by Daisy Tate
Freya had begun doing that after the first night. Serving dinner, wandering off to the sea ‘for a quiet moment’, going for a shower then making a bit of a show of being tired and ready for bed when she came back and realized they were all still up.
Charlotte was worried. Normally Freya vented. Quiet Freya was concerning.
‘Charlotte?’ Regan shook the bag of marshmallows, immediately pulling Dumbledore the dog out of his fireside snooze and into a state of high alert. ‘Mrs Mayfield?’
‘Charlotte, please. Call me Charlotte,’ Charlotte said, all of a sudden realizing she wouldn’t actually be Mrs Mayfield that much longer. Would she keep the name or go back to her maiden name, Bunce? ‘Thank you. Not just yet. You go on ahead,’ Charlotte teased at a loose string on one of the embroidered flowers on her skirt. Alliums, the shop assistant had said in an authoritative way that had reminded her of her mother-in-law. A woman used to having whatever she said accepted as gospel. Perhaps that came with the name. A ‘Verity’ was hardly going to be a wilting flower, was she?
She half rose to retrieve the mini sewing kit she always kept in her cavernous handbag then, remembering she had no one to be exactingly perfect for any more, yanked the cotton free. Or was this hemp? She did try to hit all of Freya’s briefs when shopping. Local, Fairtrade and organic were the flags Freya had always waved. She thought it best not to mention the fact that she’d noticed the T-shirts she’d bought from Freya’s online shop had come direct from Bangladesh, something she’d once sworn she would never do. Charlotte had no idea about sourcing these things, but she was sure Freya would’ve counter-balanced with a good deed. Like opening a school. Or sending books. Heaven knew they must have stacks of them lying about, the way Felix tore through them. She wasn’t entirely sure she’d ever seen her own son voluntarily reading a book.
Monty loped over from the shed, camera looped round his neck. Monty never seemed to plain old walk anywhere. Running, loping, striding. He was full of verve. Shame it hadn’t translated to the paperwork that Freya said he’d neglected to do. Charlotte would have loved to offer Freya some financial help, but with things being so up in the air on her side, and knowing how proud Freya was … Besides. She’d yet to receive the email that Oli had promised would be coming her way from his lawyers. It’d be interesting to see what that had to say.
‘All right there, Lotte? Mind if I take a quick snap?’ Monty took the picture without waiting for an answer. ‘Enjoying your de-luxe camping chair?’
‘Loving it.’ She was actually. She ran her hands along the durable, reinforced stitching and gave him a toothy grin. ‘Look.’ She moved her hands like a show model. ‘It even has side pockets!’
She’d bought it from one of the camping outlets that Freya kept none-too-subtly pointing out once they’d pulled off the motorway. She should’ve cottoned on earlier when Freya went into an elaborate story about last year’s camping excursion and how the children had grown so much they’d spent half the night elbowing one another in the face. A cue, she realized, to remember she didn’t own a tent. After she’d found a sleeping bag (on special offer), Freya had actually cheered and crowed, ‘That’ll show him’, when she’d settled on a tent that was full price. Is this what almost-divorcees did? Buy insanely expensive, startlingly pink, two-bedroom – with additional central cooking/living area – tents on their husband’s debit cards?
Charlotte made a visor out of her hand (Monty had yet to turn off his head torch) and smiled up at him. ‘I may never leave.’
‘Good,’ Monty gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘We aim to please at Camp Burns-West!’ He pulled out some invisible pistols and made kapow! noises.
‘May I?’ Monty gestured to the stump beside her and pulled a tin of lager out of his windbreaker.
‘Please.’
He cracked the can open then furtively glanced about. ‘While the cat’s away …’ He waggled his eyebrows then took a few long gulps, as if he’d been dreaming of this moment the entire day.
‘Lotte … just for the record, anything Freya says goes for the both of us, but I want you to know from me that I think Oliver has well and truly lost it. The plot I mean.’
‘Ohhhh …’ Her smile faltered. ‘That’s very kind, Monty, but you don’t have to say that.’
‘I know. I wanted to. The man’s an idiot. Anyone in their right mind would be falling over backwards to keep you happy.’
Charlotte was finding herself quite drawn to Monty. Not in a sexy way, obviously. More … a strange sort of admiration for his relentless optimism. Perhaps if he put a bit more energy towards keeping the family finances in order …
Again, he drank deeply. ‘Is, ummm … how do you think Freya’s getting on?’
‘Oh! Well …’ What did one do here? At home she would’ve lied through her teeth. ‘I think she might be a bit upset actually.’
Monty scrubbed his hands through his hair.
‘Yeah. Ummm. I think that might be my fault.’
Charlotte didn’t say anything. She often found this was best.
‘You know I love her, right?’
Charlotte sat upright. ‘Of course, Monty. No one’s doubting that.’ Except, perhaps, Freya.
‘Good. Good.’ He kept on nodding, staring at the fire, his mind catching up with his body, perhaps. The two didn’t often seem to work in tandem. Like a puppy. ‘I should probably get a job. Help her out. Time just seems … well, you look after two teenagers. It’s like your life is eaten alive by chauffeuring them everywhere and PE bags and whose laundry is or isn’t done, you know? And tied to the oven and the dishwasher! I mean, they never stop eating. Any of them!’
Charlotte nodded. She knew. She also knew how little credit someone who was ‘just’ a housewife or house-husband received for the endless ream of details and chores. Some days she thought of herself as the family CEO. Others, a mere skivvy.
Monty swiped at the air. ‘I shouldn’t complain. Freya shoulders a lot, you know. I probably shouldn’t say anything, but the shop isn’t doing as well as it once did. And with her mum dying and her brother looking after her dad and all … did she tell you about the milk prices?’
Charlotte shook her head no, but Monty didn’t need to explain they were bad. It had been all over the news lately. Small family dairy farmers were going out of business at a shocking rate.
‘It’s a lot for her to deal with.’ He rubbed his own neck, as if the weight of it all had landed on him as well. ‘I suppose I could always hang up my proverbial pinny and get a proper job. Building trade’s looking up again. My brother’s just taken on a couple of new guys, but that’s out in Bristol, so …’
As complicated as their lives sounded, Charlotte’s thoughts drifted back to Rocco. He used to drop Freya off at term time. Stay the night sometimes. He’d always reminded her a bit of a cartoon lumberjack. One with a warm, inviting smile. His eyes were green to Freya’s dark brown ones. Like the heather, he’d joked once. Since then she’d never been able to look at heather without thinking of him.
‘It’d mean more laundry duty for both of us, but do you think she’d be up for that? Me getting a job?’
Freya would probably sob with relief. ‘It’s probably something you’d be better off discussing with her. I mean, not that I’m not happy to talk.’
Monty flashed her one of those cheeky grins of his and laughed. ‘Yeah. Course. I suppose I just look up to Freya so much, I thought I’d test the waters with someone I know she respects. I just … I want her to be proud of me but I haven’t found the window of time to find my niche yet, you know? That place where I can turn this into this.’ He pointed to his head then rubbed his fingers together across some invisible money. ‘Any road … I shouldn’t be dumping on you when you’ve got … well … things.’
‘We’ve all got things, Monty.’ Big or small, everyone had things.
After he’d retrieved the football that Dumbledore had nosed into the sink, fetched Regan a hoodie, then produced a hay-fever table
t for a violently sneezing Felix, Monty plonked himself back down on the stump next to Charlotte.
Charlotte handed him the bag of marshmallows, which he waved off. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘You are absolutely brilliant with the children.’
He looked across at the twins who’d abandoned their game of footie and were setting up a game of chess in the lambing shed. ‘They’re pretty fab, aren’t they?’
‘Very much so. And a lot of the credit for that goes to you. Maybe teaching’s something you could consider.’
His brow scrunched up, as if he were genuinely thinking on it, then shook his head. ‘Freya would kill me if I said I wanted to go back to uni again.’
Excuses! Then again, she’d wanted to set up a shop from the day she’d been married and had that ever materialized? It had taken Oli destroying their marriage for her to so much as consider doing something along those lines, so … Charlotte cleared her thoughts of her own marriage and tried to channel Freya. What would Freya want most from Monty, apart from a million pounds? Something he could actually give her.
‘What about …?’ She pierced a marshmallow onto a stick. ‘Have you ever considered treating your wife the same way you treat your children?’
‘Ha! I don’t really think she’d be up for a water-balloon fight.’
It wasn’t quite the direction she’d been heading, but who knew? Maybe she’d been jealous. ‘Have you asked her?’
‘No.’ His sunny features briefly clouded then lifted. ‘She’d go on about the mess and there’d be the reminders to avoid smashing Felix’s specs and, God, you know Freya. She’s usually so busy doing stuff she never has time for messing about.’
‘Maybe it’d be nice for her to have a reprieve every now and again. What if you and the children were to chip in a bit more so that she’d actually have the time to find out if she likes it?’
She’d often wondered if Oliver was blind to the millions of things she’d done to keep the household in order, or if he simply didn’t care. If he had wanted to go out, he’d wanted to go out now – oblivious to the fact there were still nappies to change, bottles to fill for the babysitter, and who knew what else left to do before she could so much as think about getting herself ready to go out of the door. Perhaps she’d been the one to draw the line. Made those types of chores her own so that she felt she had at least some value. Had Freya made too much of an art of sweeping into a room and grumpily tidying it up whilst her family got on with the business of living? More than once Charlotte had wished she’d been the one guiding a laughing Poppy along on her pony or learning how to use the Wii with Jack.
She tried a different tack. ‘Maybe it goes deeper than that.’ Charlotte rotated her marshmallow so it wouldn’t slip off the stick. ‘Perhaps she doesn’t feel as though she’s part of the gang.’
Monty looked shocked. ‘She’s part of the gang! She practically is the gang! We’d be nothing without her.’
‘Does she know that’s how you think of her? Or do you think she’s lodged herself into the role of She Who Must Be Obeyed?’
Monty’s lack of an answer was answer enough.
She pulled her marshmallow out of the fire and tipped it towards him. ‘Want to share?’
They ate the marshmallow in silence then, after Monty had toasted another and they’d eaten that too, he nudged her with his elbow.
‘You’re a wise old duck, you know that Lotte?’
She felt a silly puff of pride. ‘I try my best.’ It wasn’t that great an insight into life. But it was a start.
Monty clapped her on the knee, stretched, yawned, then crushed his can in his hand. ‘Right then! I’m off to see if I can get these children of mine to finally learn how to play poker!’ He galloped towards them, singing some pop song or other.
Perhaps she should’ve been sharper with him. Emily would’ve launched straight into him. Given him a proper tongue-lashing. Of course he should get a job. Of course he should feel badly if things were as bad as Freya was intimating. Then again, from what Monty had said about the business not going so well, perhaps all of the blame might not be entirely his?
Oh, she didn’t know. Monty was obviously very much in love with his wife, but Freya was stuck on the fact that he’d betrayed her trust and the bills they faced sounded serious.
If Oliver had broken down after Freya had smashed him in the face with her birthday cake and told Charlotte he still loved her, or had a water-balloon fight with her, would that have been enough to stitch their marriage back together? Build something stronger?
She suddenly, urgently, began to will Monty to do something tangibly helpful so that Freya could forgive him and the pair of them could move on. She wanted their marriage to succeed. Needed it, even. Perhaps it had been a good thing she’d come along. Served as a bit of a buffer between the two of them so tensions didn’t escalate past a point of no return. There were, after all, the children to think about. She pulled a guilty face though no one was looking. Both of her children would be heading back to boarding school in the autumn. It was how all the Mayfield children had been raised. They’d sent Poppy off a bit early, but she was very bright and Oliver had thought having her traipsing around the house on her own wasn’t for the best. Charlotte hadn’t wanted to send her. Said it was too soon and that perhaps it might be nice for the pair of them to have a special mother-daughter year.
Oli had laughed and said no one wanted a child who stayed tied to the apron strings.
Why was it she seemed incapable of putting her foot down with that man?
Because he paid for everything and was posh. It was that simple.
Well! Just because she was raised in a Sheffield council flat didn’t make Oliver a better person than her, did it? She was simply going to have to … dig deep, or whatever it was a girl did to churn up a bit more self-worth. Her children were hardly going to want to live with a milksop. Her children were her family now. From here on out, she would refuse to let Oliver and his ‘Mayfield Ways’ take that from her.
She pulled out her phone and sent Poppy a text. In French, as recommended by the course tutors, so as ‘not to jar the students out of their immersive experience’. A minute or two later she received a selfie in return. Poppy and her best friend Willow, moodily – Gallicly? – chomping into opposite ends of a rather large baguette. She sent a message to Jack as well, in English, but didn’t expect to hear back. He’d gone a bit surly as of late. Most of his mates were off to Eton or Winchester and, the truth was, he simply didn’t have the academic leanings for either.
‘Hey!’ Freya appeared zipped up tight in her onesie, Uggs on her feet and her hair corkscrewing out at odd angles. She looked around, gauging whether or not she needed to launch into her ooo, ohhh, so-tired routine.
‘Everyone gone to bed?’
‘Poker lesson.’
Freya’s eyebrows shot up, then dropped. Her brow crinkled. ‘Everything all right?’
Charlotte felt as though she should be asking Freya the same thing. ‘Absolutely. Better than all right.’ Charlotte meant it, too. She’d just decided to grow a spine. ‘Yes I am.’
‘Good!’ Freya gave her a solid nod. ‘We aim to please at Camp Burns-West.’ She pulled out a pair of invisible pistols and made kapow! noises.
Charlotte smiled. Monty and Freya would be fine. She and Oliver had never had little things like that. Family quips. Now, she supposed, they never would.
Izzledizzle to Emmzzz
Yahooo! You’re coming! Luna ecstatic. Me too, obvs. Wot have you booked a hotel for? You’re coming here, right?
Emily to Izzledizzle
Not staying in cottage full of deadly mould even if it is your mother’s love shack. I’ll book for you and Luna, too. My treat. She eats grown-up food, I presume?
Izzledizzle to Emmzzz
Happy dance! [dancing emoji] And yes, to the grown-up food. She’s not lost that many teeth! Looks super cute! Natch. #TotesPrejudiced
Izzledizzle to Emmzzz
&nb
sp; Been googling. There’s a castle down the road with rooms! How cool would that be?
Izzledizzle to Emmzzz
And a Premier Inn just off motorway. They take dogs. Not the castle.
Emily to Izzledizzle
I forgot about Bonzer.
Izzledizzle to Emmzzz
How could you forget about Bonzer, the world’s cutest dog?
Izzledizzle to Emmzzz
Just stay here at the cottage. Luna and I aren’t dead. Yet. *mwah ha ha ha haaaaa*
Emily to Izzledizzle
You’re sick.
Izzledizzle to Emmzzz
That I am.
Emily conked her head against the wall. Hard. Trust Izzy to find the funny side.
Izzy was trying to read Emily’s expression, but it was difficult. After the taxi driver had dropped her off and they’d had one of their exceedingly awkward hugs, weirder this time because – for the tiniest fraction of a second – Emily had leaned into it, Emily had on her neutral face. She had yet to leave the doorway, her dark eyes travelling along the ceiling of the cottage.
‘Well … what do you think?’ Izzy held her hands out and twisted side to side, a bit like Luna did when she’d said something clever and was waiting for a reaction. Izzy had sent Luna outside with Bonzer to practise his newly acquired trick of rolling over. She didn’t want Luna to get freaked if Emily was freaked. Then she would freak and it would all be very bad.
‘It’s a death trap waiting to happen.’ Emily wasn’t one to mince words.
‘Seriously? C’mon. You haven’t put anything in a beaker or … whatever. Did you bring a microscope?’
Emily smirked at her and pointed at her rather swish but compact Burberry handbag. ‘Yes. I brought two.’
‘Ha ha.’ Cow. Lovely cow. But seriously. She’d brought her daughter here. Emily could at least fake it a little. ‘Hey! Did you know there’s an actual village called Mouldsworth?’
‘I did not,’ Emily said distractedly.
She was staring at the rather unseemly dark splodges that Izzy had clocked advancing across the ceiling from the windows. Maybe it was pretty bad and she’d just gotten used to it. Like the leaking roof in their rental in Hawaii. She hadn’t had the energy to move and, as they were a bit behind on their rent those last few months before the business sold, she’d decided bugging the landlord would be a bad thing. She and Luna had made a game of it. Dodge the bucket.