by Daisy Tate
She was surrounded by friends. Friends who made her feel safe. Loved, even. ‘Yes,’ she said, her own smile broadening along with everyone else’s. ‘I think that’s a brilliant idea.’
Chapter 6
Luna ran so fast and hard into Izzy she had to windmill her arms to keep her balance. ‘Woah! I missed you, too.’ She looked up and saw Monty jogging towards them. ‘Everything all right?’
Monty nodded, leant in for a kiss on the cheek. ‘She had some growing pains last night. Said she felt a bit achy and sore.’
Izzy’s brow instantly furrowed. ‘Is she all right?’
‘Don’t worry. She’s good. Felix and Regan used to get them all the time at that age. So we knocked them out with some Calpol and a bit of stretching, didn’t we, Luna?’ He grinned down at Luna who nodded and smiled shyly, but tightened her grip on her mother’s waist. Izzy’s mama-bear claws retracted.
Monty had a way of putting people at ease. Even after their silly fling in uni, she’d still valued his friendship.
Izzy dropped down to her daughter’s eye level. ‘Hey Booboo. Mama’s going to go zip wiring, too. What do you think?’
‘I’ve got dibs on Looney!’ Regan bounced over and lightly patted Luna’s hair as if she were a favoured doll.
‘What about your old dad?’ Monty pretended to look offended.
Regan rolled her eyes. ‘You’re in charge of Felix.’ She mimed holding a huge book in front of her. ‘I’ve got, like, twenty more chapters. Just … wait …’ And then she pretended to die. Everyone laughed, even more so when Felix, who was sitting over at a picnic table, looked up from his book, saw everyone was staring at him, gave them all an eye-roll, then went straight back to reading. He still had some blue paint on his left cheek.
‘You good with that Looney? Zipping with Regan?’ Izzy gave her daughter’s cheek a pinch and Luna twisted out of it which meant, yes, she was good with it.
‘Right then!’ Izzy rolled her shoulders back then took a sharp breath in.
‘What was that face for?’ Emily appeared by her side exactly when she wished she hadn’t.
‘Nothing. Just my shoulder giving me gyp.’
‘Your shoulder,’ Emily repeated, as if she’d just asked her to go and fetch a baby dragon from Charlotte’s Land Rover.
‘Yup,’ Izzy said and rolled it again, fighting to hide her grimace as her muscles spasmed behind her boobs. Ugh. It was really beginning to hurt. She probably shouldn’t have moved the couch round the other day. She probably shouldn’t have done a lot of things.
Emily did her peering thing, as if Izzy’s head was actually a Magic 8 ball and it was going to reveal all the secrets Izzy was hiding. Then, unexpectedly, she backed off, smiled and pointed at the zip-wire launch, ‘Wanna do a double with me?’
‘What? Don’t you want to do the flying thing? Where you go on your own?’ They’d all just watched a teenaged girl soar off into quarry screaming, ‘I aaaaam Captain Marvellllll!’ It looked really fun.
There were two zip lines. The quarry-pit run, which was quite barren and stark but super long, and the woodlands route, which was shorter, but had more of a faerie-forest feel about it.
Emily looked at her as if she was insane. ‘No.’
‘Ohmigawd. You’re a scaredy pants, aren’t you?’ She whacked her arm round Emily’s shoulders and began to baby-talk, ‘Have I just found the one thing widdle-biddle Emms is afwaid of?’
‘What are you two up to?’ Freya bounced up, tugging on a fleece. She was looking less stressy than she had the other night. Good to see that furrow smoothed out of her forehead.
Izzy grabbed Freya with her other arm. ‘Emily needs a bit of group hugging. Don’t you, Emms? A bit of courage from the girls before her big jump out into the great beyond.
‘Get off!’ Emily growled.
‘Are we group hugging?’ Charlotte appeared from the toilets. Her hair was redone in two adorable Heidi plaits. No make-up. She looked about ten years younger. She was wearing a cute T-shirt (a T-shirt! Charlotte!), with a raccoon wearing a cape. It had to be one of Freya’s. She looked nervous, but excited.
Izzy widened the circle so Charlotte could get in but Emily couldn’t get out. ‘We’re definitely group hugging. Little Emmy Wemmy’s got the jitters so we’re going to hug her better.’
Emily urghed and arghed her protests. Charlotte kept suggesting they let her go, that was probably enough now, while Freya seemed to be the only one who actually wanted a hug. ‘Resistance is futile!’ Izzy shouted.
When they eventually freed Emily, she grumbled, as expected, then grinned. Izzy loved Emily. Didn’t know what she’d do without her. Before Charlotte had saved her bacon, she’d almost suggested that she and Emms should move in together, but there was no way she could get a job that would earn her enough money to pay London rent. This way she could keep Emily’s barrage of ‘why haven’t you done that yets?’ at arm’s length.
‘So are we going to do the zip thing together or what?’ Emily asked Izzy.
‘Sure.’ She gave Emily’s kiss a cheek and grinned as Emily wiped it off as though it was green bogies. That done, Emily said, ‘Which leaves the all-important question …’
It appeared none of them knew what the all-important question was.
‘When shall we four meet again?’ Emily asked in her Shakespearean/you’re all village idiots voice.
Charlotte’s eyes lit up. Izzy shrugged but was excited that Emily was even asking.
‘I can’t believe you’re the one who wants to know.’ Freya looked shell-shocked.
Izzy threw out an option. A fictional option, but it was an option. ‘Luna and I were hoping to go glamping in Devon next spring. Check out the surf.’
‘That’s months away.’ Charlotte’s eyebrows templed. She was clearly hoping to meet up sooner.
Living in her swish granny flat wouldn’t be that bad. Izzy could go swimming every day. She’d pay rent. Definitely. When she got a job. There were jobs in East Sussex. Had to be. She’d find a quiet moment, like the hours’ long drive back to Cardiff, and say yes.
Freya’s brown eyes widened as an idea struck. ‘What about the farm? Up in Scotland.’
Emily sucked in a sharp breath. ‘There’s dirt there, right? And poo. Loads of dirt and poo on a farm.’
Izzy elbowed Emily. ‘It will strengthen your resistance to all the germs in hospital, you goofball.’
The idea was clearly growing on Freya. ‘At Hogmanay. Why don’t you lot come up just after Boxing Day? That way you can do whatever it is you do over the hols, then come up to Scotland!’
‘St Andrews?’ Izzy said the name as if it was Brigadoon.
‘Just outside, yeah.’
‘Will Rocco be there?’ asked Charlotte, a bit of a spark in her eye quickly replaced by embarrassment. ‘I mean, we wouldn’t want to impose on any family traditions.’
‘Are you kidding? It’s going to be the first Christmas without Mum, so, honestly? It’d be bloody brilliant if you all came.’
‘The kids normally go skiing with Oli and his parents around then … but things might be different this year …’ Charlotte’s eyes darted between them. ‘Would you mind if I brought them? I mean, I could always not come.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Freya batted away the suggestion. ‘There’s room enough for everyone.
Just then they heard the first of their names being called for the zip runs. Freya said she’d go last as she wanted to pop her tote into their car. As she headed towards the car park, they saw Monty take off after her in a run.
Right! Izzy jogged her shoulders up and down. Let the fun begin!
‘The car is where?’
Monty couldn’t even look Freya in the eye. ‘Bailiffs took it.’
‘How?’ As if it mattered.
Monty looked as though she’d just asked him to explain nuclear fission. ‘I don’t know. They have remote disablers and keys and … I don’t know, Frey. I came out this morning to put some s
tuff in it and there they were and there it went and now it’s gone.’
‘But it’s on a lease! The payments should be on …’ She stopped herself. Direct debit. Just as the council tax payments should have been. Freya could hardly breathe. She couldn’t tell if her heart was pounding so fast that she could no longer track it, or if it had stopped altogether.
Their car had been repossessed while they were on their family holiday.
‘At least you had all the camping stuff, right?’
Oh, please tell her Monty was not trying to put a silver lining on this. Blood roared between her ears as she tried to figure out how to handle the situation. Normally she would’ve torn into him. The children were nowhere in sight. They had the car park to themselves, apart from a solitary security camera that wouldn’t catch them if she were to lunge at him and choke the living daylights out of him.
But she couldn’t.
Couldn’t say anything. Move anything. Think anything.
He’d actually turned her into a zombie.
‘What do you want me to do, Frey?’ Monty was tugging at his hair, shifting his feet back and forth, peering into her eyes, waiting for an answer. She was always the one he came to for answers. Only this time … this time she had nothing.
At least there was an edge of desperation in his voice. That was something.
‘I’ll talk to Charlotte.’
‘And say what?’
Oh, she didn’t know. Maybe that her fucking idiot of a husband was proactively trying to make them homeless. That her children would have to nourish their growing brains with gruel. That the Burns-Wests were heading towards becoming a ‘more families than ever have been struggling to meet basic bill payments’ statistic. That was an option. Slightly inaccurate, self-indulgent, and verging on histrionic, but …
‘I’ll ask her if she can help us get a hire car.’ Heaven knew there wasn’t anything left on the credit cards. She’d checked last night.
‘What? Say ours broke down or something?’
Tears she refused to cry backlogged behind her eyes. The pressure was overwhelming. She blinked, then suddenly saw him afresh, as if a filter had been removed. Here he was. A forty-one-year-old man who’d wanted to be a human rights lawyer who’d ended up a stay-at-home dad. A stay-at-home dad who also did the family accounts. Badly. Unbelievably badly. ‘Hide the empty bottles behind the books on the shelves’ badly. Was this his fault or hers? They were meant to be a team. If she’d known things were this bad, she would have never, ever … No. For what felt like the first time ever, she stopped herself. If she let her temper flare now, there’d be a wildfire. So she walked away. It was the best she could do in a very, very bad situation. What happened next was anybody’s guess. Who knew? Maybe she and Charlotte could share a lawyer after all.
‘You sure you’re up for this?’ Emily was holding on to Izzy as if her life depended upon it. They weren’t even on the edge of the platform yet.
‘Dude!’ Izzy giggled. ‘Relax the grip, you’re squishing me baps!’
‘Oh, god. Sorry.’ Emily held her hands up in the air.
‘You don’t have to let go, you muppet. Just don’t crush them.’ She took Emily’s hands in hers then put them round her waist. Emily was in awe of how comfortable Izzy was with bodies. She gave unsuspecting British people hugs. She petted strangers’ dogs. Told acquaintances when they had spinach stuck in their teeth. And no one ever took offence.
Emily paid strangers to hug her.
The zip-line chap came up to them, looking every bit the outdoor adventure brochure model. A bit beardy. Ruddy cheeked. An insanely healthy glow. ‘I’m just going to take your safety clips off, all right ladies?’
‘I can’t believe we’re going to do this,’ Emily said as Izzy walked the pair of them closer to the edge of the platform.
‘C’mon, woman. This is what fun is.’
‘Really? For whom exactly?’ She was scared. She was really scared. This was the total opposite of surgery. In surgery she had a plan. Things went according to the plan. When they didn’t? There were other plans. She liked plans. What had possessed her to do this?
Izzy squeezed her hands. ‘I gotcha.’
And in less than the blink of an eye, they were airborne.
‘Right!’ Freya sliced through the air with her arm. ‘I need you not to talk any more. Can you do that? Can you do that one thing for me?’
Monty looked as though she’d slapped him. They might bicker like magpies but they never shut one another down. And she’d already done it once today. And then, despite her best efforts, lost it. ‘Better out than in’ went their oft-used refrain.
Somehow they’d managed to leave the car park. A combination of numbness and disbelief that any of this was real, she supposed. They were back up near the launch pad, trying not to look as if their lives depended upon Charlotte wrapping up her phone call so that they could ask for yet another favour. She’d thought of asking Emily but as they’d need Charlotte’s car in the first instance … Yet another swell of nausea churned the remains of her breakfast. Freya wasn’t sure she’d ever felt more humiliated.
Emily and Izzy were halfway down their zip line. You could still hear Emily screaming.
Screams she couldn’t wait to unleash once it was their turn. Perhaps the ride would whip away some of the truly vile thoughts she was having. About herself. About Monty.
The weight of shame on Monty’s slumped shoulders doubled the load on her own. He did genuinely seem to have finally understood just how bad things had become because of his inability to tell her what a shambles he’d made of things. Like a gambling addict at their lowest ebb. Blunt waves of remorse for lashing out the way she had made her skin feel prickly. She’d tried to dial it back, but the wheedling way he’d run after her in the car park and asked her not to tell Charlotte what had really happened had made her feel sick. The worst part was, she’d not even yelled. She felt like the survivor of an explosion – a bomb built by her very own husband – and was desperately trying to make sense of it all. At the heart of it was one solitary question. Why would he compromise them like this? He’d not only vowed to love and cherish her for ever, he’d done the same for the kids. Right there in front of everyone they knew. Her parents. His parents. All their friends. Promised to care for them. Shelter them. Feed them. Clothe them.
As, she reminded herself, had she.
She had, after all, taken on the mantel of chief breadwinner not out of necessity but by choice. And she was failing at it. On an epic level. It didn’t excuse Monty making such a hash of things, but if she’d worked a bit smarter, grasped the need to be stronger about their online presence, maybe none of this would be a problem. Or maybe it would. Perhaps no matter how much money she made, Monty would spend it all. Right now, she simply didn’t know. Didn’t want to know.
Charlotte walked a bit further away, her expression impossible to read as she talked and listened to whoever it was, Oli maybe?, her gaze pinned to the huge slate monument atop the hill. A list of the thousands of the men who’d worked in the quarry back in the day. Many of whom, she supposed, had sacrificed their lives to put a crust of bread on their family’s tables.
‘Freya, please.’ Monty reached out a hand.
She tucked her hands tight beneath her arms, her shoulders cinched up around her ears as she avoided Monty’s bright, blue-eyed gaze. She shouldn’t have totted up her business taxes this morning. Adding the App to her phone had been a mistake. Especially when she’d gone on to include the council tax and the arrears on the mortgage. Oh, yes. And the home insurance. She’d had an email confirming that that had lapsed, too. It had been a ridiculous thing to do, but she’d wanted to see Monty again, knowing she had a clear picture of what they’d be facing together. As a family. She’d got that all right. And then some. Emily, who’d been out for a morning run, had found her on the beach and had had to find a paper bag for her to breathe into. Then, of course, been sworn to a vow of silence. Maybe she should
ask Emily instead of Charlotte. How bone-crushingly mortifying that she had to ask at all.
Monty tried to pull her in for a cuddle.
She shook her head and very quietly, very firmly said, ‘No.’
He huffed and pointed to the quarry. ‘No way am I going out there attached to you wondering whether or not you’re going to unclip it the whole time.’
They stared out at the zip line they’d chosen. It was an almighty drop. Together, they would step off the wooden platform at the top of the massive quarry. Hanging from nothing but a single wire, they’d career out and over the bare, stripped-out hillside down and over the quarry pond and then into a small woodland.
Monty changed tack. ‘Aw, c’mon, Frey. This is our last day of hols. We should enjoy it!’
She stared at him in utter disbelief.
‘It’s a few thousand pounds. We’ll sort it.’
She actually saw red. No they wouldn’t. It was a few tens of thousands of pounds. Tens of thousands of pounds they simply did not have.
For once Monty’s sheepish ‘forgive me’ smile failed to tease at the edges of her fury. If possible she was even angrier. She didn’t want to be this person. Constantly nagging. Raging at the flip of a switch. It wasn’t fair to her family. It wasn’t fair to her. Freya used to be the fun one!
She looked at her husband. Smiling. Pleading really. He looked lost. Her very own Peter Pan about to walk the plank.
She’d trusted him.
She remembered her mother once saying a strong marriage was strong because of all the little chips and nicks it had endured through the years. That somehow, with trust and love, those chips and nicks healed and grew stronger.
She didn’t want her family to be destroyed because of money. So. ‘You’ll be more honest in the future? Talk to me. Properly?’
Relief softened Monty’s anxious features. Eased the hunch in his shoulders. Glassed over his eyes. ‘Absolutely. With every fibre of my being.’ He craned his neck, looking past her to where their children had just disappeared down the zip line. Her eyes snagged on his profile.