A Pretty Beach Wish

by Polly Babbington

  ‘I suppose it is the best idea.’ Daisy nodded.

  ‘In the long run if he’s in her life now it will come up again. She’ll want him to be around for things, I assume.’

  ‘True. That’s if he stays around. He’s not got the best track record in that department, has he? He favours abandonment somewhat.’

  ‘Nope. Once I started thinking about it my mind wandered to all sorts of things. Like if he’s in her life, he’ll be at her wedding if she gets married, he would be a grandparent... it’s going to be tricky for sure. And even trickier if I let him get to me.’

  ‘Crikey. When you look at it like that, he could well be around quite a lot.’

  ‘He could. You know Doris at work who I always talk about? Her daughter’s ex-husband, who is the father of her two boys, purposely causes dramas at every family event. Normally by bringing one of his latest partners of either sex, gets drunk, and starts trouble. I do not need a predicament like that in my life. I need my relationship with Bella’s father to be at the very least bearable. Grin and bear-it-able,’ Juliette said, sighing and shaking her head.

  ‘The more I hear about families, the more I feel not quite as bad at my current situation being alone.’

  ‘You’re not alone - you’ve got your fair share of dramas here with us! So, yeah, all in all, I thought, Juliette pull yourself together, and get it over and done with,’ Juliette said, tucking the hanging baskets around the corner and leaning them up against the back wall.

  Daisy sighed. ‘Who would have guessed Jack Fitzgeralde reappearing? Not me! How much did we talk about him in the early days? For hours and hours on end. Remember? Bella in that tiny little cot and we’d sit there, and you’d tell me all about him.’

  ‘Oh, I certainly remember. It took me years and years to get over it. Years.’

  ‘I know it did. And now he’s back.’

  ‘Yup. Back and still, it seems, totally as self-centred as ever. I mean I know I can’t talk lately. I totally acknowledge that I’ve been a pain in the behind since the accident, but Jack takes the biscuit in thinking only of himself.’

  Chapter 51

  Juliette stood up against the worktop and slowly and methodically dipped cold, leftover pasta shells from the fridge into chocolate spread, and popped the shells into her mouth.

  Bella had been to the Smugglers with one of her friends and was now in bed, Maggie was long gone to sleep and Luke, who had swimming before work, had retired early which left Juliette standing in the kitchen in just the twinkle of the fairy lights mulling over everything over the last few years. Her divorce, meeting Luke, the death of her parents, the reappearance of Jack, the accident. At least my life is not boring, she thought to herself.

  She thought about how the next day was going to go. It was all very simple; her and Daisy had calculated that the whole meeting Jack episode would, hopefully, last not more than five minutes. The only fly in the ointment would be if Jack tried to invite himself in and wanted to have a look around. They’d worked that scenario out too - if he did try to come in, Juliette had already planned that she would have her bag and jacket ready by the door and would say that actually she was on her way out too. Surely, he wouldn’t be so bold, so cheeky as to do that? He’d left her all those years ago - presumably he wouldn’t think she would be agreeable to him coming into her house?

  Juliette stood there with the chocolate covered pasta and thought about Jeremy too. She’d called him the day before on her way to work about her meeting Jack and his reaction had not been impressed. It had made Juliette feel even more uncomfortable about the whole thing. Even more uneasy about it all than she had been.

  There was one thing you could say about Jeremy and that was that he treated Bella as his own and had done from day one. He was still very much involved in her life too. Going up to stay the weekend in Oxford, coordinating things with the hospital after her accident, looking into buying her an e-bike. Even though he could be a royal pain in the behind he was part of their little unit, and give or take, it all worked fairly well. Even with Luke on the scene, Jeremy had been fine. He did not sound fine about Jack in Pretty Beach, though. Not at all. There were no two ways about it; Jeremy felt as if his nose had been put out of joint and Jeremy Sparkles did not cope well with that.

  Juliette went to put the jar of chocolate back in the fridge and stood there with the door open, the glow of the fridge light reflecting off her glasses and spooned more of the chocolate spread straight from the jar into her mouth.

  She smiled to herself, remembering the first time she’d been introduced to chocolate spread when she’d first had Bella and had only just met Daisy. Juliette had never even heard of chocolate spread. One particularly colic-filled evening where Juliette and Daisy had spent hours pacing around with Bella trying to pacify her, Daisy had made Juliette a piece of toast thickly covered with chocolate spread and when Juliette had bitten into it she’d thought she’d died and gone to heaven. From those heady early days, her and Daisy had moved in different chocolate spread spheres - Daisy made her own homemade version, they’d carted ginormous jars of it back from France, and Juliette had ordered boutique versions from far-flung places on the internet.

  In the Hungry Years with Jeremy, chocolate spread had been a big no-no and it was banned from the house. So, Juliette had kept a secret jar of it in her locker at work. Since Jeremy was no longer in charge, there had always been a jar of it around ready and waiting for the stressful times. She screwed the jar back on the spread, put it at the back of the fridge behind the eggs so that Maggie wouldn’t spy it, and shut the fridge door.

  Juliette walked over to the kitchen window and out into the moonlit garden and thought further about how Jeremy had reacted. There were no two ways about it. Jeremy had not been happy about Jack being in Pretty Beach. And the way Jeremy had reacted did not bode well for the future for any of them.

  Jeremy Sparkles liked to win and Jack being on the scene and in his territory meant that Jeremy was very much in second place. And as Juliette well knew and had been on the receiving end of many times, when Jeremy didn’t want to play nice he had a very calculated, but quite undercover, way of making everything tricky. For everyone.

  Juliette had heard the tone in his voice switch as soon as she said Jack was coming to Pretty Beach. It was the same switch he used to do to her - a teeny, little alteration to his tone with a passive-aggressive comment nicely dropped into a conversation here and there.

  Yikes, I don’t blame him, though. Juliette thought to herself. Jack in Pretty Beach wasn’t something any of them had thought, at any point, would be on the cards.

  Jeremy had asked her if she was going to be okay when Jack actually turned up, and Juliette had replied that she didn’t really have much choice in the matter. After a long, drawn-out conversation where Jeremy had offered to come round and be there on the premise that he was just picking up Maggie for the day, they had both decided that it was probably for the best for Juliette to meet Jack first. Keeping the whole thing drama-free and without any confrontation would be beneficial in the long run to everyone involved.

  Jeremy had continued and started to dip ever-so-slightly into politician mode, not schmooze politician mode, more back-stabbing politician mode, and that was when Juliette had thought that the longer he was kept away from Jack the better. Jeremy was not going to play nice.

  ‘I don’t know who he thinks he is,’ Jeremy had bristled, his feathers clearly ruffled. ‘He really does need someone at some point to tell him what for.’

  Juliette had driven along her eyes wide and tried to placate him. She wanted this to all go as smoothly as possible for Bella’s sake.

  ‘Don’t let him forget, Juliette, that there are two men around in this situation. Two men who have actually, you know, been involved in Bella’s life. I mean Luke can’t be happy about this either, and this Jack thinks he can swan in here as if he’s a saint, well he is so very mistaken.’

  Juliette smiled to herself. Tw
o men around? Typical Jeremy, he’d bundled Luke into being his ally somehow.

  Anyway, she was quite capable of looking after herself and her two girls, and she had the big old house in Pretty Beach, a good job and well-adjusted offspring to prove it. The two men in her life weren’t her saviours. Juliette hadn’t responded to Jeremy’s ranting.

  Jeremy Sparkles, MP, certainly didn’t need any more of his feathers ruffled. He’d already made quite a good job of that himself. But she hoped that his reaction wasn’t a sign that this whole thing was not going to go well.

  Chapter 52

  Juliette woke up after a disturbed night. The thunder and lightning had been deafening and one big clap at about two in the morning had brought Maggie up to Juliette and Luke’s bedroom with an exceedingly frightened look on her face. Juliette had taken Maggie back down to bed, got her settled and then when she’d come back and got into her own bed she’d laid there thinking everything through for the next day.

  At about four, the wind whistled and rattled the old shutters at the windows, heavy rain began to again pour down outside, and Juliette was awake again. Luke had got up and tried to get one of the shutters to close tightly, but after a few minutes had given up and they’d both laid there listening to it rhythmically bang against the window frame in the wind.

  ‘It’s so loud. You can’t quite believe it’s nature, can you? Pretty Beach hasn’t had a storm like this for ages,’ Juliette whispered.

  ‘It sounds like it’s not real. Like it’s a storm in a movie,’ Luke replied.

  ‘I know. I sort of like it apart from the part where I should be asleep, and I’m going to be exhausted tomorrow. It’s lovely tucked up here in this gorgeous old house with you with all that going on outside. I just hope Maggie doesn’t wake up again - she was petrified.’

  ‘How are you feeling about tomorrow?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Fine. I just wish it wasn’t happening. I’m sure it will be nowhere near as bad as I’ve been building it up to be in my head once it's actually over and done with,’ Juliette said hopefully.

  ‘Hope so. If he tries anything he’ll be seeing the end of the path pretty quickly,’ Luke replied.

  ‘How can that happen if you’re not here?’

  ‘I thought I might hide in the sitting room,’ Luke said laughing.

  ‘You’re as bad as Jeremy wanting to be here to see what antics the infamous Jack Fitzgeralde tries to pull off. Trying to save us all from him.’

  ‘Any bloke that turns up at a funeral like that is not one I want anywhere near you.’

  Juliette felt a tiny bit of warmth fill every part of her body. Although she very much liked to convince herself that she could do very well on her own it felt quite nice to be protected, and especially to be protected by someone like Luke. She snuggled up under the duvet and he put his arm around her.

  ‘Let’s try to get some sleep.’

  ***

  The next morning with the last of the storm still blowing around outside, Juliette got out of the bath, put on her dressing gown, and walked back into her bedroom. She walked over to her drawer, took out a crinkly packet of shaping underwear, pulled it out of the wrapper, and held it up. Maybe going a size down hadn’t been such a good idea after all. There was no way she was going to get the scary looking thing over her tummy. Perhaps it would be a challenge to even get the thing past her thighs. It defied every logical part of her brain that this piece of fabric could stretch enough to do anything to aid her silhouette as it had claimed to do when she had read the information on the website.

  Luke came walking out of the shower with a towel around his waist, rubbing his hair, and with the abs on full display. ‘What in the name of God is that?’ Luke said as he saw Juliette holding up the garment in the light over near the windows.

  Juliette looked at him and burst out laughing. ‘It’s armour, Luke.’

  ‘Armour? For what? That’s a torture garment.’

  ‘Yeah, suck everything in armour.’

  ‘That does not look pleasant. Why-oh-why would you do that to yourself?’

  ‘I know. But it will, according to the instructions, totally transform me.’

  ‘Really! Into what?’

  ‘Not quite sure on the answer to that, but I will be sculpted into a tabletop flat stomach.’

  ‘And you need that because...?’

  ‘I need that because I am not meeting Jack blooming Fitzgeralde looking like a pudding.’

  ‘The best looking pudding I’ve ever seen, or tasted for that matter,’ Luke said, shaking his head in disbelief at the flesh-coloured, elongated cycling shorts.

  Juliette smiled. ‘This contraption will, according to the label, provide me with squeeze-free slimming in all the right places, if indeed I can get it on.’

  Luke walked over and touched the fabric Juliette was holding up. ‘And you may also require CPR if you wear the thing for more than twenty minutes. At least I’m qualified I suppose. I’ll be able to save you. Give you the kiss of life. That is one awful looking item.’ Luke laughed.

  Juliette slapped him with the skin-coloured shapewear and started giggling. ‘The added bonus of this compared to other ones that I considered is that it won’t rub or irritate the skin.’

  Luke pulled on his jeans and put on a shirt shaking his head. ‘Sometimes I really don’t get it.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t. Seeing as you are the owner of exceedingly unreal looking abs - you don’t need anything to be sculpted or smoothed.’

  Luke laughed. ‘So, you are definitely sure you don’t want me to be around for the showdown?’

  ‘Nope. I’ll be fine. I would rather you weren’t here.’

  ‘Okay. Anything further from Mr Sparkles when he collected Maggie this morning after his little hissy fit regarding it all?’

  ‘No. Nothing further from him either. Though by the look in his eyes he’s scheming something if I know Jeremy. I’m hoping for a nice clear and easy run though.’

  ‘You’ll reckon he’ll be in and out?’

  ‘He will be. He won’t have any choice in the matter. I certainly won’t be inviting him in, and I’ve already warned Bella that him coming into the house is not an option. There’s only so far I am willing to be congenial to Jack. Bella’s feelings or not.’

  Chapter 53

  Juliette put her cup of tea down on the mantelpiece, stood back, and checked how the sitting room looked. She adjusted the huge jug of old-fashioned roses on the windowsill a millimetre to the left, stood back and then moved it a millimetre back again. Ridiculous. What am I even doing? Jack Fitzgeralde won’t even notice whether or not there are flowers in the window as he walks down the path.

  After a bit of back-and-forth texting it had been decided that because Bella still couldn’t walk too far and was still delicate that Jack would pick her up from the house and Juliette would meet him then. As the time had approached Juliette had had second thoughts as to whether or not that had been a good idea.

  Juliette picked up her cup of tea, walked through the kitchen, and out into the garden. A tree branch which had come down in the storm was right in the middle of the lawn, and a part of the wisteria which had been tied up against the fence had fallen down onto the hydrangea. Overall, there hadn’t been too much damage from the storm, but Juliette was glad she’d taken the time to take down her hanging baskets.

  She walked down the path on the right side of the garden and felt her dress slip over her shapewear. It had certainly done the trick. She was smoother. She didn’t know about sculpted, that was taking it a bit far, but at the very least everything was pulled in, and to be seeing Jack again after all the long years of wishing and hoping that he would make an appearance she wanted to be contoured to the best of her abilities.

  Juliette yanked back the bolt on the top of the gate to the cobbled lane at the back and stepped outside with her tea. She stopped to say hello to the cat next door and took a pew on a bench a few houses down dedicated to someone could Ada Spee
dy. She wondered what sort of life Ada Speedy had experienced in Mermaid Lane. Had Ada Speedy had long-lost boyfriends turn up on the scene years later? Had Ada Speedy had a busy life, a full-on job, and a new partner? Or had Ada Speedy spent a quieter existence pottering around in the lane with her flowers?

  Juliette sat there thinking about the morning. Once Jeremy had picked up Maggie, and Luke had gone swimming, and both of them had texted her instructing her to call them straight away if anything went wrong with Jack’s arrival, the morning had been peaceful and quiet if tense.

  Juliette had vacuumed the whole house, mopped the ground floor with Dettol, and then proceeded to make her comfort fallback chocolate cake. She had a feeling she was going to be needing it later.

  She strolled back along the lane on the overcast day with a nip in the air and checked the time on her phone. Not long to go. She couldn't wait for it to be over.

  She walked back into the house to the smell of the cake in the oven. Actually, I planned that one well. A nice relaxing comforting smell of baking. A family smell. A smell Jack has missed out on.

  Juliette set the timer on her phone for the cake and went into the downstairs bathroom. Her hair was freshly washed, curled, and styled, she had her pale blue linen dress with the tiny white flowers on which skimmed and fell in all the right places and did a most excellent job of hiding the recent weight gain. With the aid of eye drops which Leza had told her did magical things to eyes, she even looked as if she had had a full night's sleep rather than what had actually happened, lying awake in the storm listening to the thunder and lightning.

  Another text came in from Luke.

  It’s crazy down here! Some of the roof of the swimming club has come off in the storm and hundreds, possibly thousands, of jellyfish have come in! They’re all over the beach and in the water. It’s like a scene from a zombie show or something.