The Holiday Home

by Fern Britton

  ‘No. I can’t. Where did the time go? We’re lucky that she’s got this far without doing anything illegal.’

  ‘That we know of,’ said Connie, screwing the lid back on to the hand-cream tube.

  ‘Well, she hasn’t got a boyfriend, so we know she’s still innocent in that sense.’

  Connie gave a quiet laugh.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ asked Greg.

  ‘Nothing.’ She turned to face him. ‘But teenage girls are very good at having private lives that remain private.’

  ‘I would know if she’d been up to anything. I could tell just by looking at her,’ said Greg smugly.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK.’ Connie reached for the bedside light and turned it off. ‘Good night.’

  ‘Good night.’

  In the darkness, with the house settling around them and the dull shush of the unsleeping sea outside their bedroom window, Greg began to worry about Abi and her purity. Connie, on the other hand, smiled a secret smile and closed her eyes, reliving once again her own seventeenth birthday.

  She’d been alone in the house – she couldn’t remember why – when there was a knock at the front door. She opened it to find Merlin leaning casually against the porch wall, looking very desirable.

  ‘Hey, birthday princess. I hear you’ve got the key to the door today?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Connie had giggled. ‘I’m only seventeen.’

  ‘Shame – I was going to take you for your first legal drink.’ He had stepped into the hall, uninvited, and closed the door behind him.

  Connie felt a shiver of anxiety. ‘Pru’s not here.’

  ‘It’s you I’ve come to see, birthday girl.’ He leaned in and gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘It’s very hot outside. Can I have a cold drink?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry. Come into the kitchen.’

  He stood behind her as she opened the fridge door. ‘I’ve got some Coke or orange juice … Milk?’

  Laughing, he reached his hand in and pulled out a tin of shandy. ‘This is more like it. But I can’t drink alone – will you join me?’

  Connie had tasted a sip of her father’s shandy and wasn’t keen on the flavour, but wanting to appear sophisticated she agreed and got out two glasses.

  He took the tins and walked with them into the big drawing room. ‘Quite a house.’ He opened one tin with a hiss and offered it to Connie. She poured it into a glass and then did the same with the second tin. ‘Come and sit on the sofa next to me.’

  Connie did as she was asked and he sat down next to her, very close.

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers.’ They clinked glasses.

  Connie wasn’t sure what to say next, but it didn’t seem to matter. Merlin started talking.

  ‘Like your sister you’re a very ’andsome woman. Different, mind, but I bet you’ve got plenty of admirers an’ all.’

  ‘Have I?’ She took a quick mouthful of the bittersweet shandy.

  ‘Don’t pretend you haven’t seen the boys lookin’ at you on the beach.’

  Connie, who had hoped this was the case, shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Yeah, an’ some of them ’ave been asking me to put in a good word for them.’

  ‘Have they?’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  Connie took another sip and felt its unfamiliar alcohol warmth hit her tummy. ‘Who?’

  Merlin laughed and drained his glass. ‘I’ll get us each another one of these, then I’ll tell you.’

  When he came back, with two more tins, he sat down next to her and turned his sleepy, sexy blue-green eyes on her. ‘Where were we?’

  ‘You were going to tell me who had asked about me.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ He looked from her eyes to her lips and then seemed to shake himself and come back to the question. ‘Well now, there’s all the lifeguards for a start, and there’s … well … there’s someone else.’

  Mesmerised by the thickening of the atmosphere between them, Connie murmured, ‘Who else?’

  In answer he turned his head slowly to one side so that his nose wouldn’t squash hers and his lips kissed her mouth very gently. As he broke away, he said quietly, ‘Me.’

  Connie had never been kissed by a boy before. This was unlike any practising she’d done on her hand or her mirror. This was warm and responsive and sensual and she wanted more.

  After a while, Merlin lifted his hand and very gently cupped her breast. As his thumb stroked her nipple, she understood why girls at school were obsessed with discussing sex. She’d felt something similar reading the odd adult book borrowed from a friend, but this was real. A man was kissing her and touching her and wanting her. He took her hand and placed it on the zip of his trousers. He groaned as he pressed her hand down. She realised somehow that this was the point of no return. Either stop now or step into the unknown.

  He lifted her hand and pulled her up. ‘How about we go upstairs?’

  Her legs felt weak and her breathing was quickening. What should she say? She knew she shouldn’t be doing this. He kissed her again so that she couldn’t speak and when he stopped kissing her, she led him up to her bedroom. It wasn’t long before all thoughts of how wrong this was left her completely.

  The memory had reawakened Connie’s libido and she turned in the bed to face her husband. ‘Darling, are you asleep?’

  His eyes were closed but his mouth moved. ‘No.’

  ‘Would you like a cuddle?’

  ‘Don’t I always?’

  *

  Next door, Pru and Francis were in bed reading a Kindle and a pamphlet respectively. Francis turned to the back page of the pamphlet. ‘I think we should give Abi a cookery course at the Starfish. It’ll stand her in good stead at uni, when she goes.’

  Pru, deep in her Kindle, didn’t reply. Francis tried again: ‘Darling, did you hear me?’

  Pru laid her open Kindle on her lap and turned to look at him with rather dilated pupils. ‘Oh, yes, yes.’ She shifted her body to face his and touched his lips with her fingers. ‘It’s been a long time, Francis.’

  ‘Since what, Pru?’

  ‘Since I made love to you.’

  ‘Oh, er, yes. Must be … quite a long time now.’

  ‘Shut up and let me kiss you.’

  ‘Let me clean my teeth first.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. Kiss me.’

  ‘I’m a bit tired, actually.’

  Pru stopped advancing on him. ‘It’s Belinda, isn’t it?’

  ‘What?’ Terror gripped Francis.

  ‘You fancy Belinda. Are you having an affair with her?’

  ‘NO!’ he almost shouted.

  ‘Do you want to have an affair with her?’

  ‘NO.’

  ‘I’m not blind, Francis. I saw you in the kitchen with her that day, playing with the kids, chucking grapes at each other. And then that time you let her dress you up as a sea fairy.’

  Pru moved to sit on the edge of the bed and hugged herself. For the first time, Francis saw her vulnerability. He moved towards her and put his arms round her shoulders.

  ‘I love you, Pru. I may not have said so often enough. But I do.’

  She turned and looked at him, her eyes shining with tears. ‘I love you too. You’re not going to leave me for Belinda, are you?’

  ‘God, no!’

  Then Pru’s mouth was on his. As she lifted herself on top of him, her Kindle slid to the floor. In the dying light of the screen a passing moth may have read the title: Fifty Shades of Grey.

  *

  Over in The Bungalow, Henry popped his head round Dorothy’s door to say good night and found her weeping.

  ‘What’s all this, old girl?’ He walked to the bed and sat beside her. She sniffed. ‘I can’t stop worrying about the girls and Abi and Jem. What’s going to happen to them? If you die first, I’ll be left with all the mess. They’ll be furious that you never made a will …’

  Henry felt a twinge of guilt
and sighed. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You know what you should do. Find out if Susan is still alive. Do what you should have done forty-odd years ago. Even if you have to pay through the nose, it will be worth it for the peace of mind. Please … for the children’s sake if not for mine?’

  Henry kissed the top of her head. ‘I’ll get on to it tomorrow. I promise.’

  Dorothy took his hand and gripped it tightly. ‘We’re old, Henry, and time won’t wait. Do the right thing, for the children and for me.’

  Henry padded back to his own room, deep in thought. He knew he was being an old fool. Dorothy meant the world to him and he had let her down. He lay in his bed, looking at the cosy clutter around him: old copies of The Times, books that had belonged to the children when they were young – he spied a copy of Five Go to Smuggler’s Top and remembered Connie’s addiction to Enid Blyton. As his eyes roamed the shelves, they settled on something that he had barely noticed for a long time, though it must have been there since they moved into The Bungalow. It was a battered but still intact box containing the first prototype of Lawyer, Lawyer produced by the factory. Henry threw the covers off and went over to the shelf, removing the game from beneath a Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. So much of his life was down to this game, he mused. Work, Dorothy, the house …

  Henry thought back to the first time he laid eyes on Dorothy. More than forty years had gone by, yet it seemed as if it were only yesterday …

  *

  Henry had just returned from lunch on a dreary, overcast Wednesday when his father’s secretary appeared, summoning him to the old man’s office. He knocked on the half-glazed door and went in without waiting for a reply.

  His father was sitting behind his big old desk, silhouetted against the Crittall windows, which looked out on to the factory car park. He was wearing his usual office clothes of loose tweed trousers, twill shirt, knitted tie and sleeve garters.

  ‘Ah, Henry, come in. Are you busy this afternoon?’

  ‘Nothing too important. Why?’

  ‘I’d like you and Miss Danvers –’ he waved to the corner of the room just behind the open door – ‘to join me for a meeting about advertising. Apparently we’re not doing enough.’

  Henry turned to where his father had pointed. Miss Danvers, the cool typist who’d joined the firm a month or two ago, was smiling at him warmly but without any hint of flirtation. She took a couple of steps towards him, juggling her shorthand book and pencil into her left hand and offering him her right. He shook it and asked rather pompously, ‘Do you have advertising experience, Miss Danvers?’

  That smile again. ‘Yes, a little. I worked for the Surrey Advertiser after leaving secretarial college. Occasionally I’d be roped in to help with the classified ads.’

  ‘So, not an advertising executive then?’ he asked.

  She laughed. ‘No. Sorry.’

  Henry’s father coughed and indicated that they should take a seat. ‘Now we’ve established that neither of you have advertising experience, perhaps we can get this meeting under way. I propose starting an advertising department for the company. Just a small team at first: you two.’

  ‘Really, Dad?’ Henry was excited. ‘When? What’s the plan? What’s the budget?’

  The three of them had spent the rest of the afternoon devising an advertising strategy. Carew Family Board Games was viewed in the industry as a relic of the fifties and sixties; while tradition and the cosy family image remained important to the brand, they needed to show that board games still had a place in the seventies.

  ‘Times may change, but the fact remains: the family that plays together, stays together,’ declared Henry’s father, Clarence. ‘Nothing can beat the fun of a family sitting round the table playing Ludo.’

  Henry looked up under his eyebrows to see if Miss Danvers was familiar with his father’s favourite catchphrases. She gazed steadily back at him with a small curve of her lips.

  He returned his attention to his father: ‘Absolutely, Dad.’

  ‘I’ve an idea,’ said Miss Danvers. ‘How about redesigning the Snakes and Ladders board? Instead of the usual nursery rhyme figures, how about having some more modern faces pictured on the board? Maybe pop stars? David Cassidy and the Partridge Family, or the Jackson Five.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Henry warmly.

  Mr Carew senior looked bemused. ‘I don’t know who the hell they are, but why don’t you ask Sylvia in the art department to mock something up? Anything else?’

  Dorothy, confidence growing, spoke again. ‘Supposing I contact Thames TV and the BBC and ask if we could have the franchise to use their popular programmes? In Ludo, for instance, each of the four teams could be a children’s programme: Blue Peter, Dr Who, Crackerjack and Catweazle?’

  Henry’s father leaned back in his chair and placed his hands firmly on the desk in front of him. ‘Genius! Why haven’t you thought of this, my boy?’

  Henry was still gasping in awe at the brilliance of Miss Danvers. ‘I’ve got some catching up to do, I agree.’ He turned to her: ‘Are you sure you need me as a colleague?’

  She laughed and looked down at her unused notepad.

  His father got to his feet. ‘Right! That’s the new department up and running. Henry, your office is now the HQ of Carew advertising.’

  He ushered the two fledgling advertising executives to the door and rang through to his secretary to order his afternoon cup of tea. ‘And, Elsie – I’ll have a couple of Bourbon biscuits, too.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Elsie before putting the receiver down. Bourbons! He must be having a good day.

  *

  The following months had seen the blossoming of the advertising department and the blossoming of a love affair between its two members. Everything about Dorothy Danvers appealed to Henry. She was upfront and honest, she was attractive but didn’t spend hours on her appearance or feel the need to flirt with every man she encountered. Dorothy wore little makeup and treated men as equals. She was all the things that his life had been lacking.

  One evening in her small one-bedroom flat, stomachs replete with Henry’s home-cooked spag bol, they lay on the sofa together watching The Goodies.

  Henry turned off the TV, stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head.

  ‘I love you, Dorothy.’

  She gazed up into his eyes. ‘I know. I love you too.’

  A lump formed in his throat and his eyes shone. She reached up and brushed the unformed tears away. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’

  He swallowed hard and, finding her hand, kissed the fingers and the palm.

  ‘I want every evening to be like this. I want to live with you and be with you every day and every night. As man and wife.’

  It was her eyes that filled with tears now. ‘Oh, Henry. So do I. I want to be Mrs Henry Carew so very much.’

  Henry paused. He knew this would the hardest thing he would ever do; there was so much at stake here. ‘Dorothy … there is something I have to tell you. Something …’ he gulped. ‘I’m afraid you might not love me after you hear this.’

  He let her sit up and face him. Clutching her hands in his, he told her, holding nothing back.

  When he had finished, she looked at him, eyes wide with shock and disbelief. ‘This is a cruel joke you’re playing on me.’ She stared at him, willing him to laugh. ‘It is a joke, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wish it were.’

  Hearing this, she buried her face in her knees.

  ‘Do you hate me?’ he ventured.

  ‘I am disappointed in you.’ Her voice was muffled by her skirt. ‘I think you’d better go now, Henry. I need to think.’

  He thought about falling to his knees to plead with her, or sweeping her up and carrying her into the bedroom. But in the end he walked to the door in silence and let himself out.

  *

  Dorothy stayed as she was for some time. Her brain was trying to make sense of the enormity of the mess she’d found herself in. Who was He
nry? Her Henry had vanished and this other man who could keep such an enormous secret from her had taken his place.

  She realised that her feet were getting cold. Rubbing her hands together to warm them, she slowly stood up. Her legs felt as if they didn’t belong to her. She went to the bathroom and ran a bath. The little pilot light leapt into action as she turned the Ascot water heater on and the gas jets hissed with heat.

  Dorothy caught sight of her drained face looking back at her from the clouded mirror above the basin. She didn’t cry. She wasn’t sick. Although she felt like doing both.

  Instead she came to a decision. In the bath she washed her hair and afterwards towelled herself dry and applied Nivea crème to her skin. Then she cleaned her teeth, got into bed and slept soundly.

  *

  In the morning she got to work half an hour earlier than usual. By the time Henry arrived she was surrounded by cardboard boxes, packing up her things.

  He threw down his briefcase and rushed to her, pleading, ‘Don’t go. Please, Dorothy.’

  She looked at him, astonished. ‘I’m not leaving. I’m reorganising the office, that’s all. I think our desks should face each other in the centre of the room. Much more practical, and it’ll mean I get a bit of the natural light from the window.’

  He gawped at her. ‘Oh. OK.’

  She moved towards his desk. ‘And another thing: book a taxi for six o’clock tonight. We’re catching the Caledonian Sleeper to Scotland. I have reserved us a room in a nice hotel for three nights. When we come back we shall return as Mr and Mrs Henry Carew.’

  *

  Henry placed the tatty box containing Lawyer, Lawyer back on the shelf.

  Dorothy was right. It was time.

  24

  ‘Morning,’ breezed Pru as she popped a wholemeal bagel into the toaster.

  ‘Morning,’ replied her sister, who was gazing out into the garden, still basking in the afterglow of memories of Merlin. She looked at her watch. ‘Blimey, sis, you’re up early – it’s only seven thirty.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to waste such a glorious day. I was thinking, is there anything I can do to help with the party preparations?’ asked Pru.