The Family Holiday

by Elizabeth Noble

  And now, after the missing and the longing, he was there, walking towards her, a holdall over his shoulder, looking different, dressed for winter in a pea coat with the collar up, big smile across his lovely face, his eyes fixed on her. That thing happened where all the other people melted away, and it was just him, coming her way. It was like a boyband music video.

  And there was something else as well. Lust. Unfamiliar, powerful, good.

  When he got to her, he dropped the bag, and pulled her into him. Her hands went inside the open coat, to where she could feel his ribcage, warm and solid, and his big arms were very tight around her – her whole frame remembered that instantaneous feeling of being safe and … home. Exhale. Relax. Rejoice.

  For long moments he just held her. And then he kissed her, hands on her face and in her hair, and the kiss was deep and long and hard and possessive, and she felt engulfed and almost overwhelmed. His stubble was rough against her cheeks, his teeth were against hers. A most definitely inside kiss outside, because they were both oblivious. He pulled back and looked into her eyes. ‘God, it’s good to see you. I’ve missed you.’

  ‘You too.’

  And then he kissed her again. Daphne would have called it a knee-trembler.

  Eventually, they stopped. When she opened her eyes, a few people were staring. A middle-aged woman looked almost envious, a teenage boy in that footie shirt more repulsed. Joe picked up the bag, and slung one arm around her shoulders, keeping her close to him, and they started walking towards the exit.

  ‘What are we doing?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea.’ She was giddy. She laughed. ‘What do you fancy?’

  She’d fed him the line and he took the bait. ‘That’s bloody obvious.’

  ‘No, I mean what would you like to do? Are you hungry?’

  ‘Maybe. I could eat. We could get a drink.’ He looked down at her. ‘I don’t care. I really don’t care what we do. I’m just stupid-happy to be back with you.’

  They went to the pub. The nearest pub to the station. Joe went to the bar to get drinks, and Laura couldn’t take her eyes off him. It seemed so unlikely that she’d be there, now, doing this, with him. But she was.

  He slid into the booth beside her, and they clinked glasses.

  ‘I. Have. Missed. You,’ Laura said. ‘A lot.’

  He nuzzled into her neck, murmured, ‘I don’t know how but I do know, Laura, I’ve known for ages, maybe even from the very start, I absolutely know that you and me need to be together. Somewhere. In the same place. All of the time. Here. There.’

  She was shocked.

  ‘Say something.’

  Words failed her. She hadn’t known until he said it how completely and exactly it was what she had wanted to hear him say, what she’d wanted him to want. How would she even have dreamt it would be?

  Joe, anxious now, was misinterpreting her silence. ‘You think I’m insane.’

  ‘No, no.’ She took his hand. ‘I think you’re lovely.’

  ‘But …’

  Laura laughed. ‘There’s no but, Joe. No but at all.’

  68

  Nick wove his way from the bar to the table Fran had chosen for them, a beer and a glass of white wine in his hands, a packet of pork scratchings under his arm. They clinked, said cheers and drank.

  They’d come together – Nick had picked her up – and they’d done all their small-talk in the car. Now, they both fell quiet. The pub was busy: a lively crowd was watching a big football match being broadcast from the huge screen in the corner. The two of them seemed subdued by comparison.

  Nick didn’t know where to start, but he was very clear on where he wanted to end up. Fran gave a sad, closed-lip smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and started it for them both.

  ‘We’d better talk about the elephant in the room.’

  He considered a lame joke about pachyderms and their football-team allegiances, but he didn’t want to be cowardly. He wouldn’t pretend he didn’t know what she meant, either. They’d had a good stab at it, meeting up on the holiday, but the weird-kiss moment between them all those months ago was hanging in the air. He so badly didn’t want to hurt her, and he was, in truth, a bit scared of losing her as a friend. But he needed to say this.

  ‘You know it wouldn’t be right, don’t you? Letting anything happen between us?’

  Fran stared into her glass of wine for a moment, then lifted her gaze and met his. ‘Yes. I do. Really. I’m just sort of in denial.’

  He took her hand. ‘Carrie is what we have in common.’

  She pulled it away, picking up her glass, but she didn’t drink from it. ‘Missing her is what we have in common.’

  ‘And you and me together just won’t fill the space. We can’t.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I need to be clear. I wanted to kiss you that night.’

  ‘I wanted it too.’ That smile again.

  ‘I think I maybe wanted more. But if I’m brutally honest, Frannie, it wasn’t you I wanted. It was someone.’

  A tiny laugh. ‘That is brutal.’

  He hadn’t intended it to sound that way. ‘I don’t mean it like that. You know I don’t. I was sad and lonely and we’d had a good night.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘And the Carrie thing. You were her best friend, Fran. Her best friend. You knew her so well. I’m betting you know stuff about me and her. Our life together. Like I know stuff about you. And you’ve been so incredibly brilliant.’ He felt emotional now. He heard it in his voice. ‘I don’t know how I would have managed, in the beginning, without you.’

  She started to shake her head as though she didn’t want to hear it.

  ‘No. No, Fran. I need to say it. It was exactly because you knew her so well that you knew what to do. You were so brave. You got me through those horrendous early days and weeks. You.’ Fran’s eyes filled with tears, and he knew Carrie was very close to them both then. He reached for her hand again, and this time she let him hold it. ‘You helped more than I can ever express to you. And I will always, always, be profoundly grateful for that. And I want your friendship. If we can get past this weird stuff – this understandable, sad, lonely confusion …’

  Up on the plasma screen, someone scored, and everyone cheered. The two of them looked at each other while the celebrations subsided.

  ‘We can.’

  ‘We can?’

  ‘Of course we can.’ She didn’t quite look at him when she said it, and Nick knew he couldn’t push. It wasn’t up to him.

  ‘It was just a moment, for God’s sake.’ It wasn’t. He knew it and she knew it. It was a possibility that he at least had let swirl around his head for weeks. A temptation. A solution. It wasn’t just a moment. Not for him, and not, he suspected – he knew – for her. But that didn’t matter now. And they couldn’t help each other to get past it.

  They might be able to be friends. They could stay close, or drift apart. It wasn’t up to him. He had to let her decide, and accept her decision. He knew what he would choose.

  69

  He’d always, from a boy, hated going to doctors. Hated hospitals too. The smell, the look, the way you avoided everyone’s eye.

  All three of the children had been born at home, so he didn’t have those glorious, life-affirming memories to counter the dreadful ones. Broken limbs, painful minor surgeries, terminal diagnoses … They were anxiety-inducing places to him. He’d heard someone on the radio say that modern anxiety stemmed from human beings’ caveman origins: we were always alert for tigers, and because there weren’t any tigers for most of us, we made unnecessary worries our foe. Doctors were Charlie’s tigers. Even Dr Stephens, and he really liked Dr Stephens. If he’d played golf, or lived on the same street, the two men could have been friends. He’d been seeing him, at the practice, for almost nineteen years. They were almost friends. The older you got, the more time you had to spend there. There were pills and blood tests and chest infections that didn’t seem to clear up without a p
rescription, and moles that suddenly looked like a map of the Isle of Wight and had to be excised. There was nothing much to recommend growing old.

  Dr Stephens was no spring chicken himself. He had to be over sixty. Maybe even sixty-five. Charlie hoped to God he died before Dr Stephens retired. How awful to have to get to know a new doctor. ‘How’ve you been, Charlie?’ He looked up as Charlie came in, then turned to the ubiquitous computer screen, calling up his catalogue of woes.

  Charlie sat down heavily in the chair adjacent to the desk. ‘Not so bad.’

  ‘I’m not looking for the polite answer.’

  ‘Not giving you the polite answer. I’m okay.’

  ‘How’s the cough?’

  ‘No worse.’ Which was almost, but not quite, true.

  ‘Any swelling? Legs or ankles?’

  ‘You’ll tell me.’ Charlie pulled up his trouser leg and stuck his leg out to prove he could lift one independently of the other. His ankle was thicker. He knew it was. Dr Stephens leant forward, pressed the flesh with his thumb, observing how the oedema blanched, then returned to the usual blotchy white-pink. He sat up, and Charlie let his trouser leg fall.

  ‘And how about in yourself?’

  ‘Not confused, if that’s what you mean. I know what day it is, who’s prime minister. My car keys weren’t in the fridge when I looked for them this morning.’

  Dr Stephens laughed. ‘You’re on the ball today.’

  ‘And every day.’

  He unfurled the cuff of the blood-pressure machine. Charlie obligingly unbuttoned and took off his shirt, resting his left arm on the corner of Dr Stephens’s desk. Neither man spoke while he took the readings and made a note of them. Charlie tried to think of white sandy beaches and gentle tropical breezes, but he failed.

  ‘You know,’ Dr Stephens’s conversational style was laid-back, chatty, ‘patients like you are the worst. You know more about what’s wrong with you than I do.’ That wasn’t true, but Charlie knew enough. ‘And you’re the stiff-upper-lip generation. Dangerous combo.’

  Charlie smiled. ‘The day you tell me there’s a cure, I’ll open up like a clam.’

  There it was – the whole truth. There was no cure. There were palliative therapies, there were decisions to be made about interventions, there were things that could make him more comfortable when the time came. But there was nothing, not a damn thing, that could be done to stop congestive heart failure killing him in the end. He’d known that for a couple of years now, and the chances were that in a couple of years more he’d be gone.

  He’d meant to tell the kids. He’d planned to, while they were all away together, but the right moment hadn’t presented itself. He’d been more their father, it seemed to him, in those ten days than he had in the previous ten years. The tipping point he’d hated so much – the one where they cared more for him than he for them – had briefly, gloriously, tipped back in that pretty house in the countryside. It would have been a lousy time to tell them. He’d liked how it felt. Damn it, he didn’t want to tell them. Then or now. He hoped they’d never need to know. He had to die of something. It would be no one’s idea of a tragedy, not at his age. Better to keep it to himself.

  Daphne had said to him, near the end, her voice smaller and quieter than it had ever been, that she was sorry she was going first: she hated him being the one left behind. He didn’t. Even in his misery, he was glad. Living without her had been hard. Relentlessly lonely and sad. He couldn’t have borne the thought of her living without him, however much he could acknowledge that she’d probably have made a better fist of it than he had.

  He was going to enjoy the parts of what was left as much as he could. Spend more time with the kids, if they’d let him. And when the right time came, they would know if they needed to. And it was all right. There was a peace to it.

  ‘So I’d be wasting my breath if I tried to talk to you about options?’ This was a well-rehearsed double act by now, and Charlie always went home feeling dignified and respected.

  ‘Pretty much. Not yet. Not yet. I’ve got my next consultant appointment booked.’

  The doctor shook his head ruefully. ‘Good to see you, Charlie. You take care.’

  Charlie buttoned his shirt, and left, smiling warmly at the cantankerous receptionist and the timid-looking new mother in the waiting area, then gratefully stepping outside into the crisp, cold air.

  70

  ‘Ethan! Breakfast!’ Laura put a plate with toast, scrambled egg and two rashers of bacon on the table, then sat down adjacent to it to nurse a vast mug of tea. She smiled at her son’s heavy tread on the stairs. He lurched into the kitchen, wet hair flicked back, and slid into the chair.

  ‘Cheers, Mum.’

  She pushed the ketchup across to him. Ethan didn’t eat anything without ketchup.

  He smiled. ‘What you up to today?’ That was new, since the summer, asking about her day.

  ‘Well, the second I’ve got you out of my hair, I’m whizzing round with the Hoover. Second viewing later.’

  ‘The people with the twins?’

  ‘They’re keen, I gather. The agent thinks they’re measuring to see if their furniture fits.’

  ‘And that’s a good sign?’

  ‘I reckon. He reckons, too. They might make an offer this afternoon.’

  Ethan was eating heartily. He nodded his approval.

  ‘You sure you’re okay with this?’

  He swallowed his mouthful and rolled his eyes. ‘For the ten-thousandth time, I’m fine with it.’

  He seemed truly fine with all of it. With the house being on the market. With Joe being a regular visitor. With school. Even with his dad. He saw Alex less than before, but seemed happier and more relaxed now when he got back from those visits. Alex appeared to be making what for him would be a Herculean effort to be what he might refer to disparagingly as ‘present’. He’d taken him to a football match. And gone to watch Ethan play in one. The painfully bloody obvious stuff he should have been doing all along. Not just since he left them. Laura was glad. She’d never wanted Ethan to be estranged from his father, except in the early, darkest days, and she wasn’t ever going back there. He’d even confessed, a little shyly and cautiously, a few weeks ago that he’d had an okay chat with Genevieve. That maybe she wasn’t quite as bad as he’d thought. Laura felt proud he wanted to tell her that, because it meant he knew, too, that she was moving on.

  And she was. She didn’t want to double-date, and some tiny, twisty part of her might always hope that Genevieve and Alex didn’t work out, but she could think of them together and not get palpitations now. She was at peace with the tiny, twisty part. She was entitled to it. What mattered was that that part lived in a box, and she controlled the lid.

  Ethan came first. He had risen to the surface, where he belonged, of her psyche and her consciousness. For now, he had to. These were crucial times. Practically and emotionally. In two years he’d be going to university – at least, that was what he planned. She tried not to push it, although she assumed Alex would be horrified if he chose a different path. They’d cross that bridge when they got to it. It seemed unimaginable that he’d be leaving home. But it would come, and come fast, she knew, just as she knew it would be years more before he left for good. For now, he was stable and he was doing well. And that meant everything to her.

  They hadn’t talked about Saskia in ages. There wasn’t a new girl, so far as he’d told her, but he was hanging out with a big gang of guys and girls – some old friends from school, and new people, too, who’d joined the sixth form, filling the spaces left by Saskia and others. There were gatherings and parties, and often their kitchen was full of kids messing about, laughing and eating everything in sight. When that happened, Laura would say hi, and chat for a few minutes, then slope off to the living room to watch TV, or upstairs to her room to call Joe, content to hear them, and to know Ethan was safe and seemingly happy. She worried, because she was his mother, that it would be hard for him to start somethi
ng with someone else – but Joe and Scott and Nick, her triptych of male wisdom, had told her he’d be fine in time.

  She was glad he was spending more time with his uncles. They were better men than his father – stronger and wiser and less selfish.

  Ethan gestured to the pile of papers on Laura’s left. ‘So if we get an offer, we can go and see some of these, can we?’

  She’d held off viewings. She dreaded finding something she loved when she wasn’t in a position to make an offer. But she’d signed up with agents, and they kept sending things. ‘Yeah. You going to come with me, are you?’

  ‘When I can. I mean, I’ve got college … Maybe I’ll just do the second viewings.’

  She smiled. ‘Checking for your en-suite, eh?’

  ‘Something like that. Got one at Dad’s, you know.’ He was only joking, and they both knew it.

  She hit his arm playfully. ‘Don’t start that crap with me!’

  ‘I’m kidding! I’m hoping for somewhere a bit more homey than Dad’s boutique hotel.’

  ‘I’ve never been there.’

  ‘Trust me. It’s all very … anonymous. You’ll need a shed,’ he added.

  ‘Why on earth would I need a shed?’

  ‘Not you.’ He looked at her like she was being obtuse. ‘For Joe. He’ll need somewhere for all his projects.’ He was teasing, his voice light and kind. But it was, she figured, his way of letting her know that he was okay with Joe’s presence. Okay, even, with that presence becoming more permanent.

  ‘Oy.’

  ‘You know you want to.’

  She laughed. ‘We’ve only been going out for a few months, Eth. We’re taking it slowly.’

  ‘You’re not getting any younger, though, Mum, are you? Better crack on, I reckon …’