The Summerhouse by the Sea

by Jenny Oliver

  And yet all Ava was doing was trying to help him. Trying to find a solution to restore balance.

  Rory swallowed. He thought for a minute, looking from the slightly dejected Ava to Flora, sitting back, arms crossed under her chest, expression cynical, and said, ‘It could very well give you your confidence back, Flora. You’re one of those people who comes alive on camera.’

  Ava’s eyes narrowed just a touch, as though she’d clocked a victory. As though he was coming round to the idea.

  Flora batted her lashes.

  A little bubble of excitement fizzed in Rory at the idea of filming here again. The prospect of doing a job with no expectation. No one waiting for the end result. Aside from Ava, among these people Rory carried none of the weight of expectation that had been placed upon him in the last ten years. And how well did he even know Ava nowadays? They met up for the odd drink, birthdays and Christmas Day.

  This would be something completely at Rory’s whim.

  ‘You know, I’ve still got the original,’ said Flora.

  ‘You haven’t?’ Ava gasped. ‘Oh, can we watch it? Please?’

  Rory made a face. ‘Nah, I don’t think we should—’

  ‘Of course we should,’ Tom cut in, and no one seemed to disagree with Tom, ever. He dropped something into conversation and people seemed to wilt in acquiescence. That was the upshot of fame, however distant.

  As the others stood up, Rory remained, reluctant. He very rarely watched anything that he had made. It was in the past. History. He was on to the next thing. He knew that nothing he produced ever quite lived up to the epic vision that he had prior to undertaking it. And this being his first ever film, he expected a chasm between reality and perfection.

  But everyone was already following Flora into the café. Rory pushed his chair back and sloped along behind.

  It was dark and smelt slightly of old chip pan grease. The football was on the TV. Flora went round behind the bar while Ava perched on one of the high metal stools, paint flaking off the rust, and Tom and Rory stood.

  ‘Isn’t this exciting?’ said Flora, bending down to scrabble through a huge stack of DVDs and VHS tapes on a shelf.

  ‘I can’t believe you still have videos!’ Ava said.

  ‘It’s all that lot,’ she pointed to the punters eking out their coffees and peering into the café to see what was going on, ‘they want to watch their old films here half the time.’

  Tom leant against the bar, hands in his pockets, and sighed. ‘Ah, there’s nothing like a rainy morning’s viewing of Casablanca.’

  Ava raised a brow.

  ‘It’s actually true,’ he added. ‘It’s very relaxing.’

  ‘It doesn’t really seem your style,’ she said.

  ‘And yet you don’t know me at all,’ Tom replied, eyes narrowed, knowing grin.

  Ava’s cheeks flecked red and she turned her attention to Flora, who had stood up triumphant with a dusty copy of Rory’s film in her hand.

  As Flora was trying to work the DVD player, Max came charging in like a wet puppy, full of speedboat chatter, but then the sudden sight of Rory on the TV screen halted him mid-sentence.

  ‘Urgh, is that you, Dad?’

  They all stared at the screen in fascination. There was twenty-year-old Rory, all buff and tanned with his camera on his shoulder. He was talking to the mirror, the same one they were all facing now behind the bar. His blond hair thicker, his skin golden, his eyes glowing bright.

  Something about seeing that energy, that confidence, that youth, made Rory unable to look away.

  And then there was Flora, big laugh, shining hair, skin smooth as a cherry.

  They were looking at ghosts.

  He glanced at Flora across the counter and wondered if she was thinking the same thing as him. Is that person still there? Still somewhere living inside me?

  He felt like he could say with certainty that it was still in Flora.

  He swallowed. Which meant that he was still living somewhere inside him.

  ‘Why are you doing that weird voice?’ Max asked, face screwed up, hair dripping a puddle on to the floor. ‘You sound really odd, Dad.’

  ‘I know.’ Rory had to look away because now they were getting into the actual film, the faux American accent the younger version of himself had put on for the voiceover and the thundering flamenco music he’d overlaid. ‘I think we should stop it now.’

  ‘No!’ a chorus of voices undercut him.

  Then Ricardo appeared on screen – all dashing Latin good looks, red neckerchief and casually half-unbuttoned chef’s whites, rhapsodising about his future while he patted his wife’s bottom – and Flora reached over and pressed STOP.

  They all sat in silence.

  It was Ava who broke the tension. ‘Hey Tom,’ she smirked, ‘I bet you’ve got a stash of Love-Struck Highs at home, you should go and grab a couple, we could watch them now.’

  Tom scoffed. ‘Sounds to me, Miss Ava, like you might be the one with the Love-Struck High collection. What was it you were saying about a poster earlier, Rory?’

  He glanced at Rory, winked conspiratorially.

  Ava huffed, ‘I did NOT have a poster!’

  Tom beamed.

  And Rory remembered what it felt like to laugh.

  CHAPTER 13

  Ava was still sleeping on the sofa in the living room. Max and Rory were sharing the spare bedroom. Ava was itching to tell Rory about the little room of their mother’s stuff, but she’d figured it was better to wait till morning, let him get a good night’s sleep.

  She hadn’t thought it possible for the days to get any hotter. She woke up damp from sweat, her hair stuck to her forehead, sun clawing its way in through the cracks in the blinds.

  ‘Have you been asleep all this time?’ Max asked, as she appeared in the hallway. He was slipping little feet into his flip flops. ‘Dad’s already been for a run and we’re going out for breakfast.’

  Ava looked behind her at the clock. ‘It’s not that late,’ she said, although as Rory appeared, showered and changed from his jog, he shared a look with Max to say that it was.

  Ava had been up in the night again, lying awake on the pulsing hot sofa, her hand itching to check her phone in the silent stillness. To feel the distraction of the little number of unread messages on the corner of her WhatsApp and email. To check her Instagram likes and her Facebook notifications.

  In the end she’d caved, slipping it out of its hiding place in a living room drawer and turning it on, on the proviso of checking for emergencies. When she saw a text from Rory’s wife, Claire – Is he OK? – she felt vindicated. So vindicated that, after replying – Think so. We’ve given him a project. A x – she treated herself to a little WhatsApp chat with Louise.

  Ava is typing . . . I’m meant to be digital detoxing.

  Louise is typing . . . Unsuccessfully, clearly. How’s the heart-throb?

  Ava is typing . . . VERY smug and not that good-looking. How are the twins?

  Louise is typing . . . Famous people have symmetrical faces, giving them universal appeal. You’re lying. Twins size of lemons.

  Now as Ava stood in the hall, Rory and Max in front of her, she wondered where her phone was. She’d stayed up after the WhatsApping doing more Thomas King Googling. Looking at paparazzi pictures of him getting mad with photographers at airports, his hand trying to block their shots. There was a flurry of old articles about how ‘strained’ things were with Mia Martínez, the mother of his daughter, a one-hit wonder teen popstar, who became more famous for her wild-child antics as her subsequent releases failed to chart. Reporters made insinuations about whether she’d trapped Tom into parenthood in an attempt to stay in the limelight; others blamed him for the demise of her career. But it was generally implied that neither of them were mature enough for parenthood, and while there were staged pics of Tom all fresh-faced, holding the tiny baby in Hello! magazine, the majority of pictures were of him stumbling out of clubs, glassy-eyed, while Mia was papped
out and about exhausted with the baby strapped to her front. It was only in later photographs that Tom appeared with the little girl, holding her hand, her face blurred out, him suddenly wearing glasses and shirts rather than ripped black T-shirts.

  Ava had skimmed article after article and had no recollection of falling asleep. She certainly hadn’t turned her phone off or hidden it back in the living room drawer. What if it rang now? She couldn’t bear the idea of getting caught cheating in the detox. Max’s little face would be pure disappointment. And she didn’t want Rory to find it because he was just beginning to look more human again, and he would tell Tom that she’d failed in the detox, and that would make him even more annoyingly smug.

  ‘Dad’s going to teach me to be a cameraman,’ Max was saying.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Ava said, distracted. Wanting to find and hide her phone. ‘I’ll meet you out there, if you like, at breakfast,’ she said.

  ‘You sure?’ Rory asked, shoving his feet into the same-brand pair of black flip flops that Ava recognised from when he was a teenager. Once Rory settled on something he didn’t change.

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ she said, but as he started to usher Max out the door, Ava remembered the little room. ‘No, wait, wait! I have to show you something.’

  Rory stepped back into the hall. ‘Right now?’

  Ava nodded. ‘Come with me.’ She could feel herself holding in a smile at the idea of it. The rush of excitement she’d felt when she first prised the door open.

  Rory and Max followed as she led them up the stairs into the main bedroom. It was labyrinth dark. She pulled the blind and the place shone. Rory looked immediately uncomfortable being in their grandmother’s bedroom. He stood awkwardly on the threshold.

  ‘In here,’ Ava said, and jogged over to open the little door.

  Rory and Max edged forwards.

  ‘Ta-da,’ she said proudly, pulling the scrap of light cord. ‘Look, it’s all of Mum’s stuff.’

  Rory watched from where he stood in the middle of the main room. Max went closer to peer in. Ava waited, expectant.

  ‘It’s very sparkly,’ said Max as he touched a sequinned jacket sleeve.

  Ava nodded, giving him a little wink as she slipped the green jacket off the hanger and put it on over her vest top. ‘And look, Max,’ she said, lifting up a dusty programme from a box of theatre memorabilia, ‘this is her,’ she pointed to the picture on the front. ‘Isabel Fisher, one of the greatest mezzo-sopranos ever in the whole world.’

  Max nodded like he had no idea what that meant, but as he glanced at the picture of the woman in swirling red skirts playing Carmen, he frowned and said, ‘Isn’t that you?’

  Ava laughed. ‘No, it’s our mum. Mine and Rory’s.’

  Max took it off her. ‘Blimey,’ he said, ‘you’re identical.’

  ‘Max, watch your language,’ Rory cut in.

  Ava bent down and picked another programme from the stack. There were hundreds of them. ‘That’s her as Cinderella,’ she said, passing the glossy booklet over to Max. ‘And here, in the The Barber of Seville. And look, this box must all be fan letters,’ she said, gesturing to a pile of cards and envelopes in a tatty old shoebox. ‘And this, this is a photo of her at The Plaza in New York. When we went to see her she always took us to The Plaza. Afternoon tea. It was amazing.’

  That was when she heard Rory sigh. She glanced over to hear him say wearily, ‘Ava, you’re not going to get all starry-eyed about this, are you?’

  Ava felt herself deflate. She stood up as straight as she could under the sloping roof, pushing the box of fan letters on to the nearest shelf, a couple of loose brooches falling to the floor. ‘Oh Rory, why?’ she said. ‘Why do you have to always go and ruin everything?’

  Max looked at the floor, his toe nudging a fallen leopard brooch.

  ‘Because I know you, Ava,’ Rory said, running a frustrated hand through his hair. ‘I know what you’re like. You’ll get sucked in like you always do. Just close the door and walk away.’

  ‘No,’ she said, hands on her hips, still in the sequinned jacket.

  Rory looked at her, eyebrows raised. ‘You’ll get hurt.’

  ‘Well, good,’ she said. ‘Maybe that’s a good thing.’ She felt like she was five again, eyes blazing, chubby little hand bashing the table in a tantrum. ‘Better than shutting the door and ignoring it.’

  Rory shook his head, his voice staying completely calm as hers rose. As it always did when they fought. ‘Don’t come crying to me when you find something you don’t like.’

  ‘I want to find things, Rory. She was our mum.’

  ‘Yes, and she left us, Ava. And it wasn’t a bad thing. She made life harder. At some point you have to accept that.’

  Ava looked away to the stack of glossy programmes, breathed in through her nose. Max was watching her. She smiled at him, then looked back at his dad. ‘The thing that you never seem to understand,’ she said, ‘is that there’s more than one way. There’s more than your way, Rory.’

  Rory replied with a snort, as if that was ludicrous. ‘Come on, Max,’ he said, ‘we’ve got work to do.’

  Max, who seemed quite relieved to get the hell out of there, bounded over to the door saying, ‘Assistant Director, if you don’t mind, Dad.’

  Rory did a mock salute. ‘Yes, sir.’ Then turned to Ava and said, ‘We’ll see you at the café.’

  She nodded without looking up, pulling the glimmering jacket off and sliding it back on to the hanger.

  CHAPTER 14

  Flora’s kitchen was dark. The walls were a deep blue, the paint chipped where delivery trollies had hit the edges and feet had scuffed the skirting board. The beautiful big paella pans and giant stainless steel pots hung unused from a central pulley that had been fixed almost permanently up close to the yellowing ceiling, forgotten. A giant gold graffiti stencil of a bull’s head dominated the wall between the kitchen and the bar, the window hatch in place of its nose, commissioned by Ricardo in the early days as a symbol of ambition. He’d give it a ceremonial smack first thing every shift.

  Rory walked once around the space, noting the new addition of a microwave and the whiff of old chip pan oil, and came back out to lean against the bar.

  ‘Didn’t you use to have tapas out on the counter here?’ he asked Flora, pointing to the space where he knew very well heaps of fresh tapas had sat on stands, all priced with different-coloured cocktail stick flags, ready to be picked by tempted customers.

  Flora was standing awkwardly behind the bar, the counter top running along almost the complete length of the right-hand side of the room. She’d poured herself into a powder blue dress and done her hair and make-up beautifully. Her big blonde curls shone in the overhead lights, but she was clearly a little embarrassed about the place being under such scrutiny. ‘You’ll see all my tricks,’ she’d said with a laugh when Rory had paused by the microwave.

  Max was perched on a battered old bar stool. The camera was on the counter in front of him.

  ‘We had to stop,’ said Flora, in answer to Rory’s question about the tapas. ‘There was so much waste at the end of the day.’

  Rory nodded. ‘Who’s cooking now?’

  ‘Me, a bit. Igor,’ she said, pointing to where the sullen waiter had just pulled up on a scooter.

  ‘The waiter?’ Rory asked, thinking maybe he’d got the wrong end of the stick.

  Flora nodded, shrugged her shoulder, did a little laugh. ‘We don’t have a lot of business, Rory. Friday nights sometimes I get a guy from town to come in and help, but he wants full-time work and I can’t give it to him. I don’t have the customers.’

  Flora broke eye contact and looked away towards the kitchen. Rory remembered Ricardo working his magic: chorizo flaming in brandy, lobsters screaming in the pan, clams popping open like flowers, crabs making a dozy dash for it in their chilled semi-consciousness.

  ‘Do you want to film the kitchen?’ Flora asked.

  Rory had thought he did. But what
would he film? There was no flamboyant finger-licking or spoon-slurping, wild gesticulations with a tea towel to get the point across. ‘Maybe we should just start on you,’ he said.

  Flora struck a pose, arranging herself by the coffee machine like Marilyn Monroe. Rory caught Max’s eye; even his ten-year-old was dubious.

  ‘Maybe you should sit at that table,’ Max said, pointing to a small marble table at the back with gold legs. On it was a cut-glass jug that had lost its handle and was filled with wild flowers, scrappy little things that had managed to chip their way through the fierce summer heat. Next to the jug was a pink snakeskin notebook, a fountain pen and a painting of a green parrot leaning against the wall.

  ‘Oh yes, that’s my table, my haven,’ said Flora, ‘where I write my books. Well, not my books any more, recipes for other people to say are theirs. But they still feel like mine. I buy all the books when they come out in the shops, I just have to pretend that it’s my face on the cover.’ Almost every one of Flora’s statements was rounded off with a jolly little laugh, the sadnesses of her life seemingly more manageable when scraps of amusement.

  Rory looked from the lovely little table vignette to the rest of the bar, then outside to the plastic tables and chairs and broken awning. ‘Flora?’ he asked, a little bemused. ‘Why haven’t you done the rest of the bar like this table?’

  ‘Because, my darling, I love my table,’ Flora said, sashaying out from behind the bar, her stilettos silent on the scuffed black rubber floor. She sat herself down, smoothing the front of her dress, positioning herself at the best angle, crossing her legs and folding her arms to push up her chest, before adding, ‘And I hate this place.’

  Rory wished he’d caught it all on film. Wished he’d captured the cool certainty and the raw hitch of emotion that she’d done well to almost conceal. He glanced longingly over to where the camera sat on the bar and saw with surprise the little red recording light. He looked up to Max, who winked at him. Bloody hell. The boy had nous.