by Judy Astley
‘Anyone with an eye to a few quid,’ Sam told them. ‘They cost a bomb, those fancy buggies, and Em insisted she needed the most state-of-the-art gizmo for this baby. God knows why, but it’s the must-have for all the smart mummies. The big fat four-by-four of prams. Anyway, it’s probably on eBay as we speak. I’d have a look and go and grab it back but Emily won’t let me. Says she never wants to see it again.’
‘It would feel cursed,’ Emily chimed in. ‘Ned could have been in it. He was in it only seconds before. What would the evil thieving bastards have done with him? Thrown him out on to the concrete floor or in the road? Suppose they’d taken him and kept him or sold him? Or worse, he could have …’ Her eyes filled with tears.
‘But he wasn’t in it.’ Anna put her arm round Emily. ‘And they only wanted a valuable piece of kit, not a baby. You can’t sell babies.’ She wasn’t entirely sure about this but it was the safest thing to say. Emily’s imagination was quite capable of conjuring up awfulness without back-up from her own mother.
‘I could see it all, like a huge fast flash.’ Emily sobbed into a piece of kitchen roll. ‘If they’d got him, the whole thing from then on went through my head: the press, the “Oh, the careless mother, letting a child go from under her nose while she looked in a shop.” Blame, hate, the horror, all my fault. Stupid, feckless woman, doesn’t deserve a baby, it should be taken into care … People can be so vile.’
‘Oh, come on now, Emily, none of that happened,’ Mike told her. ‘Not even close. Some yobs mugged you. They probably hoped you’d left your bag in it as well so they could get cash and a couple of credit cards at the same time. In fact that’s all they would be after. The pram was probably abandoned somewhere by the river, or even in it, like a nicked car.’
‘I hate London. I loved it and couldn’t imagine being anywhere but here in this house but now it’s spoiled. I don’t want to live here any more. I need to feel safe. I need to be somewhere the children can feel safe,’ Emily said through more tears.
‘That’s a bit of an extreme solution!’ Anna told her, getting up from the opposite sofa and heading for the kitchen. ‘Though I can see how you might feel that at the moment. I promise you it’ll pass. You need another cup of tea,’ she said firmly. ‘And you’re no less safe today than you ever have been so don’t start blaming an entire city.’
Sam followed Anna. He switched the kettle on and then took mugs out of the cupboard, ‘Go easy on her, Anna. She’s not herself. She won’t let go of Ned. She’s got him sleeping in our bed at night now.’
Anna smiled. ‘Emily used to sleep in ours when she was that age. It was very much the thing to do back then. Now of course everyone panics about accidental smothering but it’s only in our western cultures that a baby occupying its own cot is the norm. Don’t worry about it, Sam, it won’t be for long. He won’t still be sleeping with you when he’s twelve.’
Sam laughed. ‘Is that supposed to be a comfort?’
‘I’m doing my best here, Sam,’ Anna said, grinning at him as she poured boiling water into the teapot.
‘But really, it’s bad and getting worse. She didn’t want Alfie and Milly to go to school this morning. Luckily, for once they really wanted to go because both their classes have started on a Halloween lantern-making mission and they didn’t want to miss out. But if they’d only got a regular school day to look forward to it would have been a battle and I’d be on my own there.’
‘Hmm, that’s not good. Emily really is very down, isn’t she? She might need help that’s beyond what we can offer. Has she seen the health visitor or a doctor?’
‘She says she doesn’t want to see anyone. I was thinking it was really great that Charlotte nagged her into going out yesterday but it’s done more harm than good. I keep telling Em the theft was just a form of mugging, an opportunity grabbed, nothing personal, but she’s like a scared little animal and thinks the world has got it in for her.’ Sam, who was usually so laid-back and cheerful, was looking half-chewed with worry. Anna felt sorry for him, for his inability to reassure Emily and make things right for her.
‘Has she talked to Thea? Maybe this is a chance for them to bury the Cornwall hatchet.’
‘Only if it’s buried in each other’s heads,’ Sam said, putting two spoonfuls of sugar in his tea. He tasted it and grimaced and added one more. ‘Thea called her yesterday, all worried about the theft, but Emily wouldn’t speak to her. She’s blaming her along with Charlotte.’
‘Blaming Thea? Whatever for?’
Sam shrugged. ‘Who knows. That’s just what she’s like right now. Irrational. Stubborn.’
‘Depressed. You need to get her to see someone about it, Sam. And fast.’
Now the autumn was well under way, the leaves were daily cascading from the trees and road-sweepers were leaving them in heaps along the pavements, waiting for them to be bagged and taken away. Thea wondered, each time she went out to the shops and passed the mounds of foliage, how old you had to be before you stopped wanting to jump into the middle of a dry leaf pile and kick them around. She and Sean had done just that in the park only a couple of weekends ago, giggling like the infants she taught and racing each other to the café for hot chocolate. It had been one of the few blissfully carefree moments that weekend; just for a little while she’d managed to put the row with Emily out of her mind and simply relish the precious time with Sean.
On the first day of half-term, Thea had got the car packed and ready to go in the early-morning darkness. It was close to freezing outside and she breathed silvery clouds as she went down the path with the last of her bags. The lights were on in Mr and Mrs Over-the-Road’s house and any second now the door would open and either June or Robbie would be sure to come out, dragging the half-asleep terrier as an excuse to find out where she was going and for how long. In Thea’s opinion it was rather early for conversation so she closed the car boot as quietly as she could, then dashed back into the house to double-check she’d locked everything. The house phone was lying on the sofa so she picked it up to put back on the charger but as she checked to make sure that it was switched off she realized it was doing the fast beeps that indicated a voicemail message. No one, she reasoned, could leave one unplayed merely in the interest of gaining thirty seconds’ time – after all, it could be some emergency news or a friend with fabulous gossip – so she sat down on the stairs to listen, the front door wide open.
‘So I wondered if you’d do me a massive favour and have Benji over the second weekend in November. Otherwise I’ll have to put him in kennels for the duration and I thought you probably wouldn’t want me to do that to him.’
Rich’s message gave Thea a jolt. He was a sly sod, she thought after she’d heard it. He’d left a message deliberately loaded with emotional blackmail when he could have called her on her mobile and they could have had a conversation about this. She knew what he was up to: he was avoiding her arguing that he surely had other arrangements that he usually made for the dog, and pushing him to think if he had anyone else he could leave him with. And great timing too – it was weeks now since he’d suddenly appeared in her garden and told her he was moving back down south. How sunny and warm it had been then; it seemed as if they’d moved on a whole season since, rather than only a couple of months.
After Rich’s visit she’d been nervous that he’d keep turning up unexpectedly but she hadn’t seen him since. She’d just got used to not leaping a mile high whenever her phone rang in case it was him; she’d finally been convinced that when he’d said ‘We must have dinner and a proper catch-up’, it was simply polite code for him having no intention of seeing her again. She certainly didn’t want to see him. But Benji was another matter. The weekend after the end of half-term, Sean would be away visiting his mother up in Lancashire and she’d be alone and, really, she could have the dog to stay quite easily. Saying no on principle and condemning Benji to a cold and lonely kennel with possibly not enough opportunity for long walks and exercise seemed horribly
unfair. She would call Rich halfway to Cornwall and say yes, but she’d have to make it as clear as plain glass that it was a one-off.
The road this early was good and clear for Thea had managed to get away before the main body of half-term travellers was on the road. As the sun came up behind her, she looked at the trees and hedgerows at the sides of the road and took in just how much they’d changed since she’d last driven on this route. Only a few weeks ago they’d still been green. Not with the vivid new brightness of spring or the warm variations of midsummer but a selection of gentle, fading shades going sandy in places, a little sparse here and there. Now all was russet and shades of chestnut and deep golds and there were gaps and near-naked branches showing through. She whizzed past Stonehenge and on through the rolling Wiltshire fields, which were now ploughed and earthy, some of them greening a little in places with winter crops. Sheep had grown back their fleeces after the summer shearing and were looking plump with growing lambs. The turning seasons: Thea thought about her class of infants. How many of them had even seen sheep apart from on TV? She would (in spite of the huge amount of paperwork that such things now involved) get a school outing organized to the nearest urban farm in the spring, try to connect the little ones with where their food came from and how sheep and goats and piglets actually felt to touch. And if they all ended up as vegetarians because they’d assumed meat was something factory-made for supermarkets and nothing to do with actual sheep, then that was fair enough.
The journey was a long one but Thea was excited to be seeing Sean again and stopped only briefly a couple of times for a sandwich and some reviving coffee, so when she arrived she wasn’t surprised to find that Sean wasn’t there. She let herself into the converted stable block by Cove Manor and took her bags into the bedroom that overlooked the sea at the end of the building. She hadn’t needed to bring much with her in the way of clothes: over the past year she’d accumulated plenty of basics that stayed in the chest of drawers: knickers, tights, spare jeans and a couple of jumpers that she only wore here. Her shampoo, another toothbrush and various cosmetics also lived in the adjacent bathroom: the place definitely felt almost as much like home as her house in London did. She was – of course – excited about the prospect of moving down here permanently once the school year was up, but was concerned about how hard it might be to find a job in the area. Would friends come all this way to visit? Would the excitement of this slightly nomadic life fade away? How would it be when they had to deal with what Sean called the ‘potatoes’ of life, its essential mundanities, every single day together? Summer had been wonderful, all those weeks, but at the back of her mind had been the awareness that their time together was still limited and it reinforced the excitement of kind of playing house. The real thing would be soon though; after Christmas it would only be just over six months till the end of the summer term and then … a whole new life.
‘Anyone home?’ As Thea went through to the kitchen the door opened and Paul came in.
‘Ah you’re here!’ he said, hugging Thea. ‘Welcome back. I was looking for Sean. I’ve just brought over a couple of essentials for the manor before the half-term clients rock up. It’s a bit last minute but we can’t have them lacking a bedside rug. It can be a deal-breaker on TripAdvisor.’
‘Hi, Paul, how are you doing? Love the sweater,’ Thea said. ‘Lilac is definitely your colour.’
‘You can’t beat a good mauve cashmere,’ he said, stroking his own front. ‘And it makes a change from all the mud-coloured stuff the farming lot wear around here.’
‘You are always an absolute beacon of chic,’ she said, switching the kettle on. She remembered how when she’d first met Paul, the previous Christmas, she’d assumed he was gay. It wasn’t entirely her fault: not only would he easily qualify as the best-dressed man in Cornwall – all soft fabrics and sugar-almond colours – Sean had introduced him as his partner, somehow managing to omit the word ‘business’. It had been quite a surprise that he’d turned out to have a lovely wife, Sarah, and three children.
‘Thank you – how sweet of you. Now – the thing I wanted to ask you both: supper at ours tonight? Sarah has made a massive boeuf bourgignon and the children are off on a sleepover so you’ll be doing us a favour. If you don’t come she’ll make me eat it again tomorrow and lovely as it is, well, you can have too much of a good thing.’
‘That would be gorgeous, Paul, thank you. I’ll say yes but obviously I’ll have to check with Sean and let you know if he was intending to surprise me with some other plan. I expect it will be fine.’
Paul gave a naughty chuckle and grinned. ‘Ah, you loved-up young things,’ he said, ‘I am deeply envious. Long may it last. I can’t tell you how excited Sarah is about you and Sean getting married at our place. It’ll be our first one so I hope we all get it right. I expect you’ve got masses of organizing done by now, haven’t you? We’ll want to hear all about it over supper. So, see you later then.’ And he was gone, leaving the faintest waft of expensive and hugely classy aftershave.
It wasn’t hard to guess where Sean would be. If he wasn’t in Cove Manor welcoming new renters then he would be in the sea. There hadn’t been any cars outside apart from Sean’s, so Thea took a mug of tea out on to the terrace overlooking the dunes below and sat on the bench alongside Woody the Siamese cat to see if she was right.
Sean was down on the shore, just coming out of the water, carrying his surfboard. She watched as he shook the sea out of his hair in the manner of a dog that’s retrieved a ball from a river. How beautiful he is, she thought as he strolled up the beach, and she felt a great wave of peace that she hadn’t been able to access back in London for the last few weeks. It was as if she were sloughing off a carapace of anxiety, out here in the chill afternoon air with the fading sun glinting on the iron-grey sea. And as Sean looked up, saw her, waved and broke into a sprint across the sand, she felt a rare moment of calm. Here just might be where she belonged.
TWELVE
‘You got here pretty damn fast,’ Sean greeted Thea at the top of the rocky steps from the beach. ‘Couldn’t wait to get to me, then?’
‘Something like that,’ she told him, hugging him tight in spite of the cold, soggy wetsuit. How fabulous to see him, she thought; this more than made up for the horrible rift with Emily and the daily annoyances of school life under the dictatorial rule of head teacher Melanie. And even though his hair dripped cold seawater on to her face, his mouth tasted of love and deliciousness. Also of salt, but that was OK.
‘You must be in need of a reviving nap after such a long drive,’ he murmured, pulling her close to him. ‘And all that surfing tires a bloke.’
‘So we’re going to have a sleep?’ she teased, unable to stop smiling as they went into the house. Oh, it was so good to be back, to be away from work, from the row with Emily, from the uncomfortable awareness of Rich and a new strange feeling that she was being watched by him, even though he’d only turned up that one time.
He laughed and his fingers stroked down the length of Thea’s spine, which made her tingle. ‘Possibly, possibly … it’s not as if we have anything to rush off to.’
‘Ah – well, we do, sort of. Supper at Paul and Sarah’s. He stopped by to invite us just after I got here. I hope it’s all right – I said yes.’
‘Definitely. You get spared one of my inevitable pasta concoctions and I get extra time to diddle about with you. Bliss. Come on, Elf,’ he said, pulling her towards the bedroom. ‘Come and help me fight my way out of this wetsuit. The temperature out there is getting to the point where it feels as if it could freeze itself on to my skin.’
As Sean went to run the shower and rinse the sea off him and the neoprene, Thea’s phone buzzed with a message. She had a little moment of anxiety in case it was Rich asking again about the dog but it was Anna.
‘Hey, Sean?’ she called to him over the sound of the running water. ‘My mum just texted. The folks are on their way down.’
‘Really?’ he replied t
hrough the shower’s steam. ‘Are they wanting to stay here? They’re very welcome. The spare room isn’t too shabby, or it won’t be if I move a few spare boards and stuff round.’
‘No, they’re heading for St Ives but asked if it’s OK to come over one day this week and see us. Lunch, Mum says. Shall I tell her just to pick a day?’
‘Sure – any except Friday, changeover day. We can take them to the Rick Stein place in Porthleven. And to be honest, I’m not too sad that we’ll have the place to ourselves for the whole week.’ Sean came out of the shower naked and rubbing his hair with a towel. His body was so damn gorgeous, Thea thought. In spite of Emily’s hostility and Rich’s … well, existence, there were just so many blessings to count.
He put his arms round her and pulled her over to the bed. ‘I think we’ve got plenty of time for a proper hello. And we can do some talking catch-up too. Later.’
‘You see we could do as much of this as we like once the house has gone,’ Mike said to Anna as they parked outside the Sloop galleries in St Ives. ‘You can’t even get into the town in the summer holidays but out of season it’s a total luxury.’
‘It is half-term though,’ Anna said, looking around at the groups of families dragging bored small children behind them. ‘I think we were just lucky.’
‘Well, OK, but even there we’ve got an upside: it means we can go round the Tate without tripping over parties of schoolkids.’
‘I thought we’d come to look for a place to buy? Will there be time for both?’
‘Of course there will. And anyway, we’ve already whittled it down to a few from looking online so it’s not like the old days of peering in agents’ windows. I’ll admit St Ives is a bit more hilly than I remember. We might have to extend the search. But first, I think an ice cream. Fancy one?’
‘I think so, though it’s not really the weather for it,’ Anna said, pulling her coat close round her. ‘But we’re at the seaside which means it’s got to be done. So long as the gulls don’t attack. I’m sure they didn’t use to be this big or this menacing – I mean, look at them, dive-bombing anyone who’s got a bag of chips. Are they bigger or am I shrinking? I dread the shrinkage.’