The Beach House

by Jane Green

  Lesley Branfield was the former wife of the very successful owner of a large make-up company. She had never managed to have children during their seven-year marriage (her first, his fourth), and had consequently considered herself somewhat screwed during their divorce (wives one, two and three had ended up with smallish alimony but huge child support).

  She had, however, been left with their Upper East Side apartment, a cottage on Shelter Island, and all the furnishings, clothes and jewellery, which is where Michael came in.

  Her husband, while wealthy, was too cheap to pay retail. If Lesley Branfield fell in love with a ring, or a pair of earrings, or a beautiful necklace at Cartier or Tiffany, they would borrow it (you’d be surprised at what the jewellery stores do for their wealthiest, well-known customers), photograph it, and take the photo into the back room at Jordana & Jackson, where Michael could create an exact replica for a fraction of the price.

  The rich may like the best of the best, but they still love a bargain.

  And since the divorce Lesley Branfield had decided that rather than do an Ellen Barkin and sell everything, she would simply remodel, thereby eradicating any painful memories that may have come with the original jewellery.

  ‘I’ll phone her and tell her it’s ready,’ Jordana says. ‘She’ll be so happy. Oh Michael, you’ve done a really beautiful job. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure.’ Michael smiles, turning to get back to work.

  ‘So how’s everything going with your new girlfriend?’

  He shrugs. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Just okay?’ Jordana laughs. ‘That doesn’t sound so good. What’s going on?’

  In different circumstances it might perhaps be odd for the boss to be talking to her employee about his love life, but since they opened the second store in Manhasset Jackson has been spending more and more time there, and Jordana has found herself turning more and more to Michael for help with the store.

  Of course there are others – the two sales assistants who work in the store – but she would never really talk to them, would never ask their advice; and there is something calming about Michael, something that makes her want to open up and confide in him, and she has found herself forming an unlikely friendship with him. For the first time in years she has found herself looking forward to getting in to work.

  Not that she doesn’t like her job – she and Jackson decided, even before they got married, that they would create a line of high-end, affordable jewellery stores, which is exactly what they are beginning to do – but the Manhasset store had been Jackson’s baby from the outset, and she had felt, left on her own in the Madison Avenue store, that life had become a bit dull.

  Which is why she is so enjoying this friendship with Michael. Sometimes they have lunch together, a sandwich in the staff room usually, occasionally walking over to the park if the weather is nice enough. It is just lovely to have someone to talk to again. To have a friend at work.

  ‘No, better than okay,’ Michael says. ‘I really like her, it’s just…’

  ‘Not the one?’ Jordana smiles.

  ‘Oh God,’ he groans. ‘I feel like every time I meet girls who are really great it’s just a matter of time before I start to find problems with them, and then after a while I start to think that maybe it’s not them, maybe the problem is with me, and that I’m the one who needs to work through it, and so I stay in these relationships but I can’t commit and then they start accusing me of being a commitaphobe and all I want to do is run as far away from them as possible.’

  Jordana starts to laugh. ‘Do you think perhaps that’s a sign that you are a commitaphobe?’

  ‘Which bit?’ Michael grins. ‘The running away from them as far as possible bit?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Hmm. You think?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Me? I think I’d love nothing more than to find a wonderful woman, a true partner in every sense of the word, who I could spend the rest of my life with. I just don’t think I’ve found her yet.’

  ‘And this… Aisling?’

  Michael nods.

  ‘Aisling couldn’t be the one?’

  Michael sighs. ‘She’s doing that changing thing.’

  ‘What changing thing?’

  ‘You know. That thing where on the first few dates they act as if everything you do is wonderful. They adore the fact that you ride a bicycle because it’s so ecologically sound, and they love that you’re a jeweller because it means you’re creative and soulful, and they think it’s wonderful that you have a rent-controlled pre-war on the Upper West Side because they say they’ve always dreamed of a rent-controlled pre-war on the Upper West Side.’

  ‘So far so good.’ Jordana shrugs.

  ‘And then dating becomes more serious, and then they ask very casually whether you’ve ever considered a Vespa, and it would really make a huge amount of sense because not only is it cool but then the two of us could travel together. And then they start wandering around your apartment looking meaningfully at the walls and floor, and they tell you that the apartment would be really amazing if the floors were sanded and stained, and it costs almost nothing, apparently, to have your bathroom re-tiled and your bathtub re-enamelled, and Smith & Noble do great custom blinds that are really not that expensive…’

  Jordana starts to laugh again.

  ‘And then one night when you’ve had a really great dinner and you’re starting to think that perhaps you can overlook the warning signs – even though the warning signs always lead to the same place and frankly your instincts about the warning signs are never wrong – they look you in the eye and ask if you’d ever want your own jewellery store. Or they’ll ask you where you see yourself in five years’ time and you see nothing but disappointment in their eyes when you tell them that ideally you’d love to be settled down with the right woman, living in the same apartment, working for the same company.’

  Jordana puts a hand over her heart and breathes an exaggerated sigh of relief. ‘Phew. You’re not leaving us any time soon?’

  ‘Not planning on it. And that’s the problem. They can’t believe, can’t accept, that I’m happy with my life exactly as it is. All these girls want to help me discover my inner mogul, convinced that somewhere I have this hidden, untapped, fathomless well of ambition that only they can help me access, and none of them want to accept me as I am.’

  ‘So has that happened with Aisling?’

  ‘Yes. Things were going great, and then she asked the five-year question, and said she couldn’t understand how I could not ask for a partnership in this business, or want to set up on my own. “You could make so much more money,” she kept saying, and I kept trying to explain that I wasn’t motivated by money. And then, inevitably, she asked how I could support a family and I explained that I didn’t have a family to support – and of course she wants a family, so suddenly I seem like horrible husband material.’ Michael sighs, shaking his head.

  ‘That’s tough,’ Jordana says. ‘She sounds like she probably isn’t the one for you. I do think that your goals have to be the same or, at least, have to be in tune with one another for it to work, and if she’s motivated by money, or at least by a husband with money, then that’s not right for you. Thankfully,’ she says and laughs, ‘Jackson and I were both equally motivated by money.’

  Michael laughs too. ‘That’s what I like about you,’ he says. ‘You don’t mind admitting it.’

  ‘Listen, as I always say, I came from nothing and I grew up wanting everything, and knowing that I would find a way to get it. I loved sparkly things as a little girl, and worked damned hard at that gemmology course before I went to work for a jeweller. I just don’t understand these girls who expect their husband to provide everything for them.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Michael says. ‘Why is it those are the ones I keep finding?’

  ‘You must be looking in the wrong places.’ Jordana smiles. ‘Right. I’m back up to the floor. I’ll phone Lesl
ey Branfield and let her know. I’m sure she’ll want to thank you herself. Are you around the rest of the day?’

  ‘I’m going nowhere,’ Michael says. ‘At least, according to Aisling.’ And they both laugh as Jordana closes the door of the workshop behind her.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Isn’t this nice?’ Bee reaches over at LaGuardia and strokes Daniel’s arm, and he smiles at her, wondering if perhaps his sense of being lost is an overreaction, for he does love Bee, does love so many aspects of his life.

  ‘What do you think the girls are doing?’ Daniel says, and Bee laughs.

  ‘Are we going to spend the entire time talking about the girls?’

  ‘Isn’t it crazy? Our first trip in years without them, and I miss them so much.’

  ‘Stella was very upset, but they’ll be fine. My dad will spoil them rotten.’ Bee smiles. ‘He was so excited to have them, and it turns out he really does know Nantucket well. He’s given me a list of places we have to visit.’

  She glances down at Daniel’s suitcase. ‘Why is it I can come away with nothing, and you seem to have packed your entire wardrobe?’ she says, attempting a laugh which doesn’t quite conceal the irritation behind the comment.

  ‘Because I haven’t been to Nantucket before and I have no idea quite what to wear. I’ve got “preppy” covered with polo shirts and pink and green, and “old Yankee” with seersucker and flip-flops. I just wasn’t sure and I hate getting things wrong.’

  ‘I’ve got three T-shirts, a black jersey dress in case we go out and two pairs of shorts,’ Bee says. ‘I could have packed in a backpack. I’m the girl, I’m supposed to be the one who brings the trunk for the weekend, not you.’

  Daniel shrugs and tries to laugh at himself. ‘You know I’m an old woman,’ he says eventually.

  ‘Yes, you are.’ Bee looks at him with affection in her eyes. ‘That’s one of the reasons why I love you.’

  ‘I know,’ he says, and he knows he ought to say ‘I love you too’ – the words are on the tip of his tongue, and he tries to say them, he looks at her knowing she’s waiting to hear those words – but instead he finds himself rubbing her knee affectionately before standing up. ‘I’m going to get a newspaper,’ he says abruptly. ‘Shall I get you a People?’ And he turns and walks towards Hudson News before it gets any more difficult.

  Daniel has never been able to say ‘I love you’ with ease. He wasn’t brought up like that, he often tells Bee, although that isn’t quite true. His father was cold and distant, but his mother had always showered him with love, and he had always and easily told her he loved her.

  Bee was also an only child, and the apple of her parents’ eye. Both of them told her that she was the most precious child in the world, and that no one could possibly love a child more than they loved her, and she believed them. She grew up in a world of safety, security and outward expressions of love, and believed her parents to have a perfect marriage until her mother left her father after she went to college.

  ‘I am tired of the secrets,’ her mother once said, and Bee had asked what she meant, but her mother had just shaken her head wearily and said she didn’t want to talk about it, and Bee hadn’t wanted to push. She had hoped, for years afterwards, that they would get back together, even though she was an adult, even though it shouldn’t have made any difference to her, but despite the divorce being amicable, friendly even, her mother always said it was an impossible situation.

  Bee had tried to talk to her father about it but he hadn’t said much. Not that this was unusual; her father was often quiet, pensive, lost in another world, except when he was playing with Bee, when he was fully engaged, wholly attentive and brimming over with love for her.

  Bee had always assumed that when she got married, her husband would treat her in much the same way as her father had, and she doesn’t understand, has never understood, why she has ended up in a marriage with a man who seems incapable of truly loving.

  But Bee is not ready to give up. Not yet. Her force of will is so strong she is convinced she can change things, and convinced she will turn Daniel into the man she knows he really is, the man she knows he can be.

  Jessica settles back into her car seat and watches her father, who looks over at her from time to time and smiles, reaching out to squeeze her knee as he drives.

  She loves him so much it sometimes hurts. He is, without question, the best daddy of all time, and even though she didn’t appreciate him so much when he and Mom lived together, since he’s been gone she feels she has truly come to understand him, and as her attachment to him has grown, so has her dislike of her mother.

  It started as ambivalence. Even when her parents were still together her mother was starting to annoy her. Constantly nagging Jessica to tidy her room, or do her homework, or change her clothes, her hair. And then she forced her dad to leave, thereby ruining her life. What was ambivalence has turned very rapidly to hate.

  Sure, there are times when they get on. Sometimes her mom will take her for a manicure, which is always fun – then they’re kind of like girlfriends, although it only lasts for a short time and then her mom always ends up trying too hard and Jessica wants to scream at her.

  Jessica knows her dad would never leave her, and the only reason he left is because of her mom. And how does she know this? Why, her dad told her, of course. He said, quite clearly, that he would never have left Jessica, that he loved her more than anything and that this wasn’t his choice to live in a small apartment in a different, less expensive neighbourhood. He’d give anything, he said, to move back into their home, to be a family again, but it was her mother who had told him to leave, who was driving this.

  Jessica wasn’t particularly surprised to hear that. She knew her father loved her too much to leave, knew it had to be something to do with her mother.

  ‘I hate you!’ she screamed at her mother soon after her dad left, daring to say those words out loud for the first time. ‘You’ve ruined my life and I hate you!’ She ran up to her room, expecting her mother to come racing up the stairs after her to punish her, or shout at her, or something. But there was silence.

  Jessica sobbed loudly into her pillow, then stopped after a while because no one was coming up to see if she was okay. She tiptoed to her door, cracked it open very gently, and heard her mother crying quietly downstairs.

  Good. She felt a glimmer of remorse, quickly covered up by a smug sense of satisfaction. Her mother deserved to feel the pain that Jessica felt every second of every day since her mother had thrown her father out. There was nothing that he could have done that would have justified that, and so Jessica continues to blame her mother, trying to figure out how she can get to live with her dad full-time.

  ‘Can we go to Four Brothers?’ Jessica asks, the amusement arcade having become one of her favourite places. When they had been living together, she had rarely been allowed to go there, only as a special treat once in a while, and once there her parents had never paid her that much attention. Like every other place they had gone to when they were a whole family, they had gone with other people, friends, so the grown-ups could hang out together and the kids could go off and do their own thing.

  Jessica doesn’t ever remember her dad playing arcade games with her, for example. Doesn’t remember her parents sitting at the diner and talking to her as if she were an equal. She remembers them going out a lot at night while she stayed home with a babysitter, remembers them going away for weekends while she went to her grandma’s.

  Now her dad does everything with her. Jessica is not old enough to understand about guilt, but she is old enough to reap the benefits, and old enough to know how to manipulate so she always gets what she wants.

  ‘Daddy?’ she will say breathlessly as they stand outside Kool Klothes, the coolest store in town that her parents always said was horribly overpriced and ridiculously trendy. ‘Who shops in there?’ her mother used to say, glancing disdainfully through the window at the sequinned tiny T-shirts and low-
slung studded denim skirts.

  ‘Can I?’ And she has learned that as long as she shows enough excitement and a wide-eyed gratitude, as if to say she can’t believe how lucky she is, he will buy her whatever she wants.

  A curious mix of adult and little girl, at thirteen she has curves, breasts, a budding interest in boys, but the divorce has brought about a regression, and she now attaches herself to her father like a limpet, curling herself around him when he stands, sitting on his lap and leaning into him, sucking her thumb while he sits on the sofa to watch television.

  She has developed a new routine when she is with her father. She reaches out her arms to him at bedtime and he lifts her up and carries her upstairs to bed, lying down behind her and stroking her back until she falls asleep. I am so lucky, she thinks, as she lies there – the only time in her life she feels absolutely safe and secure. I love my dad and he loves me, and no one can take that away from me.

  ‘So? Can we?’

  ‘Can we what?’ Richard seems distracted.

  ‘Dad!’ she whines, rolling her eyes. ‘I just asked you if we could go to Four Brothers.’

  ‘Maybe later, sweetheart,’ he says. ‘I thought we could go to Belucci’s for lunch today.’

  Jessica’s face falls. ‘Why Belucci’s?’ she says. ‘We always go to the diner.’

  ‘I know, sweetheart.’ He smiles at her indulgently. ‘But today I want you to meet a friend of mine, and I thought we could go somewhere nice, somewhere special.’

  Jessica’s heart skips and she narrows her eyes. ‘What kind of friend?’

  ‘Her name is Carrie and she’s really nice.’

  Jessica feels as if she can’t breathe, but she tries to make her voice sound normal. ‘Is she your girlfriend?’

  ‘No, darling.’ Richard laughs. ‘She’s just a new friend of mine who I’m hanging out with and I thought you’d like her.’

  ‘You swear she’s not a girlfriend?’

  ‘Jessica! I would tell you if she was my girlfriend.’

  ‘So how do you know her?’