He was a lot more pleasant than Billie about the offer to come with them. The poor lamb, he probably didn’t get much quality family time. Each morning when he emerged from Spot’s room with his shaggy hair sticking out in all directions, Harriet asked whether he’d talked to his mum. Not that she wasn’t firmly on Owen’s side. He wasn’t at fault for whatever had gone wrong between them. He was too nice a boy. Besides, as much as she hated admitting it, because she was pointing the finger at herself, too, parents had to take responsibility for breakdowns with their children. They’re older and supposed to be smarter.
‘You coming too?’ Billie asked Owen when she’d emerged from her shower with her hair twisted up in a towel. ‘Cool.’
Owen barely nodded. Harriet assumed that meant they were both looking forward to the day and were excited by the idea of spending time together. In teen-speak.
But you wouldn’t know it, because they barely spoke again all the way to the heath.
Even with the picnic bags bouncing against her bare legs, Harriet was glad she’d worn a dress. It was definitely summer. Her sun hat kept the worst of the heat off her head but sweat dribbled down the sides of her sleeveless dress.
She glanced up ahead. The dark patch on the back of Billie’s black band t-shirt was getting steadily bigger. Stretched out and faded, it was hardly better than the checked shirt she’d changed out of. She had to be baking in those jeans but, as usual, she’d completely ignored Harriet’s suggestions about a dress, or shorts at least. She seemed to want to look like a dock worker. Harriet used to wonder if that was what passed for fashion these days, but no, most of Billie’s school friends dressed normally.
She shifted her daughter’s fashion choices from her mind. At least James was enjoying himself, despite that POW dig. Sometimes she swore he took sides against her on purpose.
He seemed to tense, though, as much as she did when his phone rang. ‘Hi, Persephone, Harriet and I are on the heath,’ he said. Was she imagining that he sounded very rehearsed? ‘Yes, it’s really nice. Sunny today. I don’t think it’s going to rain.’
Since when did he discuss the weather with her? Harriet watched him carefully as they continued up the hill.
‘Okay, have fun, talk to you later.’ He hung up.
‘What’s she doing?’ Harriet asked.
‘Oh, just going for a run.’
‘She rang to tell you that?’
‘No, she rang to see what we were doing. This is nice, isn’t it?’ He made a big show of looking around. He reached for the bag with their lunch. ‘Good choice. Though I did get some countryside yesterday, too.’ He met her gaze. ‘I had a quick trip back to the village. I rang you, but your phone was off.’
‘I was in the spa.’ She felt her legs weaken. So, he was going to admit to his secret scarpering.
‘Billie wasn’t interested in the museum and I thought you and I could go another day,’ he said. ‘I wanted to check in with Marion.’
‘You could do that on the phone.’ He’d rung her every day, morning and night.
He sighed. ‘I know, it was just an excuse. I’m sorry, Harriet, I really am. S’pose I didn’t think I’d miss the goats this much.’
‘You miss the goats?’
He pulled that sad frown face that pushed out his lip and made his chin wrinkle up like a peach stone. ‘You think it’s daft, but they are family to me, just like your cats were to you.’
It was not the same thing. She didn’t milk her childhood pets or make them sleep in a barn.
‘I think about them when I’m away,’ he said. ‘I worry about them, and with Artemis not being well … I wanted to see them. I ran into Persephone while I was there.’
He couldn’t have sounded more bright and breezy saying that last bit. ‘You just ran into her?’
‘Yep. She’s jealous we went to our old Mexican.’
Join the jealous club, Harriet thought. Though this wasn’t definitive proof, was it? James was daft enough to travel two hours to see his goats. He didn’t usually do things without telling her, as far as she knew, but her phone had been off all morning. And in a village as small as theirs, he could have run into Persephone.
Or was she being naive? One thing was for sure: she wouldn’t get to the bottom of it during a family picnic. She just wished that uncertainty didn’t always force her off balance like this. ‘Step on it,’ she called as they closed the gap on Billie and Owen. She shoved the uncomfortable thoughts from her mind. ‘We’ve only got two hours and forty-five minutes till we need to start for the zoo.’
‘I’m not going,’ Billie said over her shoulder. ‘I’ll just head back when Owen does.’
‘Yeah, if that’s all right,’ Owen added.
‘Thank you for asking, Owen.’ Billie could learn some manners from that boy. It was no use trying to get Billie to stay with them. She watched her daughter talking to Owen as they continued speeding up the hill. They were probably comparing music or courses they hated or how ghastly their parents were, but Harriet hoped against hope that Owen might suggest maybe she wasn’t the complete ogre Billie thought she was.
She’d take any support she could get. Lord knew, James didn’t do it. He was too afraid of tarnishing his Favourite Parent status.
She shot him a dirty look.
He blew her a kiss.
‘Should we worry about them being alone together?’ she asked. ‘Back at the house, I mean?’
‘I trust Billie.’ Implying that she didn’t.
‘It’s not about trust, James, it’s about being a responsible parent and not just her mate.’
‘She’s almost seventeen.’ He squinted into the sun, where a small flock of birds caught his attention. He twisted round to watch them fly off while Harriet waited for him to tell her why that made one tiny bit of difference. If anything, that’s why they should be more careful. ‘Owen lived with Sophie,’ he said eventually. ‘She vouches for him. Besides, do you really think there’s any attraction there?’
They both looked towards the teenagers. Owen was slouched into his hoodie. The hood covered most of his face. Harriet wondered whether he was self-conscious about his acne. She had been at his age. Her skin hadn’t cleared up until she was well into her twenties. It would have been nice then to have had a trendy hood to hide under.
Billie had her hands shoved into her jeans pockets and they walked with about five feet between them.
She had to admit she saw no signs of romance. Billie didn’t seem to be interested in boys yet. She had a few friends who were boys, who they trusted, but no boyfriends, who they definitely wouldn’t.
Harriet supposed she should be grateful that Billie was a late bloomer in that respect. Still, she didn’t want to risk her daughter blooming in Sophie’s house.
James gently reached for her arm a split second before she started towards Billie to say she had to stay with them. How did he know? ‘They’ll be fine back at the house. Carlos will be coming in anyway. They’ll probably just stare at their phones and ignore each other.’
Fighting every instinct, Harriet didn’t even tell Billie to be good when they left.
She and James made excellent time to the zoo after the picnic, and zipped straight through the just-opened ticket queue, which put them eighteen minutes ahead of schedule.
James wasn’t nearly as tickled by the time saved as Harriet, but then she wasn’t as charged up about the animals, so they were even in the excitement stakes. By the time she had ticked off all the enclosures on her map, a tiny part of her dared to believe that James really hadn’t had anything to hide when he’d gone back to the village. He hadn’t needed to tell her about it. He didn’t know that Sophie had spotted him, or that she’d told Harriet. Logically then, on this occasion at least, it wasn’t a case of confession before accusation.
Back at Sophie’s, the lights were on but the house was silent. They caught each other’s eye. Harriet wasn’t about to say I told you so when it meant gloating over her daughter hav
ing sex. James’s voice was firm when he called up the stairs. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Dad! Come and see this!’
James’s shoulders dropped as he exhaled. Nice to know she wasn’t the only one whose mind had raced ahead to becoming young grandparents.
‘Make them come downstairs,’ she told James. She knew she should be modern and cool about this but, acne or not, she didn’t like Owen upstairs in a bedroom with her sixteen year old.
For once James did what she asked, calling them into the kitchen. ‘What are we doing for dinner?’ he asked her. ‘I’d be happy staying in.’
Harriet rifled through the cabinets for options. Then she checked Sophie’s freezer. She unearthed some prawns and peas from the ice-bound tundra that lay within. She’d defrost that for her tomorrow.
She added the foraged ingredients to the list that sat, neatly expanding day by day, on the worktop beside the fridge. Then she added defrosting to the list on the kitchen table.
‘Nice fashion accessory,’ James said while Harriet’s head was in the fridge searching for parmesan cheese. He obviously wasn’t talking about her. Maybe Owen was a good influence on Billie, she thought, reaching for the Cheddar that would have to do.
Harriet turned round, hoping to see her daughter in something pretty. It didn’t even have to be a dress.
The smile froze on her face when she saw the flickering tongue inches from Billie’s delicate face. That snake was coiled around her baby’s neck! Slithering and squeezing and wrapping its malicious tail around her arm.
‘GET THAT SNAKE OFF YOUR NECK!’
‘Jesus, Mum, relax.’ Billie’s voice was perfectly calm. ‘Don’t scare her again.’
Harriet’s heart pounded in her ears. The need to protect her daughter reared up so suddenly that it knocked the breath out of her. She wanted to rip the reptile off and stomp it into the tiles. ‘Billie, take it off! It’s dangerous!’
‘Nah, fam,’ Owen objected. ‘Carlos lets me carry her round my neck all the time.’ Gently he unwound the snake from Billie and plopped it over his own shoulders. Spot took the move well. Its tongue flicked at Owen’s cheek.
‘Jesus, that’s disgusting,’ said Harriet. ‘It shouldn’t be out of its enclosure.’
‘She’s out all the time when Sophie’s home,’ he said.
‘Sophie’s not home, so put it back, please. And wash your hands before you set foot in this kitchen again,’ she called after them.
Harriet would rather be a young grandparent than have that thing in the house. At least she wouldn’t be afraid of a grandchild.
The next morning, James and Harriet both stared at Billie when she came downstairs. She hadn’t been up that early for as long as they could remember. Harriet hadn’t even finished her second coffee.
‘This is unprecedented,’ Harriet said with a smile. Maybe her daughter was starting to enjoy their holiday.
Billie didn’t smile back. ‘Mum? I don’t want you to flip out, but Spot might be somewhere in the house.’
Harriet’s face blanched. ‘You’d better mean in its cage in the house, Billie, or I swear—’
‘I’m sure we’ll find her, Mum. She’s got to be here. A snake can’t just disappear.’
‘What the hell, Billie,’ said James. ‘Your mother told you to put her back in her enclosure last night.’
‘We did, I swear! I’m sorry, Mum.’ She looked exactly as young as her sixteen years just then. ‘I’m sure she’s here somewhere.’
‘That is not comforting.’ The thought of it slithering around her neck as she slept made her feel ill. She shuddered. ‘Ring Carlos. Seriously, I want him over here now to find that snake.’
‘It’s not even nine yet,’ James said. ‘We can have a look for her.’
‘Are you mad?’ Harriet noticed that her hand was on her own neck. ‘I’m not going near any cabinets where it can jump out at me.’
‘It’s not a cobra, dear heart,’ James noted. ‘Come on, Billie, I’ll help you look.’
But they wouldn’t find it, would they, because ‘I can’t see it’ was the most often uttered phrase in their house, in spite of Harriet having just pointed out exactly where their keys, phones, extra washing-up liquid, new coffee filters or about a million other things were. Half the time she could actually see what they were looking for. She was sure she’d even used the phrase if it was a snake it would have bitten you.
Harriet sighed. ‘I’m coming. First thing is to wake up Owen. We’re going through that room properly. I’m not about to turn the house upside down when it might be in there after all.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said James. ‘If anyone can find her, you can.’
‘I’d better not find it,’ she snapped back.
Chapter 16
Sunday
Sophie was up with the birds on the morning of the Scouts event, her tummy fizzing with excitement. She listened to Dan breathing deeply beside her in the big bed. She admired his ability to sleep. And when she said ‘admired’, she meant resented. He did it so bloody easily while she tossed and turned, flipped and flopped and made hopeless bargains with her brain to let her get off before dawn. Frustration sometimes made her do unattractive things, like poking him just enough to make him stir but not enough to rouse him. He never remembered the next morning why his sleep was dodgy.
She’d become a light sleeper when Katie was born – chalked up to motherhood along with sneeze-wees – but the insomnia was new. Well, newish. It wasn’t helped by her GP’s diagnosis. He’d offered her sleeping tablets, but she wasn’t keen on that idea. It felt weak to give in to medication when you couldn’t open a magazine without reading about how everyone was curing diabetes and preventing cancer by eating superfoods and decluttering their wardrobes. The holiday was meant to be the start of her own major changes – without having to declutter her wardrobes – but now she feared it wouldn’t be enough. The treatments were terrific, yes, and she was a happy bowlful of jelly every time Molly whispered for her to get dressed again. The walks to and from the village filled her with the joys of spring, summer, autumn and winter. She’d already resolved to do more ambling through their local parks when she was back home.
But here, in the house, she wasn’t any calmer. She was starting to wonder whether part of the problem had just parped under the duvet beside her.
She’d supposed her stress was part and parcel of being a mother and wife in London. She knew women who were just as frazzled as her. Most of the other mums on the school run, for a start; though none of them was at risk of a stroke, as far as she knew. When the GP had broken the news to her, he’d explained that the stress itself didn’t cause long-term high blood pressure, but that the hormone surge from stress raised your blood pressure, which damaged your blood vessels, which caused long-term high blood pressure. That was splitting hairs when the result was the same. If she didn’t calm down, she’d stress herself into the same fate as her mum.
She had to ask herself now, as she lay there listening to a blackbird singing in the tree beside the window: was she looking in the wrong place?
Dan had been livid when he found out she’d be filling in for the event planner today. He’d have rung that poor man at his mother’s bedside if Sophie hadn’t refused to tell him her phone password.
She was surprised by how good she’d felt. Not at knowing that she’d upset him, but that she hadn’t given in to him. That was new.
‘Just don’t expect my help when it all goes wrong,’ he’d said, shaking his head like he did when she’d massively disappointed him. ‘You’ve brought this on yourself. It’s your health, so knock yourself out.’ Then he gave her the silent treatment.
Of course, the silent treatment. How could she have forgotten about that? Those days and nights when Sophie felt so desperate to please Dan that she’d do just about anything. There was such deafening disappointment in those silences. Sophie had always caved in.
But not this time. She glanced at her sleeping husband. Then sh
e poked him again and bounced out of bed.
When she turned on her phone, there was a text from Harriet.
Sophie put her phone away. She was in no mood for banter with Harriet. She, Sophie, might have every right to rubbish Dan in her small ways, but she was not about to let someone else do it. Dan might be many things – didn’t Sophie know that – but he wasn’t the fraudster that Harriet claimed. He was an excellent solicitor who used his skills to help his clients. His career meant everything to him. He would never risk that, and Harriet had absolutely no right to be spreading rumours about him. She barely knew him! They’d met, what, once at a charity dinner. Sophie probably knew more about Molly at the spa than Harriet did about Dan.
Well, she did know Dan, thank you very much. This was the bloke who always told assistants in shops when they accidentally gave back too much change. Always. He’d never even had a speeding fine. The idea that he’d tamper with evidence, or whatever it was Harriet was accusing him of. Harriet had actually sounded surprised by Sophie’s reaction. What did she expect, that she’d automatically take the side of a woman she’d known less than two weeks over her husband? Even if she had felt like they were becoming real friends. That was the sad part.
Harriet needed to stop gossiping about Sophie’s family and start paying more attention to her own. Sophie had a good mind to ring her back to say that. Dan wasn’t the one she should be worried about, not when James was sneaking back to meet that woman. And yet, was Sophie spreading rumours about that? No, she was not. She hadn’t even mentioned it to Dan. That’s how discreet she was.
She brewed a cup of tea, wrapped herself in one of the oversized padded coats that hung on the hook beside the door and let herself out into the chill of the early morning.
Just what she needed to clear her head.
She loved this quiet before the family stirred. When Katie was a baby, she used to creep into the dark kitchen with her just to sit and stare at nothing.
Even though all hell was probably about to break loose, Sophie’s mind was perfectly calm. It was exactly what she’d hoped for from this holiday. She’d assumed it would happen in the middle of an especially good treatment, or maybe forking up a mouthful of delicious home-made pasta or savouring a Tuscan sunset. Not sitting on a creaky old bench with a bog-standard cup of tea in familiar-as-you-like England.
The Staycation: This summer's hilarious tale of heartwarming friendship, fraught families and happy ever afters Page 16