The Family Holiday

by Elizabeth Noble

‘Wow indeed.’ Nick shook his head.

  ‘And did this sensitive soul have a suggestion as to how you might do that?’

  ‘Online. Tinder. Or Bumble. Or something …’

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ Charlie was incredulous. ‘Why didn’t I think of that? I could have replaced your mother.’ He clicked his fingers, like an impatient customer summoning a waiter. ‘Do they have a site for silver surfers?’

  Nick smirked. ‘I’m sure they do.’

  ‘Bumbling?’

  Nick laughed. ‘I’ll write a profile today. “Charlie. Compos mentis. Own teeth, if you don’t count crowns. Still vaguely continent. Seeks …”’

  ‘Replacement wife.’

  ‘Replacement wife.’

  Charlie nodded slowly, and the levity passed.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Dad?’

  ‘Anything, son.’

  ‘Do you suppose that if you’d lost Mum sooner, much sooner I mean, you’d have married again? Wanted to, even?’

  Charlie thought about it. ‘I know what your mother would have said. If you lot had been small, I mean. She’d have said I should.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  Again, Charlie was slow to answer, trying to get it right. ‘If you force yourself into something, it won’t be right. You have to give yourself time. I don’t think you can do it for the children. They’re okay. They have all the love you give them, all the love all of us, their other grandparents, the friends the two of you had, can give them, and that’s enough for now.’

  Nick nodded vigorously as though his father had said exactly what he had wanted to hear.

  ‘But …’

  Nick turned to him.

  ‘… but I don’t think you should close yourself off to the idea completely. You shouldn’t want to spend the rest of your life alone, Nick. She wouldn’t have wanted that for you because she loved you, and I don’t want that for you because I love you too.’

  ‘There’ll never be anyone as right for me as she was.’

  ‘Of course you feel that way. But it isn’t true. It would be different.’

  Nick’s eyes had filled with tears. Instinctively, unthinkingly, Charlie tried to hold him, although it was awkward on the side of the pool.

  Bea, on one of her running walks from steps to deep end, saw the movement. ‘Are you okay, Daddy?’

  Nick sniffed, pushed his father away, not unkindly, and pinched the top of his nose fiercely. ‘I’m absolutely fine, darling.’

  Bea stopped and put a wet hand on his shoulder, peering at his face.

  ‘Hey, you’re getting me all wet!’ He diverted her with a theatrical shake. She giggled, and forgot.

  ‘Might have to get into my trunks and come in, now you’ve soaked me …’

  ‘Oh, yes! Come in! Come in! Please! You, too, Granddad!’

  Charlie laughed.

  Delilah added her pleas: ‘Yes! Granddad! Come in!’

  Nick stood up, and helped his father stand on the pool edge. ‘I think we’d better do as they ask!’

  The mask was back. It had slipped for just a moment.

  Charlie had the clearest memory of Daphne, and music played in his head. She’d particularly loved a Nanci Griffith song – ‘Talk To Me While I’m Listening’. He could hear the refrain in his head now, hear Daphne telling him that was all you could do with your children – talk to them while they were listening.

  52

  Charlie had made a speech at the smart luncheon (they’d laughed at how putting ‘eon’ on the end of ‘lunch’ made it smart) he and Daphne had held for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. The speech had been short and touching and funny, and he’d spoken without notes, standing behind Daphne’s chair. He’d had a hand on her shoulder the whole time, as if she was a talisman, and at various points she’d put her own over it, patting supportively. Scott remembered it very clearly. He’d been impressed by his father’s ability to extemporize, reminded of the impressive man he’d always seemed to the outside world. The substance of his father’s words had been his own notion of what made a marriage work. Never go to sleep on a quarrel, he’d said. It wasn’t an original thought, he had acknowledged. His own mother had told them at their wedding a quarter of a century before, and she’d been told the same thing at hers. But it was good advice, he said. He made everyone laugh with a story about a fight they’d had as newlyweds, something about shoes and carpet squares. Scott didn’t remember the story but he’d always remembered the advice.

  He and Heather hadn’t exactly gone to sleep on a quarrel, but they’d hardly been right either. They normally chatted while they undressed and brushed their teeth. He liked to watch her put hand cream on her elbows, and comb her hair back from her face – those intimate rituals were precious to him. She’d been quiet. She had put out her bedside light and lain down with her back to him while he was still reading, and when Scott had leant over and put one hand on her hip, she had patted it just once. He’d read more, listening to her breathing slow. When he was sure she was asleep, because she’d shifted position onto her back, he’d rolled towards her, to look at her lovely face, as if staring at her sleeping might provide him with answers, or move them towards reconciliation. They’d slept, at first, perilously close to their respective edges, an ocean of crisp sheet between them.

  And in a way it did. Across the night, they’d migrated closer together without even meaning to, and he awoke with the dawn to find her pressed to him. He knew she was awake because her hand was moving gently through the thick hair on his chest. He turned towards her, and stroked her velvety smooth, soft back. She shrugged her shoulders a little, then made a familiar small sound, and put a leg across his thigh as his hand moved lower, slowly stroking each vertebra of her spine, until it got to the small hollow right at the base, and what was usually the point of no return with Heather.

  That morning was no different. He loved the swift, lithe athleticism with which she tilted her narrow pelvis and was suddenly straddling him, her full weight on him, and he loved the way she shivered when he ran two hands, one down each of her slender flanks, his thumbs skimming the sides of her breasts, to cup her bum.

  After she’d lain there just long enough to achieve the desired effect for both of them, Heather put the heels of her hands on his chest, and pushed herself up into a sitting position, raised and then lowered herself onto him in an easy, practised movement. She smiled, almost triumphantly, as though she’d won some prize, and began the almost excruciatingly slow, teasing rise and fall they both loved.

  Part of him wanted to stop her – he needed to talk to her about what had happened. But not the greater part. This was better. Way better …

  Afterwards, before they dozed back to sleep, because it was still very early, they did talk, and it was easier because of what had gone just before: some equilibrium had been restored.

  ‘I’m sorry, Scottie.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve got anything to be sorry for. I didn’t know …’

  ‘And that’s what I’m sorry for. That part feels like a lie. Leaving that out when we were first …’

  ‘I don’t have the right to know every single thing about you, Heather.’

  ‘But I want you to. I trust you. I love you.’

  He held her close to his chest. ‘I love you too. And I’m glad I know.’

  ‘I am too.’ Her voice was muffled. ‘And I’m sorry for being so hard on Ethan. That wasn’t fair.’

  ‘No.’ He wasn’t about to tell her it was. She’d misjudged Ethan, even if he knew what had motivated her to do it.

  ‘Hayley put me straight.’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘She put Ethan’s case. Very eloquently. Made me see I was getting him wrong. She doesn’t know, of course, why I flipped.’

  ‘And you didn’t want to tell her?’

  ‘Not yet. One day. So I’m sorry. I was wrong.’

  He kissed her for an answer. She was so straightforward. He loved her for it. He w
as, still, a very lucky man.

  53

  Laura knocked on the door at Joe’s place, surprised by how jittery she suddenly felt. God. She almost turned around and walked back in the direction she’d come. She’d been so sure he wanted her to come. Now she’d forgotten why. Would he think she was tragic? He didn’t answer quickly. Maybe he was with someone … Maybe she was wrong about all of it, had stupidly misinterpreted everything. Panic set in. She took one, two, three steps backwards, and was on the verge of spinning and running away when he opened the door.

  He’d showered. His hair was wet and water had made it darker. There were rivulets running down into the open neck of his white shirt, not tucked into the dark denim jeans. His feet were bare.

  If he was surprised, he didn’t seem it. A less insecure woman might have noticed how his eyes opened wide and twinkled when he saw her, might have known that the broad smile signified genuine pleasure at her presence.

  ‘You came.’

  She shrugged. ‘I came.’

  She stepped backwards again, but he moved forward, across his threshold, keeping the space between them the same.

  ‘Are you coming in?’

  ‘No. No. You’re home …’ What did that even mean?

  He smiled wryly. ‘Which is how I can ask you in.’

  ‘I mean I should get back.’

  ‘No, you really shouldn’t.’

  ‘I shouldn’t.’ It was as if something else was working her voice.

  ‘So come in.’ He stepped back into the dark interior, and left the door open wide.

  The room had a masculine sparseness – the work surfaces were devoid of clutter, almost minimalist. There were no photographs, just a couple of landscape watercolours framed on the walls. No ornaments. But everything was clean and neat. The space was calm, like he was. One wall, though, was entirely full of books, floor to ceiling on sturdy oak shelves. Large heavy ones at the bottom – the kind about art or animals or exotic locations – up through hardback biographies and history books to paperbacks at the top. She scanned the spines – Nevil Shute, Ian McEwan, Mark Billingham. A complete mix, in complete order. There was a deep old cognac-leather armchair in front of the shelves, worn and cracked, with a tall Anglepoise lamp behind it. Three books were piled on the arm, and on top of them a folded pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses she had never seen him wearing. It looked stylish – almost like it had been posed for a magazine or something.

  It was a good space.

  He watched her taking everything in.

  ‘Alphabetical. By genre. Wow. That’s a little …’

  ‘OCD?’

  ‘OCD. Yep.’

  ‘What can I say? I’m a neat guy.’

  ‘I’m a messy woman.’

  ‘Don’t believe you.’

  ‘Oh. Believe. Total slob.’

  He was still watching her. Watching her mouth as she spoke.

  She hadn’t expected to be here. She was suddenly acutely aware of herself. He seemed so still and cool and calm. That quality she’d always noticed was magnified indoors. By contrast, she was hot, possibly even a little sweaty, and she couldn’t seem to breathe quietly.

  She forced herself not to witter into the silence.

  ‘So. That’s sorted, then.’ He laughed. ‘I’m a little bit OCD. You’re a little bit messy. Laura Harcourt.’

  He was closer now, although she hadn’t been conscious of him moving. His tone was light, but still challenging.

  Something in the way he was looking at her and speaking to her made her want to say something real and true about herself.

  She repeated her own name. ‘Laura Harcourt. Not sure who she is any more. That’s the thing. The whole pathetic thing …’

  She could feel tears in her eyes. ‘Not a wife, barely a mother. Nothing useful to offer society. Lousy daughter. Too busy being pissed off to be a decent friend. Not even good company.’ Her shoulders dropped.

  ‘Not true. I enjoy your company.’

  She almost snorted.

  ‘Don’t do that.’ He took another step towards her. Laura might have backed away, had she not already been leaning against the wall, close to the books. ‘Shall I tell you who I think you are?’

  Silence was her answer. Her heart raced faster still.

  ‘I think you are a beautiful woman who hasn’t been told she’s a beautiful woman nearly often enough, and certainly not recently enough. A clever woman who hasn’t had anyone to spark off lately. A funny one, with no one to make laugh. A sexy one …’

  God, if it was a line, it was nothing short of genius.

  Closer. A step at a time. Barely moving. His voice was calm, his breathing slow. Just that spot of red on his chest gave him away, just above where the blond hair grew, and just below that pale hollow at the base of his throat, where she could see his pulse. She loved the spot of red. It seemed to prove to her that this meant something to him. That she did. She reached out and touched it with one finger.

  This time there was nothing safe or careful about the contact. They both knew it was different.

  Something snapped in her. It felt like a guitar string. Ping. The tension gone. She launched herself at him, and kissed him. His stubble scratched her face. He took her shoulders in his hands and pushed her away from him. For a dreadful moment she thought she’d horribly misjudged him. But he just wanted to look into her eyes, and then, with a small, triumphant smile, he wanted to be the one who initiated the kiss. He brought his hands from her shoulders to her face, and held it on a tilt, his palms covering almost all of it, his fingers in her hair, while he kissed her back, hard.

  It had been such a long time. For ever. Laura had perhaps thought, certainly considered, in the middle of the long, lonely nights, that this part of her was dead. That she might never feel like this again. But lust flooded back, like a tsunami. And you never really forgot how it worked.

  Then again, she’d never done it in a leather armchair, until now. She couldn’t remember Alex ever being so keen to be inside of her that he hadn’t taken his trousers off, so that her heels, clasped around his back, felt denim, not flesh. He’d pulled her dress over her head, but he hadn’t bothered to take off her bra, just pulled the cups aside, not gently, to get at her, and it was as sexy as hell to be only partly undressed. His skin was warm, and soft, except for his hands, which were as rough as she’d thought they would be, calluses adding to the sensations as he stroked her everywhere he could reach. The leather was strangely cool and hard against her skin. But it all felt good. So, so good. He kept his eyes open and he kept them on her. She looked away at first, because it was too much, but it got easier to meet his stare. When he cast it over her body, she was surprised to feel not self-conscious but powerful.

  Alex had been a quiet lover, even in the early days. Joe was the opposite. He spoke to her at first, murmuring that she was beautiful, that she felt so good. Later he seemed happy to abandon himself to noises. His grunts and groans were hugely affirming to her. She felt … desired. When he closed his eyes at last and lost himself in the rhythm, pounding into her, there was something magical about his oblivion, and it carried her along with him. And when he collapsed heavily onto her, his breathing ragged, his mouth open against her shoulder, and his heartbeat fast, she threw her head back and laughed triumphantly, the sound neither strange nor discordant.

  He spoke first. ‘Christ. My knees.’ He reached behind her and pulled a cushion from under her.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She tried to move, but he held her still. She realized he was still inside her, more intimate now than in motion.

  ‘Don’t you dare be sorry.’ He deftly slipped the cushion under his knees on the floor, one arm holding her firmly against him. ‘You’ve got absolutely nothing to be sorry about.’

  She laughed again. ‘That was –’

  ‘Bloody fantastic.’

  She flushed with the compliment. He thought it had been fantastic. Not just fantastic – bloody fantastic. ‘I was going with unex
pected.’

  His face was on her chest, and his voice was muffled, and still a little, gratifyingly, breathless. ‘You mean you didn’t come here with the express intention of seducing me?’

  ‘That’s what happened, is it? I seduced you?’

  Their tone was playful. Sex had moved them on a level.

  ‘Absolutely, your honour.’

  They were still and quiet for a few moments, catching their breath. His head was on her chest. She had one hand across his shoulder, while the other smoothed his thick hair.

  ‘I don’t do this.’ She heard the wonder in her own voice.

  He lifted his head and smiled kindly, briefly at her. ‘Neither do I.’

  And she believed him.

  Another minute. Then he said, ‘I’d like to stay here for ever, but I’ve got to move’, and groaned softly. He handed her dress to her as he stood up and shucked himself back into his jeans. It was thoughtful of him – she felt suddenly vulnerable and very, very naked as his flesh left hers. He walked over to the kitchen part of the room, away from her, and she watched him move while she tidied herself hastily. His back was broad, with well-defined muscles, chestnut brown from the sun. He was the best-looking man she’d ever been with. She remembered Alex. Pinky-white, ever so slightly sunken-chested and hairy. There was a second when she felt disloyal, then remembered her loyalty was no longer required. And almost giggled.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Glass of wine?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘White? I hate rosé.’

  ‘I do too. White sounds great.’

  ‘Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay?’

  ‘I’m easy.’

  He raised an eyebrow. She blushed.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she corrected herself.

  He took a bottle from the door of the fridge, uncorked it, and filled two large glasses he took from an open shelf beside the sink. Holding them in one hand, he grabbed a blanket that was folded over the arm of the sofa in the other. ‘Come and see.’

  The sun was setting. She hadn’t realized the time.