by Daisy Tate
‘Just leave her here,’ Jack sneered. ‘It’s not like she’s sided with Xanthe or anything. I know I’m a bad influence.’ He made scary monster noises that, in the circumstances, were rather disturbing.
‘Mum, tell him to stop it. I want to be with my friends is all.’
Jack gave a mean laugh. ‘Friends? Is that what you call them? How stupid are you? The only reason they’re nice to you is because you spend your allowance on them, idiot.’
‘Jack! That’s enough.’ Her son’s indifference to his sister had developed into a rather vile disdain since he’d arrived. She knew staying with his father might cause a bit of a divide, but nothing like this. Before she could intervene he started poking Poppy in the arm.
‘What’s Dad giving you to buy your friends now, hunh? Fifty? A hundred? More?’
Poppy swiped at him, only to stumble into the car when he dodged her hand, her flute case cracking against the immaculate finish. ‘Asshole.’
‘Poppy!’ Jack mimicked Charlotte’s shocked tone perfectly, and then, ‘Language!’
‘All right, you two. Why don’t we all settle down?’ Charlotte opened the passenger door. Neither of her children moved.
Jack pressed up to his full height. He was over six foot now. Intimidating when he wanted to be. And right now he wanted to be. ‘Did you know that, Mum? That Dad’s been paying Poppy not to come for her weekends in London? That he paid me to come out here? I guess now that you’ve got your big job and “Saint Luna” hanging onto your apron strings you’ll be paying us to stay away as well.’
In that instant her heart broke.
The anguish morphed into a white-hot rage that Oliver had led their children to believe her love for them could be monetized.
‘At least I don’t have to buy my friends with drugs!’ Poppy snapped.
The pair of them went wild. They hit screaming level just as pairs of hand-holding parents began to wander out from the concert hall. Lovely.
‘Right!’ Charlotte pointed at the car with a level of authority she hadn’t realized she possessed. ‘Get in the car. The pair of you. We’re going on a little trip.’
Freya had only been to a handful of suppers at Cameron’s over the years. Living in London was very useful in that respect. Not because he was unpleasant – actually, he was unpleasant – but up until now Freya had always felt slightly sorry for him. Whatever he did, no matter how grand the achievement, the poor man’s feats never outshone the fact that Monty had a law degree. The fact that Monty had never actually used his law degree seemed to be irrelevant. And, whilst a Tory-devotee and a bit of a boor, poor old Cam worked hard. He’d turned his father’s two-man building business into a company that employed over fifty people. They developed entire communities where once there had been a neglected field. He re-envisioned old buildings. Re-purposed newer ones. Was sending his own children to university. And still, Monty remained the family’s golden child.
Until now.
Being indebted to Cameron was turning out to be a real bitch.
Twenty minutes in and she was ready to gouge her own eyeballs out. Sure. Cameron had helped them out of a particularly tough spot, but there was no need to talk to Monty as if he were a thicko. He’d had a breakdown, not a lobotomy. And if she had to coo over Cam’s pool house/lad’s pad one more time …
Would this be their lives for the foreseeable future? Kowtowing to an aspirational lifestyle they’d proactively sought to escape?
When talk shifted to the twins’ academic ambitions, she smiled tightly throughout Marnie’s – Cam’s wife’s – pontifications. ‘As I understand it from my boys, most young people who want to succeed in life are doing something sensible in university these days. Something like engineering or computer science. You know. Useful degrees for useful jobs.’
Marnie had never once bought one of her T-shirts so she knew it was a dig. But now the woman was insulting her kids.
Did she not know that applied mathematics was the foundation of those useful jobs? Like cement to a builder. And hello? Veterinary science? That was useful. Especially to that overweight chocolate lab of theirs. The type-2 diabetes would strike any day now if the titbits from the table were anything to go by. Or a coronary. A malicious urge to call the RSPCA kept her smiling through the non-native prawn cocktails.
Penance was what it felt like. Penance for every wrong she’d ever done. Which was fitting, she supposed, now that they were living in a church. (Deconsecrated as of 27 June, though Izzy claimed she could still feel the presence of ‘a higher energy’.)
She choked her way through Marnie’s dry rib roast and Cam’s talk of the new Tory town councillor they’d held a drinks do for. She drank glass after glass of artisanal water from Fiji (the air miles!) despite having insisted that tap water was fine. She needed it to choke down the endless sycophancy. Her own children, who were normally eye-rollers at nouveau middle-class excess, were all, ‘Thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to live in the church’ this and, ‘Oh my goodness we think your house/car/pool/shed/Magimix is amazing’ that. Regan even performed triage on Trudy, their Persian cat, when the fur ball’s claw got snagged on the floor-to-ceiling scratching tree after Dumbledore may have accidentally on purpose chased her up the thing. A nail clipper would’ve done the trick back home.
A home, she reminded herself, they’d had to sell to begin to pay back Cameron for digging them out of an epically bad hole. And the Fiji Water had been irritatingly refreshing.
After the obligatory hugs and kisses goodbye (of the pat-pat, air-kiss variety that suggested her in-laws couldn’t wait to close the door and talk about them), Freya and her family got in the car to go home. They’d been unable to resist a ‘playful comment’ on the diesel fuel she was gobbling up in the old Volvo estate she was driving these days. She’d bought it for a snip from a friend at Camden Market who’d given up cars for public transport. When she scraped some change together she’d donate to her favourite CO2 emissions charity. Or sell it and insist they ride cycles everywhere. Bristol wasn’t that hilly.
Once they were heading back into Bristol, Monty gave his nonexistent belly a pat and sighed. ‘Oh, it’s good being so close to family, isn’t it?’
Freya kept her eyes on the road. He’d never spoken about his family like this before. He’d always preferred her family to his. They didn’t give a monkey’s about his law degree. It was the bottles of homemade beer, the flirtation with cheese making and the thousands of other experiments he brought up to the farm each and every Christmas that had dazzled them. They liked him for him. End of story.
He slipped a hand onto her leg. ‘I was thinking, Frey …’
‘Oh?’ She glanced at the rear-view mirror. Felix was reading a book and Regan was unsuccessfully plaiting her hair into a fishtail. He squeezed her leg. She and Monty hadn’t had sex in a while. She could do with a bit of intimacy. But where? The ‘house’ was a vast, stripped-down church with a few bits of scaffolding marking out the future townhouses. Privacy was not an option.
‘What would you say if we branched out from the townhouses?’
She laughed to hide her disappointment. ‘Monty, you’ve barely started our townhouse, let alone the other three.’
‘Yeah, I know, but … I’ve been doing a bit of blue-sky thinking. You know, inspired by working on the church and seeing it come together.’
What was he talking about? There were a few chalk lines etched out around the apse, but that was it.
‘I was talking to Cam about it before we left. There are so many interesting buildings out there. And not just in the UK. There’s France, Croatia. Italy! I was flicking through Cam’s Telegraph and it had an amazing article about these abandoned ghost villages. Entire villages just dying to be turned into boutique hotels.’
Freya’s toes begin to curl in her sandals.
Not again. She couldn’t do this again. It had taken nearly every fibre of her sanity to make it this far.
Monty nattered
on and the kids joined in with ooo, that’d be cools as the white noise of blood roaring round her brain drowned him out.
Emily had hit the nail on the head. Monty wasn’t depressed or scrabbling to make up for her shortcomings in the bringing-home-the-bacon department. He was living in cloud-cuckoo-land. So was she, come to think of it. She’d fallen for all of this – the church, the ‘potential big income’ if they wanted to flip theirs and do up another big project further down the line. Watching a man who normally flipped pancakes put his newly lean, fit body to work at a table saw with a sheet of double ply had blinded her to reality. Her husband was no longer the man she’d married.
Just as she was gearing up to remind him about the money they had not yet paid his brother and the four entire townhouses he had yet to finish, she had an idea.
She pulled into a lay-by, took off her seatbelt and twisted round so they could all see one another.
‘I know we’ve gone through some huge changes lately, but how about we all take a page out of the Franciscans’ handbook?’
They all looked at her as if she’d just told them they should become Scientologists.
‘Look. I know things are tough right now, but we don’t need more stuff to make us happy, do we? Or more projects. We have a roof with a spire over our heads. Almost two full months to explore Bristol. Pretty cool schools to go to in the autumn. The best cake baker in the land living just a few feet away.’
They all smiled at this. Charlotte, despite her new workload looking after Izzy, Luna, Poppy and, periodically, Jack, still managed to drop cakes off just when they needed them most.
‘However much I’d love for you to buy a ghost village, what we really need right now is each other.’ She looked her husband in his sweet blue eyes. ‘We need you, Monty. The real you. I need you. The children need you. Don’t we, kids?’ She opened up the field. ‘Tell him. We love him, don’t we? Tell your father something you love about him.’
The children squirmed. ‘C’mon,’ she coaxed. ‘I’m not asking for deep stuff here. I’m talking about the way he always makes the best popcorn when we watch a film. Or how he makes homework fun.’ They nodded. He did make homework fun.
‘I love it when he does my hair. The twisted plait ponytail, especially,’ Regan shyly volunteered.
‘Don’t tell me, tell him! He’s right here. Tell your father how much you love it when he does your hair.’
‘I love it when you do my hair.’ Regan started to giggle. ‘Mostly because Mum’s terrible at it.’ She shot an apologetic look at Freya.
‘Good! This is good. C’mon, Felix. Your turn. What do you love about your dad?’
Felix took off his glasses and rubbed the indentations on his nose. ‘Ummm … well … I think Dad’s Thai green curry is really good.’
‘I wouldn’t want any other dad,’ Regan said solidly. ‘I mean, no offence to Uncle Cameron, but he’s kind of … materialistic.’ She said it like it was a crime against humanity. Which was good. Because being materialistic at this point and time in their family was not a viable option.
‘Uncle Cameron’s a bit of a bore about his roast beef, isn’t he?’ Monty said guiltily. Then unleashed a gleeful grin.
Excellent. This was more like it.
Monty sat back in his seat and rubbed Freya’s shoulder. ‘Forget I said anything, Frey. I was being an idiot.’
‘What? No.’
Oh, thank god.
‘Honestly? I don’t think I could stand sucking up to my brother until the end of time. More loans means more prostrating myself at the altar of Cameron. I don’t think that’d be good for any of us.’
Fresh, clean air filled her lungs again.
He was still in there. Her Monty.
She pulled the car back out onto the road.
‘I think clearing my debts is a more realistic goal to work towards. Yeah. Clean and clear. That’d work.’
‘Would you still want to be partners with him once you’re in the clear?’
Monty thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think he would really either. Especially if I start pointing out how handy my law degree would be.’
The children laughed their socks off.
Monty admitted he’d been thinking of actually putting it to use by volunteering a few hours a week at the local citizens advice bureau. The children cheered.
Freya smiled, silently enjoying all of the Cameron-bashing that ensued.
This type of guilty pleasure, mercifully, was free.
Oohh, this was nice.
Izzy was so pleased she’d accepted Kai’s invitation to come down with Luna for a couple of days. Not that life with Charlotte wasn’t lovely or anything, but this was most excellent.
Beach. Fire. Looney running round making mincemeat of the other children with her epic boogie-board skillz.
‘Hey, Izz.’ Kai handed her an enamelled mug of green/ginger/garlic tea, or whatever it was his hippy wife had prepared. The woman sure did love a tincture. Said it would ‘set Izzy up’ for her treatment. As if some reduced elderberry juice and honey would prepare her body for the most intensive round of chemotherapy she’d ever had.
She took a sip of the tea and grimaced. Oohh, that was foul. Poor Kai.
‘Great kid you got there,’ Kai said after a while.
‘Yeah.’ Izzy was never shy about admitting her kid was one of the best. Mostly because it was completely true. Beautiful, sunshiny, bright. She couldn’t have asked for a better child. Wouldn’t. She wouldn’t ask for a single, solitary thing ever again if this worked.
‘Who’s looking after her while you’re in?’
She laughed. ‘You make it sound like prison.’
‘It will be a bit, won’t it?’
Kai lived in a yurt year-round. Had lived under a palm-frond lean-to in her back garden when they’d been in Hawaii. He was one of those men who’d hyperventilate if he were made to sit in a sealed office block for more than, say, a minute.
‘If the treatment makes it possible to have a bit more of this in my life?’ Izzy lifted her mug towards the sky, the beach, the ocean. ‘I’m in. Looney’s staying with friends. Good friends.’ Good friends she hadn’t been brave enough to discuss the whole ‘what if it doesn’t work?’ factor with. Or absent fathers. She knew she was avoiding a rather critical decision but even considering the possibility that the treatment wouldn’t work … nah. She couldn’t go there. History simply couldn’t repeat itself. Not this time.
‘We’ve got a weekend surf camp. If Luna ever wants to come down and show the rest of the kids how it’s done, she’s more than welcome.’
‘Thanks, man.’
‘No worries. Least I could do after all the work you threw my way back in Maui.’
He’d been such a surf bum back in the day. Could barely scratch two coins together, let alone save enough to buy the fancy hybrid he’d picked them up in at the station. A bit like the one Freya used to have. He charged it up with solar panels.
They sat in silence and watched as the sun began its slow descent towards the end of this day en route to the next.
Then the day after that she’d be off to hospital. At least Emily was coming out to Bristol on Sunday night and Monday morning. Her last text said she would’ve come earlier but there was something she had to do with her parents.
She dug her toes into the cool sand, unable to stop the chill from whispering its way up her spine. Would she ever feel warm again?
Going into hospital felt scarier this time. Make or break of the highest order. The similarities to her own mother’s recurrence was … well, the apple definitely hadn’t fallen far from the tree.
She watched as her daughter rode in on a wave, pulled a triple spin, jumped off the board and ran to the shore with a whoop and a jump.
There she was. Her reason to be brave. Her reason to fight. Her reason to live.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Both of Charlotte’s children had turned surly by the time she hit t
he exit.
Little wonder given how long the trip had taken. It was getting dark and the satnav had kept trying to drag them onto the motorway, though she knew A-roads would be their best bet.
Despite her children’s entreaties, she’d refused to stop for food. Or to get a new charger for Poppy who had left hers in her school locker. Or to drop Jack off at the vicarage, despite his vow to open the car door on the motorway and jump out. It had been a taxing journey, but Charlotte was determined to see it through.
‘Gross. Sheffield,’ Poppy said in her surprisingly plummy accent. ‘What on earth are we doing here?’
Charlotte resisted the urge to respond. It wasn’t Poppy’s fault she’d been raised the way she had been. It was Charlotte’s. She should have put her foot down years ago. Taught them life wasn’t about how many things you did or didn’t have. It was about character. Something she realized she’d parked at the door the moment she’d agreed to marry Oliver Mayfield.
She crossed over a roundabout and took a left against the satnav’s instructions. Though the cooling towers had long since been taken down and many new buildings had been put up, she knew exactly where she was going.
‘Mum. It says the city centre is that way. Are we going to a play or something? Ohmigawd. Are we going to see Miley? I’m pretty sure Miley Cyrus is doing a concert here. Or maybe it was Taylor.’
‘No, Pops. We are not going to see Taylor or Miley.’ Charlotte’s tone stemmed any more questions.
She should have brought them here years ago. Shown them just how much strength of character she had once possessed. Enough to give herself goals. Work towards them. Achieve them. Then set some more.
Jack made a series of noises to show his disgust as the shop fronts began to shift from bright and aspirational to faded and world-weary. Takeaway restaurants, betting shops, laundrettes. When was the last time she’d been in a laundrette?
‘What the fuck are we doing in Sheffield, Mother?’ Jack said the word ‘Mother’ the same way he’d say ‘puce’. ‘I thought you were bringing us to see Rocco so he could lay down the law for you again.’ He gave Rocco’s name a nasty singsong tone. A tone that belied the fact that Jack had definitely liked him when they’d been in Scotland.