The Summerhouse by the Sea

by Jenny Oliver

  ‘OK, I’m coming,’ Rory shouted as he came out from the kitchen, then turned immediately around and returned with a roll of kitchen towel which he chucked at Max. ‘Use this,’ he said, gesturing towards Max’s mouth.

  They all watched as Max made a hash of the kitchen roll, trying to tear a sheet off but ripping it in half, wiping his face but missing the crucial bits of chocolate, distracted by the fact that he was already late as well as by a couple of the girls he’d been hanging out with strolling past arm in arm, wearing cropped tops and skinny jeans, pointing his way before starting the walk up the hill. ‘Gone?’ he asked his dad, anxious to get going.

  Rory shook his head and ripped off another piece of paper, subtly wiping off the chocolate so none of Max’s friends would see and adjusting his half-upturned collar. ‘There. Very handsome,’ he said.

  Max nodded, not really listening.

  Rory tried not to smile.

  Ava watched as she popped little meatball tapas into her mouth. She’d never really seen Rory as a dad. She’d seen Claire as a mum and Rory unpacking the car, or going back to the car to pick up the things that had been forgotten, or coming in for a bad-cop tell-off when Max wouldn’t listen to Claire. But she’d never really seen him as a lone parent. And she was surprised to find in him an unexpected sweetness.

  ‘Looking good, Max!’ she called, as he smoothed back his hair.

  Max gave her a glare, a silent warning not to embarrass him in front of the girls.

  Ava grinned.

  A large group of locals came in, all chatter and big laughs, pushing tables together and sitting down under the awning, their day-at-the-beach paraphernalia propped up around them. A woman in a gold bikini and white shorts strutted up to the counter to take a look at the tapas.

  ‘Excuse me, is there going to be more?’ the woman asked, pointing towards the almost empty plates, then added, ‘Hey Tom,’ with a smile and a wave when she recognised him at the bar.

  Tom nodded a polite hello.

  Ava tried not to notice.

  Flora wiped her hands on her apron as she leant through the hatch to have a look. ‘Absolutely, darling, coming up,’ she called, and when the gold bikini woman went back to sit with her friends, Flora added, ‘Rory, we’re going to need you back here.’

  ‘Can’t. I have to walk Max.’

  ‘Come on!’ whined Max.

  ‘We’ll walk him,’ Ava said, sliding off her seat. She’d said ‘we’ without really thinking about it, because somehow over the course of the last few days she and Tom had become a ‘we’, everything they had done they had done together.

  She glanced back at him, suddenly a little embarrassed by her assumption. Embarrassed that he’d be looking at her like there was no chance he was walking up the hill when there was fresh sangria being poured and a woman in a gold bikini waiting.

  But he was already wiping his hands of tapas oil, already standing up ready to walk out with her.

  ‘D’you want to go swimming after?’ Ava asked, grabbing her beach bag from the floor.

  Tom thought about it for a second, then shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Let’s go!’ Max didn’t seem to care who escorted him as long as they got moving ASAP. He was off before Ava and Tom had barely left the restaurant, the two girls strolling in front of him turning round and giggling every now and then, Max puffing his chest out, trying to put as much distance between him and his aunt as possible.

  Ava and Tom hung back so he could do his stuff. They watched with amused fascination as one of the girls dropped back to ask Max a question then ran back to her friend, Max’s swagger increasing with every burst of excited laughter.

  At the top of the hill his shaggy-haired friend Emilio appeared, arguing with his sister who trotted off when she saw the girls. A car pulled up and the English boys who’d played football with them got out, high-fiving Max and Emilio. They all loped off together towards one of the big white villas that overlooked the bay.

  ‘Bye Max!’ Ava shouted.

  He turned. ‘Oh yeah, bye,’ he said, all nonchalant cool.

  Ava and Tom watched him go into the house then turned to walk back, silently smiling.

  Ahead of them was a view of the whole beach, from the pedalos waiting on the straw yellow sand, out to where the sea met the sky, the sun hovering low over the water ready to drop, and round to the tourists walking the blustery headland, the houses, the café and the bright pink daubs of bougainvillea.

  The only noise was the sound of their flip flops and the breeze rustling like animals through the leaves.

  A phone beeped.

  ‘Is that yours?’ Tom asked.

  Ava paused. ‘No,’ she said, too quickly. Realising immediately that it must be somewhere in her cavernous beach bag. Either thrown there after her night of Googling or bundled in by Max along with the towel.

  It beeped again.

  ‘It is yours!’ Tom said, his mouth open in mock surprise.

  ‘It’s not,’ said Ava, starting to walk a little quicker.

  ‘It is,’ he said, jogging to catch up with her. ‘You’re the worst detoxer ever.’

  ‘I’m not, I am detoxing,’ she said, emphatic.

  They were both walking really fast, side by side, him trying to get her to stop.

  ‘You’re also the worst liar.’ He was laughing.

  Ava was slightly out of breath. ‘I’m not, it wasn’t my phone,’ she said, stumbling on the incline of the road.

  Tom put his hand out to steady her at the same time as whipping her bag off her shoulder.

  ‘Give it back!’ She dived towards him to yank it back but she was too late. Tom’s hand fished around in her bag and pulled out the iPhone, triumphant.

  ‘Give it back,’ Ava said, half-laughing, half-serious.

  ‘No way,’ he said.

  She tried to wrestle him for it. Jumping up at him in the road, his arm outstretched, the phone out of her reach. Even with the wind it was swelteringly hot. The air swirled thick and glittering from the sun. She suddenly registered that they were touching. That his arm was tight around her as she grabbed for her phone, that she could feel his breath from laughing and his heart beat through his chest.

  But then his fingers holding the phone nudged the Home button and the screen lit up. She saw the exact moment his eyes registered what was on the screen and in that second it was all gone.

  She felt his grip loosen around her. ‘Here,’ he said, handing her the phone and her bag.

  ‘Thanks.’ She took it from him, not quite sure what had happened.

  Tom pointed up the hill and said, ‘My house is just up here. You’ll be alright going back on your own, won’t you?’

  Ava nodded. There would be no swimming.

  He jogged away without looking back.

  She looked down at her screen.

  A WhatsApp preview from Louise: The kid’s not his! Massive super injunction. Lawyer friend told me so don’t tell anyone. Best bit of gossip, EVER?!

  CHAPTER 23

  Rory was madly frying up pimiento du padron, the little green peppers hissing and crinkling as they blackened in the pan. From the kitchen window he caught sight of Ava walking alone down the hill. ‘Where’s Tom?’ he asked, as she appeared back at the bar.

  ‘He had to go.’

  Rory frowned. ‘Why, what’s he doing?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  He came out with the pan of sizzling peppers and slid them on to a plate at the far end of the counter, scattering little crystals of sea salt over them like a pro.

  ‘Is he coming back?’ He walked past Ava back towards the kitchen.

  Ava sighed and got her phone out of her pocket.

  ‘I thought you were detoxing?’ he said, as she tapped the screen a couple of times and brought up a WhatsApp text, holding it up for him to read.

  ‘I am,’ she said, and explained what had happened. When she was finished she stared at him, her hair hanging windswept and
curly half across her face, her huge eyes trained defensively on him as she said, ‘Go on then.’

  ‘What?’ Rory asked, inwardly cringing at the message.

  ‘Tell me how awful I am.’

  Rory frowned, his fingers thrumming on the counter top. He had been about to say how awful she was. That it was a stupid thing to be messaging about. And that with regard to the detoxing, she’d promised not just him but Max that she’d lay off her phone. But now she was expecting a telling-off he realised how predictable he was. How quickly they reverted to type when together. Or maybe he just told everyone how awful they were.

  He thought of all the times he’d told Claire how she could have handled a situation differently when she came home bitching about some workplace injustice. ‘I don’t want a solution, Rory! I just want you to listen to me,’ she’d groan in frustrated annoyance. ‘I just want to be able to say it and for you to nod in sympathy.’

  He thought of his plans to kidnap the #SwanLovesGoose and how easy it would have been not to action it, but equally how easy it was for a silly plan to run away with itself. A five-minute meeting and an idea that would probably have disappeared just as quickly once they’d seriously examined the logistics if it hadn’t been for the Twitter leak.

  He looked at Ava looking at him, eyes blinking. Instead of saying anything he nodded towards the frothy jug on the counter and said, ‘Igor’s made some sangria. Have some. We’ll join you in a bit.’

  Then he went back to the kitchen. Flora and Gabriela were frying up more meatballs, steaming lobster, whipping up fresh garlicky aioli and flash-frying tiny white clams. There was a call for more tortilla. ‘That’s you, Rory,’ Flora shouted, face pink, hair a bit sweaty, glass of sangria on the go next to her chopping board.

  But Rory had paused.

  ‘Everything OK?’ Flora asked, when he didn’t jump to it.

  ‘Yes, yes. Absolutely,’ he said, giving himself a quick shake. He’d been distracted. Wondering how often in his life he might have been wrong. It was still virgin territory for him, to question his watertight resolve, the possibility that he might have won arguments, bulldozed through chats, made decisions not necessarily because he was right but because he was so stubbornly headstrong.

  He was feeling more and more like his father every day.

  As he whisked up the eggs for the tortilla, he was caught by his own reflection in the window overlooking the garden. He remembered a similar moment as a teenager, catching sight of himself in a giant hallway mirror, the time he stood at the top of the stairs, Ava trying to get through to their mother in New York, and him saying, voice completely neutral, ‘Unless she calls to talk to me herself, I’m never calling her again.’

  His dad at the bottom of the stairs, standing next to Ava, looking up and saying, ‘That’s up to you, son.’

  And his mother didn’t call. She was terrible at keeping in touch. So he didn’t speak to her again.

  In the hot, smoky kitchen, Rory rubbed his hand over his eyes. Stood holding his fingers over his temples.

  A soft touch to his shoulder reminded him where he was. ‘Have a break,’ Flora said. ‘Go and sit with Ava.’

  Rory would usually have pulled himself together, said absolutely not and got on with his work, but this time he nodded, handing Flora his whisk, sloping out the kitchen door to take a seat next to Ava at the bar.

  ‘That was quick,’ Ava said, sucking on a slice of orange from her sangria.

  ‘I got dismissed. Mind not on the job,’ he said, pouring himself a glass.

  She nodded.

  Rory realised how nice it was for someone just to agree with you and not try to fix the problem. He bobbed the ice and fruit around in his drink with a plastic cocktail stirrer shaped like a palm tree.

  Out front, the café was quietening down. The beach almost deserted. The wind causing havoc for the man collecting up the sun umbrellas.

  Rory had a slug of the sangria and just managed to stop himself coughing. ‘Blimey, that’s strong.’

  Ava laughed.

  He took another gulp, then pushed his glass to one side and leant forwards, elbows on the bar, fingers steepled under his chin, and stared at the lines of optics and liqueurs in front of him. ‘Do you want to know something?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘I did sometimes want to come with you, you know? With you and Gran when you went to New York. When you went to watch Mum.’

  ‘You did?’ Ava said with surprise. He could see her image reflected back at him in the wall of mirror behind the bar.

  ‘Yeah.’ Rory nodded, sitting up straight, bobbing the fruit in his drink again.

  ‘Well why didn’t you?’

  ‘Stubbornness, I suppose. I’d made up my mind.’ Rory licked his lips, rolled the next idea through his head before saying, ‘I don’t think I wanted Dad to think less of me.’

  ‘But he told us to go. He paid for it.’

  Rory shook his head. ‘Yeah, but I knew he thought she’d made the wrong decision by leaving and I felt like I should show that I supported him in that. That he would judge me somehow if I went too. That it would make me seem weak.’

  Ava listened.

  Rory scratched his head, felt like a polar bear at the zoo, suffocating in his cage. ‘And I actually think that I’m right,’ he carried on. ‘I think he would have done.’

  Ava couldn’t deny it.

  ‘But what did I end up with?’ he asked, glancing across at her. ‘Dad thinking I was a strong young man and not getting to see my mum.’ He sighed with annoyance. ‘In retrospect it means nothing what he thought.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I wish you’d come,’ said Ava.

  ‘Yeah,’ Rory nodded. ‘Me too.’

  They both toyed with their drinks in silence, Rory twirling the plastic palm tree stirrer between his fingers.

  ‘It’s very unlike you though, Rory,’ Ava said, fishing out a slice of peach to eat from her glass. ‘You suddenly taking Mum’s side.’

  ‘I’m not taking her side,’ he said. ‘I just feel like I maybe took the wrong side. That there shouldn’t have been a side at all.’

  The awning flapped in the wind. The light dimmed as the sun began to sink. Chairs scraped. Igor came round to make a drinks order. Sploshing more sangria into their glasses with a wink as he left.

  Flora appeared with the fresh, warm tortilla sliced into chunks and added it to the plates on the bar, then scooped two portions up on to a separate little plate, added a blob of aioli, and set it in front of Ava and Rory. ‘Here,’ she said, sliding the plate on to the counter. ‘Get it while it’s hot.’

  Rory hadn’t realised he was quite so famished until he took a bite.

  Ava picked up her diamond-shaped wedge, looked at Rory and then shoved the whole thing in her mouth at once, hardly able to cram it all in.

  Rory was momentarily stunned by her table manners, then the memory sparked of them doing the same as kids and he shook his head in disbelief. ‘You are kidding?’ he said.

  She shook her head, having trouble chewing.

  Unable to resist a challenge, no matter how uncouth, Rory picked his tortilla chunk up and did the same, stuffing it into his mouth, worrying for a moment that he might have to spit the whole lot out on the floor.

  Seconds ticked by as both of them sat side by side trying to chew, trying to get their teeth to do something when their mouths were unable to move. Ava laughed and tiny bits of tortilla shot out. Rory worried if he laughed it might come out of his nose. He caught sight of the woman in the gold bikini from earlier giving an unimpressed sneer, and he had to hide his face in his hand as he started to laugh and choke at the same time. It was all strangely liberating. He knew exactly why his grandmother had looked at them with such disdain and why his mother had angled her chair away when they’d played the game twenty years ago. He would struggle to watch Max do this without telling him off for messing with his food. Because he had forgotten how much fun it was to be a
participant in simple silliness. Again he realised that maybe he should let a few more things go.

  ‘I win,’ said Ava in the end, opening her mouth wide so he could see there was nothing left while Rory was still struggling to chew. She took a self-congratulatory gulp of sangria.

  Rory finally finished. ‘That was very immature,’ he said, still unable to quite give in.

  Ava rolled her eyes.

  They sat side by side in silence as the sun disappeared into the trees like a flickering bonfire.

  Then Ava held her curls away from her face, sighed, and said, from out of nowhere, ‘I don’t see how you think having FOMO would stop someone getting married.’

  Rory nearly spat his drink out.

  ‘Do you really think I’ve got FOMO?’ she asked.

  ‘Ava, seriously, I can’t even remember what FOMO means,’ he said. ‘Fear of something.’

  ‘Missing out,’ she said, picking another bit of peach from her glass.

  ‘Oh yeah. Well, yeah, I do think you have that. But I don’t think that’s why you’re not married.’

  ‘Why do you think I’m not married?’

  ‘You’re too picky.’

  Flora appeared behind the bar, service finished. She scoffed as she poured herself a huge glass of sangria. ‘No one is too picky, Rory,’ she said. ‘It’s good to be picky. Golly, take it from me, there’s nothing worse than marrying the wrong person.’

  Rory huffed. ‘OK, fine, fine, I’ll give you that,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe you’re just not the marrying kind,’ Flora said to Ava, fanning her flushed cheeks with a menu. ‘I’m going to be absolutely squiffy by the end of today. What Igor’s put in this, I have no idea!’

  ‘No, forget marriage then.’ Ava waved the comment away. ‘Just a good long-term relationship. A great one.’

  Rory propped himself up on the bar, starting to feel the effects of Igor’s lethally strong mixology. ‘I think maybe it’s that you can’t settle. Look at Jonathon, he was perfectly nice.’