The Summerhouse by the Sea

by Jenny Oliver

  But now, seen through Caroline’s eyes, it made her feel as though she was still twenty-one and doing the filing.

  It felt like a sign.

  Ava turned her phone over on the table, didn’t reply to the text. She watched the fly Rory had saved still making its way dozily to the edge of the table.

  Rory had taken the opportunity to read his emails again. ‘Going to have to drink up so we can get to the airport,’ he said, eyes glued to his screen.

  Ava checked her watch. There was acres of time. ‘You know, Rory,’ she said, swallowing, her mouth suddenly dry, talking before her brain had fully formulated a plan, ‘maybe I might come out here for the summer.’

  Rory took a quick slug of sherry. ‘What do you mean? What – to Spain?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ava nodded. ‘Maybe I could pack up the Summerhouse. You know, take some time off work. Live in it for a bit?’ He was watching her and that made her carry on, uncomfortable. ‘Maybe this might be a good opportunity for a . . .’ She tried to find the right word. He was still looking at her, dubious. ‘A restart. A re-evaluation.’

  The guitar player had started up again. The teenagers on the swings were rolling cigarettes, tinny music from their phones clashing with the guitar. The bar heaved with people, knocking their chairs as they pushed past, hands full, carrying drinks out into the square. It was still warm, but the air around Ava suddenly felt hotter under Rory’s scrutiny.

  ‘Don’t you think you’d be better off maybe buying a house with the inheritance? Or,’ he paused, tapped the table with his index finger, ‘not running out on perfectly good relationships. How was Jonathon by the way?’ When Ava rolled her eyes in response, he stretched his shoulders back, as though his shirt, or her life, was an annoying discomfort. ‘Those are the kind of things that would lead to your future, Ava.’

  She studied him. Noticed how age made him look harder. Like all his edges had squared off. ‘You sound like Dad.’

  Rory shrugged. ‘No bad thing. Look, thing is, Ava, I think it’s better that we just sell. I can’t sit on that money while you take a holiday. I’m sorry, I know that sounds harsh. But it’s going to have to be a no. OK?’

  She didn’t say anything, knew from experience that it was pointless arguing with her brother, he was like a brick wall. It was the same as when they were kids, his bedroom door always tight shut, Ava desperately guessing the password that might let her in, too naively exuberant to realise that the game was endless because there never was one.

  But Ava’s interest was piqued. The idea of a second chance, a different way of living, a change, wouldn’t go away.

  She picked up her glass and took another sip. She knew the bus accident wasn’t fate, just a bad combination of WhatsApp and the Green Cross Code. She knew there were no deals with the universe or cosmic signs. But it felt like she had somehow been handed this possibility by her grandmother, and she couldn’t allow it to slip through her fingers.

  She imagined sitting by herself on that Spanish veranda, with the view of the courtyard garden and the sweet-scented close night air. And Ava knew suddenly that if her grandmother could do it alone, so could she.

  Rory was still talking. ‘It was funny, wasn’t it, when that guy said he felt sorry for Grandad. No more peace in heaven for him.’

  Ava laughed. ‘Yeah, it was.’

  ‘God, I’d have had to say something about you, wouldn’t I? If that bus had got you.’

  ‘That’s a nice way of putting it, Rory.’

  Rory sniggered into his sherry. Then he looked at his watch. ‘Come on, drink up, we’ve got a plane to catch.’

  She realised she was suddenly itching to know what he would have said about her if the bus had indeed got her. Intrigued by a possible heartfelt truth, she crossed her arms, glass dangling from her fingertips, and with feigned nonchalance so as not to appear too eager, said, ‘Go on then, what would you have said?’

  Rory frowned as he considered the question. Then he downed his drink and grinned. He had a habit of picking up on when she wanted something, and her silent patience was a huge giveaway. ‘I’d say that you were a real pain in the arse growing up but sometimes you can be quite funny now.’

  Ava made a face. ‘You wouldn’t have said that,’ she huffed. ‘Come on, what would you actually have said?’

  Rory laughed. ‘I’m not telling you what I would have said.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because people don’t say what they think about you until after you die. That’s the bitch. You never get to know.’

  Ava frowned. ‘Here they know,’ she said, pointing towards the bustling Spanish street, the air filled with life lived richly. ‘They tell each other stuff like that here. Like, Gran knew by the end that, yes, there’d been bad bits but overall she’d lived a great life. People loved her. All they went on about was how adored she was, how great she was. She knew she’d aced it.’

  Rory tipped his head and swirled the dregs round in his empty glass. ‘Well, lucky her, that’s all I can say.’ He got his phone out again and refreshed his emails. ‘Come on, we’ve really got to go,’ he said, standing up, slinging his suit jacket over his arm.

  Ava checked her phone. It was piling up with more messages: new dates suggested for the I’m alive!! dinner. The sweetness of friendship that she hadn’t factored on. It made her waver on the decision building inside her to defy Rory and come out to Spain anyway.

  The man playing the guitar came round, proffering a hat for change. The waiter swept past, clearing their glasses from the table like magic, the teenagers blew smoke rings up at the sky, the arguing couple stood silently fuming. Ava put a euro in the hat. Rory didn’t.

  ‘Do you ever think that there’s still time?’ Ava asked, hand clutching her phone as they started to walk in the direction of the main road.

  ‘Sorry, what was that?’ Rory said, distractedly searching for a taxi, pushing his hair back from his face. ‘God, it’s so hot here.’

  ‘I said do you ever think there’s still time?’ she repeated, looking straight at him.

  ‘Still time for what?’

  ‘To ace your life.’

  ‘Me?’ he said, looking confused, ‘I am aceing it.’

  Ava stared after him, amazed at his unwavering certainty as he strode away to flag down a cab. Then she looked down at the emails on her phone, everyone raring to go for the new date – I’m alive!! – and she knew that returning here on her own would disrupt the steady predictability of her life. Would answer back to all the faults in her life that had been disconcertingly exposed since the bus crash. She imagined her mother would have done it simply for the adventure. It was the very definition of I’m alive!!

  And she knew she couldn’t let her brother be the reason she didn’t do it. Nor for that matter the safety of her friends. She opened a new email.

  Thanks guys, for trying to rearrange, but I’m not going to make it. I’m going to be in Spain for the summer!

  CHAPTER 5

  It was pouring with rain. Ceaseless, monotonous, Armageddon-type rain. The sky was like concrete, the horizon a mesh of cranes, half-built tower blocks and jagged scaffolding. Rory was standing in the middle of an industrial estate in East London, on the set of his current documentary project, filming the life of a mute swan and a Canada goose who had set up home in an abandoned Tesco trolley next to a small, dank excuse for a pond. The birds found fame when one of the office workers set up an Instagram and Twitter account for them – #SwanLovesGoose – and across the globe people fell for the hopelessly devoted mismatched duo.

  Almost overnight the birds became a symbol of love, peace and acceptance. National treasures, they were mentioned on X Factor and the fun bit at the end of the BBC news. The horrible pond became a conservation area. And Rory snapped up all the rights immediately. As well as the documentary, there was a book written from the point of view of the female swan scheduled for release at Christmas.

  ‘God, why can’t they just mate? Why can�
��t they do something?’ Rory was dressed in his blue waterproof, the rain dripping from the peak of the hood on to his nose and into his cold Styrofoam coffee cup.

  He could see the money racking up every time he glanced from his camera crew to the two overfed birds sitting on the depressingly grey water doing absolutely nothing. The old shopping trolley sat empty.

  Rory used to have a lot of patience when it came to nature. He’d built his living on his ability to wait it out. After critical acclaim for his degree show film about the Michelin-starred beach café next to his grandmother’s house in Spain, he’d followed up with a documentary about the Fête de l’Escargot in France and the traditions around snail-hunting season, which shot him to prominence as one of the youngest BAFTA documentary nominees. He hadn’t won, but his name had been on people’s lips and he’d dined at No. 10, chortling with the PM over canapés. At just twenty-one his star was on the rise, but that same year his son Max had been born. Plagued by reflux, the baby hadn’t slept, the cries echoing round the flat twenty-four-seven. His wife Claire struggling and Rory exhausted, at his worst when he hadn’t had any sleep, his brain frazzled as he tried to work, money painfully tight. It was a ten-month black hole in his life. And when things started to get back to normal the wave of success seemed to have rolled on without him. No longer riding out front, he was paddling to keep up at the back, always a step out of sync. He spent ten months driving across America in search of the quintessential diner, only to find a bigger budget version of the same idea scheduled for release two months before his quiet little film. He worked harder and harder. Obsessively. And yet never bettered the French snail success. More recently, in the relentless quest for the BAFTA, he had taken on more commercial projects which he hated. He’d spent last spring on tour with a controversial young indie rock band, filming a supposed warts-and-all behind-the-scenes exposé that, while highly praised, had been a frustrating six months watching lazy teenagers sleeping, playing videogames and refusing to rehearse. To make matters worse, the BAFTA that year was nabbed by a quirky little film by a virtually unknown director who’d sprung to fame via YouTube, setting off to record the 300 different types of snow that the Eskimos were reputed to have words for.

  All Rory’s hopes were now pinned on this swan and goose, which he counted on having just the right amount of commercial whimsy to bag the gong. But not only were the birds doing absolutely nothing, Rory was stressed and tired. The plane home from Spain had been delayed for hours on the runway and he still didn’t feel like he’d caught up on sleep.

  He huffed back to his Portakabin, past the catering van. Larry, the chef, nodded towards the fat birds and said, ‘Not much going on, is there?’

  ‘No,’ Rory replied. ‘Absolutely bugger all.’

  ‘I’ll go home and get my rifle if you want, shoot one of them!’ Larry laughed. ‘That’d boost the ratings.’

  Rory paused. That wasn’t actually a bad idea. He didn’t want to shoot one, of course, but maybe they could do something to chivvy it up a bit. He called to his assistant, ‘Petra, meeting in my office, five minutes. Get the team.’

  The Portakabin was cold but dry, except for the trail of muddy footprints and the dripping of six wet jackets on the backs of a hastily assembled group of chairs. Two of the team were perched on the side of Rory’s desk. A packet of custard creams was doing the rounds.

  ‘Do you think this is what it’s going to be like the whole summer?’ Petra stared out the window at the rain.

  George, the assistant producer, shook his head. ‘We don’t have summer in Britain any more. Global warming. We’re just going to be grey and bland forever.’

  Petra made a face.

  ‘OK, listen,’ Rory clapped his hands together then rubbed them to warm up. ‘We need these birds to do something, pronto. And they aren’t doing it themselves. I don’t want to put them in danger, as such, I just want to spice things up. Ideas?’

  The only noise was the crinkle of the custard cream packet.

  ‘Come on, you lot!’ Rory sat back in his swivel chair, hands behind his head. ‘This is what I pay you for. Think. What can we do with them?’

  George shrugged, mouth full of biscuit. ‘We could kidnap one. Goose could handle it, I reckon.’

  Petra made a sad face. ‘That would be really mean, though.’

  ‘Petra,’ Rory glared at her, ‘it’s not real. If we kidnap him he’ll be in this bloody Portakabin, probably eating all my biscuits, if you lot leave me any.’

  Rupert, a foppish researcher, nudged the one remaining custard cream still in the packet on to the edge of Rory’s desk.

  ‘I used to live near a farm, actually, one of those ones open to the public that kids go to,’ said George. ‘Just before Christmas some people broke in and stole all the rabbits and ducks and chickens. They think it was for Christmas dinner.’

  Rory smacked the table with his hand. ‘I like it. Now we’re talking.’

  ‘Really?’ said Petra to George. ‘They ate them?’

  George nodded.

  ‘That’s terrible,’ she said. ‘Some people.’

  Rory ignored her. ‘So, OK, this is good. We kidnap Goose. Petra, I want you to look into logistics. Get the police in – and what? We spin it that he’s been taken for Sunday lunch? It’s a real shame it’s summer not Christmas. George, can we get someone from that farm on camera? Just having that as a story will get the idea into people’s minds. I like it.’

  Foppish Rupert added, ‘My parents have a farm in Hampshire. Goose could stay there for a while.’

  Petra looked out the window again at the dank, rainy industrial estate. ‘Probably never want to come back.’

  Rory nodded. ‘Well that would be even better. A post-kidnapping lovers’ tiff.’

  George laughed.

  Petra looked back at them all, expression pained. ‘This is really mean.’

  Rory sighed. ‘Yes, we know it’s mean, Petra. But if we don’t do it then nothing happens, the film’s a flop, everyone forgets about the bloody birds and some fox’ll probably eat them or the council will evict them. We’re actually doing them a favour – in a roundabout sort of way. Right,’ Rory stood up, grabbed the biscuit packet, and popping out the last custard cream said, ‘Action that, people. Let’s get back to work.’

  CHAPTER 6

  Later that day, Rory was sitting at the kitchen table opposite Max, drinking a cup of tea and impatiently refreshing his Twitter feed, waiting for a scheduled announcement about the Eskimo-snow BAFTA winner’s latest project. Feeling confident about his own #SwanLovesGoose kidnapping plan, he’d picked Max up straight from the set in a great mood, then cooked an amazing risotto that Max had picked all the peas out of and said was a bit smelly. They had had a row and weren’t speaking when his wife came home from work.

  ‘Have you seen your sister’s Instagram?’ Claire said, as she walked into the kitchen. She threw her bag down on to the leather club chair by the window and gave both Rory and Max a kiss.

  ‘No.’ Rory immediately opened up his Instagram app. ‘What is it?’

  ‘She’s on her way back to Spain,’ said Claire, pouring herself a glass of water while surveying the mess in the kitchen.

  ‘She’s what?’ Rory scrolled through Instagram in search of Ava’s post.

  Max was now forking up all the bits of chorizo from the risotto while simultaneously watching a Minecraft video on his laptop.

  ‘You’re not allowed the laptop at the table,’ said Claire.

  ‘Dad’s on his phone.’

  ‘I’m not eating anything,’ said Rory, his tone exceedingly similar to his son’s.

  ‘Rory, get off your phone. Max, get off your laptop.’ Claire shut the dishwasher.

  ‘You just told me to look at this picture!’ said Rory, incredulous.

  Max huffed. ‘I need to watch this.’

  Claire gave Rory the kind of look they’d shared for the last ten years. A we’re-meant-to-be-in-this-together look that made him
roll his eyes then lean forwards and snap the laptop shut.

  ‘Oh, what?’ said Max.

  ‘Just eat your dinner,’ said Rory, his tone still reflective of the earlier risotto argument.

  Max glowered at him. ‘What about you?’

  Rory had to tear himself away from the photo Ava had posted of the sun rising over a plane wing to make a show of clicking his phone off. Max looked smug.

  Claire ate a spoonful of the leftover risotto from the pan. ‘You’re getting closer to that spot on MasterChef, Ror,’ she said with a laugh.

  Despite the distraction of Ava on her way to Spain, Rory felt a little flush of pride that someone appreciated his cooking, and raised a brow at Max to show how wrong he’d been. Then he was straight back to the subject of the Instagram photo. ‘I can’t believe she’s gone back already! She’s unbelievable.’

  Max looked up. ‘What’s wrong with Aunty Ava?’

  Claire bit down on a smile. ‘Nothing. She’s just not your father.’

  Rory took a slug of his tea and shook his head as if he was being hard done by. ‘That’s not what I’m saying at all. Although if she were like me I doubt she’d have been hit by a bloody bus and have zero direction in life. You know what she’s like, Max.’ He looked at his ten-year-old son as if he were thirty-five and didn’t just judge his aunt by the presents she bought him. ‘I’ve never met anyone less able to settle down. Aside from my own mother. Talk about thinking the grass is greener. She thinks it’s bloody fluorescent anywhere she isn’t.’

  ‘She’s got FOMO,’ said Max, standing up to get some ketchup from the fridge.

  ‘Yes, no – I’m sorry, I have no idea what that means,’ said Rory.

  ‘Fear of missing out.’

  Rory sat back. ‘You’re quite right, she has exactly that. FOMO. I like that.’

  ‘Where have you been, Dad? Everyone knows FOMO.’

  Rory raised a brow. ‘Earning money so that you can know words like FOMO.’