Just for the Summer

by Fay Keenan

  That train of thought was just the distraction she needed to head back down the ladder for the moment. After all, she reasoned, dragging all of those heavy boxes down from the attic by herself was a risky business; she’d wait until her sons got home from school and then they could help her so she didn’t break her neck going up and down from the loft. Grabbing her phone, she texted the family WhatsApp group and asked if either of her brothers would be able to offer a place to crash for a few days during the Easter holidays. Sam must have been off shift, as he responded straight away, and they swiftly arranged a date. Breathing a sigh of relief that now at least there would be ten fewer boxes to worry about when moving day eventually came, Kate looked once again around her living room and wondered where to start.

  3

  When the Easter holidays came, Kate was relieved that the house was already in a much better state than it had been. The attic had been sorted, and her sons had been surprisingly interested in all of the stuff that was soon going to be stored in Sam and Aidan’s houses. They’d spent ages looking through the evidence of their uncles’ childhoods, fascinated by the old schoolbooks and the mix tapes that, in one or two cases, appeared to have been gifted to Sam by girlfriends past, if the careful rounded handwriting on the inserts and the choices of songs had been any indication. Kate wondered what Florence, Sam’s wife, would think of those, and then smiled – knowing Florence, she’d just laugh it off. Everyone had a past, after all. Even Kate, who’d met Phil aged eighteen, had had a boyfriend or two before that.

  Tom, Kate’s youngest son, had discovered Aidan’s old board game Battleships and had set it up, and, to Kate’s astonishment, night after night for a week, he’d challenged each of his brothers to a game. It had actually managed to displace the PS4 in their affections for a while. On a rather different note, Kate had discreetly removed a naked centrefold of 1990s model Claudia Schiffer from their curious eyes when she’d opened an old A4 exercise book of Sam’s and found it.

  The three boys had been pleased about a change of scenery for a few days of the holiday. They liked seeing their uncles, and Kate thought that, actually, a bit of time away from the house that was feeling less and less like their home by the day would do them all good. As she settled them in for the long drive west, she felt herself finally starting to relax.

  ‘Are we nearly there yet, Mum?’ Will, her middle son, joked as they pulled off the driveway.

  ‘Nearly.’ Kate grinned. Although, just getting away from the house was enough to make her feel lighter. Lorna waved from her kitchen window as they left the cul-de-sac. She, as ever, had promised to keep an eye on the place. Kate would miss having her next door when they moved into the Airbnb place during the next half term holiday.

  Three hours later, and after watching the landscape changing from the flats of Cambridgeshire to the commuter belt and then the chalky landscape of Dorset, Kate finally made it to the Somerset border. The boys were getting restless, having swapped the front passenger seat between themselves when they’d stopped a couple of times on route, and Kate herself was looking forward to a cup of tea and unwinding at Sam’s place.

  As they headed over the Mendips and dropped down into the small town of Willowbury, Kate caught sight of Willowbury Hill, the ancient mound rising, green and stately out of the surrounding hills, and marvelled at what a beautiful place her brothers had found to live. There was something quaintly charming, too, about the sloping High Street, that, even though she’d been on the road for over three hours now, she took a detour to drive down. The shops that lined either side of the road were a delightful mix of the quaint and quirky; a health and well-being shop called ComIncense, with pastel coloured bunting strung up outside that matched the violas in the wooden tubs either side of the front door, the Cosy Coffee Shop, and a small gift shop, just before the Travellers’ Rest pub, that stood on the corner of the High Street, sand coloured stone warm in the spring sunshine.

  As ever, the mix of walkers on the pavements either side was as eclectic as the shops. Some were obviously tourists, down for the Easter break and wandering up and down the street with all the time in the world. Others looked more like locals, busily completing their shopping and meeting and greeting one another on the street. Willowbury was a draw all year round for those who wanted to spend some time in a picturesque Somerset town that had a feel and a spirit all of its own. Not for nothing was it known as the New Age capital of England. Kate smiled as she saw two little girls wearing lilac fairy wings skipping along the pavement. Her smile widened when she saw the man holding their hands was also wearing a pair, in the same vibrant colour. That image is Willowbury, to a tee, she thought, although there were plenty of people out and about who were more conventionally dressed, too. Her eye was caught, as she drove, by the bright, vibrant display of the local bookshop, Vale Volumes, which had been closed over the Christmas holiday when they’d last visited Tom and Aidan, but now appeared to be doing a brisk trade with tourists down for the Easter holidays.

  ‘This place is so weird,’ Tom said, from the back seat. ‘But kind of cool, too.’

  ‘It’s certainly never dull!’ Kate replied. She loved coming back to Willowbury, and at the moment, the place was just the tonic she needed to get away from the stresses of the house move. A few days in the Somerset countryside would hopefully recharge all of their batteries.

  In a few more minutes they were pulling into the parking space to the side of the three houses on Bay Tree Terrace. Reassuringly conventional, they looked even more welcoming when Sam, Kate’s brother, loped towards them from where he’d obviously been working in the garden at the back of the houses.

  ‘Hey,’ he said warmly, giving Kate a hug and a kiss on the cheek. ‘You made great time.’

  ‘Traffic wasn’t too bad,’ Kate replied, once Sam had released her. She looked him up and down. ‘You look well.’

  Sam grinned. ‘Florence is taking eating for two to heart, so she’s cooking massive portions of everything.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant!’ Kate laughed. ‘But now you come to mention it…’ She poked Sam’s non-existent gut. ‘How’s she feeling, otherwise?’

  ‘Pretty good,’ Sam said. ‘Tired, but loving being pregnant. She’s popped out to grab some bits and pieces for dinner tonight, but she’ll be back soon.’

  ‘I was going to suggest dinner at the pub,’ Kate said. ‘But maybe tomorrow night would be better.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ Sam replied. Catching sight of the boxes that were stacked high in the boot of Kate’s Volvo, his eyes widened. ‘Jeez. You weren’t joking about the amount of crap from your loft, were you?’

  Kate, who was making sure the boys all had their overnight bags, kept smiling. ‘Afraid not. You can see now why I wanted rid of it all!’ With a hint of mischief in her heart, she reached into her handbag and pulled out the centrefold she’d found in Sam’s old school exercise book, which she’d thought better of binning in the end and passed it to him while the boys surged ahead towards the house. ‘Thought this might bring back a few memories!’

  Sam’s jaw dropped, and then, as if he was the fourteen-year-old that Kate remembered having such a crush on Claudia Schiffer, he glanced around to make sure Florence, or worse, their brother, Aidan, wasn’t about. ‘You could have just chucked this out!’

  ‘It was worth keeping it for the look on your face,’ Kate teased. ‘You were so nuts about Claudia, it was no wonder you never had a girlfriend!’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ Sam shot back, grinning. ‘You didn’t know everything, Katie.’

  ‘Sure,’ Kate replied. ‘But perhaps it’s worth chucking that before your wife sees it. Even if she’s cool with your teenage crushes, the pregnancy hormones can play havoc with your sense of proportion.’

  ‘Noted,’ Sam said. ‘Although, it is a great picture…’

  ‘On your head be it, little brother.’ Kate smiled. ‘Now, are you going to give me a hand with the rest of this stuff or not?’

/>   Still grinning, Sam popped the boot and grabbed the first couple of boxes, proving, perhaps, that Florence’s home cooking hadn’t done too much damage to his fitness after all.

  4

  That evening, once the boys had settled into Sam and Florence’s house, they were joined by Kate and Sam’s other brother, Aidan, and his husband, Tom, from next door. Florence, true to her Yorkshire roots and her pregnancy cravings, was cooking up a storm, and after a couple of glasses of wine, Kate was feeling thoroughly relaxed. There was something so easy, these days, about just hanging out with her sons and her siblings. In the past, when her boys had been younger, she’d always been worried about what they were getting up to, but now, as they played an impromptu game of football on Sam and Florence’s long stretch of lawn, she felt she could chill out and just let the evening wash over her.

  ‘It’s so peaceful,’ Kate observed as she caught the sound of a nightingale carolling somewhere in the woods that backed onto the house. ‘If I lived here, I think I’d just be in a permanent state of relaxation.’

  Florence, who was off the booze but nonetheless seemed as chilled out as the other adults, smiled. ‘The pace of life is a little slower here, although it’s not quite the backwards rural idyll it used to be. Since the railway line got put back in, a lot of commuters have moved in. You can get to London in just over two hours these days.’

  ‘So it’s not just incense readers and organic risotto rice knitters any more, then?’ Kate laughed. ‘Shame.’

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty of that still, too,’ Aidan chipped in. ‘And if you want a neopagan blessing for your newborn baby, or an aura reading before you agree to marry the love of your life, that’s all still available, too.’

  Kate raised an inquisitive eyebrow. ‘Is that what you two did, then?’ she said, grinning at Aidan’s husband, Tom, who’d just grabbed himself a beer and was returning to the garden table on the patio.

  Aidan laughed. ‘Nah. I knew he was a keeper without Mariad O’Flaherty telling me what colour his aura was!’

  Kate laughed too, then glanced to make sure none of her sons were in earshot. ‘Perhaps I should have dragged Phil here sixteen years ago and consulted a fortune teller!’

  Aidan gave her a quick look, and Kate knew he was checking that she wasn’t hiding a deeper meaning in the remark. Reassuringly, all she felt was the humour, this time. It hadn’t always been that way, in the aftermath of Phil’s departure.

  ‘If he comes anywhere near this place, I’ll shove his aura where the sun doesn’t shine,’ Aidan said. ‘He might be the father of your kids, Kate, but he’s still a lying twat.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Kate admonished her youngest brother gently, ‘it’s water under the bridge.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’ She took a sip of her wine. ‘It’s all about the future, now. I mean, the house has been sold and I’ve had the best clear out I’ve had in years. It’s time to move on.’

  Aidan shook his head. ‘And moving on means redecorating this cottage you’ve been lent, does it?’

  Kate grinned. ‘Well, it’s a start. I can’t afford to buy a new house anything like what I had when I was married to Phil, and I don’t want to rush into something I might regret, so the cottage will be a chance to catch my breath, to think about what I really want to do now, and what’s best for me and the boys. It’s weird, after all these years, to be thinking like that, but I’m getting used to it.’

  ‘You always did have a good eye for design,’ Aidan said. ‘I remember, when we were teenagers, you spending the Easter holidays one year redecorating your bedroom. Mum nearly had a heart attack when you suggested it, but you got stuck in and even she liked it by the end.’

  Kate grimaced. ‘Although, to be fair, those light purple walls and lilac curtains were definitely of their time.’

  ‘Purple’s out for this Airbnb job, then?’

  ‘Definitely!’

  Aidan glanced at Tom, who, Kate noticed, gave a slight smile and a nod.

  ‘What?’ she said, as two pairs of eyes swivelled in her direction.

  ‘Well,’ Aidan said. ‘We were wondering…’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘If you’ve got nothing better to do for the summer… how about moving into our place and slapping a bit of paint on the walls?’

  Kate nearly spat out her drink. ‘What?’

  ‘The place needs a bit of a facelift, and I figured, if you weren’t up to anything else, you might do it for us. We’ll pay you, of course.’ Aidan grabbed a handful of crisps from the bowl on the garden table.

  ‘Can’t Sam help you with that?’ Kate asked. ‘After all, it’s not like he’s got a long way to go.’

  ‘Well, yeah, but I wouldn’t trust Sam to paint by numbers, let alone my living room walls. Would you?’

  ‘Oi!’ Sam, who had hitherto been kicking the football around with his nephews, looked affronted. ‘I’ll have you know that I’ve got great taste.’

  ‘That’s why Florence made you take back the diarrhoea yellow you picked for the baby’s nursery, is it?’ Aidan countered lightly as Sam sank into a garden chair, breathing a little more heavily than he should have been after a casual kick about.

  ‘I hate to point out the obvious flaw in your plan,’ Kate said, ‘but the boys and I barely fit into the spare rooms at Sam’s as it is. And your house is even smaller. How am I supposed to decorate around you, and them?’

  ‘Well, here’s the thing,’ Aidan said. ‘Tom and I have booked a little holiday. Kind of the honeymoon we couldn’t have because Tom was in that thing at the Bath Theatre Royal straight after the wedding.’

  ‘My biggest role to date,’ Tom interjected. ‘I mean, I wasn’t going to turn down a crack at Godot, was I?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Aidan soothed, obviously sensing ruffled feathers. ‘But since Tom’s got a bit of a break before rehearsals start for his next project, we thought we’d push off for a few weeks in the summer, see a bit of Europe and take the honeymoon then. So you and the boys will have the house to yourselves, if you fancy it.’

  ‘And while I’m here, I get to spend some time redecorating your gaff?’ Kate grinned.

  ‘Well, yeah. Unless you’ve got other plans.’ Aidan raised an eyebrow.

  Kate shook her head sardonically. ‘Obviously not. Except, of course, finding a house I can call my own, but, you know, I’ll put that on hold for you, little bro.’

  ‘So you’ll do it, then?’ Aidan, seemingly unaware of the ironic tone in Kate’s voice, asked.

  Glancing down the garden, where the boys were still kicking the ball about, Kate thought about how lovely it would be to move into this beautiful, calm terrace for the summer. It would certainly take the pressure off having to find somewhere else to live, for the moment, and meant another six weeks where she wouldn’t have to consider her mother’s garden annexe as home. That was something she definitely didn’t want to think too much about, unless it became unavoidable.

  ‘If the boys are okay with coming over for the summer, then I’ll do it,’ she said, turning back to Aidan. ‘But only if they’re happy.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Aidan said. ‘And I’ll even make sure there’s a bottle or two of the local cider in the fridge for you, if you like.’

  ‘How kind.’ Kate grinned. As they argued idly over what the job was worth, Kate feeling distinctly awkward about haggling over prices with her brother, she felt a sense of relief. Okay, so being itinerant for the next few months wasn’t ideal, especially with three sons in tow, but she loved being in Willowbury, and, since it was the summer holiday, the boys wouldn’t be missing any school. With Phil sharing custody, she was sure they could arrange the time between them so the boys were happy. Sitting back in her garden chair, breathing the scent of freshly cut grass and feeling the warmth, still in the air, she felt a real sense of belonging, for the first time in a long time. It felt odd to be so far from home but, she supposed, she was with her brothers, and, in reality,
her house in Cambridge wouldn’t be her home for much longer.

  Just as she was contemplating all this, her youngest son, Tom, came back up the garden and collapsed dramatically onto the wooden bench near the table. ‘I’m starving,’ he announced, wiping an exaggerated hand over his brow. ‘Can I have some crisps?’

  ‘You’re just about to have your dinner,’ Kate admonished, sighing as he reached out a sweaty paw and grabbed a handful of the crisps on the garden table, stuffing them into his mouth. Well, she supposed, they were on holiday, after all. Tom, stoical, stocky and cheeky to the last, grinned at his mother and kept chewing.

  ‘You’re an oik,’ Kate admonished, but she could hear the affection in her own voice. She slapped his hand playfully as he reached for more snacks. ‘Wait until your dinner.’

  Just at that moment, Florence called through from the kitchen diner, and Sam sprang to his feet to help her.

  ‘Go and make yourself useful to Aunt Florence,’ Kate said to Tom.

  Tom rolled his eyes and shuffled off in Sam’s wake. Shortly afterwards, having obviously caught sight of the chocolate cake Florence had made for pudding, Tom’s exclamation of delight was audible from the patio.

  ‘I think at least one of them’s not going to have a problem living here for the summer if Florence can be persuaded to cook for them,’ the older Tom of the group said wryly.

  ‘You may be right, there,’ Kate said. She called to her two other sons, who came jogging back up the garden, more than ready for their dinner. She’d discuss the potential project with them over the next couple of days. Hopefully, Phil would also be on board with the idea.