Seven Days in Summer

by Marcia Willett

  Her raised eyebrows encourage complicity, a whiff of danger, and he feels irritated and flattered both at the same time.

  ‘A cold drink then?’ He remains standing as she sits down and picks up a menu. ‘Have a look at the specials board.’

  She keeps him waiting whilst she scans the menu. ‘I’ll have the charcuterie board,’ she says, ignoring his suggestion. ‘And a cool ginger beer. No ice.’

  He gives a little shrug at her almost peremptory request and goes to the bar. As he waits to order he can see her reflection in the long mirror behind the bar. She doesn’t touch her hair or fiddle with her phone or her bag, she simply stares at his back with an expression in which amusement and calculation are mingled.

  ‘We always called her Cat when we were children,’ he remembers Liv telling him. ‘Now she prefers to be called Catriona but she’ll always be Cat to me. Just take my word for it. She’s trouble.’

  But just this once he doesn’t want to take Liv’s word for it. Today he’s going to take a chance and decide for himself.

  Catriona watches him. Matt’s so cool: that short silvery-blond hair, his straight uncompromising glance, those long legs. She smiles a secret smile. Perhaps she can warm Matt up; make him laugh. Each time she’s been to The Place Liv has been there with him. Maybe this is her chance to see just how much of a family man Matt really is.

  The little smile fades when she thinks of blonde, pretty Liv. Lucky Liv, with that happy air of confidence, her vitality that infects those around her, and her wild adventuring spirit. Her twin, Andy, is just the same. Suddenly Catriona no longer feels any desire to smile. For a short while Andy had fallen under her spell and she believed that at last she had her entrée into this family, which all her life had seemed set apart: special. Catriona thinks back to those long-ago rows between her parents, the bitter recriminations, how she’d watched and listened: an only, lonely child. She remembers the visits to Trescairn, the house on Bodmin Moor, where Liv and Andy and their small brothers, Charlie and Zack, lived, and the unspoken dislike, the tension, between her mother and theirs. Both fathers were usually at sea, both submariners, and, apparently, good oppos, but there was a subtext implicit beneath the veneer of friendliness of the women. She’d sensed on these visits that she could misbehave with impunity, that her mother would not censure her; that she approved. Even then, Catriona thinks, it was natural to behave with secrecy when no one was watching: to tear up a picture that one of the twins had drawn to send to their father, to break a favourite toy, to give the toddling Charlie a quick push. Yet the Bodrugans remained invincible in their unity, closeness, love. She wanted to be both part of it and to smash it.

  ‘Ginger beer.’ Matt puts the bottle and a glass on the table in front of her. ‘No ice.’

  He doesn’t take the top off the bottle and pour the ginger beer for her and she waits, willing him to do it. Instead he sits opposite and opens his own bottle of elderflower.

  ‘So what are you doing in Truro?’ he asks idly, not looking at her, watching the liquid bubbling slowly into the glass.

  ‘Visiting you,’ she answers promptly, ‘and Liv. Of course I had no idea that she’d decamped.’

  Matt smiles as if acknowledging the pejorative remark whilst rejecting it.

  ‘We always go to the Beach Hut at this time of year,’ he says. ‘My old dad comes down from Bristol and we have a family holiday. I shall join them in a few days. It’s great down there, swimming and sailing and lots of friends dropping in.’

  Just for a moment Catriona is unable to maintain her poise and her glance is bleak. Liv is still the lucky one, the golden girl, with family and friends, children and Matt.

  ‘Sounds like fun,’ she suggests lightly. ‘Or are you enjoying a little respite from parental duties?’

  She sees his swiftly lowered eyes, a slight tightening of his lips, and knows that she has scored a hit, and she feels exultant.

  ‘It must be jolly hard work,’ she says reflectively, picking up the bottle of ginger beer, ‘to run all this and be a full-time parent. Respect.’

  She looks at him, holds his gaze for a moment, then offers him the bottle. He takes it without a word, removes the top and pours half the contents into her glass. She smiles her thanks, picks up the glass.

  ‘Must be tough for Liv, too,’ she adds. ‘The original free spirit, Liv. I’m full of admiration for you both. This place really rocks.’ She raises her glass as if she is saluting him and, after a moment, he returns the gesture. ‘Actually,’ she adds, ‘I came to ask your advice.’

  Matt’s eyebrows shoot up; he’s giving her his full attention now.

  ‘Really?’ He gives a little disbelieving snort. ‘I can’t imagine on what subject.’

  She takes a breath; he is engaged. ‘It’s to do with the cottage in Rock. Since my mother died in the spring I’ve been wondering what to do with it. You probably remember that I’m an investment manager, I’m based in London. Mum was very happy to move to the cottage after the divorce, it was part of her settlement, but now I wonder whether to sell, let it as a holiday cottage, or put in a full-time tenant. What’s the local feeling these days about holiday cottages?’

  She can see that he’s thinking about it seriously. He really believes she needs his advice and he’s flattered.

  ‘Well, they’re not popular with the locals,’ he says. ‘There are too many empty villages, ghost towns in the winter, second-home cottages left empty for most of the year. If they’re holiday lets it’s a bit better because tourists visit all year round. Best to put a tenant in, a local family, and hope they look after it. Or, I suppose, you simply sell it and invest the money.’

  She grins at him. ‘At least I don’t need any advice about that.’

  He laughs, though rather unwillingly, and she laughs, too, genuinely amused that he has taken the bait. She has already decided to sell – she knows very few people in Rock and it’s quite a drive from London – and her agent has three candidates eager to view.

  ‘So you think a tenant?’ she muses, sipping her ginger beer. She nods as if she is considering his advice. ‘OK. Thanks for that. You haven’t anyone in mind, I suppose.’

  This is a risk – she’ll be in trouble if he says yes – but Matt shakes his head.

  ‘Not my patch, I’m afraid,’ he answers.

  She relaxes, her charcuterie board arrives and she studies it appreciatively.

  ‘Looks good,’ she murmurs.

  He nods as if taking the credit for his chef, anxious now that she will enjoy it, and she takes a deep, satisfied breath: the first honours are with her.

  So it begins.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IN THE SURROUNDING hamlets, Baz’s friends are preparing for the annual Beach Hut summer party. Some have known him for most of his life, a few are later acquaintances, and one has never met him at all.

  Sofia Talbot stares at a selection of clothes laid out on her bed and wonders which she might wear. A sudden but familiar panic seizes her and she sits down on the edge of the bed and takes several deep breaths. Since her split with Rob this wretched depression has dogged her, bringing panic attacks, an inability to make decisions.

  ‘It’s just a party,’ she tells herself. ‘No stress. Nobody will care what you wear.’

  She stares around the pretty attic room with its oak beams and big Velux window from which, if she stands up, she can just see the sea, a shining rim of blue at the edge of the world. Next door is a shower-room and loo.

  ‘Your own quarters,’ Janet, her godmother, tells her. ‘Nobody will disturb you here. It’s so lovely to have you with us, darling Sofes.’

  Still sitting on her bed Sofia can imagine the conversation between her mother and Janet.

  ‘It will do her so much good if you would just invite her for a week or two,’ her mother would have said. ‘She needs a complete change of scene and she’s so fond of you and Dave.’

  And so she is. Janet and Dave are warm, affectionate, good company,
and they have lots of friends. Baz is one of them and it’s the prospect of his annual party that is causing these foolish panic attacks.

  ‘You’ll love old Baz,’ Dave tells her. ‘Very good value, Baz. He’ll take you out sailing if you ask him.’

  ‘And Liv is coming,’ chips in Janet. ‘I’m sure you’ll get on well with Liv. And those darling twins of hers.’

  And then there’s a tiny, terrible silence before Janet hurries into a suggestion that they have a walk along the cliffs later on after lunch.

  Sofia sits quietly, waiting for her heartbeat to slow, remembering how she felt when Rob asked her to leave. She imagined that they’d always be together: she and Rob and Seb.

  ‘What a big name for such a small person,’ she said when she first saw Seb in his cot. ‘Sebastian Weaver, you are adorable.’

  She was aware of Rob beside her: stocky, tough, defensive. He stared down at his son with fierce protectiveness. Sofia knew the story. Seb’s mother was married to a man who’d been playing away and her affair with Rob was an act of loneliness and defiance. Her husband allowed her to have the baby on the condition that Rob took full responsibility for it once it was born. Immediately afterwards Seb’s mother and her husband moved to Australia.

  ‘Did she never,’ asked Sofia cautiously, ‘suggest that she should leave her husband for you and Seb?’

  ‘It wasn’t an option,’ answered Rob. ‘I didn’t want her on those terms. It was a brief affair that we both regretted. She’s a Roman Catholic and wouldn’t consider abortion, her husband wouldn’t consider parenting my child, so we came to terms. I only wanted Seb.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Sofia suggested, shocked by the bleak brutality of the story, ‘she’ll have other babies.’

  ‘He isn’t able,’ Rob said briefly.

  Sofia was silent. She felt an odd kind of connection with this unknown couple. Severe depression following an ectopic pregnancy was the reason her long-term relationship had failed, foundering on the rocks of her own sense of inadequacy and failure and her partner’s growing impatience and disappointment.

  ‘So do you want the job or not?’ Rob was asking.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered quickly. ‘Yes, I do.’

  She was growing weary of her work at the nursery school, so much of which was administration, and she needed change.

  ‘I know I’m a bit older than your average au pair,’ she admitted, smiling at him, ‘but I started out as a nanny and I’d like to have a go.’

  He stared at her, an assessing, unsmiling look, summing her up, and then he nodded.

  ‘OK. When can you move in?’

  She saw that a smile, a handshake, or perhaps the offer of a drink wasn’t Rob’s way of sealing the deal. He appeared to lack any social graces. Nevertheless she was attracted to him. There was a single-minded integrity in his love for his child that fascinated her. It was nearly a year before they made love after a shared supper on Seb’s first birthday. Her quarters were on the first floor next to Seb’s nursery; Rob’s bedroom, office and bathroom were on the ground floor next to the big kitchen-living-room where they all ate. Surprisingly, he was an experienced lover though afterwards he said, quite gently but firmly, ‘This doesn’t mean I’m in love with you.’

  Startled, she actually laughed and made some meaningless witty response but now, as she reflected on it, she could see how willing she’d been to accept their relationship at Rob’s valuation. Seb adored her, and this underpinned Rob’s approval of her, but it did not influence him in any way and her role remained that of nanny, though lovemaking became a regular occurrence. They slid gradually into an odd kind of threesome. Rob was not a particularly social man, and she saw her own friends on her days off or when Rob was childminding. She convinced them that this job was perfect, that Seb’s love and Rob’s off-beat friendship was all that she required and, busy with their own lives and loves and disasters, none of them guessed the real truth of it, nor were they surprised when she told them that she was having a long holiday before she looked for a new job.

  After all, what could be more natural than that there should be no more need for her once Sebastian started primary school?

  ‘You’ll still need help,’ she said to Rob, unable to imagine a life without either of them. ‘You can’t manage entirely alone.’

  ‘I shan’t be entirely alone,’ he answered. ‘My mother’s moving down from Scotland. Since Dad died she’s lonely and she wants to be more hands-on.’

  He was holding all the cards: Seb adored his father and loved his grandma. Sofia tried a different tack.

  ‘It’s been four years.’ She tried not to sound as if she were pleading with him. ‘Won’t you miss me at all? Seb will miss me. We’ve been like a family.’

  ‘But you knew it would happen,’ he pointed out reasonably. ‘It’s been great for Seb but it’s time to move on.’

  She tried persuasion, argument, but his will was implacable; unresponsive as a granite wall against the tide of her emotion.

  Now, sitting on her bed, Sofia relives the pain; that great wave of hurt that washes over her, then drains away leaving her exhausted and alone. She misses them so much. She knows that she must move on, find a new job and a place to live, but just at the moment she feels a lack of direction and life seems empty and pointless.

  She’s glad to have this change and grateful to Janet for the invitation. Sofia knows how much her mother is worrying about her; those quick anxious glances and bracing conversations about the future. It’s almost a relief to be away from her for a few days, though she senses that Janet and Dave are just as concerned.

  Sofia longs to take her life back into her own hands, to make decisions that won’t be undermined or questioned – both the men in her life have been very strong-willed and controlling – and to be able to trust her own judgement even if it is only about what to wear to Baz’s party.

  She begins to laugh. ‘Get a grip,’ she tells herself. She picks up a green silk shirt and, leaning sideways, peers at herself in the mirror above the little oak chest of drawers. This strange blue-green colour suits her, matches the colour of her eyes and complements her tawny lion-like mane of hair. She’ll wear leggings, not jeans – she knows she’s got good legs – and espadrilles. After all, this is a beach party.

  The decision made, Sofia feels better; stronger. She gets up and begins to tidy away the clothes that are scattered on the bed.

  Downstairs, Janet and Dave discuss her in quiet, anxious voices. They are a gentle, kindly couple: practical, concerned for Sofia, determined that she shall be healed. This recent retirement to their little holiday cottage in a quiet village after a lifetime working in local government in Taunton is still a novelty and a joy to them. To waken each morning to the ever-changing mood of the capricious sea, to rose-tinted cloudscapes towering above small green fields tucked tightly between neat hedges, fills them with amazement and delight.

  They are alike, these two: grey-haired, inclined to stoutness, unhurried in their movements. They sit on committees, campaign for charities and work together in their garden.

  ‘So tactless of me,’ Janet is saying, ‘to rave about Liv’s twins when I know how much she’s missing Seb.’

  ‘But you can’t tiptoe round the subject. It only makes it worse.’ Dave is calm but reassuring. ‘Normality is the only way to help her back. And Baz will do her good. And so will Liv and those twins, even if it’s painful at times. It’s odd, though, isn’t it, that we still think of Sofes as a child though she must be as old as our girls?’

  ‘Forty-three,’ answers Janet, ‘but I suppose it’s because they are our children that we think they all still need our help from time to time. Rather presumptuous of us, perhaps.’

  ‘Well, the fact that she’s here indicates that she needs something from us, even if it is only a change of scenery. Were we like this when we were young?’

  ‘We didn’t have much chance, did we?’ Janet answers almost gloomily. ‘We were engaged at twenty. Ma
rried at twenty-three. Babies. We didn’t have the opportunity for all this angst and disastrous love affairs.’

  ‘You sound as if you regret it,’ Dave says, amused.

  ‘Perhaps we were rather predictable,’ she says reflectively.

  ‘I remember you being quite unpredictable one night in my old Morris Minor,’ muses Dave. ‘It was very exciting.’

  Janet begins to laugh. ‘It was certainly uncomfortable,’ she says. ‘I definitely remember that. And there were so few opportunities.’

  ‘But you have to admit that we grabbed them when we could. And my dear old mum thought you were such a nice girl.’

  They are both laughing when they hear Sofia coming down the stairs.

  ‘Tea,’ says Janet. ‘How’s that for predictability?’ She sighs. ‘We’re just no fun any more.’

  ‘I could always buy another Morris Minor,’ suggests Dave.

  Janet snorts. ‘With your hip? Dream on.’

  Coming down the stairs, hesitating at the kitchen door, Sofia thinks that in this setting – the old dresser full of pretty plates, the Belfast sink, the beamed ceiling – Janet and Dave look like two mice from Jill Barklem’s Brambly Hedge books. There is something so safe, so comforting about them. Dave smiles at her and instinctively she hugs him, her cheek against his soft cotton shirt. He pats her reassuringly and Janet beams approvingly at them.

  ‘Tea in the garden,’ she says.

  Sofia smiles at Janet, at the delightful predictability of it all, and suddenly, unexpectedly, longs for something wild, exciting, earth-changing, to take hold of her. Meekly she follows Janet into the well-kept garden, across the lawn to where the chairs and a table are set beneath a cherry tree. How surprised these two sweet people would be to read her unruly thoughts: how far from their loving care and this peaceful garden her desires would take her. Instead she sips her tea and considers their suggestions of giving a little lunch next week for Baz, the need for a new garden umbrella, some plants for Janet’s new rockery, and tries not to think of Seb and Rob.

  ‘Rather a pity,’ says Annabel Carver, in her pretty little Georgian house at the other end of the village, ‘that Baz always has to have Liv with him these days when he comes down. I think she demands too much of his time with those children of hers.’