He’d have to wake her or the rising tide would splash the soles of her feet and do it for him. Harry and Rory had already slipped off quietly into the surf to swim back to Zig-zag Beach and trek up to the clifftop. The last slope of Secret Beach was shallow and covered rapidly, so it was better to go now than be there to battle the first waves that would hit the cliffs behind them and bounce back to create inhospitable white water. He used to throw himself around in it when he was Harry’s age but it didn’t hold much appeal now.
He reached out and traced the shape of Clancy’s breasts through her costume, watching her nipples peak in response. ‘Time to wake up,’ he murmured.
Her eyes fluttered open. She stretched and smiled. ‘That’s your normal waking-people-up technique, is it?’
He dipped his fingers into her cleavage to enjoy the satin of her skin. ‘I have a repertoire,’ he boasted.
She laughed, fishing his fingers from her swimwear and sitting up. Her expression altered as she took in how little of the beach was left. ‘Wow! The tide’s in.’
‘Time to go,’ he agreed. The waves were breaking almost at their feet now.
She groaned, but rolled to her feet and waded reluctantly into the water with a loud ‘Brr!’ The sun had moved on, making the sea feel a damn sight colder than when they’d arrived. They countered the chill with energetic strokes as they set off to rejoin the rest of the world.
Clancy dragged her feet all the way up Zig-zag Path, yawning. They arranged that she’d call at Aaron’s when she’d showered and properly woken up and he’d take Nelson for another run, meantime. He kissed her goodbye when they’d retrieved their clothes and dressed, then watched her traipse past the lawn of the B&B, its brightly coloured parasols snapping in the breeze, to the wide mouth of Droody Road. He turned towards the declining sun and Potato Hall Row bathed in the light from another pink sky.
But once he reached his cottage his feet, as if he’d already arranged things with them, carried him further through the shadows gathering in Long Lane, up to Frenchmen’s Way and De Silva House. When he turned up the drive he paused and looked at the red brick, admiring the building’s stately lines, so tall and dignified compared to his squat flint cottage. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but he knew he had to say something. He found his family sitting down to dinner.
Daisy shouted in joy to see him. ‘Uncle Aaron! I’ve been to the beach and on the funfair. I’ve had candyfloss—’ she sent a sidelong glance at her grandmother ‘—but I’m still going to eat all my dinner.’
Aaron grinned and scooped her up for a hug. ‘And did Daddy go on the waltzer?’
Lee sent him a rueful look. It was well known in the family that the more violent fair rides sent him green.
‘No.’ She pouted, picking up her fork and stabbing a piece of lettuce. ‘I’m not big enough yet to go on that and he didn’t want to go without me.’
‘Nice of him,’ Aaron said gravely. As the others ate, he made himself a cup of coffee and chatted with his parents about the car they were thinking of buying, his brother about business, his niece about funfairs and his great-aunt about the likelihood of her emerging from the next fracture clinic without a plaster on her ankle.
When the meal was over he said, casually, ‘I’ve come to give you a bit of news.’
All adult eyes swivelled his way, though Daisy, evidently unimpressed, asked if she was allowed to watch CBeebies. ‘Just till it’s time for your bath,’ Lee agreed.
Aaron drained his coffee cup and looked around the faces turned towards him, the faces of those he loved. ‘I’m seeing Clancy,’ he said baldly. He watched them closely.
Fergus looked mildly surprised and glanced at Yvonne for her reaction.
Both Yvonne and Norma frowned. ‘But she’s Awful Alice’s cousin,’ Aunt Norma pointed out.
‘Clancy isn’t Alice,’ he pointed out gently. ‘Alice is long gone. Clancy is here and Clancy is Clancy. So that doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘That Ernie Romain said there was something between you two and I told him to shut up,’ Aunt Norma replied, with an air of Aaron having let the side down.
Aaron waited for his mother’s reaction. ‘Oh,’ Yvonne said quietly. ‘You’ve taken me by surprise.’ She looked from Lee to Aaron and back again. ‘What do you think, Lee?’
‘What am I supposed to think? It doesn’t bother me, if that’s what you mean,’ Lee remarked, though in the voice of one who wasn’t sure he was being listened to.
Aaron clapped him gratefully on the shoulder and Lee returned the salute as he got up and wandered off after Daisy.
As soon as he was out of earshot, Yvonne lowered her voice. ‘I’m really not sure about this, Aaron, not sure at all. Aren’t things going to be awkward?’
Aaron sent his mum a level look. ‘Lee seems OK with it, and he chats with Clancy when he meets her. Why don’t you try to get to know her a little more? She’s a great person and it’s not fair to be down on her because of Alice. I think Clancy has tried to be polite whenever you’ve met so I suppose all it takes is for you to do the same and there will be no awkwardness at all. Will there?’ He stooped down and kissed her soft cheek. ‘You wouldn’t want to be difficult, would you?’
Yvonne sighed, then managed a smile. ‘Message received and understood, Aaron. If she’s all right with you then that’s all the rest of us need to know, isn’t it?’ She hugged him in the tightly squeezy way that told him she felt he was being exasperating but she supposed she’d have to put up with it.
After clapping his father on the shoulder and kissing Aunt Norma’s cheek, he popped his head into the lounge to say goodbye to Lee and Daisy. ‘Are we cool?’ he asked Lee softly.
‘’Course.’ Lee even summoned up a smile.
Daisy was too caught up with what she was watching to take her eyes from the TV screen as she said, ‘Bye! Will you bring Nelson next time?’
‘Would you tear yourself away from the telly if I did?’ he joked.
He was rewarded by a beaming smile as she pointed at the TV. ‘If it’s not In the Night Garden.’
He set off back to his place with a spring in his stride. He’d sorted things out with Clancy; he’d sorted things out with his family – even if he was well aware that his mother and aunt would take a while to come around. They each shared the trait of staking claims on what they saw as the moral high ground and then taking a while to be convinced if that ground shifted. He knew their attitude had sprung from a wish to protect Lee.
He arrived home and let Nelson leap up and paw the air while Aaron grabbed the lead to take him for a run along the clifftops. Maybe tomorrow Clancy would be free and they could take Nelson for a long walk along Brancaster Beach and find somewhere good to eat.
When a knock fell on his back door, he pulled it open, a smile of greeting at the ready. Then he saw it was Genevieve who stood there rather than Clancy making an early appearance as he’d hoped. ‘Oh! Hello, Gen.’
Though she greeted Nelson who, showing no understanding of human dynamics, hurled himself at her with his dance of love, Genevieve smiled thinly at Aaron, holding out a key. ‘I thought it would be a good idea to return this.’
Awkwardly, Aaron relieved her of it. ‘Thanks. Come on in and I’ll get yours.’ He didn’t lie and say he hadn’t thought about returning each other’s keys.
She only came in as far as the doormat and didn’t close the door while Aaron accomplished the fiddly task of removing her key from his keyring. ‘How are you?’ he asked as the silence became uncomfortable while he wrestled with the recalcitrant spring with his non-existent nails.
‘Disappointed, I suppose,’ she replied flatly.
Having no real idea how to answer, when he’d finally wrangled the key off the ring he passed it to her. Did ex etiquette indicate that he should offer her coffee when it really wasn’t convenient? He resisted flashing a glance at his watch. Clancy could arrive at any time.
Genevieve said, ‘Thanks,’ as she
looked down at her key. She turned as if to leave. An instant’s hesitation, then she turned back. ‘I know it was me who broke us up,’ she blurted, her eyes large and damp. ‘But I regretted it. To be honest, when you didn’t ask for an exchange of keys I started to hope that you thought we’d get back together again. Then you rushed out of the Parish Meeting after Clancy yesterday evening and I did something stupid. I followed. It gave me a ringside seat when you two got in a clinch.’
‘Ah.’ Aaron cast around for the right response. ‘I’m sorry if that upset you but—’
‘I know!’ She held up her hand to pause his flow. ‘I was the one to end things. But I was hasty. I was under stress with the subsidence at The Mimosas and disappointed you didn’t share my view of our future. I regretted it the second you left but …’ She shrugged one shoulder. ‘I understand that you’ve moved on. I can’t pretend that you doing it so rapidly and with someone in the village is comfortable.’ She shrugged again. ‘And I feel short-changed by Clancy because she’d been quite friendly towards me, but I’ll just have to get on with it, won’t I?’
Aaron frowned, his good mood soured by Genevieve’s evident unhappiness. ‘I’m sorry if you’re upset.’ Something about her air of being hard done by didn’t sit well with him though. ‘I’m just trying to understand why you’re so … disappointed that I’m seeing someone else when you are too. The guy you were having breakfast with at the B&B, a breakfast that involved a lot of kisses.’
She gave a half-laugh. ‘I was being pathetic and trying to make you jealous. He was just some tourist I met in Hunny. He went home after a few days.’
‘I see.’ He wanted to say, ‘So you ended our relationship in a snit, you sucked the face off a tourist at the B&B in a half-arsed plan to make me jealous, and somehow this gives you the right to get all tragic about me seeing someone else?’ But he crammed a lid on it. What Genevieve felt, she felt, whether the logic appealed to him or not. He couldn’t change her feelings but he could try and draw things to a close gracefully.
‘We had a great year,’ he said gently. ‘Let’s part as friends. We’ve all got to live in Nelson’s Bar, after all.’
With a sudden snap to her movements, she lifted her chin. ‘Have we?’ Then she managed a small smile before she turned away, leaving Aaron reflecting on the fact that telling himself he’d done nothing to feel guilty about didn’t stop him feeling guilty.
When you made someone unhappy, you felt bad.
Chapter Nineteen
A lukewarm shower rid her of the last of her drowsiness and Clancy thought tingly, anticipatory thoughts about the evening to come as she dried her hair, bending over to blow air on the roots.
She chose a summer dress from her wardrobe, a ‘go-anywhere’ number of dusky purple spangled with white shooting stars that would work whether they stayed in or went out … and wouldn’t crumple if cast off onto the bedroom floor. A few minutes with eyeliner and mascara and she was ready.
It was as she clattered down from her loft bedroom that she heard voices floating up the stairs. She paused in surprise as the sound of muffled laughter floated after it. Was it coming from inside the Roundhouse?
Could Aaron have brought someone round? Or had she forgotten to lock the door and one of the cottage guests thought it was OK to just wander in? Putting on a spurt, she ran down the rest of the flight and then the next, jumping down into the open-plan ground floor and putting on the brakes abruptly to see the front door open and luggage piled on the flagstones.
Then a woman dragged a man in through the front door, saying exasperatedly, ‘Behave yourself, Hugo! I’ll have you know that this is a respectable village.’ The sides of her head were shaved and the remaining chestnut hair hung in several plaits right down to her waist. She wore only a bra with a pair of shorts that were more hole than denim and tattoos of fairies and elves danced up her arms and across her shoulders. ‘Clancy, you’re here!’ the woman exclaimed, espying her and throwing her arms wide.
It took the cogs in Clancy’s brain several seconds to mesh. ‘Alice?’ she enquired uncertainly. The last Alice she’d seen had been significantly more sophisticated and conventional. Tailored, even. ‘Alice!’ Clancy shook her head in disbelief not just that Alice had appeared before her so suddenly that there ought to have been an accompanying puff of smoke but that she looked as if she’d dressed from Camden Market and wore tattoos.
Alice laughed, making the large tunnel earring in her left lobe shake along with the flesh pushed up by her purple velvet bra. ‘Yes, it’s me. Surprise! It’s so fantastic to see you!’ She enveloped Clancy in a big cousinly hug.
Now the first instant of shock was over, Clancy was able to hug her back, a flame of pleasure igniting inside her despite her shock. ‘Wow, it’s so great to see you!’
‘I know!’ Alice beamed. ‘And this is my husband, Hugo.’
Clancy could hardly believe her ears. ‘Husband? You’re married? Why didn’t you tell me?’
Alice squealed with laughter. ‘Because I knew I was coming home and wanted it to be a surprise!’
Stunned, Clancy disengaged from Alice to let her hand be shaken by the burly man who was apparently her cousin-in-law. He wore a black muscle vest along with studded combats and his dark beard went down so far that it met his chest hair coming up. A row of rings glinted in his eyebrow.
‘Correct,’ he said with a small smile. ‘She’s Mrs Hugo Suffolk now. We’ve come to see whether she’s still allowed into Norfolk.’ He laughed at his own joke, which had been delivered in precise Queen’s English. He sounded like Made in Chelsea but looked like he’d been living on a beach … which he could have been, of course. From the beery smell that hung about him and the size of his pupils, what she had no trouble in deciding was that he’d been drinking.
He turned away and prowled around the living space, touching the oak posts beneath the stairs and patting furniture as if giving it his approval. ‘Nice property. Authentic.’ He paused at the kitchen area and began opening cupboards while Clancy looked on, dismayed at his casual familiarity. He sighed with satisfaction when he discovered a bottle of red wine, taking down a glass and looking around enquiringly. ‘Anyone else?’ It might have been a polite and hospitable gesture if it had been his house and his wine he was helping himself to.
‘I will,’ said Alice. ‘Just the thing while I have a lovely catch-up with Clancy.’
Clancy tried to gather her scattered thoughts, to align this tinkling, alternative-looking Alice with the smoother and more sophisticated Alice she’d always known. One thing that hadn’t changed, evidently, was Alice’s ability to spring things on people. ‘Not for me.’ She turned to Alice hesitantly. ‘Sorry to dash when we haven’t seen each other for so long but I have plans—’
‘Oh, you can spare me an hour.’ Alice dismissed Clancy’s schedule with a nonchalant wave. ‘For goodness’ sake, I haven’t seen you for ages.’
‘That would be because you’ve been off on your travels for the last six and a bit years.’
Alice beamed as Hugo brought her a large glass of red. ‘You’ve got me there.’
Hugo grabbed a backpack from the pile of bags with the hand that didn’t hold the other glass of wine plus the bottle. ‘Where’s our room?’
‘Your room?’ Clancy echoed, a horrible cold feeling landing hard in the pit of her stomach.
Alice put down her wine and bounced up. ‘I’ll show you.’ Then she paused, ‘Oh, hang on. Which room are you in, Clancy?’
‘The loft.’ The feeling grew colder. Alice and Hugo had come to stay. For how long? Clancy had got used to occupying the Roundhouse in solitary splendour and didn’t one iota fancy sharing it. An Alice who had changed almost beyond recognition was unsettling enough, but Hugo was a stranger.
Truth was, though … the Roundhouse didn’t belong to Clancy. It belonged to Aaron and Alice and she could do precisely nothing to prevent Alice moving in as many people as she wanted.
‘Fantastic,’ Alice
sang out, skipping ahead of Hugo up the stairs. ‘We’ll take the master. Don’t run away, Clancy! I’ll be back in two minutes for that catch-up.’
Clancy stood rooted to the spot, dismay warring with disbelief as she listened to the voices from the floor above with footsteps trekking to and fro. Alice was back. A completely altered Alice with tattoos and an alternative hairstyle instead of the Max Mara and stylish up-do she’d worn four years ago to Aunt Sally’s funeral. And Alice had a husband who she was moving into the room she’d once shared with Lee, apparently.
Then Alice was running down again, waving her phone. ‘Has this village still got no mobile signal? FFS! I feel like I’ve entered Brigadoon.’ She linked arms with Clancy’s to tow her over to the sofa, collecting her wine on the way. ‘So,’ she began confidently, tossing some of her plaits over one shoulder. ‘How are you finding Ye Olde Nelson’s Bar? I couldn’t believe it when you moved here. You! I would scarcely have recognised you without your business suits and impeccable manicure.’ Clancy glanced down at her hands. They were a little more work-worn than in the past. Alice went on, ‘Did Will really cheat on you? What a bastard. I hope you kicked him where it hurt. How long are you here for?’
Clancy, who’d opened her mouth to ask this same question of Alice, was wrong-footed. ‘I haven’t put a limit on it,’ she said eventually. ‘As you know, I’m doing the caretaker’s job and it’s pretty busy at the moment. Every property’s booked up.’
‘Aces.’ Alice took two big gulps from her wine glass, her throat working as she swallowed. ‘All dosh welcome, frankly.’ She rolled her eyes.
‘Right.’ Clancy waited for her to elaborate and when she didn’t said, ‘So where have you been since I saw you last?’
‘All over!’ Alice waved the hand that didn’t hold the wine glass. ‘I bought a motorhome to drive around Europe. Met really interesting, rewarding people, you know? Broadened my horizons and made up for all the bloody years in one bloody village or another. I mean, the UK’s just one small patch on the world map, isn’t it? After Europe, I went over to Morocco, then Algeria and Libya …’ She gulped more wine, as if just the mention of such hot countries made her thirsty. ‘Came back to Europe, left the van with a friend, went to America, met Hugo in the Carolinas, married him in Vegas, came back to Europe.’
A Summer to Remember Page 20