The Beach House

by Jane Green

  ‘What do you mean? I thought I could stay here. With you. Jesus, Michael. I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘I…’ He sighs. ‘I’m just shocked, Jordana. Of course you can stay here. Tonight. But you can’t stay here after tonight. If Jackson found out it would kill him.’

  ‘Jackson’s not going to find out.’

  ‘It’s not a chance I’m willing to take.’

  ‘Fine,’ Jordana says. ‘I’ll get a hotel round the corner or something so we can sneak back and forth. Hey! Sounds kind of romantic!’

  She walks over to where Michael is sitting on the bed and stands in front of him with a seductive smile on her face, a smile that Michael used to find so sexy, but now finds downright terrifying.

  ‘Tell me you’re pleased,’ she coos, reaching down with her small, cool fingers, stroking him gently in just the way he likes. ‘Tell me you’re happy to see me.’ She pouts like a little girl. ‘I thought Mikey was going to be happy to have his girl all to himself.’

  ‘I am happy,’ Michael lies as Jordana pushes him back on the bed and climbs on top of him, and then he stops thinking about anything at all.

  ‘I feel so nervous,’ Nan says with a laugh, pulling off the gardening gloves and sitting down on the bench in the potager, taking a packet of cigarettes from the trug at her feet. Sarah has finally managed to rid the house of the smell of smoke and is refusing to let Nan smoke anywhere other than outside.

  ‘Why?’ Sarah looks up from where she is helping Nan plant out the rest of the garden, a handful of seeds in her hand.

  ‘I know it’s ridiculous – how could he not love Windermere? But I feel like I’m being interviewed, and what if he doesn’t like us?’

  ‘You said you liked him on the phone, so that’s a good start, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s true. He sounds terribly sweet. Unhappy but sensitive. A good first tenant, I should think.’

  ‘Do you know anything about him?’

  ‘He said his wife and children were spending their holiday up on Quidnet, and he wanted something small and inexpensive on the island so he could be close.’

  ‘He wants it for the rest of the summer? That’s a good start.’

  ‘He said he’d be back and forth a bit, but he’d love a room for the whole of August, and obviously he’ll pay for everything in advance.’

  ‘So when does he get here?’

  ‘Around three. Oh I do so hope he likes us.’ Nan stubs out her cigarette with her foot and pulls her gardening gloves back on. ‘Now, where do you suppose is the best place for me to stake these tomatoes? They’re so overgrown, I wish I’d cut them back earlier.’

  If it is possible to gain a new lease of life after three weeks of scrubbing, painting, plastering, hammering, staining and sewing, then a new lease of life is exactly what Nan has got.

  She has had no time to swim in neighbours’ pools, although the summer crowd is now firmly ensconced and Nan knows better than to risk getting caught, and she has had little time to cycle around town on her bike.

  Other women might be exhausted at her age, having worked the way she has worked to get the house in shape, but Nan feels alive again. She knew as soon as Daniel phoned that he would be perfect for the house, and hopes the house is perfect for him.

  For the first time in years, Nan feels like giving parties again. She is well aware of her reputation as something of a recluse, for even though she is out and about in town all the time, it is rare for people to come up to the house, and the truth is she hasn’t felt like entertaining these past few years.

  But now, walking around her house that is so fresh and clean it feels almost new, cycling up her driveway that she and Sarah tackled with gallons of Roundup so the crushed white clam shells are no longer hidden by the copious weeds, she wants to show it off.

  She wants Windermere to be the house she remembers of old.

  ‘Sarah!’ she shouts, gazing at the big old maple tree in the garden. ‘Do you think it’s possible to get fairy lights this time of year?’

  Sarah puts her trowel down and walks over to where Nan is standing. ‘I think anything is possible in the age of the computer. Why? What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m remembering the parties we used to have. Lydia, my mother-in-law, used to string little white fairy lights through the branches of this maple tree. We’d hang lanterns overhead and it was like dancing under a thousand moons.’

  Sarah starts laughing. ‘Good heavens, Nan. Are you planning a party already?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nan says. ‘But I was remembering how beautiful it used to be. I’d like to see it look like that again. I’d like to see this place come alive.’

  Michael looks up wearily as the door to his workshop opens. It used to be that he was left on his own in here for days at a time. He loved the solitude, loved the silence. Creating jewellery was like a meditation for him – he didn’t have to think, he just felt his mind settle into a peace that enabled him to tap into his deepest creative well.

  These last few weeks Jordana has changed that. She is in and out all day long, and while he welcomed the activity in the beginning – it was exciting, invigorating, energizing – now he longs for the peace and quiet of old.

  But it’s not Jordana. It’s Jackson, and as soon as he sees Jackson, Michael feels a terrible guilt.

  He has managed to avoid him – easy since Jackson has been spending so much time on Long Island – and on the rare occasions Jackson did come into the city Michael found it easy to act, easy to be easy, to simulate the same friendly banter they have had for years.

  How can he do that today? How can he do that knowing that Jordana left Jackson last night, and came to his apartment and spent the night? How can he pretend, when he is fucking his wife, and in doing so seems to have fucked up Jackson’s life?

  Jackson looks terrible. He walks in like an old man, bags under red-rimmed eyes, exhausted, having aged ten years overnight.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Michael says, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘Not really.’ Jackson pulls up a stool and sits down with a deep sigh. ‘Jordana left me.’

  ‘What?’ Michael feigns shock, but with it comes genuine upset. He never meant for this to happen, never meant to hurt anyone, least of all Jackson, who has been nothing but kind to him all these years. Jackson to whom he owes everything. ‘Jackson, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I just can’t believe it.’ Jackson shakes his head. ‘She said she was unhappy, I wasn’t giving her what she needed. Michael, I’ve given that woman everything!’

  ‘I know.’ Michael shifts uncomfortably in his seat, feeling sick, and sorry, and scared, wishing there were some way to turn the clock back, wishing he hadn’t been quite so impulsive, wishing he wasn’t the cause of all this pain.

  ‘What more could anyone want? And I love her. I love that woman. She means everything to me.’ And with horror Michael watches as Jackson starts to cry.

  ‘Jess! Breakfast!’ Daff calls up the stairs, then goes back to the kitchen, sliding fried eggs onto pancakes.

  Daff had always wanted to be the kind of mother who made breakfast for her child every day. She wanted to be the sort of woman who made her own granola, who watched Martha Stewart and proceeded to copy some, if not all, of the crafts, who had a beautiful little vegetable plot out back where tomatoes climbed over wire obelisks and clematis tumbled over a white picket fence.

  Daff knows women like this. There are hundreds of mothers in school who do precisely this, who have immaculate crafts cupboards at home, who bring in beautiful doll’s houses for show and tell that they’ve just thrown together using shoeboxes and leftover scraps of wallpaper.

  Daff has been feeling inadequate around these women since kindergarten. Hell, even before that – since pre-school. They are the mothers who fight to be room mother, who organize coffee mornings with home-baked scones and fresh lemonade, who float around school hallways with beatific smiles on their faces, never gett
ing stressed, never getting overwhelmed, and never – God forbid – shouting at their children.

  Sometimes Daff wonders if Jess would treat her better, be nicer, if Daff were a better mother. If she made macaroni cheese from scratch instead of using Kraft’s best. If she and not Mrs Entenmann made the chocolate-chip cookies she brought in for the school fair. If she, in short, were like those other mothers – Supermother, she thinks wryly.

  Supermother does not have a daughter who sneers every time she tries to talk to her. Supermother does not have piles of papers and bills taking up almost all the counter space in her kitchen, and Supermother does not give her daughter Cheerios for breakfast, day after day after day after day.

  So today Daff is going to be Supermother. It’s Saturday, her weekend with Jess, and she is determined to have a good weekend. She is taking Jess up to see their friends, Barb and Gary, who have a beautiful old horse farm in Roxbury, Connecticut.

  They have four kids, and when they were all young, when Barb and Gary were neighbours, Jess and the oldest girl were best friends. They haven’t got together in a while, and Jess has always loved horse riding, so it will be, she hopes, a lovely surprise to take Jess up there for the weekend.

  The weekends are a struggle now that she is a single mother. She feels a need to be present for Jess in a way she never used to, to think of wonderful things for her and Jess to do, to keep Jess happy, whereas when she was married she and Richard would just do whatever needed to be done on weekends – running errands, seeing friends, gardening – and Jess would just slot herself in.

  But nothing seems to be keeping Jess happy these days. At least this weekend will be fun, and Jess is always better when she’s around other kids her own age.

  ‘Jess!’ Daff goes back to the stairs and calls again, finally walking upstairs and knocking on the bedroom door in exasperation. ‘Breakfast is on the table,’ she says, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice, for that is not how she wants to start this weekend. ‘I’ve been calling you.’

  Silence.

  Daff tentatively pushes open the door, and there is no Jess.

  ‘Jess?’ A question. She checks the bathroom. Nothing. Her own bathroom, for Jess has now decided that what’s hers is hers and what’s Daff’s is also hers – Daff’s hairbrushes, conditioner, bubble bath and make-up all go missing on a regular basis – but Jess is not upstairs.

  ‘Jess?’ Daff’s voice is louder now as she shouts downstairs. She’s not in the family room, the living room, the library. She is nowhere to be found.

  Daff finds herself tearing round the house shouting Jess’s name, panic rising in her throat when the phone rings. She picks it up, breathless, feeling the tears start to come.

  ‘It’s Richard. Jess is here. I think you’d better come over.’

  Daniel hasn’t been anywhere by himself, for anything other than work, for a very long time. It is a very odd feeling, to be sitting on this ferry, surrounded by families going on vacation, going on vacation himself but without his family.

  He had wanted to travel there together, wanted still to spend as much time as possible with the girls, but Bee had disagreed.

  ‘You left,’ she’d hissed, anger finally starting to take the place of devastation. ‘You don’t get to pretend you’re still part of this family.’

  ‘But I am,’ he’d said, hurt and dismayed. ‘I’m their father. That’s never going to change. I’m always going to be part of their family.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re no longer part of mine,’ Bee had said, putting down the phone.

  Some days were better than others. Some days were fine, some found Bee in tears, some found her pleading and others, particularly these last few days, found her in a fury.

  Then the vacation was upon them, and Daniel refused to let Bee take the girls for a whole month to Nantucket. He insisted on being there too, wanted to come with them, to pretend for the sake of the girls, but Bee refused.

  ‘If you want to be on the island at the same time I can’t stop you,’ she’d said, adding reluctantly, ‘and the girls would be pleased. But don’t expect me to pretend that everything is fine between us. This isn’t my choice. This isn’t ever what I would have chosen.’

  He had Googled rentals, wanting something cheap, easy. Something that he could leave, to come back to Westport for work, travelling back to Massachusetts on weekends.

  Cheap and easy doesn’t come cheap, or easy, on Nantucket. He didn’t need much. A whole house seemed extravagant. He assumed there would be a condo, but there was nothing that was suitable, and nothing in his price range. Not that he had ever had to think about money before, but he had no idea what he would be paying in child support, in alimony, and now was not the time for extravagance.

  He had found a room in an old house. It looked clean. Nice views. The landlady said she adored children, there’d be more than enough room if the girls wanted to come and have a sleepover.

  As soon as she’d said that, his decision was made.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Daff hasn’t been in Richard’s house before, and she can’t help but be curious. She follows him through to the kitchen, noticing the furniture he took from their shared house, and the new things he has bought – the rugs, the flat-screen plasma, the bookshelves.

  It is neat and tidy, far tidier than Daff’s house. Richard spent their marriage berating Daff for her scattiness, and she is astonished at quite how ordered he is. There is not a paper out of place, nor a pile on any of the kitchen counters. But nor are there any of the things that, for Daff, make a house a home. The photographs, the invitations stuck to the fridge, the cookery books stacked haphazardly on the shelves. The little objects she has collected over the years, the shells, the interesting boxes.

  I couldn’t live like this, she thinks, sitting down at the kitchen table – Pottery Barn, she recognizes it from the catalogue – and looking round expectantly.

  ‘Where is she?’ Daff says. ‘I was so worried. I can’t believe she left the house and came to you. How did she even get here?’

  ‘She walked,’ Richard says seriously.

  ‘She walked? But it’s miles.’

  ‘She left at three in the morning.’

  What?’ Daff sits up straight, shocked. ‘Three in the morning? At thirteen? Oh my God! Anything could have happened to her.’

  ‘I know. That’s what I said.’

  ‘I can’t believe it. That’s punishable. She’s going to have a curfew from now on.’

  ‘I agree,’ Richard says quietly, ‘but there’s a bigger problem.’

  What?’ Daff is suddenly fearful.

  ‘She doesn’t want to go home.’

  ‘What do you mean, she doesn’t want to go home?’

  ‘She’s got this thing about living with me, and she’s refusing to go home.’

  ‘She can’t refuse to go home. I mean, she can, but she’s thirteen. She doesn’t get to do what she wants. She has to come home.’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I know you and she are struggling, and although it won’t be permanent, I thought maybe the best thing right now might be to have her here for a while.’

  ‘What do you mean, a while?’

  ‘I don’t know, and I’m sure it’s just a phase, but she is adamant and I can’t see the harm in trying.’

  ‘But I’m her mother,’ Daff says frantically. ‘She has to be with me.’

  ‘Daff, this isn’t a reflection on you,’ Richard says gently. ‘My sister hated my mother when she was a teenager, and look at them now, they’re the best of friends and you’d never know the hell they went through all those years ago. Jess reminds me of my sister, and maybe this is just something girls sometimes go through. I think if the two of you had some space from one another, it might help.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ Daff says quietly, and, hating herself for it, she is torn. There is part of her that is desperate to cling on to her daughter. There is nothing like the mot
her–daughter relationship. How can Richard tell Jess about boys, and make-up, and periods, and all the things she is going to have to deal with any second now? And there is another part of her that longs for peace and quiet, that longs to live in a house where she doesn’t feel like she’s walking on eggshells every minute of the day her daughter is home, waiting for the next eruption, crying quietly in her bedroom at the end of the day, wondering when she will ever get her daughter back.

  ‘She loves you.’ Richard’s expression softens when he sees Daff’s eyes fill with tears. ‘She’s just filled with hormones and she doesn’t know what to do with all her emotions.’

  ‘I know.’ Daff swallows. ‘I was the same. But, Richard, you work. How can you be there for her? Who will be home when she gets off the bus? How could you possibly take care of her?’

  ‘I have Carrie too,’ Richard says. He didn’t want to have this conversation, not yet, but she has to know.

  ‘Carrie. Your girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes. She just moved in with me. She’s a writer and she works at home. She’s here all the time.’

  ‘She doesn’t mind taking on Jess?’

  ‘They get on. Not always, and God knows it isn’t easy, but Carrie seems to know what she’s in for, and she’s supportive of anything that might make life easier for all of us.’

  ‘Do I get to meet her?’

  ‘I think you should. I thought maybe you and Carrie could have a coffee. It might be easier for the two of you to get to know one another without me there.’

  ‘Okay,’ Daff says. ‘You have to let me digest all of this, Richard.’ She sighs. ‘This is huge. I just don’t know.’

  ‘I understand,’ he says, standing up. But Daff looks suddenly so lost, he finds himself holding his arms out, and without thinking she steps into them and allows herself to be hugged.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispers, shocked at how familiar she feels, realizing that although he has moved on with Carrie, he will never fully move on, and not just because they have a daughter together. And he is sorry. He may have found happiness, but the fallout from his infidelity is so much bigger – it is so painful to see Jess so unhappy, and Daff so lost – that he still sometimes wonders what the hell he was thinking.