She knew what people thought of her. Gold-digger. Airhead. Opportunist. She didn’t care. All this loveliness – the home, the holidays, the handbags and the diamonds – this was frosting. She wouldn’t pretend she didn’t like it, because she did. She really did. For the first time in maybe for ever, she had exhaled, and she didn’t wake up worried at three a.m., and who wouldn’t want that? But whatever they thought, any of them – colleagues, family – she knew Scott was the cake.
11
‘Ethan? That you?’
The front door closed. Laura was in the kitchen, standing in front of the open fridge, wondering what to make for dinner. She was a good cook, or at least she had been once – experimental, enthusiastic – but food was uninteresting to her now. Ethan seemed just as happy with a short rotation of nursery meals – spag bol, gammon, chips and eggs, breaded chicken – as he had ever been with her more varied and adventurous efforts. He’d been an Annabel Karmel baby – she’d put every fruit and veg you could think of through the Mouli and then into a thousand little ice-cube trays, and she’d congratulated herself on a job well done until he’d turned two and begun ruling out flavours one by one. By the time he was three he was eating an almost completely beige diet.
‘Oh, give it up, Laur,’ Mel had scoffed down the phone. ‘Jack is eighty-five per cent chicken nugget, he’s on the umpteenth centile and hasn’t missed a day of nursery this year.’
This unimaginative repertoire suited Ethan perfectly. Things you could eat with just a fork, leaving one hand free for whatever electronic device you were using – a teenage dream. At this point, her spice drawer probably had cobwebs.
He hadn’t answered. Probably had his headphones on. She slammed the fridge door shut and shuffled into the hall, right into Alex.
He shouldn’t do that. Shouldn’t just come in. This wasn’t where he lived any more. Acutely aware of her messy hair, and her not-quite-fresh baggy cardigan, which she now pulled around herself defensively, Laura felt her heart race, and hated him for it.
‘Sorry.’ He wasn’t. ‘Didn’t mean to scare you.’
‘Where’s Ethan?’
‘He went straight up. Some physics homework or something.’
That felt bloody disloyal of Ethan. Making it seem like he wasn’t bothered about seeing her. He’d been gone all weekend. She tried to channel Mel, and not mind. ‘What do you want, Alex?’ She knew she sounded testy. She should have challenged him on just bowling in, instead of giving him this crotchety-old-woman impression.
Alex had the audacity to look taken aback at her tone. ‘I wanted to talk to you about the summer.’
‘Oh.’
‘Is this a good time?’
So polite. So considerate. So fucking fake. She mumbled that it was fine, and stood aside so he could walk into the kitchen. He looked around, then leant against the counter opposite the French windows.
They’d spent years in this kitchen. Cooking, eating, bickering, laughing. They’d fought here, kissed here, fed their baby in his high chair here. She’d folded a million pairs of his socks in this room, Jenni Murray for company. And he’d stood right there, near the windows, when he’d told her he was going and not coming back. How dare he lean there now, like he still belonged? Like this was his home still.
There was no rulebook for this stuff, no code of etiquette for how to talk to someone you’d loved and lived with, had a baby with and now regularly fantasized about kicking until they begged you to stop, but whom you had to talk to because they were the other parent to that baby, who had gone straight to his room.
She folded her arms across her chest and stared at the floor. There was a row of crumbs along the skirting.
‘We’d like to take Ethan to Greece.’
And there it was. The ‘We’. Innocuous word. Did he do it deliberately or unconsciously? It was a red-hot poker either way.
‘It’s a week. A flotilla holiday. Lots of boats, sailing together.’
‘I know what a flotilla holiday is.’ She’d rather have died than admit she didn’t.
‘Of course.’ He was on his best behaviour.
‘He gets seasick.’
Alex laughed dismissively. ‘He did. When he was small. Surely he’s grown out of it by now.’
She didn’t know. She remembered a cross-Channel ferry, a whole pack of wet wipes, a green toddler.
‘There’ll be other young people. He’ll love it.’
‘Have you told him?’ She corrected herself. ‘Asked him?’
‘No. I wanted to talk to you first.’
‘When is this holiday?’
‘First two weeks of August.’
‘No.’
That shocked him. ‘No. That’s it?’
‘No. He’s with me then.’
‘What are you doing?’
There was a note – a tiny note you’d probably have to have spent half your life with him to hear – that said, ‘What could you possibly be doing that would be better than what I’m proposing?’ The merest, faintest sneer in his question. You might say, if you didn’t know, that she was paranoid and neurotic. If you didn’t know.
She wanted to say it was none of his business. ‘It’s a family holiday. All of us. For my dad’s eightieth.’
‘Gosh. He’s eighty already. Of course. Sounds lovely. Well, perhaps we should ask him, Ethan, I mean, ask him what he’d rather do.’
She wished she could be sure of what Ethan would say. She wished she’d already mentioned his grandfather’s birthday celebration to him. She’d been waiting. She didn’t even know why. Maybe because she suspected he wouldn’t want to go.
‘Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare put him in that position.’
Alex raised his hands in a way that said he thought she was unhinged and he couldn’t talk to her while she was in this frame of mind. ‘Look, Laura –’
‘No, Alex. You look. I’ve said yes already for both of us. We’re going. It’s important. You need to change your dates.’
He shook his head. ‘There are lots of people involved.’
‘Well, then, perhaps you’ll have to go without him.’ She imbued the ‘you’ with all the weight his ‘we’ had carried.
‘He’s not a pawn, Laura.’
‘I’d like you to go now.’
‘That’s not very grown-up, is it? It’s been months. We should be moving on. We should be able to be civilized. We need to be able to talk about these things without every conversation degenerating into a slanging match.’
She knew he was right. And she knew she wasn’t ready. ‘I’m sorry I’m not moving at the speed you want, Alex.’ She heard sarcasm dripping from her words. It was a struggle to keep her voice quiet. She wanted to scream.
Ethan’s heavy footfall on the stairs drew their eyes to the doorway. He still had his headphones on – those stupid big Beats. He glanced from one parent to the other as he pushed them off his ears onto the back of his neck. He looked discomforted, and she hated that they were doing this to him. ‘Didn’t know you were still here, Dad.’
‘I was talking to your mum about the summer.’
‘Right. Okay. Me and my mates have been doing exactly that as well. There’s a festival in Croatia we were talking about going to. And Reading, of course. Everyone’s going to that.’
Laura fixed Alex with an expression she hoped was defiant, but must have been imploring. His appetite for the fight had clearly passed.
‘You know, it’s late – you’ve got that homework to finish. No hurry. Let’s talk about this next week, huh?’
Ethan had his head in the fridge now, foraging. ‘Sure.’
‘You take care, okay?’
‘See you, Dad.’
Alex didn’t look at Laura as he left, and when she turned back from closing the front door, leaning weakly against it, Ethan was halfway up the stairs, headphones back on. She wished he would stay downstairs, take the headphones off and talk to her. She knew there was a girlfriend, Saskia. She didn’t know h
ow serious it was. She didn’t know what to do. Buy him condoms? She couldn’t bear the thought of it – her baby. And sex in general. It was so far from her consciousness. She might never have sex again. The thought of her beautiful boy … She shook her head. No wonder he didn’t want to talk to her.
12
The counsellor had said they should have lots of pictures of Carrie. As many as they wanted. There she was, framed in most rooms of the house, smiling out at them from windowsills and chests of drawers. The kids had those montage frames with dozens of Carries. Bea often spoke to her as she passed them in the morning, and sometimes she kissed one.
Nick had the pictures out because the counsellor had said he should. One day they might not hurt. They still did now, though. Mostly he tried not to look at them, not when he was trying to get through the business of the day. Looking at them was for wallowing and, most of the time, he couldn’t let himself do that.
He was carrying a load of small-people laundry upstairs when the pink sparkly dress snared him.
Carrie in a pink sparkly dress, cut low in the front, with little flouncy sleeves on her shoulders. He’d met her at that party, back when he’d liked parties. Well, back when he hadn’t hated parties. It was the summer between his second and third year at university, and he was interning all week with a local law firm, his dad’s idea, and going to twenty-firsts almost every weekend, criss-crossing the country by train, coach or cadged lift to don black tie (slightly oversized, purchased at Oxfam, to his mother’s dismay) and drink lukewarm wine in a white nylon marquee. They were a shoal in black wool, him and his mates. Saturday travel, Sunday hangover, repeat. He’d almost missed this one – Cumbria was bloody miles away, and even with his railcard, the train fare had felt eye-watering. A weekend at home, sleeping all day, had seemed more appealing. His mate Simon had persuaded him, found him a seat in a beaten-up Fiat, and an actual bed in another mate’s house only a few miles from where Steve’s party was taking place. Supposing he hadn’t?
Occasionally, long after he and Carrie were together, he’d be gripped by a weird retrospective fear of something that hadn’t happened. What if he hadn’t gone? What if he’d missed her? What if, having skipped the twenty-first, he was somehow still invited to Steve’s wedding, six or seven years later, had met her there, and it was too late, because she was with someone else, and maybe he was too. Would you know, instantly, what a mistake those two other relationships had been? Would you know she was the one you were supposed to be with? Or would you just smile at her in passing, think what a pretty girl Steve’s kid sister was, have a casual chat on the edge of the dance-floor and go on with your life?
It seemed unimaginable. He had gone, thought Cumbria was staggeringly beautiful. Changed in a pub toilet, been handed a glass of something alcoholic. And there she was.
He’d never thought he’d be one of those blokes, the kind who are struck by a thunderbolt young and don’t look anywhere else. Who just know: This is my person. A year before, one of his more laddish mates had done exactly that – come back from Interrailing with a soppy grin and a suddenly serious girlfriend. Nick had been nonplussed by his transformation. Judged him, a little.
He’d been having a sort of a fling with a girl at uni. Nothing serious for either of them. Certainly no declarations or promises had been made. She wasn’t invited to this party, and neither of them had minded that or fretted about absences or separations. He liked her well enough, and he certainly liked sleeping with her, but he didn’t think about her when he wasn’t with her. The last fling had been like that, too, and the several before that. It had always been thus. Most had petered out without scenes or recriminations. There’d been remarkably little drama.
This was different. Instantly, inexplicably, vastly different. He suddenly sensed all the drama in the air. He thought immediately of the friend he’d judged last summer and wanted to ring him, say he was sorry, that he got it now.
For at least an hour, he just watched her. His mates came and went, and he half paid attention to what they were saying, moving around the room so that he could always see her. It was everything about her and nothing in particular. It was her smile. The way she moved in her pink sparkly dress. The ease with which she chatted to everyone. Her dancing – face tilted upwards, eyes closed, hands high above her head, like she was alone in her bedroom. It was the peculiar, unfamiliar sureness that she was there for him.
‘Are you ever gonna talk to me or are you just gonna stare at me, d’you think?’
She had her hands on her hips, her head on one side. Nick had no idea where she had come from, and where his mates had faded away to, but she was right in front of him. He could feel his cheeks colour, betraying him.
‘You make me sound like a weirdo.’
‘Are you a weirdo?’
‘Nope.’ He racked his brain for witty banter. He was good at it. Except with her, apparently.
‘Steve says you’re Nick.’
‘You asked him?’
Did she wink? ‘Caught me.’ Her confidence was audacious.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I said, “Steve, who’s that weirdo staring at me so I can get Dad to chuck him out?”’
Nick must have glanced over her shoulder, looking for the dad, just for a moment, but it was long enough for her to win the point. She laughed. It was a glorious sound. He’d been watching her laugh for an hour but now he could hear it too, and it was even better than he’d been imagining. If you hadn’t felt like this, it sounded ludicrous and fanciful. But if you had, you knew. That was it. He never questioned it, not once, after that night. He was going to be with Carrie.
When he’d got home, twenty-four hours later, he’d hugged his mum in the kitchen, harder than normal. She’d wrinkled her nose, told him he smelt like a brewery in a farmyard, but hugged him back, of course. Then she’d drawn away to study him. ‘You look very happy, son.’
‘I am.’
‘Good night?’ She’d done that clever thing she always did – turned slightly away from him, busying herself making a cup of tea – so it was somehow easier for him to speak.
‘Amazing night.’ He saw her mouth curl into a smile, and an eyebrow rose just slightly.
‘That sounds like a girl.’
And he realized he was busting to tell someone. ‘Not a girl, Mum. The girl.’
‘Oh, really? The girl.’
‘I met my wife yesterday.’ He felt the blush rise, hot and red. What a dick. Who said that?
She hadn’t laughed at him, hadn’t fobbed him off. She’d put the two mugs on the table, with a plate of toast, and sat down.
‘You’re not going to tell me I’m an idiot?’
‘No. I don’t think you’re an idiot, darling.’ She smiled conspiratorially.
‘Was that how it was with you?’ Nick willed her to say yes.
‘No. Not really.’
Nick bit into the toast, partly hungry and partly to create a diversion.
Daphne hadn’t finished. ‘But I think you’d find that was how it was with your dad. If you were to ask him. And if he were to admit it.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, it makes me sound bloody conceited but, yes, I think so.’
‘Did he tell you?’
She laughed. ‘God, no. I’d have thought he was a weirdo.’
Nick remembered Carrie’s teasing question. ‘But he told you eventually?’
‘Yes. Ages afterwards. When I was a done deal.’
‘So Dad thought he’d met his wife, and you thought … what?’
‘I thought he had potential.’
‘Wow. Potential. That’s harsh, Mum.’
‘What does she think? Your wife.’ Her tone was gently teasing.
‘God knows. Probably that I’m a weirdo.’ Daphne laughed, then sipped her tea. ‘Actually, maybe she thinks I might have … potential …’
Daphne had put her hand over Nick’s, on the handle of his mug of tea. ‘Well, she sounds like a good
girl to me. She’s right about that, at least.’
Now Nick held his breath, then ran one finger across Carrie’s cheek in the photograph. ‘All right, weirdo.’
13
Scott had stepchildren. Two teenage stepdaughters. He had a photograph in his wallet, for God’s sake, of the four of them.
‘Pancakes! Ready!’ Scott shouted in the hallway, directing his voice at the upstairs landing. They weren’t pancakes as he knew them – the crêpe style Daphne had made for them when they were young, eaten as a treat in front of the television, with lemon juice and as much sugar as you could get away with sprinkling on them before she caught you. These were – like his whole family now – an American import. Small, thick and dry, eaten with bacon and maple syrup, they were a weekend ritual. He’d learnt how to make them from scratch, and now a stack was waiting on the warming plate of the Aga.
Saturday mornings had never been like this. They’d been for errands, dry cleaner’s, hair trims. For long workouts and admin catch-ups. Not now. Now they were for long breakfasts, the prelude to sports fixtures, cinema visits, party drop-offs and country walks ending in pub roasts. These weekends were better – they were actually rather wonderful.
The girls appeared, summoned by the smell of pancakes, one by one, bed soft, and clad in their brightly coloured Abercrombie & Fitch sweatpants, with their mother’s blonde wavy hair, and her face shape – the heart with the endlessly appealing, slightly jutting chin. As sisters, they were completely different. Hayley, the older of the two, was more serious and studious, conscientious and organized, like Heather. Meredith was the more rambunctious, with a chaotic streak that probably ought to have irritated him, but which he found enchanting. Hayley was a lark, Meredith a night owl, who practically had to be Semtexed out of bed in the mornings, unless, of course, a stack of pancakes was waiting. It was ten a.m. He’d been up since seven, and that constituted a lie-in. The peace of the early part of the day was good, but by nine, he was itching to make the batter with which he could lure them from their respective pits to join him.
The Family Holiday Page 6