by Lucy Diamond
A faint smile twitched at the corners of Josie’s mouth. She loved hearing them laugh like that. Things had been so tense at home lately, there hadn’t been much laughing. They probably needed a change of scenery, too, just as much as she did.
Oh, what the hell. Devon would be fine. And they could always come home if something went wrong. The main thing was that the boys were happy. That was all she cared about.
Right, where was that list? It was time to get the show on the road …
‘And off we go!’ Nell said, turning to smile back at Toby and Sam. ‘Ready for our holiday, boys?’
‘Yeah!’ they chorused.
Josie, in the passenger’s seat, gave a small smile as Nell turned the ignition key and started up the engine. She was so bone-weary that she’d put Nell on the insurance to share the driving. Making the call had seemed an effort, but her mind had been in a perpetual fog lately, and even driving to Tesco seemed perilous. She didn’t feel anywhere near sharp enough to get them all safely down to Devon in one piece.
She gazed out of the window as Nell reversed carefully out of the driveway and into the road.
‘Blimey,’ Nell commented as she went into second gear, ‘this is a bit smoother than Gareth’s old jalopy. Ooh, power steering too. Excellent.’
‘Make the most of it, I’ll probably have to sell it once I’m homeless and destitute,’ Josie replied. She was trying to be jokey but the words came out sounding mournful.
Nell glanced back to where the boys were plugged into a double Walkman and singing tunelessly to ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’. ‘You could always live in it,’ she suggested. ‘Nice and cosy, put a few curtains up, get a pot plant on the dashboard …’
Josie grimaced. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t even joke about it, I’m so scared.’
‘Well, don’t think about it then,’ Nell said. ‘Look, we’re leaving Heartbreak Hotel behind, right? Next stop, Hope.’
Nell drove for a couple of hours while Josie dozed, her head wedged uncomfortably between the window and the headrest. The boys were now listening to a Horrid Henry tape on the main car stereo system, and Miranda Richardson’s bolshy Henry voice floated in and out of Josie’s dreams. The boys’ guffaws broke her slumber and she wiped her mouth blearily. ‘Pete, did you—?’
She blinked as she turned to the driver. It wasn’t Pete. Of course it wasn’t Pete.
Nell patted her hand. ‘All right, Sleeping Beauty? I’m getting peckish. Fancy stopping somewhere for lunch?’
‘Lunch!’
‘Yeah!’
Sam and Toby had pounced upon the question before Josie could answer. ‘Mmm, yeah,’ she said, trying to shake the sleep from her brain. She’d really thought she was with Pete again. Just for a second. ‘Lunch. Right. What were you thinking? Service station, or … ?’
Nell was indicating to come off the motorway. ‘Nah. Let’s do some exploring,’ she said, turning on to the slip-road. ‘Lower Hensall,’ she said, reading the sign. ‘Never heard of it. But maybe it’s got a nice pub.’
‘Pub!’ squealed Sam. ‘Are we going to the pub?’
Nell winked at Josie. ‘Just like his father,’ she joked.
‘Let’s hope not,’ Josie replied, then wished she hadn’t. She was sounding so bitter. ‘Let’s hope he’s even nicer than his father, if that’s possible,’ she said loudly, for Sam’s benefit. Stop moaning, she ordered herself. This is supposed to be a jolly, remember?
‘Left or right?’ Nell said, coming to a crossroads.
‘Right,’ Josie said.
‘Left,’ Sam chimed in.
‘Light,’ Toby giggled. ‘Reft.’
‘And I vote left, so the lefts have it,’ Nell said, turning into a single-track lane with high beech hedges. She drove another a mile or so, uphill all the way, then the hedges became lower and they could see they were on the peak of a hill, with green meadows sloping down either side of them, dotted with fat white sheep. There was a village, complete with squat stone church, and purple hills and woodland in the far distance. A tractor droned somewhere in the background.
‘Nice,’ Nell said approvingly. ‘Fingers crossed there’s a stonking pub down here. It’s a perfect day for lunch outside.’
Josie leaned forward as they entered the village. This was actually happening, she thought in surprise. They had actually escaped the house and were here, in the middle of nowhere, with the sun shining. It was a good start.
‘Hallelujah and God bless Lower Hensall,’ Nell whooped as she slowed the car and parked it outside a sprawling cream-coloured building. ‘Thatched roof and everything. Oh, look – and a food sign. This is the life, boys. This is the life!’
Nell’s enthusiasm was infectious. Josie let Sam and Toby out of the back and they raced straight to the pub door, bouncing around like a couple of Tiggers under the old wooden porch. She slipped an arm through Nell’s as they followed. ‘This is a new one for me, you know,’ she confessed. ‘Doing something like this without Pete. I keep looking around for him, expecting him to be here too.’
Nell gave her a sidelong look. ‘And how do you feel when you remember he’s not here?’ she asked.
Josie thought for a moment. ‘All right,’ she pronounced. ‘Kind of all right. It helps when I think of him in his suit, sitting in his office,’ she added, ‘when we’re off on an adventure.’
‘Too right,’ Nell said, pushing open the door. It was dim and cool inside, with solid oak beams across the ceiling. Through an open back door, Josie could see a strip of long lawned garden.
‘Hello, poppet,’ the woman behind the bar said, catching sight of Toby. She looked to be in her fifties, small and neat-looking with shingled coppery hair and a slathering of orange foundation. ‘Oh, two poppets!’ she added as she saw Sam. ‘Double trouble, eh?’
The twin poppets charged outside and Josie followed while Nell ordered drinks. There were ten or so wooden picnic tables spread out on the grass, each with a white parasol stuck through the centre. A pair of elderly women giggled conspiratorially at one another over a glass of wine, and a couple held hands across one of the tables, but otherwise the garden was theirs.
Josie slipped her feet out of her sandals and walked across the grass after the boys, letting the cool blades tickle her toes.
Toby and Sam were right at the far end of the garden, squatting to peer at something in the grass.
‘A frog, Mum!’ Sam called as she came over. His eyes were shining as if he’d just seen Father Christmas. ‘A real frog, Mum!’
‘Wow,’ Josie breathed, trying to sound suitably impressed. ‘Not a real one!’ She crouched down with them to watch the small young frog scramble away from Toby’s grubby poking finger, loving the way her sons were both so utterly absorbed in this single moment. Toby had grass stains on his shorts already, and Sam had a bramble scratch on one leg – how on earth had he managed that? – but for ten seconds or so, nothing else mattered to them in the world except this one creature.
A couple of birds were calling to one another in the woodland behind the pub garden, and Josie suddenly felt a rush of relief that they were there, barefoot in the grass in a sunny pub garden, gazing at a frog together, instead of on the playgroup run, or anywhere else. If only Pete could have been there too …
No. Don’t let that spoil things.
‘So!’ Nell’s voice broke the spell. Josie looked up to see her striding towards them with a tray of drinks and some menus. ‘What does everyone fancy to eat, then?’
Somehow or other, the minutes turned into hours and time slid by in a haze of frog-bothering and chip-scoffing. Nell lay on the grass with her shades on, catching forty winks, while Josie watched the boys trying their hardest to climb up a twisted old apple tree. It was so peaceful sitting in the sunny garden, in no hurry to get back in the car.
‘What’s the rush?’ Nell had said lazily before she fell asleep. ‘Devon will still be there tomorrow. We’ll move on when the boys have had enough. These things a
re always better left unplanned, if you ask me.’
A week ago, Josie would have disagreed outright with such a statement. In her opinion, life was better if you had everything mapped out. Husband – check. Children – check. House with all the trimmings – check. If everything was arranged and in its place, there was no room for the bad stuff to sneak in and ambush you.
That was what she’d thought a week ago, anyway. Now that her life had been invaded by turmoil and chaos, Josie couldn’t do anything other than get through each day as it came, and be grateful if everyone was OK at the end of it. Forget planning, forget mapping everything out. If her boys were happy right now, this minute, then that was good enough. That was enough to cling on to.
Nell stirred and pushed up her sunglasses to rub her eyes. Then she sat up, shaking grass from her hair. ‘Bliss,’ she said, stretching her arms above her head. ‘Fancy pushing on? We don’t have to go far, just look for somewhere to spend tonight.’
Josie nodded and got to her feet. ‘I’ll get the map,’ she said, grabbing the car keys from the table. ‘We can see if there’s anywhere interesting coming up.’
With a last quick glance over her shoulder at Toby and Sam – who were both astride one of the lower branches, looking through their curled-up hands like telescopes – Josie slipped on her sandals and walked to the car.
‘Off on holiday, are you?’ the orange-faced woman behind the bar asked as Josie came back through the pub with the road atlas.
Josie hesitated. ‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘It was a bit … spontaneous. We only decided to go last night.’
The woman raised her eyebrows. ‘Lucky you. I wish I could hop off for a jaunt like that,’ she said approvingly.
Not that lucky, Josie thought, but she said nothing, just smiled and made her way out to the garden again. It was funny the way other people made assumptions about your life, she thought. That woman really did think Josie was lucky, but then all she’d seen of Josie’s life had been her sons, and the fact that they could afford a nice lunch out together, and that now they were heading off on holiday, on a whim, just for fun!
Josie shook her head at the irony. Actually, we’re going away because my husband has left me for a marriage-wrecker, and I’m trying my hardest to stave off a nervous breakdown and make sure my boys enjoy themselves, she added in her head. That do you?
She spread the road atlas out, and she and Nell pored over the page.
‘I’ve never been to Stonehenge,’ Josie ventured, pointing at it.
Nell wrinkled her nose. ‘Salisbury is a bit of a ’mare to drive through,’ she said. ‘I think we should avoid it.’ She leaned over thoughtfully. ‘Where are we anyway? I can’t spot our village.’
Josie pointed it out for her. ‘So if we look around here in a – what? A thirty-mile radius,’ she began, ‘then …’
‘Oh! Look, we’re near Lymington,’ Nell exclaimed, not paying her any attention. Her eyes sparkled and she reached in her pocket for her phone. ‘That’s where Rob lives – well, not for much longer actually, according to my mum. Shall I ring him? I’m sure he’d let us stay.’
‘What, Rob as in your brother?’ Josie asked.
‘Rob as in my brother,’ Nell confirmed, pressing a button on her phone. She held it to her ear and waited, face alight. ‘Hi, stranger,’ she said, then laughed. ‘I’m OK, how are you? All packed?’
Nell began chatting away, and an image of Rob’s face floated up into Josie’s mind. Rob! She’d had an embarrassing crush on him when she and Nell had first been flatmates, gone all coy whenever she’d answered the phone to him and made sure she washed her hair and squirted perfume in her cleavage if she knew he was coming round. Not that he ever seemed to notice, too busy getting ready to go off on another adventure most of the time to give the eye to his kid sister’s mate, but all the same …
Josie found herself smiling to think of him. Rob was just as well travelled as Nell, and with a permanent tan, it seemed. She vaguely remembered him working in Nepal a few years ago, leading mountain treks or something equally exciting-sounding. Before that he’d been a volunteer in Mozambique, some kind of mechanic, she thought, and before that …
‘Excellent,’ Nell said, grinning as she hung up. ‘We can stay. I’m dead chuffed I’ve got a chance to see him; he’s off to Zambia at the end of the week. Some new voluntary thing, Mum said.’
Josie rolled her eyes and smiled. ‘Of course he’s off to Zambia. I’m amazed he’s actually in this country at all,’ she said. When had she last seen Rob? She’d been kept up to date by Nell of his various comings and goings, but the last time she’d actually clapped eyes on him … Oh, yes! Of course. It was just after she’d split up with Nick, before she started seeing Pete. Years ago. Josie frowned. There was something else. Something she hadn’t remembered. What had happened that night?
Nell rolled her hand into a tube and shouted through it to the boys. ‘Ahoy there, shipmates! This is your captain speaking!’
Toby shouted through his own small hand. ‘What?’
‘Land ahoy!’ Nell called. ‘Prepare to lower the gangplank and become landlubbers!’
‘Aye aye, captain!’ Sam yelled.
‘And then we’re going to go and meet my brother,’ Nell told them, with a grin. ‘You two are just going to love him.’
She’d drunk too much the last time she’d seen Rob, that much Josie could remember. She had a brief flashback of the beer garden swaying around her. Oh God! She hadn’t made a pass at him or something awful, had she? Why wouldn’t her brain remember?
‘Anchors away!’ Toby bellowed suddenly, and hurled himself off the branch.
‘Toby!’ she cried, just getting there in time to catch the full weight of him as he plummeted headlong. ‘Be careful!’ She hugged him, and then set him down and held out her arms for his more cautious brother. ‘Honestly, Tobes, you’re just an adrenalin junkie,’ she scolded, too relieved that she’d caught him to be cross.
Nell scooped him up and tickled him. ‘Just like my big brother,’ she said with a grin. ‘Didn’t I say that you were going to love him?’
Chapter Eleven
It was almost five by the time they reached Lymington, a pretty town on the edge of the New Forest. ‘Nice,’ Nell commented as they drove past the old stone quay, where clusters of children were crabbing off the side.
Josie felt prickly with tiredness and almost immune to the charms of the cobbled streets she glimpsed, with their sweet little boutiques and ice-cream shops. ‘Look, boys, see all the yachts out there?’ she asked, leaning over the back seat to point out of Toby’s window. They were getting hungry and grouchy by now, and had started pushing each other in the back seat. They were immune to Lymington’s charms too.
‘Stop fighting,’ she snapped for the tenth time. ‘Toby, keep your hands to yourself. Sam, stop winding him up.’
Josie was starting to wish they were back home, jammed safely into the usual conveyor belt of routine. Tea … bath … story … sleep. She was already dreading putting the boys to bed in Rob’s house. They’d never been the most brilliant sleepers to start with, but were even worse when they were away from their own bunk bed. And she’d no doubt have to camp in with them – she was sure Rob didn’t live in a mansion where they could all have a room to themselves. And they d be waking each other up the whole night … How was she going to manage her nightly sobbing session when she had her boys snoring either side of her?
Oh, why had they come? Why had she let herself get talked into this? She wished they were round her kitchen table right now, eating shepherd’s pie together like they did every Wednesday night. Rob didn’t have kids of his own, he probably hadn’t even thought as far ahead as tea yet, he might not even have any food in the house …
‘Mum, he kicked me!’ whined Sam.
Josie swung round irritably. Sam’s nose was running and he had snot trails on his cheek. His mouth was turned down as if he were on the verge of tears. Toby was kicking a petulant
leg in the air as if he might very well lash out again. He grabbed his sword with a glint in his eye and a sidelong look at Josie, deliberately provoking her.
‘Both of you just pack it in, or I’ll—’
‘Here we are,’ Nell said at that moment, pulling up outside a small terraced house at the end of a lane.
‘And not a moment too soon,’ Josie muttered, unclipping her seatbelt thankfully. ‘Right, boys, get your shoes back on.’
Nell got out of the driver’s seat and stretched her legs. Josie let the boys out of the back, helped them with their shoes and grabbed their overnight things. ‘Where are we?’ Sam asked, staring around as they went up Rob’s front path. The front garden was scruffy and unkempt, full of rubble sacks and old planks of wood.
‘We’re at Nell’s big brother’s house, remember?’ Josie said. ‘This is where we’re all going to sleep tonight. Like campers! Like …’
‘Well, I don’t like this house,’ Toby said loudly, and Josie shushed him as they approached the door.
‘It’s not very pretty is it?’ Nell agreed. ‘He’s been helping a mate, Mark, do it up,’ she explained to Josie, knocking on the door. ‘And, by a stroke of luck, Mark’s away all this week, hence room for us to stay.’
They stood there waiting for a few seconds, and an image of Rob as she’d last seen him rushed into Josie’s head. He’d just come back from a two-month holiday in … where had it been? Sri Lanka that time? … and was bronzed and unshaven, his tousled brown hair a shade lighter from the sun as it fell almost to his shoulders. She could picture him at the table in the pub garden now, could remember precisely the way he’d held his pint glass with both hands while he told them stories of his travels. He’d been wearing an unusual green disc pendant round his neck, and a white cotton shirt – really thick, heavy cotton, it had looked. She remembered wanting to stroke it. She remembered the way he’d made them all laugh with his stories.