Just for the Holidays

by Sue Moorcroft

  Curtis: It’s OK. Dad’s put a new shower in and he’s painting everywhere. We sleep in beds.

  Mum: Glad to hear it. x

  Curtis shoved his phone away. Leah had begun the washing up so he helped Jordan transfer his sheet of chocolate shapes to the fridge while Natasha washed her hands free of glitter. When Curtis saw the shapes Jordan had made he snorted with laughter.

  Jordan sent him a warning look.

  Then they set the kitchen table with cutlery with coloured plastic handles and Leah showed them how to fold paper napkins into the shape of swans.

  ‘Making paper swans is well easy,’ Curtis marvelled, following her instructions closely and ending up with something that was recognisably a swan.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone. Let them think we’re really clever.’ Leah grouped the swans as if they were swimming down the centre of the table.

  Jordan looked discontented. ‘Forget paper swans. Where’s dinner?’

  On cue, Ronan called to be let in, his hands, when Curtis flung open the door, proving to be full of their two large stew pots, balanced one atop the other. ‘Cool,’ Curtis grinned.

  ‘Actually, scalding hot.’ His dad deposited the pots on the hob with a clang, dropping the towels he’d used as oven mitts.

  ‘Mum texted.’

  His dad’s face did that funny flicker that tended to accompany conversations about Curtis’s mum. But ‘I hope all’s well with her’ is all he said.

  ‘Yup, fine.’ Curtis took a seat at the table. He hadn’t asked her that specific question but she’d sounded fine. She’d lolled, after all.

  The meal was leisurely. Leah relaxed and enjoyed the kids and their quirky worldview. After the main course, suspiciously giggly, they arranged glittery strawberries and Jordan’s chocolate decorations on scoops of ice cream beside the lava cakes. Leah understood the red-faced mirth when she got a proper look at the shapes Jordan had created and realised they were unmistakeably phallic but decided that stern words would only give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d made an impact. Plus, Ronan’s eyes were dancing and Leah didn’t trust herself not to laugh.

  ‘Delicious,’ she pronounced, scraping the sides of her bowl a couple of minutes later. ‘Curtis, your lava cakes were exactly right – firm on the outside but squishy in the middle. As you guys have worked so hard I’ll do the final clean-down. You go and play pool or something.’

  ‘Cool!’ In three seconds the door to the hall was swinging and the kitchen was empty of teenagers.

  Which left Leah alone with Ronan. Trying to pretend she hadn’t planned it, she bundled up damp tea towels and put out clean ones. ‘Teenagers are hard work. I love Jordan and Natasha but I’ve never had to spend so much time in their company. They talk all the time and fire questions, and you have to try not to swear and remember to be disapproving when they say or do something they shouldn’t.’

  Ronan glanced up from loading the dishwasher. ‘Like making chocolate decorations in the shape of –’

  ‘Exactly.’ She felt a blush begin. ‘Has Jordan been to Ann Summers for ideas?’

  ‘Fifteen-year-old boys had ideas like that long before Ann Summers shops were around.’

  Suddenly very conscious of the weight of his gaze, Leah paid assiduous attention to the hang of a clean tea towel. ‘It’s obvious that your wife’s wondering about how Curtis is getting on over here. Nice for him that both his parents are obviously loving and concerned.’ She turned around and found Ronan right there. A fizzing swept over her skin as if she’d lain down and rolled in Space Dust.

  ‘Ex-wife,’ he corrected softly but with emphasis. Backing Leah up against the kitchen table, he hooked his right arm around her waist and, with a quick heave, jumped her up onto the surface so that their eyes were level. ‘It’s over between Selina and me. Completely. OK?’ His gaze moved between her eyes and her mouth.

  ‘Right.’ As he edged his body closer her dress hitched up by several inches. The denim of his jeans brushing the inside of her knees made it hard to think.

  ‘You don’t have to test me. We live separate lives.’ Slowly, he brought his lips closer to hers. ‘And now … I really don’t want to talk or think about my very very very ex-wife.’

  ‘Right,’ Leah repeated.

  ‘Because I want to kiss you.’

  ‘Good.’ As the heat of his mouth took hers, she closed her eyes and let herself feel the softness of his kiss, the sensual stroke of his tongue. There was no reason to fight the attraction she felt for Ronan. It would make this strange and uncomfortable holiday bearable. A French fling. A flingette.

  Hooking him closer with her leg and hearing his breathing change she shut down to anything apart from his mouth on hers and his hands beginning a flesh-tingling slide up her body.

  And the clatter of feet on the stairs.

  Ronan sprang away and Leah leaped off the table, making sure her hem had fallen to its proper place, an instant before Curtis threw back the kitchen door.

  ‘Natasha’s crying lots,’ he told Leah urgently. ‘Jordan said would I get you cos he doesn’t know what to do. She’s really going at it.’

  ‘I’ll go up to her.’ Natasha sprang to the forefront of Leah’s mind, though her uneven breathing even before she ran up the stairs was a reminder of the snatched moment in the kitchen. That and the waves of heat still pulsing through her body.

  She found Natasha draped across her bed, reams of damp toilet paper clutched in her fingers. Jordan crouched beside her patting her arm awkwardly. The look he threw Leah was defensive. ‘I wasn’t even horrible to her.’

  ‘Good. Shall I have a chat with her?’ Leah suggested softly.

  With undisguised relief, Jordan gave his sister a last pat before slipping out through the bedroom door. Leah pulled the heaving little figure into her arms, smoothing her hair and kissing the top of her head. She didn’t ask what the matter was. She just waited, ripping off fresh festoons of loo roll as each reached the limits of absorbency.

  Finally, Natasha choked, ‘I want my mum.’

  Leah felt a peculiar sensation under her breastbone as if someone was very slowly pulling a thread that was attached deep inside her. ‘I know. She’ll be back. It’s a difficult time for all of you.’

  ‘I’ve texted her today and she hasn’t answered.’

  Leah fought to damp down a spark of sisterly rage. ‘Maybe she’s still having trouble with the signal. She said she was leaving her phone on all the time and that she was going to keep in contact with you.’ It was actually what Leah had demanded. She wasn’t quite so certain that Michele had agreed. ‘Let’s try and call her now.’

  But the call went to voicemail once they’d heard the ring tone a few times, making Natasha sob anew. ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Leah.’ Natasha held onto Leah tightly, smelling of chocolate and curry.

  ‘So am I.’ With a warm trickle of pleasure, Leah realised she meant it. There were few things sadder than an upset teenager and if her presence could make Natasha feel even a tiny bit better she was glad, even though her own heart was feeling oddly bruised.

  As if it, too, wanted to offer comfort, Natasha’s phone began to ring. She snatched it up. ‘It’s Mum!’ she beamed wetly, fumbling in her haste to answer.

  Almost weak with relief Leah withdrew to the doorway as Natasha exclaimed, ‘Oh, you were in the bathroom?’ and began to pour out the day’s news, breathlessly mixing it up until it sounded as if they’d baked lava cake on a tram as it whizzed through the hospital. She even managed a few watery smiles. When Jordan crossed the landing with an expression of expectation Leah stepped out to meet him. ‘Do you want a word with your mum?’

  He gave a single nod. ‘Might as well.’ The eager light in his eyes belied his casual words.

  Leah left him listening to Natasha’s jumbled side of the conversation, putting in a comment here and there. Then she remembered Ronan and Curtis in the kitchen and, though feeling as if her emotions had had a quick whizz in a blender, jogged down
stairs.

  The room was empty. The stew pots had gone. On the table was a note written on the back of a shopping receipt. Thanks for a great evening. Goodnight. R & C.

  There was little left to do but finish the last few chores, lock up, switch off the light and mooch back upstairs. She found Jordan’s door shut. Natasha was already in bed, three-parts asleep but managing a sleepy smile. ‘Mum’s still icky but she’s going to be OK,’ she murmured before turning over and closing her eyes.

  ‘That’s fantastic.’ Leah sought the sanctuary of her own room. She fished for her phone and rang Scott.

  ‘About time,’ he snorted mock-disagreeably, ‘you’ve hardly sent me any texts and you’ve been away a week. Is everything OK, you bloody annoying woman?’

  ‘Don’t give me a hard time.’ But Leah smiled just to hear his funny, familiar, snarky voice. In the background she could hear a lot more voices and what sounded like a TV. ‘Nothing’s OK. The Milton Family Dramas just pile up.’ She brought him up to date then, hearing a muffled roar go up in the background, demanded enviously, ‘Are you at the Chequered Flag?’ It was their favourite pub for a relaxed Saturday night watching Sky Sports and drinking with mates. A longing rolled over her to be there, sinking a couple of Budweisers and getting involved in pointless arguments that led to raucous laughter and more beers, close enough to home to walk back at the end of the evening.

  ‘Yep.’ Another roar. ‘Watching a Superbikes race. Loads of dicing at the front. So you’re still stuck out there?’

  Easing the ponytail elastic from her hair, Leah lay back on her pillows. ‘Stuck like superglue. And I don’t know how we’re going to get two vehicles back. I may have to drive The Pig home and fly back for the Porsche.’

  Scott laughed incredulously. ‘Don’t leave the Porsche, Leah. Bring your favourite kid and make the other one stay behind.’

  Although she knew he was joking, for a wild instant Leah imagined having to choose which child to leave alone in a foreign country, woebegone and desperate. She actually had to gulp back tears.

  Scott’s voice softened to a remorseful croon. ‘Hey, hey, it was just a stupid joke. Don’t get upset. You’ll get everyone home somehow. There are trains, planes and coaches. The people are what count. Cars are just bits of tin.’

  Leah was so astonished at hearing him term cars ‘just bits of tin’ that she even smiled despite her hot eyes. ‘Wow. People more important than cars? That may take some getting used to.’

  Though Scott laughed, he said, ‘You know it well enough. That’s why we all love you.’

  Chapter Eight

  As soon as she awoke on Saturday Leah rang Michele and listened to the far-off ringtone. She’d just resigned herself to the call going to voicemail when Michele answered.

  ‘I’m glad you found time to speak to your kids last night.’ Leah decided there was no point pulling punches. ‘Natasha was getting upset.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. I spent most of yesterday on the bathroom floor.’ Michele sounded worryingly faint and wobbly. ‘I can’t keep anything down and I’m reaching the point of exhaustion. If I’m the same today, Bailey’s going to find a doctor to give me medicine to stop the constant throwing up.’

  Leah had rung with the intention of getting a firm answer as to when they might expect to see Michele back in Kirchhoffen and, meantime, discuss the fact that the last visit to the supermarket had mopped up most of the food kitty. Now concern for her sister overrode those things. ‘You poor thing–’

  Michele suddenly gasped. ‘Oh … I’ve got to run!’

  ‘I hope you soon feel bet—’ The line was already dead. Leah sighed as she shoved her phone in her pocket. The situation got worse all the time.

  At Chez Shea, Ronan was spending his morning painting the walls of the third bedroom. The sunshine had returned to stream in as he painted the sloping patch above the window. That done, the upstairs would be finished and he could tackle the unappetising, time-consuming job of rubbing down the kitchen cabinets before applying fresh stain. Curtis hadn’t put in an appearance and Ronan was allowing him to sleep in and indulge his wild teenage circadian rhythms.

  Ronan pulled up the step in order to reach the upper edge of the wall and paused to release the stiffness in his left arm, rolling the shoulder, lifting and flexing the arm, stretching and flexing his fingers. The doctors had warned him about building his fitness sensibly and he’d cut down his usual running regime to jogging or walking while his collarbone healed.

  Laborious labour. It was meant to free the mind to wander. Not that his mind needed any invitation; it’d been awake hours before it should have been, drawn like a magnet to the day the RPM needle on Buzzair Two had begun to flicker, leading him into going obsessively over whether he’d chosen the best of the farm fields spread below him for his forced landing, pulse accelerating at the memory of the dropping engine note and the warning flash of the engine out light, reliving the automatic movements of his hands and feet on the controls to take the aircraft into autorotation, the procedure every helicopter pilot practised until nursing a sick helicopter down could be done in their sleep. The ground had come closer at a rapid but controlled rate; he’d achieved exactly the right angle and speed of descent until he could execute a perfect flare and run-on landing.

  Then had come the sickening instant when the aircraft dug in its toes and the world flipped, leaving Ronan hanging in his harness, his shoulder feeling as if it had burst into flames.

  He recognised it was just bad luck that the crop had disguised the underlying bogginess of the spot he’d chosen. He knew he hadn’t been incompetent. Stretching the glide in search of a more closely mown field hadn’t been achievable. Yet first light slipping its shining fingers around the curtains had found him re-examining every detail of what had caused this frustrating break from flying and thanking his stars that at least his injury hadn’t been career-ending.

  He paused to drag the step along to the final couple of feet of wall. Irritated that he was mulling fruitlessly over the forced landing again, as he had last night and the one before, he directed his mind instead onto the subject of Curtis, wondering how the shyly smiling boy who, only a few years ago, had skipped hand-in-hand at Ronan’s side had been replaced by a man-sized teen who dressed like a character from a graphic novel; as if he wanted everybody to look at him. Or nobody to see him. Particularly disenchanting was Curtis’s occasional habit of treating Ronan as a joke. Ronan liked jokes, but didn’t exactly see himself as one.

  Ronan was pretty comfortable with his place in the world, his respected career, the responsibility he took for the life of every passenger who boarded an aircraft he flew. Yet he saw his greatest responsibility, his greatest achievement, the most important thing in his life, was Curtis. It hurt that Curtis was so obviously, even deliberately, growing away from him.

  And then there was last night … Leah, the way her smile struck him in the pit of his stomach, how she’d felt in his arms: soft and curved in all the right places. He loaded his brush with cream emulsion and his mind flipped to Curtis’s face when he’d almost caught them in a clinch.

  Ronan had thought he’d unwrapped himself from around Leah quickly enough but now he wondered whether Curtis’s eyes had narrowed suspiciously.

  Tucking his left hand into his waistband to relieve his shoulder of its weight, Ronan used his right arm to sweep the paintbrush to and fro, to and fro, methodically covering the last segment of the wall before stepping down to check out his handiwork. Instead of seeing the bright new coat of emulsion, he remembered the edge to Curtis’s voice on Thursday evening. I’ve seen the way you look at her.

  In the three post-Selina years, Ronan’s sex life had consisted of hook-ups with the kind of women who were happy for him to leave while the condom was still warm, a smile on his face and a head full of interesting memories. But none of the women concerned had been living in the house next door, as Leah was, so they hadn’t appeared on his radar before. Maybe Curtis was a
larmed at this first hint of Ronan as a man rather than just a dad? Ronan might one day want to introduce Curtis to a girlfriend but there was a difference between ‘girlfriend’ and ‘holiday romance’.

  He frowned over his thoughts as he cleared up his decorating paraphernalia and went downstairs.

  It was a couple of hours later when Curtis finally made an appearance. By then Ronan was calculating the amount of work needed on the kitchen cabinets and mentally consigning it to the day’s ‘the doctor said not to push myself’ category.

  ‘What’s up?’ mumbled Curtis through the hair hanging over his face, swinging open the fridge and pulling out the milk.

  Ronan passed him a glass in the hopes of encouraging him not to drink directly from the carton. ‘Nothing much up with me. You?’

  Shrugging, Curtis poured the milk. Despite the hot August morning he wore baggy black and white chequered trousers that tucked into boots laced up almost to his knees. Black braces dangled pointlessly from his waist and his black T-shirt depicted maggots wriggling through the eye sockets of a skull.

  ‘Lunch?’ Ronan took yesterday’s baguette from the bread bin. He covered chunks of baguette with grated cheese and slices from a big red tomato, stuck them under the grill and helped himself to a bottle of Meteor beer.

  Curtis poured a second glass of milk, plonked the carton next to the fridge – what good was next to? – and noisily dragged out a kitchen chair. ‘What we doing today?’

  Ronan was tempted to say, ‘I’ve been up for hours and have finished emulsioning the third bedroom already,’ but instead went with ‘What do you want to do?’

  Shrug. ‘What are the others doing?’ Curtis inclined his head in the general direction of the gîte next door to indicate the identity of ‘the others’, adding, helpfully, ‘Cheese is burning.’

  Locking expletives behind his teeth like a responsible parent, Ronan leaped for the grill pan. He’d only removed his attention for a split second and one hunk of bread had begun to catch. Having put that and another on his plate, he passed Curtis the more golden slices.