The Beach Hut

by Veronica Henry

  ‘You’re right,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t want to write again, after losing that. I did, of course. Only way I knew to earn a crust.’

  Crust? He was a multi-millionaire, she knew that. The nation had an appetite for the rather trite action thrillers he had taken to. The sort of books she had thought he would write in the first place. They were superficial. Dishonest. They sold by the shed-load, piled up in supermarkets and airport bookstores, candy that rotted your brain.

  ‘Were you . . . happy?’ he asked her.

  ‘No.’ Her answer was direct. He took a breath in, and then began to cough. The fit was interminable. It racked his body, pain flitting across his face with each spasm, as if he was being knifed. By the end he slumped back in his chair, exhausted.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ Jane asked gently, but he shook his head.

  He was incredibly still. For a moment she wondered if he was dead. But she could see the rise and fall of his chest, and he seemed to be sleeping sweetly. She didn’t want to disturb him. Besides, she had nothing left to say. It had all been said.

  She found the girl behind the reception desk and tried to pay for her half of the bill, but the girl was firm. Mr Shaw wouldn’t hear of it, she was sure. Jane wasn’t going to spend any time arguing. She wasn’t going to feel guilty about him buying her a gin and tonic. He owed her a great deal more than that. He owed her her whole life.

  She walked back out into the streets of Soho. The light was strangely bright after the tenebrous atmosphere in the club. It was inappropriate. It didn’t suit her sombre mood at all. She hailed a cab and jumped inside, grateful to be shielded from the sunlight. She was glad when she finally reached Paddington, the familiar hubbub of the station where you could be somebody and yet nobody, just another person on their way to somewhere else.

  She sat down in the train carriage and shut her eyes while the rest of the passengers came on board and jostled for seats, shoving their packages and laptop bags onto the insufficient luggage racks. Around her she could hear people calling home, reporting back as to when their train would get in, what time they would be home for dinner. There was no one for her to call. There’d be no one waiting for her at the station, no one to lean over and give her a kiss while she told them what she had been up to. No one who’d been out to buy ingredients for supper. She’d be going back to a taxi and an empty fridge. She should have bought something from M&S at the station. A little bubble of resentment rose up inside her, and she pushed it away.

  She wasn’t going to think about it. She wasn’t going to wonder what life she might have had if she had never met him. The happiness she might have been allowed to feel. She was going to pick up the pieces of what was left of her life, and make the most of it. Between Terence and Graham, they had managed to destroy her. But she had her children and her grandchildren, and they hadn’t managed to destroy her love for them. This was going to be her summer.

  Eventually she reached the station and found a taxi, which put her down at the top of Everdene beach. She climbed out, weary from her journey but as ever exhilarated by the view and the sea air. She filled her lungs and stepped out across the sands until she reached the hut.

  Inside it was reassuringly familiar. It had hardly changed since the day her father had bought it. There were new curtains at the window - nautical blue and white - and a new cooker and fridge. It smelt the same, slightly damp, slightly tangy. There were the same board games and paperbacks, the same chipped mugs and plates.

  The fridge door was shut and she went to open it, worried that mould would have built up inside. She was surprised to find it was on, and inside she found milk, cheese, eggs and bacon. Further investigation revealed a loaf of bread, a box of tea and a packet of chocolate digestives in the cupboard.

  It could only have been Roy. He was the only one with a key.

  She felt a flicker of warmth leap up inside her, just as if she had held a match to the pilot light on the little cooker. How wonderful to be thought of.

  As she unpacked her things, she looked forward to the weeks ahead. The little hut would be cramped, filled with a succession of her offspring and their offspring, a complicated timetable of comings and goings that depended on work, school, university, exam results, holidays abroad, social engagements. She wouldn’t bother trying to keep up, she never did. She took each day as it came. Catered for whoever was there. Fitted in round their madcap plans.

  They would all be there for this weekend, for the opening. And she’d have to tell them. It would break her heart, if she let it. There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t afford to keep it going. And she knew none of them would be able to buy it from her - they had too many financial commitments between them already. Anyway, it was probably best to make a clean break. She would give each of them a little money from the sale, to put towards a holiday. Small consolation, but it was the best she could do, given the circumstances.

  She sat down later that evening to draft an advert. She’d get her grandson Harry to do it on his laptop and get it printed out in the town nearby. She wouldn’t need to market it hard-a copy through each of the other beach-hut doors, a few pinned up in the village. Word would get round, offers would come in.

  By the end of the summer, the deal would be done . . .

  2

  SEASHELLS

  It was astonishing how easy it was to lie.

  Only, strictly speaking, she wasn’t lying. She really was going down to Everdene to kit out the beach hut for the summer. She really was going to stop at IKEA in Bristol and stock up on melamine mugs with spots on, and new rugs, and a coffee table and a big bag of tea lights and some lanterns and a couple of bean-bag chairs. And then scrub out the hut until it gleamed, rearrange the furniture, put up some new pictures, make up the bunks with fresh linen - all for the first set of holiday-makers who were due to arrive the week after. It was two days’ work at least.

  So she wasn’t actually lying. Only by omission. Although every time she thought about it she went hot under the arms and panicked. Her hand hovered over her mobile incessantly. She could cancel any time, she knew that. It was up to her. She was in control of the situation.

  The problem was she wasn’t in control of herself.

  Incipient infidelity was a curious thing. It made her feel as if she was walking on air one minute, then as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders the next. She would be skipping around the aisles in Sainsbury’s with a silly grin on her face, singing to herself, for heaven’s sake, only to go home and bury her head in her arms for half an hour, completely paralysed, unable to speak, think, operate on any level. Oh, the agony and the ecstasy. Pandora’s box wasn’t quite open yet, but she definitely had her fingers on the lid, ready to prise it off.

  How had this happened to her? Sarah wasn’t the sort of person to be unfaithful, although she suspected no one was until they found themselves on the brink of it. No one went into marriage thinking, ‘It’s OK, I can sleep with whoever I like when I get bored. No biggie.’ It just happened.

  The obvious answer was that it was a mid-life crisis. She was, after all, thirty-six. Technically mid-life, if you still went by three score years and ten. Her children were eight and six, which meant life was far, far easier than it had been - they were at school, they didn’t need so much mollycoddling, they could get themselves ready for bed, do their own teeth, wipe their own bottoms. So she had more time on her hands - she was no longer in that fug of lack of sleep, car seats and push-chairs and potties, everything slightly crusted in dried food, biscuit crumbs everywhere. Life had a routine, a pleasant, manageable routine, and she was organised enough to keep on top of most things - she wasn’t an anal control freak, but neither was there full-scale panic on a regular basis. She remembered spellings and swimming kit and home-made cookies for the school coffee morning most of the time, and didn’t go into meltdown if something was forgotten.

  So yes, maybe she did have too much time on her hands.

  As
for her and Ian, if challenged, she would have said they were still basically quite happy. She remembered when they had first got together, the tiny little house they had bought in Harbourne, a fashionable area of Birmingham with a warren of streets full of aspirational couples just like them. They had done it up themselves, spending the weekends sanding floorboards and stripping skirting boards, revealing all the original features but giving it a modern twist with Sarah’s paint effects, so that when they eventually came to sell it, when the two girls came along and they finally couldn’t squeeze another thing inside its four walls, they got what seemed a ridiculously high price for a two-bedroomed terrace.

  It had been Ian who had insisted they move to Hagley, a ‘village’ on the outskirts of the city, insisting that the schools were better, that the girls needed fresh air and access to the countryside. The move coincided with him joining a big corporate firm in Birmingham, a totally different kettle of fish from the family-run outfit he had been working for. Sarah wasn’t sure if it was the change of house or the change of job that had altered him, but after the move Ian seemed to have a different set of values.

  He seemed very preoccupied by things that didn’t matter a jot to Sarah - what cars they were driving, where they went on holiday, what they wore, where they ate out, who they socialised with. When she confronted him about it, he asked what was wrong with him wanting the best for them? And she supposed there was nothing wrong, as such, but he didn’t need to be so obsessed. She’d been quite happy with her old Micra, but he had insisted on chopping it in for a shiny new Golf, even though it meant taking out a loan. And he’d bought her a private number plate for her birthday, which was absolutely the last thing on earth she had wanted. She wanted to be anonymous when she was out driving. She didn’t want people to watch her while she hashed up parallel parking on the high street. He had watched in satisfied smug pleasure as she had opened it, and she had to feign gratitude, even though she would have far preferred . . . well, anything, quite frankly.

  And Ian always had a plan these days, a scheme, a scam, usually something that had been planted in his head by one of the partners at work. Sarah had questioned these plans at first, but always glazed over when he got the figures out. The first had been to purchase a flat in the rather ugly new block that had been built at the end of their road, to let out.

  ‘The figures add up,’ he told her. ‘If we buy it on an interest-only basis, the rent we get will cover the repayments. It’ll wash its face, easy.’

  Wash its face? Where did he get these expressions? Sarah couldn’t argue with him - she didn’t have a clue about interest rates or APRs - and so suddenly they were the owners of a four-bedroomed house and a flat. Then another one, which he had been tipped off was going cheap. Then another.

  ‘It’s good for the girls,’ he assured her. ‘Even if we don’t benefit, it’s a legacy for them.’

  Sarah couldn’t help feeling that the whole exercise was to make Ian feel as if he was one of the gang. She hated it when they were out and he talked about their ‘property portfolio’. It made her cringe.

  He wasn’t like that all the time, thank goodness. Just enough to put her teeth slightly on edge. Like they did when he pulled on his Armani jeans - since when had Levis not been good enough? And when he polished his BMW at the weekend - what on earth was wrong with a bit of dirt?

  And sometimes he looked at her critically when they were going out. He had suggested once or twice that she smarten herself up a bit, and she had been outraged. Did he want her to be all fake tan and blond highlights, like the rest of the wives in their coterie? They had no sense of expression. She might not be smart, but she knew how to dress as an individual. She wasn’t going to put on their uniform of designer jeans and sparkly tops and six-inch heels. She was quite happy in her little dresses and vintage cardigans and biker boots, her hair piled into a messy topknot. She certainly wasn’t going to change to make him feel as if they belonged.

  Once he had looked at her hands. There was paint under her nails, which were short and ragged, and the skin was chapped from white spirit and wiping them on rags.

  ‘Why don’t you get your nails done?’ he asked, and she realised he wanted her to have hands like the other women, soft and pampered, with their false nails, square-ended with white tips. The very idea made her shudder. They had hands like porn stars, hands that were made for rubbing themselves suggestively over a man’s chest in a meaningless gesture.

  And anyway, the people they mixed with didn’t put her under any pressure to don their uniform. The women always cooed over what she wore, admiring her bravery. ‘You’re so arty,’ they sighed, ‘so boho.’

  ‘I’m just me,’ she would reply, though she wanted to retort that she wasn’t a sheep. She didn’t put her name down for a designer handbag at the local boutique, she bid for one on eBay or found something in a charity shop.

  She could tell Ian disapproved, but he hadn’t always. He’d once loved her for her kookiness. He’d been proud of the fact she was an artist. He’d shown everyone the fairy mural she had done for the girls’ bedroom in Harbourne. He’d loved that she decorated their Christmas presents with potato prints and shells she’d sprayed silver. Now he seemed embarrassed. He wanted to buy everything in Selfridges and have it gift-wrapped, all shiny paper and sharp edges. If he had his way, he’d book her an appointment with a personal shopper and have her made over from top to toe, until she looked like a clone. A fully paid-up member of the Terracotta Army, as she privately dubbed them, on account of their permanent spray tans.

  In fact, the only thing she had done lately that he had approved of was buy the beach hut. It had been her idea. She had seen the For Sale sign when they were having a day at the seaside in Everdene two years ago. She had ‘done the maths’. If they used it for two weeks of the year, and rented it out for the rest, it would ‘wash its face’. Not least because they wouldn’t have to fork out for a fortnight in Portugal or Antigua or wherever the hot destination of the moment was. The girls far preferred mucking about on the beach and going for fish and chips to shacking up at some chichi hotel. And Sarah hated, hated, flying.

  Ian hadn’t been sure at first. Largely, she suspected, because it hadn’t been his idea, but in the end he hadn’t been able to argue with the figures. And now Sarah was secretly gleeful that it was the only one of their properties which, if it hadn’t gone up in price, was certainly holding it. And they had no trouble renting it out, whereas one of their flats had been empty for nearly four months, which had eaten into their reserve fund.

  Which was why she was heading to Everdene to get ready for the season.

  And Oliver Bishop.

  They met at a drinks party. A drinks party at a grand house in Race Course Lane - rather mystifyingly named, because as far as Sarah could see there was no race course, but it was the poshest address locally and Ian had been thrilled to be asked to the Johnsons, who were top dog in the area.

  By ten o’clock, everyone was half cut and was either in the massive conservatory (‘Amdega!’ Ian told her in an awed tone) or the adjoining kitchen (‘Smallbone!’ The same tone), Sarah had gone back into the garden to have a cigarette. A roll-up. It was a habit she had never broken, an art-school affectation that made her something of a social pariah. Anyone else with any common sense had stopped smoking years ago, usually when they got pregnant. But Sarah enjoyed her illicit roll-ups. Only one or two a day, hardly worth bothering to stop. It was her little rebellion. The thing that was hers and no one else’s.

  A figure stepped out of the back door. She hoped it wasn’t Ian coming to tell her off. She wasn’t going to shrink into the shadows. She drew on her roll-up, defiant.

  It wasn’t Ian. It was one of the other guests.

  ‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘Another smoker.’ And lit up a Camel with a Zippo.

  He looked about twelve. Tufty, sticky-up hair. Ceaselessly roaming eyes that slid from her eyes to her cleavage to her bottom then back to her mouth without
apology. A demonically charming smile. He even smelt dangerous - a musky cologne that made Sarah’s endorphins stand to attention at once. He had trouble written all over him.

  He sucked in the smoke as if it held the elixir of life.

  ‘Goodness,’ she commented. ‘You look as if you needed that.’

  ‘After talking to that lot? Yapping on about where they’re going skiing?’ He threw his eyes up to heaven in a gesture that was slightly camp, but there was no doubting his sexuality. She looked at him with interest. Did he feel the same way she did, bored to death with the conversations? Listening to them compare the merits of the Trois Vallées versus Austria. Debating how they were going to get there - by car or air or snow train. The women spent hours discussing ski boots and salopettes and what colour was in this year. Sarah couldn’t care less, as long as she was warm and dry. She had worn the same outfit four years running, and there was still plenty of wear in it. Nobody had actually said anything but she could tell they all noticed.

  Personally, she wasn’t bothered about going skiing - the girls enjoyed it for about two days and then got exhausted, and she was never going to be a daredevil on the slopes - but Ian had looked utterly panic-stricken when she had suggested giving it a miss this year. Then she’d asked if they could go on their own and he had been irritated by the suggestion. The social life was a big part of the holiday for him. Sarah would have liked to snuggle up in their own chalet, happy to spend the evening in front of the fire with a glass of wine and a good book, but no - they all had to troop out to whatever restaurant was in vogue and boast about their bravery on the piste.

  ‘Do you ski?’ she asked Oliver tentatively.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t spend three months talking about it beforehand.’ He gave her an impish grin, then adopted a mock pompous voice. ‘We always go to St Anton. Bloody marvellous - can’t beat it. Take the same chalet every year . . .’

  Sarah snorted into her wine glass.