The Beach House

by Jane Green

  ‘So what about you?’ Mark changes the subject. ‘What do you do when you’re not being a tenant in Nantucket?’

  ‘I’m actually a realtor,’ she says with a laugh. ‘In Westchester.’

  ‘Ah. So we’re both on the same team, then.’ He grins. ‘Are you here with your husband and kids?’

  ‘No.’ Daff shakes her head, wondering when she will get used to these presumptions, when she will be able to tell people she is divorced without feeling like a failure somehow. ‘I’m… divorced. My daughter’s with her father at the moment.’

  ‘So did you get into real estate after your divorce?’

  ‘After the separation. Yes.’

  ‘It’s a tough business right now. Nantucket’s different. It’s an island so the prices will always hold, but I know the rest of the country is really suffering. How are things where you are?’

  ‘Not great.’ Daff is trying to think of a way to get away. She knows she should be polite, but this is not a comfortable conversation for her: he wants to know too much and it feels like he has an agenda. But she doesn’t know how to extricate herself.

  ‘There should be some new activity in the fall,’ she says, looking over to the drinks table, about to excuse herself. ‘You know how it is, summer’s always hard.’

  ‘Well,’ Mark leans closer, ‘between you and me, if Nan were to agree to sell to me this summer, I’d make sure there was something in it for you.’ He winks. ‘Just business. I know you understand. We could do a deal privately, no agent, and I’d give you a percentage. Here –’ he slips a card into her hand and she gazes at it numbly – ‘give me a call and we can talk some numbers. Between you and me,’ he says again, looking at her intently.

  ‘Mark Stephenson!’ Nan appears, her elegant red crpe gown swishing around her ankles.

  ‘Nan Powell! You look as beautiful as ever.’ He kisses Nan on each cheek as Daff shudders. ‘Would you do me the honour of allowing me to have this dance?’

  ‘Seeing as you asked so nicely, how can I possibly resist?’ Nan giggles, and the two of them walk across the lawn, leaving Daff standing there looking at the card pressed into her palm.

  A percentage. Of what? What could the house be worth? Millions, she knows, but how many? Six million? Seven?… And what kind of percentage? Her mind quickly tumbles some numbers around. Three per cent, say, of six million would be one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. That’s a fortune. She wouldn’t have to worry for ages.

  Oh God! What is she thinking? She couldn’t possibly do that to Nan, couldn’t possibly get involved in anything so shady, so underhand and so, well, sleazy. She is tempted to rip the card up, feeling dirty just having had a conversation with that man, but she pushes it into her purse and covers it up with tissues, pretending that if she can’t see it, it isn’t there and will just go away.

  Michael is sitting on the porch, glass of whisky in hand; he’s lost count of how many he has had. Daniel came to see him earlier, asked if he was okay, but Michael couldn’t speak, didn’t know what to say.

  In some ways he feels like he’s been waiting for this moment all these years. He has spent his life astounded that none of his girlfriends, his lovers, his past conquests has ever become pregnant, and now finally it is as if this was always supposed to be – his past has caught up with him at last.

  He feels numb. Shocked. Scared. Once the words were out, he looked at Jordana in fear, feeling his chest tighten up, his breath coming out in short, sharp bursts as he struggled to breathe, hoped that somehow he had misheard, that he was about to wake up from this nightmare.

  Jordana had left, had stormed out in a whirlwind of tears and drama, announcing that she was staying at the Wauwinet, that she was having this baby, that if she had to do it alone, she would, and that she was stunned by his reaction, his inability to speak, let alone breathe.

  A baby. With Jordana of all people. Every time he thinks about it he feels like he wants to crawl under a blanket and never come out. How can his life have spun so wildly out of control? How can he be responsible for another human being when he seems to have messed up his own life so badly?

  He can’t think of anything worse than having their lives entwined, because of a shared child, until the end of their days.

  It is almost as if, he reflects grimly, he was having an out-of-body experience. After just seeing her tonight, her highlighted, over-made-up, desperate, obsessive, sparkly self, he kept thinking, what the hell was I thinking! What the hell was I thinking? A friend, yes. But a partner for the rest of my life? Hell, no.

  If only he had ignored that chemistry, kept Jordana as the distant friend she had always been, gone out with her that night, that first night, and headed home to the Upper West Side. Alone.

  And Jordana, how will she cope with this? With an illegitimate child by a man who doesn’t feel the slightest bit equipped to cope with it himself, a man who just can’t be there in the way Jordana wants, can’t be the husband or partner she needs.

  Tonight he didn’t see her as vulnerable, as being in need of a knight in shining armour, someone to rescue her and make it all better. Tonight he saw her as damaged. Insecure.

  And perhaps just a little bit crazy.

  ‘Michael? Is that you?’

  He looks up, seeing Daff standing in the darkness, so beautiful in that dress, so fresh, and clean, and different from Jordana, and as he looks up, unsure what to say, he realizes that his shoulders are shaking, and that tears are streaming down his face.

  ‘Sssh.’ She glides over, puts her arms around him, strokes his back, kissing the top of his head and soothing him as she would a child. ‘It’s okay,’ she whispers, rubbing wide circles on his back as he leans into her and cries. ‘It’s okay.’

  Slowly the tears subside, and he is still in her arms, and she has stopped rubbing his back, and it’s not quite so comfortable. He pulls her down gently so she is on his lap, never taking his arms from her, nor hers from him, then he is kissing her, and oh my Lord, this is not what he should be doing when he has just discovered he is going to be a father, but this is Daff, this feels like a safety net in the most awful storm he has ever known. And more than that, as he kisses Daff and feels her arms wrapped around him, he feels, finally, right.

  ‘What’s that?’ Minutes later, a buzzing.

  ‘Oh God.’ Daff jumps up guiltily, embarrassed, and reaches into her handbag for her mobile phone. ‘Who would be calling me this late?’ She looks at the number and her heart stops. It’s Richard’s number. There is something wrong. Jess. She flips the phone open as terror flutters across her chest.

  Jess sobbing down the phone. Like a little girl.

  ‘Jess? What is it? Jess? What’s the matter?’ Fear is making her shout, desperate to know that Jess is okay.

  ‘I miss you, Mommy,’ Jess says, gulping for air through the tears. ‘I need you, Mommy.’

  Daff immediately goes into mother mode. ‘I miss you too, Jess. I love you. But tell me what’s wrong. What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

  ‘Daddy’s going to call you,’ she says, the sobs starting again. ‘But I want to come and live with you. I hate it here. I don’t want to be here any more.’

  ‘Jess?’ Daff’s voice is firm, even though her heart is not. ‘What’s going on? Let me talk to your father.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Windermere is absolutely still at night, quiet and at peace, yet listen a little more carefully and you will hear the sounds of tossing and turning, of people struggling with dilemmas, of an inner turmoil that is anything but peaceful.

  Michael is still numb with fear. A baby. Jordana is pregnant with his baby, just as he’s met a woman with whom he feels, for perhaps the first time, a real connection. There is no way in the world he can see this ending well.

  He has never had strong feelings about abortion, has never had to think about it, other than knowing various women who have had one, has always felt that it is a woman’s right to choose.

>   But what about the man? Where is his choice? Michael can’t think straight, can’t think of anything worse than bringing a baby into the world under these circumstances. He has never thought of himself as a father in anything other than the abstract, but a parent with Jordana? He would laugh if it wasn’t so unthinkable as to be almost painful.

  Terminate, he wants to shout. Get rid of it. But this is not his body, he cannot say anything, and now he is terrified he will pay for his mistake for the rest of his life.

  Tomorrow he will go and see her. Talk to her about it. See if he can convince her. See if he can prove to Jordana that this won’t be good for anyone, that this isn’t, cannot possibly be, the right thing to do.

  For Michael is ill-equipped to be a father, his own father having died when he was only six. He has no concept of what a father is, of the joy that comes from seeing your child, a life you created, being brought into the world.

  And he has never thought of himself as having responsibility for another life. A responsibility so huge the mere idea of it is utterly overwhelming to him. He has always taken care of his girlfriends, his mother, but that’s different. However childlike some of them have acted in their time, they are still adults, capable of taking care of themselves.

  Michael was never prepared for this; never prepared for having to suddenly grow up.

  On the other side of the house, Daff sits in the window seat, staring out at the blackness, the odd blinking light from one of the boats bobbing on the water. She sips slowly from a cup of sweet, warm tea, trying to soothe her jangled nerves, hoping it will send her back to sleep.

  There is so much to think about. Jess, her darling Jess, shoplifting. How can her little girl have been caught shoplifting? It doesn’t seem to make any sense, but Richard was perfectly clear. It wasn’t a mistake, he and Carrie went to pick her up and he was shown the contents of her bag.

  Even when he was shown the evidence, Richard wanted to believe that there was an alternative explanation, but there wasn’t, and Jess’s initial denial swiftly turned to hysteria as she became a little girl, hoping that Daddy would make it all better, would make all the bad stuff go away.

  They wouldn’t press charges, they said, after Richard had explained their situation, said she was struggling with her parents being newly divorced. Given that it was, as far as they were concerned, her first offence, next time she would not get off so lightly, they said sternly, showing them out of the store.

  Jess ran straight up to her room, slamming the door, after Richard told her the consequences of her behaviour. He was taking her computer away, and she would be grounded for a month.

  ‘I hate you,’ she screamed at him from behind the door. ‘I hate it here! I wish I’d never been born!’

  Carrie and Richard sat at the kitchen table discussing what to do in low voices.

  ‘Do you think maybe she should see someone?’ Carrie offered tentatively, sure that this would help, but unsure how Richard would feel about it.

  ‘See someone? Like who? A shrink?’

  ‘Maybe not a shrink, but a therapist perhaps. Someone she could feel safe with, someone she could talk to.’

  Richard sighed. ‘I just think it’s ridiculous. Sending a thirteen-year-old girl to a therapist. I know this shoplifting thing is bad, but Jess is not a bad kid, she’s just a kid going through a rough time. Carrie, you were a thirteen-year-old girl, and you said it wasn’t easy for you either. Surely you know how this is.’

  ‘I do know,’ Carrie said. ‘But I didn’t steal. And I never ever would have dared speak to my parents the way she speaks to you.’

  ‘Well, times are different now. And she doesn’t do it often, and she doesn’t mean it.’

  ‘Richard, whenever she doesn’t get her own way she screams that she hates you, or hates me, that we’ve ruined her life, not to mention other unspeakable things, and you let her.’

  ‘I’d rather she were able to express herself,’ Richard said quietly.

  ‘But it’s not appropriate,’ Carrie said. ‘I’m not saying she’s not allowed to feel those things – she should be able to feel everything – but it’s not appropriate to vomit those feelings out whenever she finds them overwhelming.’

  ‘I disagree,’ Richard said. ‘I think it’s far better to let them out than to suppress them. I was never allowed to be angry, never allowed to be anything other than happy and pleasant when I was a child, and for years I struggled with this repressed anger. I never want Jess to go through that.’

  ‘Why not? In case the repressed anger leads to something terrible like… shoplifting?’

  ‘That’s not fair.’ Richard was stern.

  ‘Maybe not, but I see a child here who is struggling and who will do anything for attention, including shoplifting. Don’t you see that’s what this is about?’

  ‘She gets attention. I give her tons of attention.’

  ‘I know, but she always wants more. It’s never enough, and this stealing is a cry for help. Richard, we wouldn’t be responsible if we didn’t get her some help.’

  There was a long silence as Richard tried to digest what she was saying, for some of it made sense. He adored his daughter, loved her more than anything in the world, but it was true that sometimes he didn’t understand her. He tried so hard to listen to her, to validate her, to allow her to be herself without judging her – all the things that he never had when he was a child – and yet she still seemed to be in such pain, and at moments like this he felt like a terrible parent, utterly helpless.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said finally, looking up and meeting Carrie’s eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and she reached across the table and squeezed his hand.

  Sometimes it’s enough, she realized, just to be heard.

  Jess was crouched outside the kitchen door, listening to every word. She hated Carrie at that moment, hated her father, wished she could turn the clock back to when her mother and father were married and everything made sense.

  She quietly went back upstairs into the master bedroom and called her mother, and, as she dialled, the tears started to fall. Living here wasn’t what she’d expected, not now that Carrie had ruined it, and for the first time in a long while she wanted to be away from her father.

  If he and Carrie were going to reject her, she was going to reject them first.

  ‘Mommy?’ Her tears were genuine when she heard her mother’s voice. ‘I want to be with you.’

  Richard agreed to send Jessica to Nantucket. Perhaps it would do her good, he thought; get her away from the bad influences here. Jessica must have been influenced by a friend to steal, would never have thought of this herself, despite what Carrie thinks.

  And a girl needs her mother, he had realized. He had thought this might be an ideal opportunity for Jess and Carrie to bond, and even though there were times when they seemed to get on amazingly, when Jess truly wanted to be with Carrie, ultimately she wasn’t her mother and never would be. Richard was almost grateful that Jessica asked to leave. He felt like he’d been on an emotional roller coaster ever since Jess had moved in. He needed a break, needed to think about something other than his troubled teenage daughter for a change. Let Daff deal with it for now.

  Daff is ready for Jess, but worried about what’s going on in her daughter’s life. She has missed her, of course, but hasn’t pined for her in the way that other women she knows talk about pining for their children on the rare occasions they have some time off.

  It is a fallacy, she thinks, that all mothers ache for their children when they are not with them. It is guilt that makes them say that, a fear that they are not good enough mothers if they are not thinking about their children twenty-four hours a day.

  Daff thinks about Jess. Often. But she has also loved being seen as a woman, as an individual, as something other than a mother. She has loved that she has got to know new people, created a world out here in Nantucket where she is someone other than a dowdy suburban housewife and mom.r />
  This evening she was a temptress, for God’s sake! Remember that kiss! She shivers, wishing it had led to more, but the spell was broken with Jess’s phone call. Even though she stayed, once she had finished talking to Richard, and asked Michael what was the matter, wanting to check he was okay, her mind was focused on Jess, and they had decided to call it a night, to talk about it another time.

  There was also Mark Stephenson to think about and his strange offer. She didn’t want to consider it, knew it was underhand, deceitful; she could never do that to Nan, or Michael. But it was such a lot of money – it would set her up for life, would afford her a freedom she has only been able to dream about since her divorce.

  For working in real estate these days is hard. And getting harder. It isn’t like the good old days when everything was overpriced and running out through the door, bidding wars were commonplace, realtors making a fortune.

  Almost every middle-aged woman she knows in town who decided to go back to work after raising her children is a realtor. Every week it seems yet another one has joined the fray, got her licence, turned up at one of the hundreds of open houses, each one of which now offers bigger and better lunches in a bid to attract the realtors.

  There is so much inventory. The builders who thought the boom was going to last forever are still building the huge new houses, only now the houses are sitting for months, sometimes years, their prices dropping dramatically until the builders either go into foreclosure, or sell them at a loss.

  It is getting harder and harder to survive as a realtor in her town. Even the people who are supposed to be the best – Marie Hathaway and her team, four stunning blondes who regularly take the back page of the local paper and are known for having the highest-end houses in town – aren’t doing so well. Once she has paid all her marketing expenses – those full-page ads and monthly flyers may be good for exposure but don’t come cheap – and paid her team, Daff has heard that what’s left in the pot isn’t nearly as much as Marie leads everyone to believe.