don’t mind if he comes to visit Pretty Beach? I was thinking maybe for lunch. He could come down on the fast train and then leave.

  Up to you darling.

  Would you like to meet him? I thought it might be a bit more comfortable for everyone if we got that out of the way soon. What do you think?

  Juliette stared down at her phone. She just didn’t know what to type back.

  Chapter 46

  Juliette stood in her underwear and looked down at herself with a mild feeling of panic. She’d put on masses of weight since the accident taking comfort eating to whole new levels. There had been many chocolate spread episodes standing up against the worktop looking out onto the garden late at night. And many more where she’d shovelled in as many carbs as fast as she could spoon them in.

  Ever since she’d left her ex-husband Jeremy, who had liked her to ever-so-nicely adhere to his requirements regarding her appearance that she was a size eight, preferably a six, her weight had changed drastically. And she had loved her new curves, loved getting plumper, loved not being hungry all the time. Before the accident, she was happily four sizes bigger than the old Juliette and how it had suited her - everything had seemed better. But now she didn’t feel quite as comfortable. Her jeans, not that she in actual fact owned that many pairs, no longer did up and she was busting out of her bras.

  She examined herself in the mirror. At least she had put the weight on in easy to conceal areas and with her new way of dressing - lovely floaty tops which emphasized her narrow shoulders and pretty dresses which covered up the growing stomach. She most of the time felt okay about it all.

  That was until Jack Fitzgeralde had been thrown back into the conundrum that was her life. As the thought of seeing Jack again kept flitting in and out of her head, the voice of some nurses in the toilets when she’d first been going out with Luke, taunted her. Frump. Really let herself go. She only really cared about Luke’s opinion, but there was also a little voice whispering that she wanted Jack to think to himself that he might have missed out on something really very good and being a frump wasn’t part of that. And there was absolutely no way she wanted Jack to smirk to himself that Juliette had let herself go.

  Luke had always vehemently dismissed anything that she ever said about weight. Telling her that he loved her curves, couldn't stand it when his ex-wife had constantly gone about calories and would barely eat a carrot without jumping on the scales and seeing the damage it might do to what she thought had been a model-like figure. But what Luke thought wasn’t helping her in the slightest with Jack Fitgeralde’s reappearance looming in the distance.

  Juliette walked into the spare bedroom still in her underwear and rummaged around in the back of the cupboard for the scales. She couldn't even work out why she’d bothered to keep them - the last time she’d gone anywhere near them, which had been daily, sometimes twice daily in the Jeremy Years, was when out of interest a year or so after
she’d left him she’d stepped on just to see the difference.

  She found the unpacked box and pulled off the brown packing tape. This would be interesting. She rummaged around in the box until she found the scales, wiped them off, checked on the back to see if they were still working and miraculously they were. She placed them on the stripped floorboards, braced herself, stepped on, took a deep breath and looked down.

  Yeah. This is not good. Breathe and calm.

  There was one thing being a bit plump, feeling happy and comfortable. It was quite another thing to be erring on an unhealthy weight. Spooning chocolate spread from the jar did that for a girl.

  Boring, though, she thought. Boring and hungry. That’s what she used to be, and she couldn't face ever being that person again. That person who looked on the back of packets, turned over flavoured water to see if it had any calories. The person who looked down a menu trying to decide on what would cost the least in exercise the next day.

  No, she would never go back to that. But the impending doom of seeing Jack and him thinking to himself just like those nurses had in the toilets all those moons ago that she was frumpy and had let herself go was filling her with dread.

  If she was going to go anywhere near Jack Fitzgeralde who didn't look a whole lot different by the looks of his profile than he had when she’d last seen him then she wanted to look passable. With his very handsome jawline and lovely skin he still looked amazing - shame he actually wasn’t amazing in the morals department, but he wouldn’t be thinking that. She knew that deep down he would be judging her, analysing his decision to not have been part of her life, and thinking that he had done the right thing not to end up with an overweight, droopy, frump who had dropped her game.

  Chapter 47

  Juliette scanned down through the orders for A Christmas Sparkle and finished wrapping the last parcel. All up to date.