Summer at 23 the Strand

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Or I can work here and make tea and coffee until Fred is better. I can make cake. English cake. Romanian cake. Cozonac. Cozonac is a special Romanian cake for Easter and Christmas. It’s a sweet bread with dried fruit and nuts.’

  ‘Yum yum,’ Saffron said. ‘Dad could do with something different in here to bring the punters in. The season’s short and I’m always telling him he could open more than he does in the winter.’

  ‘Soup,’ Ana said. ‘He could serve soup in winter.’

  ‘Now there’s an idea.’

  ‘I can make soup. Spicy parsnip. Potato and leek.’

  ‘Sounds delish. You’ll be a great asset to Dad, I can see that already.’

  Delish? Asset? Ana didn’t know these words but she had a feeling they were good ones.

  ‘And I can clean. Even the toilets. I did that in my last job in a hotel in Bristol. But now I’d like to live here. And to work. I need work.’

  ‘Blimey, you’re desperate if you’d clean toilets!’ Saffron laughed, and Ana had a feeling this daughter of Fred’s was the one most like him. She liked Saffron already anyway, just as she’d liked Fred.

  ‘It’s essential, yes?’

  ‘Very,’ Saffron said. ‘Dad did have someone helping him but she turned her nose up at cleaning the toilet and she was light-fingered.’

  ‘Light-fingered?’

  ‘Stole stuff. Teabags. Bits of cake. A tenner here and there when she thought Dad wouldn’t notice.’ Saffron began clearing the stale cake from the stands, shoving it all into a plastic bag.

  ‘I don’t take things,’ Ana said.

  Saffron turned to face her. She put the bag down and placed her hands on Ana’s shoulders.

  ‘D’you know, Ana? I believe you. Perhaps, between us, we could keep this place going until Dad’s back on his feet, as it were. When can you start?’

  ‘Now,’ Ana said.

  ‘You’re on,’ Saffron said.

  ‘I’m in the right place at the right time?’ Ana said. Shelley had said that.

  ‘You could say that,’ Saffron said, giving her a hug.

  Ana hugged her back.

  She took a deep breath – she had something else she needed to ask.

  ‘At the library the lady said I had to have a permanent address to apply for jobs. Do you think Fred would let me use this address?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. There’s a flat up over, not that anyone’s lived in it for years. Dad uses it to store stuff. But if he has a hissy fit and says no, seeing as we’re going to be working together you could use my address.’

  ‘I can?’

  ‘Didn’t I just say?’ Saffron laughed. ‘And if you’ve got nowhere to go after you leave the holiday let, and before this place is cleaned up, I could put my two boys in together and give you a bed. Just till you get sorted. That’s if you can stand the din of three excited kids about the place?’

  ‘I can,’ Ana said, too choked up at Saffron’s kindness to say more.

  ‘Right then. Let’s get on. There’s work to do.’

  Ana nodded, still unable to say anything for fear of dissolving into tears, which would help no one at that moment. She went into the kitchen and found a pair of rubber gloves and put them on. She had made a new friend and had a feeling everything was going to be all right after all.

  Ana knocked loudly on Shelley’s door at seven-thirty the next morning. She knew Shelley was up because all the lights were on inside.

  ‘Blimey, girl, are you just coming home or just going out?’ Shelley said when she answered the knock. ‘Black as pitch it was from your place yesterday evening when I glanced over. Had a little liaison, did you? Some handsome fisherman or something?’ Shelley tapped the side of her nose and winked.

  Ana didn’t know what liaison meant but she could guess – Shelley thought she had been in bed with someone, didn’t she?

  ‘Not that, no,’ Ana said. ‘I have a job. I began yesterday. Saffron and me, we scrubbed and we cleaned, and I made cake. It was ten o’clock when I got home yesterday. Today we will open The Port Light café at half past eight. I won’t have time to swim today.’

  ‘Well, there’s a change of fortune for you. I’m pleased for you, lovey. Really pleased. And I’ve got a bit of news for you. I’m going home a couple of days early. Clean forgot I had a hospital appointment, didn’t I?’

  ‘Hospital?’

  Was Shelley ill?

  ‘Don’t look so worried. Nothing serious. Just something I have to do once a year to keep an eye on the old ticker. A load of old nonsense because I’m as fit as a fiddle and the swimming helps. But I suppose I’d better go, get the old ticker checked out again, and then they’ll scoot me off to look after myself for another year.’ Shelley placed her hand on her chest and Ana was pretty sure ticker was a funny term for heart. ‘So that means I probably won’t be here when you get back later.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ana said.

  ‘But I’ve loved your company, Ana. I really have.’

  ‘And me. I like spending time with you. Thank you.’

  ‘So that’s mutual then. But I won’t say we’ll keep in touch and here’s my address or anything because you don’t need an old bag like me in your life.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ana said again. She understood exactly what it was Shelley was saying. ‘But if you come back I hope I will still be working at The Port Light. You can come and see me, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Shelley said. ‘Now let’s have that goodbye hug.’ She pulled Ana towards her and Ana could feel Shelley’s bones, thin and hard against her. ‘Now off you go, and get on with what I hope will be a very long and happy life, Ana, lovey.’

  ‘I hope so too,’ Ana said, and left.

  Dear next occupant,

  I didn’t know what to leave for you as is the tradition at 23 The Strand. So, I leave you my collection of shells. Sometimes it is the smallest things that cost no money that give the happiest thoughts. I live and work here now, at The Port Light café, if you want to call there and have coffee. I can collect shells every day now if I want to. These are for you, a memory of your holiday. Have a happy time. You can leave something for the next occupant if that is what you want to do.

  Ana

  Chapter Six

  LATE JULY

  Stella

  ‘No, Mum, I am not having a nervous breakdown.’

  Stella propped the phone between her raised shoulder and her ear and picked up the little jar of shells she’d found on the small dining table of 23 The Strand. Her teeth were clenched together so hard as she spoke that it made her jaw ache. She’d purposely left all technological gadgets – her laptop, her iPad – behind and now she was wishing she’d left her very old, and very basic, mobile there as well.

  ‘Well, something’s wrong,’ her mother said. ‘I mean, why won’t you tell me where you are? I could come down and sit with you, and…’

  ‘I’m not ill, Mum. I don’t need sitting with, as you put it,’ Stella said as evenly as she could. Yes, there was something – not wrong exactly, but not in Stella’s plans either. Or her husband James’s. And her mother didn’t need to know about it, not yet. ‘I’m not immobile in a hospital bed needing 24/7 care.’ She jiggled the jar this way and that, watching the light hit the iridescence of the shells – how pretty they were.

  ‘I can hear bells. Are there bells ringing somewhere? Are you in some sort of retreat?’

  Stella held her breath, then let it out in a long, controlled sigh.

  ‘Sort of,’ she said. Perhaps that much information would make her mother back off a bit.

  ‘Is it James then? Are you and he having a rough patch?’

  ‘No. It’s not James and no we aren’t. James and I are absolutely fine. I just need a bit of time on my own, that’s all. James understands my need for that and he’s happy for me to be here.’

  ‘Your father and I had a rough patch or two,’ her mother said as though Stella hadn’t spoken at all.

  ‘I know.’ What Stella
didn’t add was that she’d heard the rows and wished she hadn’t. Her mother was a widow now but filled her days with activity – swimming in a local hotel pool, Pilates, embroidery club, lunch clubs of various sorts.

  ‘I could come down. Wherever you are, that is. I don’t know why you won’t let me know—’

  ‘That’s lovely of you, Mum,’ Stella interrupted, ‘but company isn’t what I need at the moment.’

  Stella had plenty of that in her house up on the hill – if she stepped out onto the deck of 23 The Strand she could see the roof of her house against the skyline. It was just that she didn’t want to be in it for a couple of weeks – she needed to recharge, rethink, re-energise. She had the company of her husband, James, and three children – Max and Adam, the twins, who were fifteen, and Lola, who was twelve – pretty much 24/7, especially in the school holidays. And it was rare for a weekend to go by when friends of one or all of her children weren’t around all day or stopping for sleepovers, all of them seeming to regard Stella’s fridge as an extension of their own at home. Sometimes, just sometimes, she wondered if any of them noticed she was there. Did they just see her as a provider of meals, a laundry service, someone to check over homework when asked, and a million other things? It had been Stella’s choice – with James supporting her all the way – to be a stay-at-home mum and she’d loved it. Motherhood was something for which no one got any training and yet it was – in her opinion and in James’s – just about the most important job. She’d been there to fetch sick children from school, or take them for urgent dental appointments, or just to sit, snuggled in a fleecy blanket, to comfort them when they felt sad and she decided they didn’t have to go to school that day and home was the best place to be in the circumstances. But, just when she was thinking of maybe getting back into nursing, retraining, now… this!

  ‘Do James and the children know where you are?’

  ‘James does.’

  ‘I still think it’s irresponsible…’

  ‘Look, Mum,’ Stella snapped. ‘I’d love to have your approval on this because it’s what I want and need to do. But I’m forty-one years old now and I don’t need that approval. Anyway, got to go. Love you.’

  Stella caught the word ‘love’ in her ear, knowing the rest of the sentence would be ‘…you too’, but she’d already switched off the phone.

  She’d given herself a fortnight to do nothing at all, or everything. She had given herself the gift of time to indulge herself because who knew how much of that she’d have from now on. Stella had brought six paperbacks with her that she’d been given as presents over the past two or three years and hadn’t, yet, got around to reading because she’d never been able to find the time. She’d brought the tapestry kit her mother had bought her last Christmas, which she might or might not open. She’d brought notepaper and envelopes and her address book and she had a fancy to handwrite a letter to her old school friend Chrissie. They’d kept in touch with Christmas cards, sending changes of address when needed, so Stella knew where to write to now, although they never had got around to exchanging email addresses. Chrissie – so Stella had discovered on Google very recently – had written a novel. It was no mean feat to write a novel and she’d write to Chrissie and congratulate her, and when she got back home she’d order Chrissie’s book from Amazon. And then a thought pinged into her head – maybe she could write one too? Something about family life, maybe? Or start a blog of some sort. Already ideas were beginning to swirl around in her mind.

  Max was the first to turn up. He came marching up the steps to the deck, and stepped in through the open doorway.

  ‘Max?’ Stella said.

  ‘Don’t say you’ve forgotten me already,’ Max said with the beginnings of a grin.

  ‘No. Of course I haven’t. I’m surprised to see you, that’s all. And I’m wondering why… and how… you’re here. Did your dad tell you where I was?’

  ‘No. You could look a bit more pleased to see me, Mum.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course I’m pleased to see you. I’m just wondering why you’re here, that’s all, seeing as your dad and I explained I need a bit of a break from, well, everything. Just for a while.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Max said. ‘I know all that.’

  ‘So, is there something I can help with? Without having to come back home immediately, that is.’

  ‘Might be,’ Max said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Dad is so rubbish at English, Mum.’

  ‘English? Have you been given homework to do in the school holidays?’

  What a lousy mother she was not to have asked that before bailing out. But James was there. He’d taken two weeks off to man the fort as it were.

  Max was roaming around the chalet now. He peered into the bedroom, then opened and closed the bathroom door. Then he found the mugs and the coffee and switched on the kettle. Stella didn’t have the heart to remind him – just in case there was something seriously worrying him – this was her space and he ought to have asked.

  ‘So, have you?’ Stella prompted. ‘Been given English homework?’

  ‘Nah,’ Max said.

  ‘The word is “no”, Max, not “nah”. Just saying, seeing as you’re the one here saying your dad is rubbish at English.’

  ‘Ha ha. Yeah, well, point taken,’ Max laughed, looking exactly like his father. Max and Adam might be twins but they didn’t look alike. Max was the spitting image of his father with dark-blond hair and brown eyes, and Adam was more like her, or a male version of her, with wild and curly dark hair, verging on black, and eyes just a shade or two darker than his twin’s. It was wrong, very wrong, Stella knew, to have favourites – but there was something about Max, as her firstborn twin, that made her heart feel that bit warmer, flutter that bit faster, if anything was upsetting him. Goodness, but what a size she’d been when she’d been expecting the twins. Stella put a hand to her pancake-flat stomach – a stomach she was proud of seeing as she was a careful eater and walked at least two miles every day.

  ‘So, what’s the problem with English and your dad?’

  Max shrugged.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He thinks I’m nerdy because I know about things like conjunctions and past participles and stuff like that.’

  ‘He’s a pharmacist, Max. Science is more his thing. He can’t spell well either but apparently that’s par for the course for many scientific people.’

  Stella remembered the shock she’d got the first time he’d written to her when he’d been on holiday with his mates, a holiday he hadn’t been able to get out of soon after meeting her. Hear and here, there, they’re and their were all the same to James.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Max said. ‘Coffee? While I’m here making some?’

  ‘Please. Shall we take it outside on the deck?’

  Stella had a feeling Max was here for something else besides the English issue. Just sitting and waiting for him to tell her might be the best plan.

  ‘I want the truth, Mum,’ Max said, sitting opposite Stella on the deck, cradling the mug of coffee in his hands. ‘You and Dad are splitting up.’

  Stella couldn’t detect even the hint of a question in that last sentence – it was more of a statement.

  ‘Is that what you think?’ she asked gently.

  ‘Yeah. And so do Adam and Lola.’

  ‘You’ve discussed this with them?’

  ‘Lola brought it up first. She said she was almost unique in her class having a mum and dad at home and now she’d be like the others. She was almost pleased. Two Christmases, two birthdays, two holidays abroad somewhere in the summer, that sort of thing. That’s what Lola said.’

  ‘Well, she’s wrong. She won’t be having any of that sort of thing. Your dad and I aren’t splitting up. Have you said any of this to him?’

  ‘’Course not. It’s easier saying stuff like this to you. You listen to what I say better than Dad, and you don’t give me lectures and stuff the way he does. And anyway, you’re the one who’s run away.’<
br />
  Stella gulped back a great wodge of emotion at what Max had just said. It seemed to qualify her decision to be a stay-at-home mum somehow. But now she wasn’t there, and he missed that, didn’t he?

  ‘Max, darling, I have not run away.’

  ‘I miss you,’ Max said. His huge brown eyes pooled with tears, and in that moment Stella thought he looked like he had on the first day of school when she’d left him and Adam at the school gate. Adam had run off happily with a boy he knew from playgroup but Max had just stood there, looking at her, tears in his eyes.

  Stella almost gave in – there was that pull on her emotions the other two didn’t quite have.

  ‘I’ve only been gone a day!’ Stella laughed. ‘I haven’t even read the first page of the six books I’ve brought with me. I never seem to get time at home.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Max said. He tipped his head to one side, studying her. Stella knew he was processing the information and, perhaps, coming to realise that what she said was true.

  Max had a sensitive soul. He loved poetry, both reading it and writing it. He was good at writing short stories too. His teachers had him down for studying the arts at university – Cambridge or Oxford had been mentioned.

  ‘Hmm, what?’ Stella prompted. ‘I’m here with you now, and I’m listening.’

  Max gave her a big grin.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, slowly, as though he was taking his time about what he was going to say next. ‘I don’t want to be a pharmacist like Dad, however much he’d like me to be,’ Max said suddenly, but with an assurance that made Stella think he’d been rehearsing the words all the way down the hill from home to here. ‘He’s always on about it. He was on about it last night. Says you can work anywhere in the world if you’re a pharmacist because lots of it’s in Latin, which is universal.’

  Yes, James did say that. Sometimes Stella had questioned whether her husband understood where Max was coming from with his love of poetry. They’d had sharp words about it, her and James. ‘He’s got to do what’s right for him,’ was what Stella had said, and James had retorted that writing poetry wasn’t going to get Max a decent living and a large house to live in, was it?