The Beach Hut Next Door

by Veronica Henry

  ‘Elodie?’

  ‘Yes.’ She was right by her chair now. She felt wrong, towering over her, so she crouched down.

  She couldn’t believe how tiny Lillie had become. She had never been large – always petite – but now she was a shrunken little woman, no bigger than a six-year-old child. Her hair was wispy and white and barely covered her scalp. Her cheekbones were sharper than ever; her lips cracked; her eyes huge in her face.

  She looked pitiful. No matter what her mother had done to her, Elodie wouldn’t have wished this on her. She felt revulsion and pity rise up in the throat. She hadn’t expected this.

  Lillie was reaching out a hand. Spillikin fingers, as cold as ice, clutched Elodie’s arm.

  ‘Is it really you? I can’t tell.’

  Of course she wouldn’t recognize her. The last time Lillie had seen her daughter, Elodie had been a bride of twenty. Now she was seventy, albeit well preserved. She could still pass for mid-fifties. She had kept her figure. She dressed well. Her skin was good; her haircut sharp. The importance of those things her mother had drummed into her. Yet age, it seemed, got you in the end, no matter how good your genes or your regime.

  ‘Yes. It’s me.’

  ‘My beautiful girl …’ Lillie reached out and touched Elodie’s face. Her hair. ‘What did I do to you?’

  Her voice was cracked with sadness. Her face even more so.

  ‘It’s OK. It doesn’t matter now.’ Elodie wanted to reassure her. She couldn’t berate this pitiful creature. Not that she had intended to do that. She picked her mother’s hands up in hers, stroking them, running her fingertips over the swollen joints, the raised veins.

  ‘What do you want?’ Lillie sounded distressed. ‘What have you come for, after all this time?’

  ‘I wanted to see you, Maman.’ Elodie found herself instinctively reverting to the French, which she had used when she was small.

  Lillie shook her head. ‘I wanted to find you. I wanted to explain. It wasn’t meant to happen like that … But I was too afraid. Too ashamed.’

  ‘I know. I know.’ Elodie found herself murmuring empty platitudes. She couldn’t bear the thought that she was causing this pitiful creature distress. She was so frail; she didn’t think she could take it. ‘Please – I didn’t come here to upset you.’

  There was no point in a confrontation or recriminations. It would be like crushing a beetle with her boot.

  ‘Every day I have thought of you. Every day I have wondered how you are. Do you know what it’s like, to lose your daughter?’

  ‘No …’ Elodie couldn’t begin to imagine it. ‘But I’m here now, Maman.’

  ‘But why?’ There were tears in Lillie’s eyes.

  ‘Because … because I wanted to tell you it’s OK.’

  How bald and insufficient that word seemed. But it was true. There was no point in Lillie seeing her days out in this room, tortured by what she had done. She had suffered enough.

  She could feel her mother trembling. Should she notify one of the staff? Did she always tremble, or was the emotion too much for her? She had to admit she felt shaky herself.

  ‘Could I have some water?’ Lillie held out an arm to indicate a carafe on the dressing table. Elodie filled a paper cup, then handed it to her mother. She looked like a baby bird as she bent her head to drink: bedraggled, vulnerable.

  When she’d finished she looked at Elodie. The water seemed to revive her. She held her head proud, and Elodie saw a vestige of her former beauty.

  ‘Your father … I am not going to blame him, but he was a very cruel man. He wanted to keep me … in a cage. A beautiful gold cage that only he had the key to. I was so bored, Elodie. I wanted to do so much more with my life, but how could I? I had to be the dutiful wife. He would not let me work. Use my brain. All I had to think about was what I looked like …’

  ‘I thought …’ Elodie was surprised. ‘I thought that was what you wanted?’

  ‘No. To be truthful, I didn’t know what I wanted. But I was jealous of you.’

  ‘Jealous?’ Elodie felt shocked. Never for a moment would she have imagined the self-assured and glamorous Lillie being jealous of her.

  ‘You had a future. I knew you would be something. You would never just turn into a version of me. You had so much more about you. You were strong.’

  She held the cup up to her lips and drank again. Elodie had a flashback of Lillie with a coupe of champagne. Her heart contracted with regret for the lost years.

  ‘I didn’t like myself very much, my darling. I felt useless. Pointless. I was just an ornament for your father. Another one of his status symbols.’ She shut her eyes. Elodie could see tiny blue veins on the lids. ‘I went after Jolyon to hurt them, not you.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘Your father and Jeanie.’

  Elodie blinked. She processed the thought. If anything, she would have suspected her mother and Roger of having an affair. Jeanie had seemed so perfect, so untouchable. Suddenly, everything made more sense.

  Desmond and Jeanie.

  ‘They were having an affair?’’

  ‘Oh yes. That’s why he was so delighted about you and Jolyon. It cemented the partnership. It meant he could always be near her.’

  Elodie felt queasy. She had been manipulated by everyone. She had been oblivious. She had been wrapped up in her happy-ever-after without knowing she was a pawn in everyone else’s sordid little game. Everyone was complicit except Roger – ironically, the one person who had made her feel suspicious was the only one not implicated.

  Lillie carried on talking, her voice an eerie whisper in the gloom, as if it was the ghost of her former self.

  ‘I felt humiliated. They flaunted it, with their trips away, their meetings, their plans. I wanted to prove to myself that I was powerful. That I could have whoever I wanted. Seducing Jolyon was the perfect answer …’

  At this point she gave such a Gallic shrug that Elodie almost laughed. It was such a French solution to the problem; so typical of her mother, now Elodie had the benefit of hindsight and life experience. Of course, at the time, she had been blind to everything.

  ‘Once I had seduced him, I couldn’t let go.’ There was a flicker of Lillie’s old defiance. Elodie flinched at the words. She didn’t want to think about it, even now. Her mother closing in on Jolyon, beguiling him with her beauty. How could he have resisted?

  ‘I became addicted to his attention. I wanted to be wanted so much. I didn’t care that he wasn’t mine to have, that he was yours, that he was your future.’

  The hand holding Lillie’s cup was trembling so much that she dropped it. Water splashed onto her skirt, but neither of them took any notice.

  ‘It was a terrible thing to do,’ whispered Elodie, ‘but I think I understand.’

  ‘You weren’t supposed to find out.’ Lillie’s head lolled to one side, as if she was too tired to hold it up. ‘I was never going to stop you having your life with him.’

  ‘But he thought it was OK to do that?’ Elodie found her voice tightening, with anger and tears.

  ‘Elodie, he had no idea what he was doing. He was young, vulnerable, confused. He didn’t feel good about it. He was … tortured.’

  Elodie shut her eyes. She could feel tears coming as she remembered overhearing the conversation that had changed her life. She knew her mother was right: that Jolyon had suffered. That didn’t take away from the fact that he had done what he must have known was wrong.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Jolyon?’ Lillie gave a shrug. ‘I do not know. There was never any reason for me to find out what happened to him. Maybe he found another girl?’

  Elodie chewed her lip. She had always avoided trying to track down Jolyon, although it would have been easy, for she had felt so strongly that Edmund had been Otto’s father. She didn’t want to confuse her so
n, although Otto knew Edmund was not of his blood. And Edmund had done such a wonderful job, she felt it would be disrespectful to dig up Jolyon and produce him like a rabbit out of a hat, even after Edmund’s death. Anyway, Otto was now a grown man and had children himself. If he’d wanted to find out who his real father was, Elodie wouldn’t have stood in his way, but he had never asked her for the information.

  Lillie was shifting in her chair. She looked uncomfortable.

  ‘After the wedding, everything fell apart,’ she said. ‘Your father was furious. Even though he was guilty too, what I had done was so much worse. And it was in public, so everyone knew.’

  Elodie couldn’t begin to imagine the aftermath. Everyone’s life unravelling in full view of friends and relatives. And Jolyon in the middle of it. Hardly an innocent victim – Lillie hadn’t held a gun to his head, presumably – but he’d had the most to lose.

  ‘The business partnership collapsed, of course. Your father pulled out his investment. And Roger left Jeanie, but he was no innocent. He was only with her for the money. The rat deserted the sinking ship.’

  The bitterness in Lillie’s tone told Elodie that Roger must have spurned her advances at some point. But she wasn’t going to accuse her mother of anything else. It hardly mattered now. All that was evident is that the situation had been a hotbed of unhappy people in unhappy marriages. Elodie was not going to judge. All she felt was lucky that she had been able to have a happy life after the event, despite everything, and that she thought the best was probably yet to come.

  ‘And … my father?’

  ‘We stayed together for a while. There seemed no point in separating. But eventually we drifted apart. I stayed in The Grey House. He stayed up in Worcestershire. He died … five years ago.’

  Elodie took in a breath. Even though they had had no contact for all those years, apart from the olive branch she had chosen to ignore, it was still a shock to hear he was dead. She felt a ripple of regret that it was too late for any sort of reconciliation with him.

  Yet not too late for her and Lillie. Her profoundest feeling, as she looked at her mother, was of pity. She doubted Lillie had set out to be cruel. She was selfish, perhaps, and self-centred, but she was certain her intention hadn’t been to hurt Elodie. She had thought she would get away with it, no doubt. She’d been insecure, unhappy; lonely too, probably. As a writer, Elodie had spent a long time thinking about human motivation and why people behaved the way they did. It had given her empathy for most things.

  Lillie let out a sigh and seemed to crumple before her very eyes, as if talking had sucked the very last of her energy.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Elodie.

  Lillie shut her eyes and shook her head. ‘I’m so very tired.’

  Her voice was barely there. It faded away to a whisper. Her head fell to one side and a moment later she was asleep, her breathing shallow. Elodie had no idea if this was normal, or what her mother’s official state of health was, but in that moment, she made a decision.

  She would take her mother back to The Grey House. She could have her old room, with the view she loved so much. She would hire a carer to look after her when she wasn’t there. She couldn’t bear to see her alone in this place a moment longer, with its sterile, efficient service that had no heart. It was time to forget what had happened and to set things right. To let the house heal the rift.

  Lillie opened her eyes.

  ‘I want you to come home with me,’ Elodie told her. ‘It will be a couple of months, because there’s work to be done.’

  ‘Home?’ Lillie’s eyes clouded with confusion. ‘Where is that?’

  ‘The Grey House. I bought The Grey House.’

  ‘You did?’ Lillie took in the information, a veil of bewilderment over her face. ‘But why?’

  ‘It was the place where I was happiest. It’s where I belong. It’s where we belong.’

  ‘I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you could … want me there.’

  Elodie sighed.

  ‘Because you’re my mother, and what happened doesn’t matter any more. And because …’ she took in a deep breath for the last revelation. ‘Because I am going to marry the love of my life. And I want you to meet him. And I want you to meet my son.’

  ‘Son …’ Lillie seemed to be trying the word as if for the first time. ‘You have children. I have a grandson.’

  ‘You have a wonderful grandson.’ She wasn’t going to break the news that Otto was Jolyon’s. She thought perhaps her mother had taken on enough that afternoon. She seemed, if it were possible, even frailer than she had when Elodie arrived. ‘And great-grandchildren. And all of them are reasons for my coming back here.’

  The picture was clear in her head. All of them, her existing family and her new family, on the beach, spilling out of the hut, talking, laughing, eating, arguing, running, making sandcastles, playing rounders. And she and Colm in the centre of it. Their rocks.

  Lillie held out a hand – a shrivelled little claw. Elodie grasped it tight.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Lillie. ‘I am so, so sorry.’

  A trail of glittery tears seeped out of her eyes and down the paper-thin skin on her face. Elodie reached out and brushed them gently away.

  ‘This is not a day for tears, Maman,’ she said.

  TIM AND RACHEL

  Only a few weeks ago, the midday sun would have made Rachel feel sick. But now she had passed into the middle trimester, the nausea had passed as swiftly as it had arrived. She felt stronger and more full of energy, even though her condition was now apparent to anyone who cared to look closely. She held her shoes in her hand, walking on the damp sand the tide had recently vacated. It was cool on the soles of her feet. The dry sand further up would be scorching: she would walk along the beach as far as she could before venturing onto it, once she became level with the hut.

  She didn’t know how she was going to approach him. There was no script for what she was about to do, of that she was certain. But she had to ask. She’d be crazy not to ask. Though she felt slightly uncomfortable when she thought of his possible reaction. Her proposition, she thought, could go either way.

  It wasn’t how she’d planned it. It really wasn’t. A suspicious mind might assume it had been premeditated from the word go, but Rachel had honestly thought it was all going to be all right with Lee. He had been shocked when she told him she was pregnant at first, but his shock had quickly turned to pride and excitement. He had wanted to shout the news from the rooftops, but she had urged him to wait until the crucial first three months were over before broadcasting it to all and sundry.

  By which time, he had started to get cold feet. The weekend she had got back from the beach hut, the weekend she had confessed her condition to Tim, she could tell by the state of the flat that Lee had been out on the razz. His nights out had become more and more frequent. He ended up sleeping on the sofa – so as not to disturb her, he said, but she sensed a reluctance in him to touch her. A reluctance that almost became a revulsion as her condition became more apparent.

  She’d called him on it. This was important to her, this baby. All babies were important, of course, but she felt even more protective than the average first-time mother, given what she had been through.

  ‘You’re not happy about this, are you?’ she asked him one night while he sat in front of the TV screen, manipulating the handset of some intergalactic computer game – it had seemed to become his escape, this world fraught with danger and noise.

  She wasn’t being confrontational, just matter-of-fact.

  He didn’t bluster or protest. He paused his game and looked her straight in the eye. ‘I don’t think I’m ready.’

  She nodded as she considered his reply. ‘Fair enough.’

  He picked up his bottle of beer and starting picking at the label.

  ‘I’m sorry. I just can�
��t get my head round it. I mean, it’s going to be like a prison sentence, isn’t it?’ He peeled off a long strip and crumpled the paper up in his fingers.

  She tried not to show the ice in her eyes. ‘The baby’s going to be our priority, yes. If that’s what you mean. Of course it is.’

  Lee looked awkward. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his thighs, the bottle dangling between the fingers of one hand, staring down at the floor. His long fringe fell forward; his shoulders were slight. He seemed like a boy, although he was thirty-four. Perfectly old enough to take the responsibility. But she wasn’t going to force him into it. She wanted the father of her baby to be one hundred percent dedicated. She could sense the tension and the arguments already, and the baby was barely bigger than an orange. Already it had come between them.

  ‘It would be better if we split now, than put the baby through all the arguing.’ She couldn’t believe how calmly she said it.

  He looked up. The relief on his face was palpable. ‘I’m really sorry, Rach. I just think I’ll be a shit dad. I’ll give you money and everything …’

  The baby had been unexpected, but he knew what she’d been through, so they’d agreed to give it a go. Rachel had been so bowled over by being pregnant, she hadn’t read the danger signs or picked up on his underlying reluctance. She’d mistakenly expected Lee to be as thrilled as she was, which in retrospect was a huge error of judgment. But her judgment had been skewed – by the drugs, the disappointment, the divorce.

  ‘It wasn’t fair of me, to force you into it.’

  ‘You didn’t force me.’ Lee seemed distressed. ‘You so didn’t. I wanted it too. At least I thought I did. But now I just don’t know …’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘If you want to go, go. I’ll be fine. I know I will.’

  ‘But it’s a terrible thing to do.’

  ‘No,’ said Rachel. ‘What would be terrible would be for us to stay together and end up hating each other and splitting up anyway. This way we can stay friends.’

  Her clarity astonished her. She found a strength inside she didn’t know she had. The choice was up to him, though. She wasn’t going to force him into anything. He was the baby’s father. It was up to him to decide.