by Judy Astley
He stole a quick glance at Anna. She was smiling as she said, ‘It’s a bit of a – I don’t know – staid sort of vehicle, isn’t it? Sensible. Practical.’
‘Thanks. You mean it’s an old man’s car.’ He felt gloomy suddenly. Truth was, whichever way you looked at it, he was an old man – well, getting there, certainly by the standards of the generation below and not that far off even by his own. He didn’t need his car to be reminding him of it, not when there were people like the camper-van boys making sure he knew where he stood in life’s long, shuffling queue for the grave.
‘What’s wrong with practical?’ he said, trying to rally.
‘Nothing. But’ – and she laughed, sounding as young as she had when he’d first met her and heard her giggling across the student union bar – ‘I’m not going for staid and practical any more, not in my new life. I fancy a hot little Mini Cooper.’
Anna was looking exhilarated at the idea, smiling and excited and … happy. And he felt the same. Of course he did. After all, this was what they both wanted.
The light wasn’t even starting to fade as it would have done by now in London. Thea was surprised. She’d forgotten that this far west, you got a bonus half-hour of light at the end of a day. She’d found the way through the village and out to Cove Manor easily enough and she now drove along a high track parallel to the sea and in through a pair of ancient stone gateposts that seemed to have lost a gate to support. After another fifty yards and round a bend, the house suddenly appeared. It was a long, three-storey Georgian building, pale stone and with many windows. Lights were on and smoke drifted from chimneys at each end of the house and also in the middle, which was a cheering sign. As she pulled up on the big gravel driveway across from the house where a sign indicated a parking area, Thea hoped those windows had heavy draught-proof curtains.
Opening the car door brought a blast of freezing wind. The scudding clouds were a deep, looming grey and she was sure that when her mother arrived she’d be scenting the air and declaring that she could smell snow. She’d always done that when they were little and it had seemed magical to them that she’d never been wrong. What Thea could smell was the sea – and she could hear it too, swooshing onto the rocks that from the website photos she knew were below the back of the house.
No one seemed to be around and for a second Thea wondered if she’d got the right place after all. Could there be more places called Cove Manor? Doubtful – the directions had been pretty clear. There was what looked like a converted stable block off to the side of the house; lights were shining in it and she could hear music (possibly Led Zeppelin; her dad would know for sure) so she started heading in that direction, but was met by a man approaching her.
‘Hi! Find us all right? I’m Sean. Welcome.’
‘Hello. I’m Thea. And yes, thanks – it was quite easy to find this place.’ She quickly peeled off her glove to shake the hand he offered her. His skin was warm on hers. He was tallish and she recognized a typical Cornwall surfer look about his hair: sun-bleached streaks (comparatively dark now in the winter but would be searing blond in summer), a baggy grey over-sized hoody with a surf company logo on the front (she could hear Rich in her head, muttering that surely the man was too old to wear one. She told the voice to go away and stop being so ridiculous) and battered brown cowboy boots that looked as if they’d been hurriedly pulled on over frayed jeans. A creamy-coloured cat – Siamese? – had followed and was plaiting itself around his legs, giving her a hostile look from blue, slightly crossed, eyes.
‘So it’s just you? You drove here alone?’ he asked, leading her towards the house.
‘Just me. The rest of them all have …’ each other were the obvious missing words here, but she let the sentence drop. He didn’t seem to mind.
‘OK, so I’ll let you in and show you round before we unload your car and get you a drink. And you can bagsy whichever room you fancy.’ As Sean unlocked the front door he turned and grinned at her. ‘Getting here before the others has to have some perks, don’t you think?’
The cat came into the house with them and jumped onto one of the two scarlet velvet chairs that were either side of a log fire in the hallway. ‘This is Woody, by the way,’ Sean told her, scooping up the cat which closed its eyes and rubbed its head against Sean’s hand. ‘He’s a lilac Siamese and he gets everywhere. You’ll probably find him joining in with you a lot of the time. I hope that’s OK, but if you’re not fond of cats I can make sure he stays over at the Stables where we live.’
Thea tentatively stroked the cat’s ears and he purred at her. ‘I love cats,’ she said. ‘I’d decided I’d get one once Christmas is over. He’s gorgeous.’
‘Excellent. To be honest, I’m not keen on people who can’t like a cat,’ he admitted. ‘But don’t tell anyone. It’s probably not good for business here.’
‘I won’t tell. I promise.’ Thea felt ridiculously pleased, as if she’d passed some kind of test. She must be tired, she thought. She wasn’t usually this soppy.
Sean led her through the downstairs rooms, which were big and bright and more colourful than she’d expected. She’d assumed the house would be darker, that there would be much brown and muted chintz and dusty green carpet. Instead, the bigger of the two massive sitting rooms, each of which had a lavishly lit Christmas tree in an alcove, was painted a glorious bright pink and had an ashy parquet floor. The next room was pale turquoise with purple sofas. Fluffy cream rugs were everywhere.
‘It’s all so incredibly pretty,’ she said, as Sean took her through to the kitchen which had a table at least four metres long and a huge white Aga.
‘Thank you,’ he said, turning to smile at her. ‘We didn’t want it to have some musty old country-house feel. People like it all a bit fresher, so we thought more Livingetc than Homes & Gardens. Though’ – and he laughed – ‘when we first came here it was so dilapidated we could have just left the shredded old curtains, peeled even more old wallpaper back from the damp and rot, and kept it as a kind of glorious ruin. Très chic, in some circles.’
‘Not very cosy though,’ she said. ‘I think you’d have to be a seriously old-school aristocrat to go along with that.’
‘Exactly. And they’ve probably got their own glorious ruins. They wouldn’t want to take a holiday in another one.’ He had very white teeth, she thought, or maybe it was that he had a leftover tan. ‘Would you like me to take you upstairs now?’ They were at the bottom of the stairs.
There was a moment’s hesitation – she was still thinking about the tan and teeth thing, ‘Upstairs? Oh – er, yes. Bedrooms.’
‘Exactly. You’re first here, you get first dibs.’
There were two floors of bedrooms, each with their own bathroom. She chose one at the end of the top floor which had a sloping roof. One of the windows looked out towards the converted stable block and the other towards the sea.
‘Good choice,’ he said, ‘You’ve got the back staircase just round the corner in case you want to slide down to the kitchen for a midnight snack, and this room’s got the biggest bath. You could have a party in it.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ she said, thinking about the last time she’d shared a bath with someone. It had been with a boyfriend at university and the bath hadn’t been anywhere near big enough for anything more than being uncomfortable and bashing bits of body on taps. It hadn’t been Rich; he thought the idea was too weird. He liked sex to be something they did in bed, as it was ‘easier’.
‘OK – I’ll go and get your bags from the car and bring them up here for you,’ Sean said, and the two of them went back to the main stairs. There was someone else just coming into the hallway, another man.
‘You up there, Sean?’ he called. ‘There’s another car just pulled in.’
This man was about a decade older, with sleek greying hair. He was wearing old black cords and a lavender-coloured sweater that Thea guessed was cashmere.
‘Thea, this is Paul. He’s my partner in crime h
ere. All the décor you were admiring is down to him,’ Sean told her.
Oh, of course he was. Partner. Damn – wasn’t it always the way? Thea was cross with herself for minding about this, but at the same time she felt a little extra notch had been reached on the recovery-from-Rich scale. She’d actually noticed at last that someone was attractive. She’d thought it would never happen. She hadn’t even been looking for it to happen. Shame it had to be someone who was on the other bus, but it was a start.
There were noises and bustling from outside the door and Paul opened it wide to let Sam, Milly and Alfie crash through. Behind them she could just see Emily tottering on the gravel in her favourite Prada boots and hauling a case on wheels. ‘Is the maiden aunt here yet?’ she called, then stopped abruptly as she came in through the door. ‘Oops, sorry, Tee. Just a joke.’
Sean was laughing. ‘“Maiden aunt”? Do those still exist?’
Thea fought against a severe sense-of-humour failure and put on a bright smile. ‘Yes, they do. That is my dear sister Emily, and the maiden aunt she’s talking about is – er, me.’
FIVE
‘Well, whoever is doing the cooking is worth their weight.’ Anna put her fork down, sat back and sighed with deep contentment. ‘That was a lasagne to die for.’
‘Let’s hope not literally,’ Rosie said.
‘Always so optimistic, your mother,’ Jimi whispered to Elmo. ‘It’s why I married her.’
Elmo glared at Rosie. ‘Mum, don’t say bad stuff. It was ace.’
‘Better than mine?’ she challenged. ‘OK, don’t answer that. I know it was. Better by a country mile. That’s fine. In fact, everything’s fine – I like it here.’ She sounded surprised at her own statement. They all looked at her, Thea wondering if her sister-in-law half-expected applause.
‘Yes, it’s brilliant,’ Sam said. ‘Great choice, Anna.’
She smiled at him and handed him the wine bottle. ‘For that, you deserve a top-up. Pass it round and we’ll open another.’
Mike got up and pulled another bottle from the rack. ‘Luckily that’s one thing we made sure there’d be plenty of,’ he said, wielding the corkscrew.
‘So what do we have scheduled for tonight, Thea?’ Sam asked. ‘Are we on Monopoly-with-menaces or Dominoes-to-the-death?’
‘You didn’t really do a spreadsheet, did you?’ Rosie looked incredulous. ‘I mean, seriously? I thought it was a joke when Jimi told me.’
‘Yes, I did. Mum insisted. I even laminated six copies to hang up in all your rooms so you won’t have any excuses not to know what the schedule is.’
‘You did what?’ Emily stared at her.
‘Not really, only joking about the laminating. And it’s only a guideline, so for tonight—’
‘Oh, I can’t do anything tonight. You’ll have to count me out,’ Emily interrupted briskly. ‘I have to get the children to bed. They’re dropping on their feet and I still have a load of stuff to bring in.’ She glanced sideways at Milly and Alfie who were lining up silvery bits of rejected onion round the edges of their plates. ‘You know, some things are still outside in the car,’ she hissed in a dramatic whisper in the direction of Sam.
Milly looked up from her onion remains. ‘Christmas presents?’
‘Not presents, silly. Santa does presents.’
‘Yes, Mummy.’ Milly rolled her eyes at Emily and flicked a bit of onion at her brother.
‘It’s OK, I hadn’t got anything organized for tonight. I was going to say I thought we could just, you know …’ Thea almost said ‘chill’ but was aware of Elmo looking at her as if he dreaded her using the word. Oh, teenagers, she thought, so sweetly transparent. ‘We’ll just do whatever we want, settle in and get the feel of the place, nothing communal. Me, I need to finish off writing cards so I can get them posted tomorrow.’
‘They won’t get there, you know,’ Emily told her. ‘The last day for posting was Monday.’
‘They’ll be fine,’ Rosie contradicted her. ‘No need to flap.’ She yawned. ‘Jimi, did you pack the Anadin? I can feel a head coming on.’
‘Of course I packed it. Your head would fall off without that stuff and we don’t want a mess on the carpets.’ Rosie glared at him.
‘Ah, well, the walk in the morning will blow your headache away,’ Thea said. ‘I thought we’d take the path from the back, through the gate here in the garden and go down to the beach and up the path on the other side and then back here for a help-yourself lunch. I’ll put a copy of the activities list up.’
‘Dear lord, is it all compulsory?’ Rosie looked alarmed.
‘Absolutely,’ Mike teased. ‘Otherwise you’ll get no turkey.’
‘An overrated fowl, in my opinion,’ Rosie sniffed.
‘That’s not the point,’ Anna said quietly. ‘Just bear with us for a few days, Rosie. I’m sure you can manage that.’
‘Yeah, Mum. You can.’ Elmo looked upset. Thea felt sorry for him. In a way he was in a similar position to her, another one who was on his own here. She wanted to make sure he didn’t get fed up or despondent, missing friends and then vanishing for hours with his computer to moan to his mates about being imprisoned in the deepest wilds with only his family for company and Minecraft to absorb him. At his age, she’d enjoyed being by herself but only in short bursts when she wanted to be, not alone among grown-ups with no choice about it. Perhaps Sean had a bike Elmo could borrow – she’d go over to the Stables and ask him in the morning.
‘Tree!’ Rosie suddenly exclaimed, slapping both hands hard on the table and making everyone jump. ‘I can add our decorations to the trees tonight while you’re all slaving over hot jigsaws or something.’
‘But I was going to do that. I brought ours,’ Emily said.
‘Uh-oh – tree wars,’ Sam said, grinning. ‘The Battle of the Baubles. Bring it on.’ Elmo splorted laughter.
‘But I’m the one on Thea’s list for decorations.’ Emily was bordering on petulant.
‘There are two trees,’ Anna pointed out. ‘Why not do one each? Not that they need much – they’ve both got lots of shiny stuff on. Not enough, though. You can never have enough.’
‘Good idea. Yes, a tree each.’
‘And which one do all the presents go under?’ Emily looked anxious.
‘The one that’s in the bigger sitting room, I’d have thought,’ Jimi said.
The two women eyed each other.
‘So it’s just a matter of who does which,’ Rosie said. ‘I bagsy—’
‘No, wait,’ Thea interrupted. ‘Flip a coin for it, then it’s fair.’ It was only a Christmas tree, she thought. Where was all this aggro coming from?
‘I suppose that would be a good plan,’ Emily conceded. Jimi pulled a pound coin from his pocket and flipped it.
‘Heads,’ Rosie said. It was tails.
‘Best of three?’ she said.
‘No!’ Emily declared.
‘That was a joke, Em. It’s fine.’
Thea was suddenly feeling the need for sleep. It had been a long drive with so much holiday traffic and the wind against her, and it had taken a good hour longer than she’d expected. She wanted to curl up in the lovely big bed upstairs, all alone with a book and some time to herself to think. What was Rich doing for Christmas? She wished she’d got to the stage of being completely uninterested but she hadn’t quite yet. Maybe he’d gone skiing again this year. Possibly with his sister who had always said she’d love to do it. Liz had hinted more than once that the two of them should let her join them on their travels. Well, now she’d got Rich all to herself so … well, good luck to them, though it would surely not be that long before Rich found another girlfriend, and then Liz’s possessive jealousy could be fired up again. She’d probably enjoy that: it did seem that some people run on love and affection and others on grudges and spite.
‘Is this tree-decorating going to be a competition?’ Sam said, looking sly. ‘A prize for the best tree?’
‘I think that’s an absolut
ely terrible idea,’ Mike said, looking mischievous and meaning the exact opposite. ‘And completely against the spirit of this holiday.’
‘A tree-off it is then,’ Sam said. ‘May the sprucest spruce win.’
It would have been hugely infuriating for the rest of the family, but for Mike it would be pretty convenient if the mobile signal to the house were a bit hit and miss. Lacking a signal altogether would actually be ideal, in fact. He supposed he could simply ignore all the texts and later claim that he hadn’t received any from anyone, but he didn’t want to offend Charlotte; she was a good sort and deserved better. Plymouth was quite a safe long distance from Cove Manor and she was working each evening and a few afternoons too, in the pantomime chorus at the Drake Theatre as a favour for a producer friend. She liked the idea of being out of London for a couple of months, she’d claimed, and besides, she fancied a view of the sea.
‘We could meet halfway, on the wilds of Bodmin Moor or something,’ she’d joked – at least he’d assumed she’d joked – when she’d heard that he would be down in Cornwall. ‘I don’t get much time off but there’d be just enough for …’ She’d left the rest unsaid, and he hadn’t prompted her to be more specific, possibly because meeting halfway for what she had in mind wouldn’t be easy without a venue in which to get together. He didn’t much fancy checking into a cheap motel for a few hours in an under-heated room, and as for a social preamble to activities, well, there wasn’t a lot that was sexy about a menu where the high point was an all-day breakfast.
Now here she was texting every couple of hours, over-cheery messages full of exclamation marks and talking about trains from Plymouth and saying she could get to Truro easily enough. She must be keen: he knew from previous trips to Cornwall that ‘easily enough’ by train was actually close to two, slowly trundled hours. But, to be honest, was he keen? On seeing Charlotte on London territory, yes. Within reason. She was good, easy company. He liked that she seemed content with only seeing him now and then, nothing intense, no commitment. A gap of a couple of weeks didn’t bother her at all – or hadn’t so far. He loved her deep and wicked laugh and the fact that she wore stockings – never tights – full-time, not just occasionally as a mildly grudging dress-up favour. But here? When he was in the middle of the entire family? It would be plain wrong.