Me and Mr Jones

by Lucy Diamond

  It had seemed a good idea at the time.

  After lunch, Charlie’s phone beeped and she heard him swear under his breath as he read the text.

  ‘Everything all right?’ she asked, stuffing the chip papers into a bin.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ he said. ‘That was my brother – I just lost track of time. I was supposed to be at my parents’ place by now.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ she said. She gazed around helplessly. They’d come in Charlie’s car, and she’d been counting on a lift home later on. ‘Well … we could get a bus from here, if you need to go.’

  He waved her suggestion away. ‘Don’t be silly. I can take you back, unless …’ He paused, making calculations in his head. ‘Look, tell you what. Why don’t you come with me, pop in there for a cup of tea. It’s on the way to yours.’

  ‘What, all of us?’ She glanced at the girls, who were crouched by some tussocky seagrass, whispering like explorers as they rummaged through its spikes. This was awkward. She didn’t really want to meet his parents today. The girls looked like ragamuffins, their hair wild and tangled from the wind. She no doubt looked every bit as windswept herself, with no make-up and her scruffiest jeans, a hole in one knee. ‘Actually, it’s probably not the best time to—’ she began, but he was already speaking.

  ‘Yeah, course,’ he said. ‘No problemo. They’ll love you guys.’

  ‘LOOK! We got it – a sandhopper!’ exclaimed Hazel just then, straightening up with her fingers curled around to form a cage. Her dimples flashed as she beamed. ‘See him?’

  She opened her palm and a sand-coloured insect immediately leapt to freedom, making her shriek. ‘Oh no. Where did he go?’

  Willow stood up too. ‘What are we doing now?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, you can come and meet my family if you want,’ Charlie said. ‘There’ll probably be some cake on offer …’

  ‘Ooh, yes please,’ Hazel said immediately, sandhopper forgotten. ‘Can we, Mum?’

  Right. This was where Izzy came up with a really good excuse for saying no, thank you, and goodbye … but her brain failed her. ‘I suppose so,’ she said weakly in the end. One cup of tea and a piece of cake with Charlie’s apparently lovely parents, and then home again. How bad could it be, after all?

  THIS BAD, was the answer, when they arrived at the Joneses’ twenty minutes later. Badder than the baddest badness ever experienced before. Flaming heck, as her granny used to say. She’d had nicer welcomes from social services.

  ‘You could have told us you were bringing some other people,’ his mum glowered reproachfully on the doorstep, her eyes beady with dislike as she gave Izzy and her daughters the once-over. ‘Other people’ indeed, like they weren’t just standing there. ‘Honestly, Charlie!’

  Izzy’s fists tightened. She felt like spitting in this woman’s face. How dare she make judgements about her and the girls, how dare she dismiss them with a single glance? She put her arms protectively around Willow and Hazel. Oh, why hadn’t she followed her instincts and asked Charlie to take them home?

  Once they’d been permitted over the threshold, things became even worse: there had been a whole room full of people around a dinner table, spoons in hand, all gawping at them in surprise. Matilda’s mum – whatever her name was – stared dumbly, her gob hanging open in shock as she put two and two together. Probably didn’t think a dance teacher was good enough for their precious Charlie, just like his cow of a mum. AwkWARD, as Louise used to say.

  Unnerved, Izzy followed Charlie into the kitchen, holding the girls’ hands. ‘I think we should go,’ she hissed. ‘They don’t want us here.’

  ‘It’s cool,’ he said cheerfully and she gritted her teeth. ‘Orange squash all right, girls?’

  But it wasn’t cool, not in the slightest. The rejection she’d felt loud and clear from Charlie’s family brought back a flood of old feelings, and all she wanted to do was escape. She was just about to make a dash for freedom with the girls when a woman in a blue dress came into the kitchen, her arms full of pudding bowls.

  ‘Hi, Charlie,’ she said, opening the dishwasher and stacking them inside. ‘Hello, I’m Emma,’ she added to Izzy, then gave an extra-big smile to the girls. ‘I love your names,’ she said. ‘Willow and Hazel, right? Beautiful. So who’s who?’

  Willow introduced them shyly, gazing up at Emma through her eyelashes. Hazel beamed and butted in with their ages, their middle names and her favourite colour (lilac). ‘We’ve been fossil-hunting,’ she added proudly, ‘but we didn’t see any dinosaurs.’

  ‘Maybe next time,’ Emma said, then turned to Izzy. ‘Sorry about the welcome you’ve had,’ she added in a low voice. ‘I promise we’re not all like that.’

  Before Izzy could reply, Matilda’s mum walked in with a serving dish, closely followed by Lilian. Immediately the atmosphere changed.

  ‘Charlie, I did say we were going to have a family talk later, don’t you remember?’ the witch snapped, giving Izzy a meaningful look, in case she was stupid as well as deaf.

  ‘Yeah – sorry, Mum, it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing because … Well, I thought it would be nice for everyone to meet Izzy, Willow and Hazel, that’s all.’

  Nice? For whom? Izzy was starting to think Charlie was insane. ‘Well,’ she said, unable to keep quiet any longer. Time to abort this mission and bail out, she decided. ‘It really has been an absolute pleasure to come here and receive such a friendly reception, but oh, gosh, is that the time?’ Sarcasm dripped through her voice – it was impossible to stop it. ‘Girls, you’ve got all that homework to do this afternoon, and I have a ton of ironing. We’d better go.’

  ‘Ohhh!’ Willow moaned. ‘Homework? Can’t we do that later, Mum?’

  ‘We haven’t even had a BISCUIT!’ Hazel protested.

  Charlie’s expression was full of dismay. ‘Already? Oh, but Iz—’

  A shudder went through her, and it was like Gary was in the room, like he’d never really been away. ‘Don’t call me that,’ she said, pulling her cardigan tight around her. ‘Don’t ever call me that.’ She grabbed Willow by one hand and Hazel by the other. ‘Come on, girls, we’re off.’

  Moments later they were out of the front door. ‘Big mistake, Izzy,’ she said to herself under her breath as she marched away. Huge mistake. Rule number one: do not get involved with a charmer. When would she ever learn?

  ‘Wait!’ Charlie yelled, running after them. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t know it would be like that. Let me drive you home. Please!’

  ‘No thank you,’ she replied icily.

  ‘But how are you going to get back? It’s miles! Come on, don’t be like this, let me give you a lift.’

  ‘We’ll walk,’ she said, then rounded on him with venom in her eyes. ‘Just sod off,’ she hissed savagely. ‘We don’t need you. Not for anything!’

  His shoulders sagged and she left him there, a pathetic figure alone in his parents’ driveway. She couldn’t have cared less.

  ‘Are we really going to walk all the way home?’ Willow asked in a whisper as they strode along together. The sun had gone in and a mean east wind was making the trees shiver.

  Guilt swamped her. Here they were, stuck in the middle of bloody nowhere, with hardly any money and several miles from their flat. She didn’t even know if buses ran on a Sunday around here. Some mother she was.

  Swallowing hard, she forced an unnatural brightness into her voice. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, without a clue how she was going to get out of this. ‘We can—’

  Then she heard a car and Charlie pulled up alongside them in his old Escort. ‘Please,’ he said humbly, leaning across the wheel to catch her eye. ‘I can’t let you walk.’

  Nose in the air, Izzy opened the back door and the girls clambered in gratefully. She sat next to them and they drove in silence back to Lyme.

  Lesson learned, she thought to herself. Lesson bloody learned.

  Chapter Eight

  God, Lilian could be a cow, Emma thought, as Izzy swir
led out of the kitchen, dragging her two bewildered-looking children in tow. That poor woman – the way Lilian had spoken to her was absolutely unforgivable.

  ‘Well, of all the …’ Lilian spluttered now, as Charlie ran after them. You could hear raised voices from the hall and then the front door banging – not slammed, exactly, but certainly shut very firmly. And that was that.

  ‘How rude,’ Lilian fumed. ‘Honestly! I don’t know where Charlie finds these women, I really don’t. None of them have ever had manners, not a single one.’

  She stalked out, nose in the air, and Emma and Alicia were left staring at each other. ‘What a total … bitch,’ said Alicia.

  It was the first time Emma had ever heard Alicia bad-mouth their mother-in-law, and she felt like punching the air. Thank you, God. Maybe she had found an ally among the Jones clan after all these years. ‘I can’t believe that just happened,’ she agreed. ‘It was like seeing a car crash in slow motion.’

  ‘It was brutal,’ Alicia said, aghast. ‘Those poor little girls! What the hell was Charlie playing at, bringing them here? He must have known what would happen.’

  ‘And of course he gets away with none of the blame, as usual,’ muttered Emma before she could stop herself.

  But Alicia was nodding in agreement. ‘As bloody usual,’ she echoed with surprising viciousness.

  They caught each other’s eyes and grinned like conspirators. There was something different about Alicia, Emma thought, and not just her swishy new hairdo and make-up. The two women had never had much to say to each other in the past; Alicia always seemed so preoccupied with her family and tended to let Hugh do the talking for them in any family get-togethers. She seemed feistier than usual today, though, as if she’d suddenly discovered her own backbone.

  ‘Hey, do you know what this big talk’s all about?’ she asked, remembering David’s anxiety on the subject.

  ‘No idea,’ Alicia replied. ‘But I know Hugh’s been worrying.’

  ‘David too,’ Emma said. ‘Come on, let’s make this coffee so that we can find out what the hell’s going on.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Eddie began, with a sideways glance at his wife, ‘we’re not getting any younger, your mum and I.’

  Charlie had returned looking chastened, and now the adults were all around the dining-room table, the children having been ensconced upstairs in the private living area in front of the television. The only guests currently booked in – a Mr and Mrs Ashburton from Devon – had gone out for a day trip to Dorchester and wouldn’t be back for hours. Here we go, thought Emma warily, sipping her coffee as her father-in-law spoke.

  ‘And … well, basically, we just feel that this place is becoming too much for us to keep going,’ Eddie went on. You could have heard a pin drop every time he paused. ‘So we were wondering … well …’

  ‘We’d originally thought we could hand it on to one of you, keep it in the family,’ Lilian said. ‘Business is ticking along; there’s no debt. But you know we’ve always tried to be as fair as we can with you boys, and we decided it would be wrong to give it to just one son.’

  ‘So,’ Eddie said with a heavy sigh, ‘unless one of you wants to buy it from us, unfortunately we’re going to have to sell up.’

  Oh God. This was big. Not on a par with cancer or heart disease, as David had feared, thankfully, but still pretty seismic.

  ‘Sell the house?’ Charlie looked devastated. ‘Oh no. But this is … this is home.’

  ‘I know, son,’ Eddie said. His mouth twisted downwards unhappily. ‘But it’s a lot of work for us. We’d like to retire before long, and move somewhere smaller that doesn’t take so much cleaning and looking after. A … what do you call them again? Those houses with no stairs. Little flat things.’

  ‘A bungalow?’ Hugh prompted.

  ‘A bungalow – that’s the chap.’

  Nobody spoke for a moment. Emma couldn’t tell what David was thinking, but his eyes were faraway. She knew how much he loved this house, steeped with so many childhood memories. The first time they’d come here he’d taken great delight in showing her the fireplace where they’d hung Christmas stockings as children, the hallway where he and Charlie had practised rollerskating on wet days (until Charlie had crashed into the front door and cut his head on the letterbox, and they’d since been banished to the drive). He’d pointed out where Eddie had built them a treehouse in the garden, and the low roof below his old bedroom window onto which he’d climbed out and jumped down from, in order to meet his mates, despite being grounded.

  Poor David. He would be sad to see it go. He turned to her now and, instead of the dismay she’d expected, there was a flicker in his eye that she hadn’t seen for a while, an almost tangible air of excitement. ‘What do you think, Em?’

  She hesitated, taken aback. ‘Of what? Your parents moving out?’

  ‘About us taking this place on. We could do it, couldn’t we?’ His words tumbled out in a rush. ‘I mean, you’d have to give up your job, but you hate it anyway – you’re always saying. We could move down here and make a fresh start together, keep the B&B going. What do you reckon?’

  She stared at him, incredulous. What did she reckon? She reckoned it was a terrible idea, that he must have lost the plot if he seriously thought otherwise. The last thing she wanted was to be stuck miles from civilization, cooking breakfasts for complete strangers and washing sheets every day. No freaking way, she thought with a shudder.

  ‘Um … I don’t …’ she began, but stumbled, aware of everyone’s eyes on her. Lilian’s face in particular was alight with hope. Forget it, love, Emma wanted to say. It’s never going to happen. She was sure they didn’t have enough money to buy a house like this, for starters, however much David might want it. ‘Well, we’d need to think about it,’ she replied after a moment. ‘This isn’t something we can decide here and now, is it?’

  ‘Of course,’ Eddie said, but he seemed disappointed, as if he’d been hoping for closure by the time they’d finished coffee. ‘Hugh? Alicia?’ he prompted. ‘You’ve been very quiet.’

  Alicia hesitated and turned to Hugh. She didn’t want this place either, Emma could tell a mile off, and yet the two of them were surely the only ones who’d be able to afford it.

  ‘This is rather out of the blue,’ Hugh blustered. ‘And with our jobs, and the children’s school … Well, we’re settled where we are, Dad.’

  ‘I could do it,’ Charlie offered.

  An awkward silence greeted his words, no doubt because, like Emma, every single other person around the table thought that actually Charlie could not run a B&B, given his track record. He could barely manage his own life competently, let alone oversee a business. He wasn’t exactly dripping with ready cash, either.

  Lilian and Eddie exchanged a glance, then Eddie cleared his throat. ‘That’s kind of you,’ he began diplomatically. ‘But … well, it’s a lot of work, day in, day out – that’s all. Especially for one person.’

  Hugh cleared his throat. ‘No offence, Charlie, but have you got the money to buy out Mum and Dad?’

  Charlie coloured. ‘I could raise it,’ he said. ‘I could!’

  Nobody spoke, but Emma could almost hear the pantomime-style chorus of ‘Oh no, you couldn’t!’ that they were all thinking.

  ‘Or we could pitch in and run the business between us,’ he went on doggedly. ‘This is a family, right? And families pull together. We can’t have you two struggling along on your own. If we all lend a hand, then we can get this ship back on course.’

  No one seemed to know how to respond to this display of magnanimity. Emma, for one, didn’t believe him for a second. Charlie never did anything for anyone out of simple decency or family-feeling – it wasn’t his style. Look at the pathetic progress on the so-called holiday chalets out the back! Besides, she didn’t think Lilian and Eddie were asking for people to merely lend a hand – they had said, clear as day, that they wanted out.

  There was an awkward silence. ‘I could help out
in the meantime,’ Alicia offered with a somewhat resigned expression. The sparkle had vanished from her eyes. ‘I could do some of the washing and ironing for you. And …’

  Hugh interrupted before she roped herself in for any more chores. ‘This is something we all need to think about,’ he said rather pompously. You could so tell he was the eldest of the brothers; he could never resist taking the lead. She knew it got on David’s nerves sometimes. ‘Now that we know how you feel, Mum and Dad, we can pitch in during the short term, but longer-term we need to weigh everything up carefully. Emma’s right, we can’t rush into a decision today, however willing we are to save the family business. We need to take a more measured approach, think it all through. When, for example, would you like to move out, ideally?’

  ‘I think we could manage one more summer,’ Lilian said, steepling her fingers together. They were rough and gnarled, Emma noticed, dotted with liver spots, the skin almost translucent in places. Hard-working old-lady hands that had scrubbed and cleaned and polished year after year. Hands that were ready for a rest. ‘Don’t you, Eddie?’

  Eddie nodded. ‘We’ve already got lots of bookings for the summer, and it would be nice to say a proper goodbye to our guests,’ he said. ‘But come the autumn, we’d like to move on.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lilian agreed. ‘One last summer – and that’s our lot.’

  Emma could feel David looking at her with the same eager, imploring face, and her heart sank. She took his hand and squeezed it, guilty that she didn’t share his excitement, especially when he hadn’t been so animated for weeks. But could he really not tell that the idea of them taking on the business left her completely cold?

  ‘Well, that gives us a clear timetable at least,’ Hugh said. ‘I can carry on doing the books for you until the autumn, and Alicia’s kindly offered to help with the laundry. Charlie, maybe if you could aim to have at least some of the holiday chalets completed in that time, and—’

  ‘What I could do,’ David put in, ‘is help smarten the place up, while I’m out of work. Whenever rooms are empty, I could redecorate and get them looking their best. I can help Charlie with the holiday chalets too – and whatever else comes up.’ He looked at Emma. ‘It would be good to have something to do.’