The Vacation

by T. M. Logan

“It’s OK, Jen. We’ll keep an eye on all the kids, we’ll look out for each other.”

  “Like we always have done,” Rowan added forcefully.

  Jennifer gave a little nod, but wouldn’t look at any of us.

  I drank another mouthful of champagne, swallowing back the bitterness.

  “Hey, I almost forgot,” Izzy said, breaking the silence. She reached into her handbag. “Look what I found. My brother was clearing out his garage. Boxes and boxes of my old stuff that he’s been looking after while I was away and I haven’t looked at in years.”

  She produced a slim paperback book, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and from within its pages plucked a photograph, a color print that was creased and bent at the edges. “Nineteen years ago.”

  Rowan picked it up. “Oh my God! My hair. What on earth was I thinking?”

  “I think it was your Jennifer Aniston phase. The graduation ball. Remember?”

  She passed it on to Jennifer, who studied the picture in turn. Finally, she allowed herself a small smile.

  “Izzy, you’ve hardly changed a bit. What’s your secret?”

  Izzy shrugged. “Not having kids?”

  The picture came around to me and I held it up to the light of the candles flickering in the middle of the table. It showed us standing close together, shoulder to shoulder, arms around one another’s waists. Ball gowns and big smiles and glasses of buck’s fizz, balloons and streamers strewn at our feet while young men in tuxedos milled around in the background of the shot, a big white marquee set out in the central quad.

  The picture had caught Rowan midlaugh, hair styled and tinted like the Friends actress, in a deep crimson ball gown; next to her was Jennifer in a sleeveless, pale green two-piece that showed off all her curves; Izzy, her chestnut-brown hair cut pixie short, stunning in a black cocktail dress—the only time I could remember her wearing a dress. And me at the end of the row, in royal blue.

  God, we looked so young. But we looked happy. Like anything was possible.

  Izzy leaned over to get another look at the picture in my hand. “Wasn’t that the night Jen finally snogged Darren Burton?”

  “That was you, if memory serves,” Jennifer said indignantly. “I was still on the rebound.”

  “From who?”

  Jennifer hesitated.

  “You know who,” she said quietly, giving me a quick glance.

  “Oh,” Izzy said. “Right. Forgot about that.”

  Jennifer had never talked about her relationship with Sean in those terms before. The ball had been in May but they had broken up the month before, as we came up to the Easter break. Had she still been on the rebound a month later, still hurting from the breakup?

  And why mention it now?

  Rowan pointed to a lad with a ponytail in the background of the picture.

  “And after Darren Burton threw up,” she said to Izzy, “you moved on to his housemate.”

  “God, yeah! I vaguely remember him—what was his name again? Kissed like he was trying to suck your face off.”

  “Nice,” Rowan said, laughing.

  Izzy clicked her fingers and pointed at me, as if she’d just remembered something else.

  “I tell you what I do remember,” she said. “That was the night, wasn’t it? The night you and Sean first got together.”

  I nodded. It was true, in a way. That was the night we had first held hands, danced together, kissed, with other people around. The first time he’d held me so close I could feel his heart bumping in his chest, when we didn’t care anymore who saw us.

  The whole truth and nothing but the truth was a little more complicated than that.

  The truth was, I’d been in love with Sean since the end of our first year at Bristol. I had admired him from afar while he went out with a string of girls who were prettier, cleverer, and more confident than me. I’d been in love with him for the one month, three weeks, and four days he was with Jennifer. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it just did. And slowly, Sean had become aware of my feelings. When he split up with Jennifer, he told her he was freaking out about revision and worried about getting kicked out of uni, and he wanted a break to focus on his exams. It was at least partly true, but there was more to it than that. Much more.

  There was me.

  He broke up with her because of me, because of what had been growing between us.

  Me, comforting a heartbroken Jennifer who couldn’t understand why her first real boyfriend had ended their relationship. Who had convinced herself that she was too straight, too highly strung, too high maintenance for him. Me offering sympathy and wine and a shoulder to cry on, and all the while fighting the guilt that I was the cause of her misery.

  Had I really been a good friend to Jennifer, back then? A true friend? I suppose I knew the answer to that.

  “Yup.” I smiled. “That was the night me and Sean finally got together.”

  “You know what?” Izzy said. “We should do a selfie, just like this picture.”

  “So we can see how haggard and crappy we look now compared to then?” Rowan said.

  “Shush, Rowan, you look absolutely lovely. Stand up now, everyone.” Izzy took her phone out and began marshaling us into position, in the same order that we stood in the old photograph: Rowan on the left, then Jennifer, then Izzy and me on the end. We stood like that, backs to the low wall at the edge of the patio, arms around one another’s waists, smiling for the camera just like we’d done nineteen years ago.

  “Say cheese!” Izzy said, holding her arm out to get us all in the shot.

  The camera clicked once, twice, and she held the phone’s screen out to us so we could all see.

  “Perfect.”

  I looked at the picture. The four of us, just like always. A beautiful meal on a fine warm evening, the lights of the valley below twinkling in the darkness. A wonderful time with my dearest friends, people I had known more than half my life. People close enough to be almost family.

  It should have been perfect, but one of them had turned it into a lie.

  And maybe that was no more than I deserved.

  23

  Sean

  Sean used the stubby pencil to cross out another box on his score sheet. That was his big street, full house and Yahtzee all gone. He would be lucky not to finish last. He sighed and handed the dice and shaker to Russ, who was taking it all very seriously.

  He studied the other men for a moment: Russ and Alistair, opposite him on one of the big sofas, an awkward pair if he’d ever seen one. Russ, all angles and elbows and alpha-dog cheekbones next to Alistair—soft edges and sloping shoulders, beer belly and bushy beard. Did either of them know? Did either of them have the slightest inkling of what was going on? Russ seemed to spend half the day on his cell phone and the other half drinking rather than paying close attention to what was happening around him. Alistair, on the other hand, appeared more observant, more tuned in most of the time.

  Jake and Ethan were sprawled at each end of a sofa, Lucy cross-legged between them. Each was splitting their attention between taking their turn in the game and their respective cell phones. Dinner was finished and the two younger children had been put to bed.

  Russ rolled a full house straight off the bat.

  “Get in!” He clenched a fist in triumph and wrote the score on his sheet.

  Alistair took the dice from him and rolled three ones, a four, and a six.

  “Here we go, boys. Your old dad’s going to get a Yahtzee.”

  He picked up the dice and rolled them twice more, ending up with three ones, a two, and a three. A bust.

  Jake shook his head, exchanging a glance with his younger brother.

  “You really are crap at this, aren’t you, Dad?”

  “It’s a game of luck, my boy. Now chess, on the other hand, that’s more my thing.”

  “Isn’t chess, like, the most boring game ever invented?”

  “All skill, no luck, Jake. How a game should be. When I was your age I was—”


  A high-pitched cry reached them from upstairs.

  “Daddy! Daddy!”

  Sean muted the music and looked over at Russ.

  “Yours or mine?” he said.

  Russ turned his head toward the sound, narrowing his eyes. A moment later, the cry came again.

  “Daddy!”

  “Mine, I think,” Russ said, popping the cap off another bottle of beer and taking a long pull. “But she’ll stop in a minute.”

  Jake and Ethan took their turns before the cry from upstairs came again.

  “Daddy!”

  Sean smiled at Russ, pointing toward the stairs.

  “Definitely yours,” he said.

  Ethan gathered the dice back into the little plastic cup and handed it to Lucy, who took it from him as she scrolled one-handed on her phone.

  Odette appeared at the bottom of the stairs in her Peppa Pig pajamas, her hair a nest of straggling bed-head curls around her head. Her face was flushed pink, a deep frown creasing her forehead.

  “Dad-ee!” She stuck out her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout. “Why didn’t you come when I shouted?”

  “Couldn’t hear you, darling.”

  “I shouted and shouted and you didn’t come! I can’t get to sleep.”

  “Have you tried lying very quietly and thinking about nice things?”

  She folded her arms. “I want a Daddy story.”

  “You had a Daddy story already, sweetie. In fact, you had two stories.”

  “Want another one.”

  “No.”

  “Want a Mummy story, then.”

  “Mummy’s out at dinner.”

  “Then you have to do it. And you have to wait with me while I fall asleep in case the baddies try to get me.”

  “The baddies aren’t going to get you, Odette.”

  She stamped her little foot on the white-tiled floor. “Want a story! And you have to wait with me!”

  Russ stood up with a sigh, grabbing his beer from the table and scooping up his daughter with his other arm. He headed back up the stairs for the second time that evening. “Are we carrying on, or what?” Jake said impatiently.

  “We should probably wait for Russ to come back,” Sean said, “since he’s in the lead.”

  “How long’s he going to be, then?”

  “Not long.”

  Jake went back to looking at his phone.

  Sean looked at the three teenagers on the sofa across from him. His daughter was only a year older than Jake, and close to two years older than Ethan, but there was a world of difference between them. His daughter looked like a young woman—with a full face of makeup, he knew she could pass for eighteen at least—while Jake had the size of a man but the face of a boy, as if he’d grown too fast for his features to keep up. No, that wasn’t quite right: not a boy, exactly, but a curious teenage hybrid that was neither one nor the other.

  Jake stood up and stretched, yawning hugely. “So bored. Who’s up for some pool downstairs?”

  Ethan unfolded himself from the sofa and stood, too. “I’ll give you a thrashing if you want, bro.”

  To Sean’s surprise, Lucy stood up, too.

  “I’ll play the winner.”

  “That,” Ethan said with a lopsided grin, “will be me.”

  The three of them trooped off down the hall, the slap-slap of their flip-flops echoing on the stairs as they went down to the basement.

  Alistair sat back in his armchair, lacing his fingers behind his head.

  “And then there were two.”

  “Game abandoned, then.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Oh well,” Sean said. “I was going to lose, anyway.”

  Russ’s iPhone started ringing quietly on the low tabletop, the display showing an unrecognized number.

  Sean ignored it and began collecting up the Yahtzee score sheets and dice scattered across the low table.

  “Must have been something we said.” He looked at his watch. “When are the ladies due back, anyway?”

  “Not for at least another hour, I shouldn’t think. I expect they’ll just be getting into the aren’t-men-awful stage of the evening.”

  “No doubt.”

  There was an awkward silence as Sean finished clearing up the game and drained the last of his beer.

  “Fancy another drink?”

  “Oh, go on then,” Alistair said. “If you’re going to twist my arm.”

  Sean went into the kitchen to grab another couple Kronenbourgs from the giant fridge, pausing on his way back to listen at the bottom of the staircase. The muffled crack of a pool ball came up from the basement, but all seemed quiet upstairs. That was good.

  He sat back down opposite Alistair and handed him one of the beers. They clinked bottles and Alistair leaned over the iPod dock, scrolling through the playlists. The kids’ chart mix was abruptly replaced by Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.”

  “So, Sean,” Alistair said, settling back into his chair, “tell me about our newest arrival.”

  “Izzy?”

  “You two grew up together, didn’t you? What was she like back then?”

  “Ah, she was great, a live wire. Funny, too, you know? We laughed a lot back then.”

  “Never married?”

  Sean hesitated and took another gulp of beer, the glass of the bottle ice cold against the palm of his hand. Didn’t Alistair know the history? Maybe he’d forgotten, or filed it away somewhere in his memory. He could never tell what the other man was thinking.

  Engaged, but not married.

  “No. Never.”

  Alistair steepled his fingers together.

  “I find her quite fascinating.”

  “Yeah, she’s an amazing woman, really.” He added quickly, “So strong, despite everything that life’s thrown at her. I’m really glad she was able to make it out here this week.”

  Stop talking. You are rambling. Just stop.

  He was suddenly aware of the way the older man was looking at him, fists beneath his chin, as if Sean were one of his clients. He felt as if he were being scrutinized by Alistair the counselor, the accredited professional who spent his days listening to other people’s problems. As if Alistair were mentally taking notes on what he said, how he said it, what he left out, to create a profile and make a diagnosis of his shortcomings. To put them on show for the world to see.

  And how about you then, Alistair? Have you ever turned that penetrating gaze on yourself? Ever done anything that you knew was wrong? Have you ever looked in the mirror, ever taken a close look at your own flaws and failings as a man, a father, a husband?

  Sean felt the sweet sting of guilt, his constant companion.

  Have any of us, for that matter?

  NINE MONTHS EARLIER

  It’s not until Daisy Marshall’s sixteenth birthday party that she talks to him properly.

  She’s sitting with Fran and Emma and Megan in the garden, everyone doing vodka shots. She knows he’s been invited, she’s checked, but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether he’ll turn up. He trains a lot on evenings and weekends with the Saracens rugby academy, where they bring through all their best young players. Saracens is one of the biggest teams in the country and he mostly plays fly half, in the No. 10 shirt.

  She’s done her research.

  Then, halfway through the evening, he’s there with his mates, looking hotter than ever, crisp white shirt taut across his shoulders, hair still looking wet from the shower, one of the other lads pressing a bottle of beer into his hand. He’s like a younger version of Chris Hemsworth, but even better in her humble opinion. He’s ridiculously hot. He’s so hot it’s kind of unfair for all the other boys in the year, who look like little kids standing next to him.

  She wonders if he thinks the same way about her.

  Jake finally beckons her over, that weird look on his face like when he’s pissed off about something but trying not to show it. He introduces them, just like she asked him to, and she has to tell herself
not to smile too much, not to be too keen, too soon. Brushing her blond hair away from her face.

  She raises a hand in a little wave and she’s like, “Hi, I’m—”

  But he cuts her off with a smile.

  “I know who you are.”

  “Do you? You do?”

  Missing cool by about a million miles.

  “Me and Jake are both in the first team for rugby. He’s told me all about you.” His bright blue eyes on hers, long lashes blinking once, twice. “He was right, too.”

  “Right about what?”

  “You are the hottest girl in Year Eleven.”

  And there’s a little starburst of joy, a deep glow in the center of her chest.

  A little sun inside her, burning hot.

  MONDAY

  24

  The water was icy, a brutal, paralyzing cold that felt like frozen fire, a million tiny needles piercing my skin at once. Rushing down from the mountains, it was pure and beautifully clear but I couldn’t imagine paddling in it, let alone getting my shoulders under. I lifted my feet out of the stream and sat back on the rock, full of delicious relief as the July sun warmed my feet back into life.

  I felt like the captain of a sinking ship, standing on the deck, waiting for the water to take me.

  We had driven north into the hills to the Gorges D’Héric, a deep gully of sparkling red granite. Hiking a mile up the path, we found ourselves the perfect sunny spot—a steep-sided valley carpeted with oak trees, jagged peaks of rock above us on both sides jutting against the blue sky. Just upstream, a mini waterfall emptied into a deep pool of clear mountain water, rocks rising vertically above it on both sides.

  We were arrayed around the edges of a smaller rock pool, complete with tiny sandy beach, our towels laid out on broad, flat rocks, slabs of granite speckled with tiny flecks of quartz that sparkled in the sunlight. I watched as Sean played with Daniel and Odette in the shallow water of the rock pool, the two children squealing and splashing with delight as Sean dared them to wade deeper into the cold mountain water. Lucy, in a black bikini and Jackie O sunglasses, lay back on a rock tilted toward the sun.

  Jennifer had gone farther up the gorge in search of her boys, while Rowan had climbed higher off the path, looking for an elusive single bar of cell phone reception.