The Summerhouse by the Sea

by Jenny Oliver

  Valentina Brown had never trusted Ricardo. She had scoffed on the phone when he had presented Flora with a knot of turquoise thread instead of an engagement ring. Ava had said that she thought it was quite romantic. As had Flora, clearly, as she proceeded to solely finance the set-up of the very successful Café Estrella from the profits of her once-bestselling cookery books, to allow Ricardo to show off his modern take on classic tapas. The critics mocked the location but Ricardo drawled in interviews that ‘People will travel for the best’ and refused to budge from his little beachside idyll. It was this same arrogant passion that had made Rory’s graduation film such a success. And Ricardo had been right. People had come. The café had garnered a coveted Michelin star. But while whipping up his fancy new tapas and proclaiming himself the saviour of Spanish cuisine, Ricardo’s growing reputation had put him in the spotlight of the rich and famous, who whisked him off to prepare birthday feasts on mega yachts and cater weddings in the Hollywood Hills – all a world away from Flora and their little beach café.

  When Flora told Val that Ricardo had left her for a very young American underwear model who he was now living with in Chicago, Val had whispered on the phone to Ava that she was not surprised one little bit, and added with quiet confidence, ‘Never trust a man who gives you a piece of string instead of a ring.’

  Now, as Ava sat opposite Flora, she saw the heartbreaking reality of what had previously just been idle gossip. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Well, what are you going to do?’ Flora sat back in her chair, piling her damp blonde curls on top of her head and wrapping them with an elastic band from her wrist. ‘People came here for him and, well, he’s not here, is he!’ She looked round at the empty café tables. ‘And that lot, they’re young.’ She nodded her head backwards towards Nino’s. ‘They’ve got the energy to triple fry their chips and serve their oysters in shot glasses. Which frankly, to me, sounds disgusting anyway, but people seem to like it. They talk about it a lot.’ She gave Ava a wry little look and then, glancing out to the sea, said, ‘I just hide in the back nowadays, ghost-writing cookery books for skinny celebrities and avoiding my accountant.’

  Ava laughed.

  Flora smiled. ‘But it’s OK. How are you doing? Missing Val? She was bloody annoying half the time but it’s not the same without her.’

  ‘I know.’ Ava nodded. The sherries arrived, the waiter setting them down on little paper coasters, half an eye on the beach, studiously ignoring them. ‘Thanks,’ Ava said. He didn’t reply. Flora rolled her eyes as if there was nothing she could do about him. Ava smiled into her sherry, then waited until they were alone again to say, ‘It’s harder than I thought, being in the house. There are just so many memories.’

  Flora took a sip of her drink. ‘And she had a lot of crap.’

  Ava, who had been expecting sympathetic words of advice, snorted into her drink. Flora laughed, as if she’d taken herself by surprise.

  ‘She does have a lot of crap,’ Ava agreed, liberated. She didn’t mention her mother’s room; like stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia, it was her precious secret to keep.

  Flora smiled. ‘Just go in, ruthless, and chuck it away. I think it’s the only way. Val wouldn’t want you poring over her stuff. She knew it was tat, half of it. I was with her at the boot sales when she bought it. Bag it up, bin it and enjoy the sunshine. That’s what she’d have said. Don’t you do this kind of thing for a living?’

  Ava thought about her job. She tried to compare Val’s house, with all its knick-knacks, to the palatial New York townhouses and cliff-top ancestral piles in the Scottish Highlands where she would pitch up for valuations and contents auctions. Places where she was handed plastic shoe covers at the door and white gloves to wear when inspecting the art or browsing the library. While she did think about who had sat in the pair of French Louis XIII armchairs she was bidding ten grand on, or who had lit the £20,000 Italian Baroque candelabras, their lives were more often than not secondary to the wealth. What they left behind was more valuable than their memory. Whereas with Val, every item was a manifestation of her self. Every chipped vase and tacky flea market print seemed to carry her voice. ‘There’s no more room in my house. But I like it. You like it? Not fancy enough for your lot of course. I’m going to have it. Where I’ll put it? But I’m going to have it.’

  And then there were her mother’s things. Ava could price a regency giltwood mirror or mid-century Murano chandelier with her eyes shut, but that little room was beyond value.

  Flora took another sip of her sherry, flumped her wet hair with her hand and, glancing around said, ‘I’ll tell you who does have some interesting stuff, have you met Tom yet? Bought the vineyard on the hill. He’s poured some money into that house. It was practically derelict when he bought it. You wouldn’t recognise it now.’

  Ava shook her head. ‘I’ve never met him,’ she said, but she’d heard all about Tom-On-The-Hill as well. Retired actor. Kept Val up with all the drilling and banging during the renovation, but made up for it with a bottle of expensive brandy when she climbed the steps to complain. They’d smoked cigars on his terrace together apparently, and Ava had always wondered if they were having an affair.

  ‘He’s over there by the bar,’ Flora said, nodding towards the people drinking inside. ‘Tom!’ she shouted. ‘Come over here, darling.’

  Ava sat up in surprise when the guy at the bar turned at the sound of his name.

  Oh my God! She tried to act completely natural.

  ‘He was very famous once,’ Flora said in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘But I’d never seen anything he’d been in.’

  Ava couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

  This was Tom-On-The-Hill.

  Walking towards her was not the eighty-year-old retired actor that Ava had imagined having brandy with her grandmother on his terrace, the two of them perhaps holding hands.

  Tom-On-The-Hill was none other than Thomas King. Probably the biggest television star of Ava’s teenage years. The fresh-faced, chocolate-box heart-throb who had shot to fame on Love-Struck High. She could remember the recording of the final episode being passed around their school like gold dust. Everyone impatiently waiting their turn, and secretly praying that their VCR wouldn’t be the one to chew up the tape. She and Louise had queued to see him at the National Television Awards, but Louise had started hyperventilating when he’d walked past and had to be taken off by the St John’s Ambulance crew for a cup of tea and a Hobnob.

  Now as he stood in front of her, all faded shorts and crisp white shirt, his hand held out for her to shake, looking pretty damn perfect and far too pleased with himself, Ava could barely get the words together to say, ‘Nice to meet you, I’m Ava’. She didn’t want to shake his hand, her palm suddenly a little clammy from the proximity to fame, his rough and cool in comparison.

  ‘Tom,’ he said.

  And Ava filled the silence by saying, ‘Thomas King,’ as if he might need reminding of his own name, and immediately regretted it.

  ‘I am indeed.’

  Flora put her hand on Tom’s arm and said, ‘Val was Ava’s grandmother. She’s here to pack up the house.’

  Ava nodded, mute. Wishing she’d been able to play it cooler. Her brain chastising her for even admitting that she knew who he was. How cool would it have been to have had no idea who he was, or at least manage to carry out a pretence as such.

  Tom was talking, saying how sorry he was about Val and that he’d been away for the funeral. ‘It’s all done so quickly in Spain,’ he said, and Ava nodded, shamefully distracted from his respectful sympathy, trying to work out whether he was wearing tortoiseshell glasses and had grown his hair a bit long to try and hide the heart-throb jaw and eyes.

  He seemed to be able to sense her distraction and paused, his mouth twitching into a smile. His whole demeanour switched to predatory with just a roll of his shoulders and a lean against one of the awning pillars. ‘So how long are you staying?’ he asked.


  Flora cut in, saying, ‘I should go.’ A couple of tourists were inspecting the menu on one of the far tables. She stood up, but as she did she leant forwards and added in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘The problem is I’ve started to hope they don’t sit down at all. I want them to just leave me alone.’

  Tom raised a brow. ‘Not a good thing for a café owner.’

  ‘I know! It’s no win,’ Flora said, hoisting her sarong up where it had slipped down over her boobs and making her way through the network of chairs to chat up her potential customers with a lacklustre smile.

  Ava wasn’t sure whether to answer Tom’s question or if too much time had now passed. She hated that she was agonising over such trivia, so readily trying to impress him.

  ‘May I?’ he asked, pointing to the seat Flora had vacated.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘So,’ he said, reclining, hands in his pockets, all cool and relaxed like he owned the place, his beer bottle half-drunk on the table in front of him. ‘How are you enjoying it?’

  ‘Good thanks,’ Ava said quickly.

  He nodded.

  She started to say more – pleasantries about her trip into town – but realised his attention had been diverted by a woman in a skin-tight red dress and glossy brown hair heading into Nino’s.

  ‘Sorry, what was that?’ he asked, glancing back.

  Ava shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

  The silence gnawed.

  Tom looked out towards the beach. Ava looked too, at the long shadows of the palm tree leaves on the sand, at the dangerously lilting fig tree and the potted orange trees, their perfume intensifying with the evening.

  Unable to bear the silence any longer, she said, ‘So, Love-Struck High . . .’, not really sure where she was going with the comment.

  Tom took a swig of beer. ‘You were a fan?’ he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, smug half-grin on his face.

  ‘I watched it,’ she said, a little dismissive. ‘If I was home and it was on.’ Given his expression she was hardly going to admit to the Love-Struck High parties at Louise’s house, where they watched their favourite episodes back to back, his face emblazoned on Louise’s spare bed duvet set. Or the countless school trip games of Shag, Marry or Dump that had seen the whole minibus shacked up with Thomas King.

  The two other guys at the bar finished their drinks and stood up. One of them shouted over to Tom that they were leaving.

  He waved a hand in acknowledgement, downed the rest of his beer and said, ‘Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Ava.’

  Ava nodded. ‘You too.’ Although she wasn’t quite sure that she meant it.

  He stood up, then paused, hands resting on the back of his chair. ‘You staying at the house?’ he asked, nodding towards her grandmother’s place across the little square.

  ‘Yes.’

  He shuddered slightly. ‘Spooky.’

  Ava glanced over at the dark windows of the house that seemed to loom in the twilight. ‘I’m trying not to think about it too much,’ she said, once again feeling the tendrils of fear that had been itching all afternoon at the prospect of going to bed alone in the house.

  ‘Not worried it might be haunted?’ he asked, almost as if deliberately trying to wind her up. His friends had headed out of the bar and were starting to walk towards the path leading up to the car park.

  ‘It’s not haunted.’

  He backed away, seeming to contemplate something for a second, then shrugging one shoulder said, ‘Well, if it all gets a bit too scary you’re welcome to come and stay at my place.’ He gestured back towards his own house on the hill. ‘Anytime,’ he added, with a slight narrowing of his eyes. A flash of blue. His gaze steady. The hint of a smile.

  And she finally understood what he’d been driving at. She almost laughed. Thomas King was living up to exactly what the papers always said about him.

  ‘No, you’re alright,’ she said, her tone incredulous but amused. ‘I’m a big girl, I’ll be fine. But thanks for the offer,’ she added, finishing her drink.

  Tom laughed. ‘Well, if you change your mind . . .’ he said, hands outstretched before turning to join his mates.

  ‘I think I’ll be OK,’ Ava replied, but he was out of earshot.

  She got up to leave, shaking her head with disbelief, laughing to herself as she walked away past the orange trees and the fig. The tension of going back inside popped, her attention diverted from the possibility of ghosts, from the blast of memory waiting in the little room, from the sadness of the scrap of soap.

  Lying on the living room sofa, all the lights blazing, she spent the next hour Googling Thomas King and WhatsApping Louise.

  Louise is typing . . . Not surprised he owns a vineyard – he was a pretty terrible actor. Did you know he has a daughter? At college in Barcelona apparently.

  Ava is typing . . . COLLEGE! How old is she?

  Louise is typing . . . 16. It was while he was still doing Love-Struck High. God I loved that show. Do you remember crying when his girlfriend died on the beach? It was so sad. I’d forgotten how OBSESSED with him I was! If you sleep with him my teenage self might stab you through the heart.

  Ava laughed out loud. Having been afraid that she would be lying in the dark in hopeless panic, she suddenly found the familiar links to her childhood – the Google images of Love-Struck, her mother’s possessions, her grandmother’s knick-knacks – strangely comforting, coupled with the gentle lull of the waves, the scent of warm dust and juniper and the heat pressing down like a blanket as she curled up around her phone.

  CHAPTER 10

  ‘You’ll be alright on your own?’ Rory said, putting the last bag in the car and closing the boot. It had stopped raining and the sun was somewhere behind the fog of early morning cloud, making the air smell like a greenhouse, warm and muggy like wet grass.

  Claire nodded. ‘I’ll be alright. You’re sure you’ll be alright?’ she asked, her hands on Max’s shoulders, stroking the tips of his too-long hair, her son just on the cusp of an age that he would allow it.

  They had decided at three a.m. that Rory would go to Spain for a couple of weeks, or however long it would take for all this to die down. And given that Max was due to break up in just over a week he would go too. It didn’t seem healthy for him to weather the Twitter storm alone at school. And it felt like a good bonding opportunity.

  Claire would stay for the time being. She had her interview coming up and Home Style magazine, where she was currently deputy editor, was so busy this time of year that taking a last-minute holiday would crucify her chances.

  They also both seemed to know instinctively that this was something Rory needed to do alone. That somehow being together wasn’t delivering their most successful selves at the moment.

  Max picked up his battered old school rucksack.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Claire, taking the bag from him.

  Max looked confused as she rested his hand luggage on the wall and unzipped it. As she pulled out his laptop, his little face fell. ‘What?’ he said with a whine. ‘No way.’

  ‘You’re going to go on a digital detox,’ she said.

  Max kicked the wall. ‘I don’t want to go on a digital detox. I like digital. What am I going to do without my laptop? What am I going to do on the plane?’

  Claire ruffled his hair as he sulked. ‘Get your dad to buy you a book at the airport.’

  ‘I don’t want a book. I want my laptop.’

  Claire shook her head.

  ‘This is so unfair,’ Max said. ‘This is so unfair.’ He turned to look at his dad, but the deathly paleness of Rory’s face and the aura of holding-it-together-hopelessness meant Max didn’t repeat his protest for the third time.

  Rory opened the passenger door. ‘Come on, mate. In the car.’

  Max tried Claire one last time. ‘Please let me take it, Mum?’

  ‘No.’

  Rory had an inkling the laptop ban was as much for his benefit as Max’s. To stop t
he obsessive Twitter refreshing. Rory himself had reverted to an old Nokia that could do nothing more whizzy than send and receive black and white texts of 160 characters.

  Max stuck his bottom lip out.

  Rory saw Claire hold back a smile as she bent down to hug him. Reluctant at first, he rolled himself round into her arms and Rory heard her whisper in his ear something along the lines of, ‘Be good, look after your father, and I love you,’ as she gave him a huge, bone-crushing hug. Then she stood up, face to face with Rory.

  ‘Take care of yourself,’ Claire said, pushing her hair back behind her ears, then clearly not knowing what to do with her hands, folding her arms across her chest.

  It started to rain slightly. Just the odd tap-tap on the pavement.

  Rory nodded.

  ‘Be nice to your sister,’ Claire said.

  Rory nodded again.

  ‘Have you told her you’re coming?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Rory!’

  ‘I will.’

  Claire rolled her eyes.

  The rain tap-tapped heavier.

  Rory stepped forwards. ‘We’d better kiss so I don’t leave on an eye-roll,’ he said.

  She smiled.

  He bent down, a bit nervous, and kissed her on the corner of her mouth. Claire reached up and held his face, kissed him square on the lips, quickly. Then she put her arms around his neck and hugged him.

  Rory could smell the Chanel and Max’s shampoo because she’d run out of her flash stuff. He thought he might cry again. Hold it together, you pussy, he told himself.

  ‘Have fun,’ Claire said brightly as she stood back.

  ‘I’d have more fun with my laptop,’ said Max, cheeky this time.