The Vacation

by T. M. Logan

  The camera gave a click as the tape reached the beginning. I pressed Play and Daniel’s grinning face appeared as he introduced the house tour.

  “Welcome to the big white villa on the hill. Our vacation house, in France,” he added in the mock-serious tone of a TV presenter. “And welcome to Daniel’s video diary. We start today in my bedroom.”

  In spite of myself and how low I was feeling, I couldn’t help but smile at his commentary as he chattered on, panning the camera around his room, his books stacked neatly next to his little digital clock, his Lego superheroes on the bedside table. I knew, from his previous vacation videos, that he could go on like this for quite some time. I hit Fast Forward, watching as the images flashed past: our bedroom, Lucy’s room, and the others along the corridor, the games room and what looked like a wine cellar, then out onto the balcony, images of Rowan and me on the first day here with the inevitable extreme close-up. Back into the living room, jerking crazily up the stairs to the first floor, a shot of the hills in the distance, another zooming close-up down by the double garage, and there was someone half hidden behind a low white wall, then the shot swinging away and over to the infinity pool—

  Wait. I jabbed the Pause button, a strange tingling sensation at the back of my neck, then rewound the tape a minute or so and hit Play.

  Daniel’s commentary started up again as the camera panned over distant hills, shimmering in the heat haze.

  “And here we have some more boring countryside,” his high little voice announced, “just loads of trees and hills and more boring trees really. Not very interesting. Not even a McDonald’s or a KFC anywhere.”

  The camera zoomed out again, pulling right back to the grounds, an outbuilding, a sweep across the roof of the double garage at the top of the driveway.

  There. On the other side of a low wall.

  The image caught Sean’s top half, from the chest upward. He had sunglasses on and was talking to someone, smiling, holding his hands out to them. Whoever he was talking to was hidden behind the garage wall.

  “It’s Daddy,” Daniel’s voice-over said on the tape. “Hello, Daddy!”

  Sean seemed not to hear his son’s voice. He carried on talking earnestly to the person behind the garage, who was still hidden.

  Come out, take a step forward so I can see you.

  Come out.

  “Daddy’s gone deaf,” Daniel grumbled to himself on the tape. “Typical.”

  Just as the camera swung away again, Sean moved to embrace the mystery person and I saw a flash of something that made my breath catch in my throat.

  I rewound the tape and pressed Play again, my finger poised over the Pause button.

  On the camera’s little screen, Sean moved in for the embrace again.

  I hit Pause. There. There it was. A flash of long blond hair, a face caught in profile for a fraction of a second. A face I knew only too well.

  Jennifer.

  33

  It didn’t make sense. I had been fully expecting to see Rowan caught in the video with Sean. It was Rowan who was having an affair—according to her husband—and she was the one who’d had Sean’s wedding ring, who’d whispered to him at the beach. It should have been Rowan in the video, but it wasn’t.

  I took out my phone, zoomed the camera in on the little video screen, and snapped a picture of the freeze-framed image. Then I ejected the tape and tucked it into the back of my bedside drawer.

  I had a feeling I might need it, sooner rather than later.

  * * *

  The sky was fading to a heavy blue black, the brightest stars already pinpricks of light against the darkness. With dinner out of the way, I sat down next to my daughter on a bench in the garden, the white stone still holding a ghost of warmth from the day.

  “I took care of that video, Lucy.”

  She nodded. “Thanks.”

  “And your brother says sorry. He won’t do it again.”

  “Yeah, right.” She sniffed. “Until the next time.”

  “I made him promise.”

  She nodded again, but said nothing.

  I turned on the bench slightly, so I was facing toward her. “What was it about it that really upset you, Luce? Daniel’s done it before, you know what he’s like. He does it to me, too, and your dad. But you’ve never reacted like this before.”

  She shrugged, once. “I just don’t like being filmed.”

  “Is that all? Seems like there’s a bit more to it than that.”

  She was silent, fingers twisting a long strand of her golden-blond hair round and around, just like she had done since she was very small.

  I rested my fingertips on her arm. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  She looked at me for a moment, then looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You know I won’t tell anyone, don’t you? Not your dad, not Izzy or the others, not your teacher. No one.”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Maybe not. But I’ll try to.”

  She leaned forward, her face hidden by her curtain of long blond hair. There was a long pause. When she finally spoke, she wouldn’t look at me.

  “When you film something, people think it’s just a laugh,” she said. “They think it’s just something to do in that minute, on that day. They don’t think about what happens to it after that, do they?”

  “And what does happen to it after that?”

  “Well, it’s out there, isn’t it? Forever. Out there on the internet, somewhere. Even after you die, it will still be out there, floating about somewhere. Something you did when you were a teenager, whatever stupid thing you did or said—forever and ever.”

  I started to get an uncomfortable feeling deep in my stomach.

  “The internet never forgets,” I said, remembering something a detective colleague was fond of saying.

  “Yeah. That’s what I mean.”

  I hesitated, not sure how to phrase the next question.

  “Is there something out there, that you did? Something that you wished wasn’t out there?”

  She stared out across the manicured lawn and the darkening vineyard beyond. When she looked back at me, there were tears in her eyes.

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “Do you want to talk about it? A little bit?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Who says you can’t?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “I’ll do my best, love.”

  She shook her head again. “I’ve told you. I can’t.”

  “I’m not going to force it out of you, Lucy. But it makes me feel so useless, the idea that I can’t help you. Dad and I have always done everything for you, but now it feels like there are things that are beyond our reach. And I hate not being able to be there for you.”

  She stared out toward the hills, another tear running down her cheek.

  “You can’t help. No one can.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders, my heart breaking over the gap that had grown between us. My wonderful girl, my firstborn, my smart, funny, sweet child, was drifting further away from me with each passing day. And it seemed as if there were nothing I could do to bring her back.

  “This—this thing that’s out there on the internet. Is it a video?”

  She closed her eyes and nodded, once. A single, tiny movement.

  A watery feeling of helpless anxiety began to spread outward from my stomach.

  “A video with you in it? The sort of thing you—you wouldn’t want me to see?”

  A pause. Then another tiny nod.

  “There must be something we can do to get it taken down, removed from whatever site it’s on. Dad works in computer security, he might know a way to do it.”

  She stood up and swiped angrily at her tears.

  “I’ve told you. You can’t help! No one can!”

  She walked off toward the house without anothe
r word.

  I gave her a minute, then followed her in. This was something that should be shared with Sean, so we could discuss it, work out what to do—on any normal day that’s what I would have done. But normal was now a distant memory.

  I could hardly look at him after today, let alone speak to him.

  Daniel’s iPad lay discarded on the low coffee table in the living room. I took it into the dining room and shut the door behind me, propping the iPad on its stand at the end of the long table. There was a rolling, sick feeling in my stomach.

  My little girl is somewhere out there on the internet. Naked. Vulnerable. Naive.

  I sat down and unlocked the tablet before realizing that I had no real idea where to start. This video of my child—or whatever it was of—was out there somewhere other people could see it. Somewhere that other people could find it. Knowing that made me feel more helpless than ever.

  It was one of those teenage things; I knew it went on, but I was pretty hazy on the details. Did they get posted on YouTube? Did they allow that kind of thing? It didn’t seem likely. Weren’t there moderators to remove nudity and sex? I had colleagues back home in the Computer Crimes Unit who could probably advise, but it was the kind of thing that needed to be done face-to-face. Discreetly.

  After an hour of fruitless Googling and scrolling through lists of results, I turned the iPad off and headed upstairs. The truth was, I had very little idea about what she might have posted, or where it was, or how to get it taken down. And if she couldn’t do it, what chance did I have? We were friends on Facebook for a short time, before Lucy deleted her account, declaring that Facebook was full of adults and weirdos. I couldn’t really argue with her on that.

  By the time I climbed into bed and switched my light out, I knew I had another sleepless night ahead of me.

  Too many questions without answers.

  I thought Sean was asleep and jumped when his deep voice reached across the darkness between us.

  “Night,” he said quietly. “Love you.”

  He always said it, last thing at night.

  I didn’t say it back.

  SIX MONTHS EARLIER

  It’s stupid, really. She knows it’s stupid. It isn’t how things work.

  But she can’t stop thinking it a hundred times a day. Can’t stop imagining it when she’s with him, visualizing it when they are together and he has his arm around her and pulls her into him. When he holds her close against his chest. When he kisses her and it feels like a crackle of electricity going up and down her spine.

  If her mum saw him, she’d understand. She’d get it. But it’s better that she doesn’t know anything, not now, not after all the lectures on staying focused and school getting real as the GCSE exams get closer and closer. And she doesn’t mind keeping a secret. It’s kind of cool, actually, to have a proper secret, like a secret room in your house full of secret stuff that no one else knows about. It’s not like she’s actually banned from having a boyfriend, just that her mum and dad have quite specific ideas about boys.

  But he’s not like most boys; he’s much more mature. She can talk to him about anything. School, exams, family, brothers and sisters and mates and the real reason they call him B-Boy at school. About how she’s going to be a doctor and how he got talent spotted by Saracens at the age of eleven and wants to go professional when he’s eighteen and play rugby for England one day. Win trophies.

  There’s one thing she doesn’t talk to him about.

  The stupid thing.

  It is stupid. On one level, she knows that.

  But she still can’t stop thinking it: she’s going to marry this boy.

  TUESDAY

  34

  The bedroom was still dark when I woke, the blackout curtains keeping all but a tiny sliver of light out. I turned over and stretched out a leg onto Sean’s side of the bed, but there was nothing there. I reached an arm out, but the sheets were cold. The other side of the bed was empty.

  The digital clock on the bedside table read 8:14. I sat up, rubbing my eyes. Our en suite was empty, too, and out in the living room the day was already dazzling bright, morning sunlight streaming through the big windows at the front of the villa. I shielded my eyes and closed the blinds a little to reduce the glare.

  Daniel was perched on the big leather sofa in his pajamas, eating a bowl of cereal and watching a film on the giant TV. Two Transformers were having a fistfight in the rubble of New York City. I sat down next to him, kissing the side of his head.

  “Morning, Daniel. Sleep all right, love?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Where’s your dad?”

  “He went out.”

  “Where?”

  “Shopping for bread or something. In the village.”

  “When did he go?”

  Daniel shrugged.

  “Dunno. Half an hour ago? They were going to get bread and I asked if they could get Chocolate Weetos, too, but they said they probably wouldn’t be able to find that because they have all different—”

  “They?”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t go on his own? He went with someone else?”

  “Oh, yeah. Jake and Ethan’s mum.” He slurped milk off his spoon and pulled a face. “I don’t really like French milk, Mummy, can we get normal milk?”

  “That is normal for France, love. It just tastes a bit different because it’s ultra-pasteurized to kill any bugs.” I stood up and peered into the empty kitchen. “So just the two of them went? Just your dad and Jennifer?”

  “Yeah. I wanted to go, too, but they said they were only going for a few bits and anyway, I still had my PJs on.” He carried on munching his cereal. “What are we doing today?”

  “Don’t know yet,” I said absently. “Something nice.”

  Izzy appeared at the foot of the stairs, yawning hugely in her pajamas. She raised a hand in silent greeting and padded into the kitchen.

  I nodded back and decided to call Sean’s phone. As it rang, I walked around the villa, out onto the balcony, popping my head into the dining room. No one else seemed to be up and about yet.

  Sean’s phone went to voice mail. I hung up and tried again, leaving a brief message the second time, asking them to get some pastries and cakes for lunch.

  I went to the front window and looked out onto the drive. All three cars were there, so they must have walked into the village. Ten minutes there, ten minutes in the boulangerie—assuming there was a line—and ten minutes walking back. About half an hour, all told, which meant they should be on their way back. Strolling back hand in hand, perhaps? Sitting in the little café in the village square, sharing a coffee? Enjoying the privacy of a few quiet moments together, somewhere they wouldn’t be seen?

  Maybe. Maybe not. But I could catch them out if I was quick.

  I went to the bedroom and hurriedly put on my running gear.

  “Stay here with Izzy,” I said to Daniel. “I’m going for a run.”

  My son nodded without taking his eyes from the TV screen.

  “Get some proper milk if you see any.”

  I grabbed a key and headed out.

  * * *

  Running had been Sean’s idea, in the beginning.

  It was part of his midlife crisis, he said. He’d greeted the arrival of his thirty-ninth birthday with a rash of new hobbies, new goals, and plans for life-changing self-improvement.

  It had come along with joining a gym, buying a new road bike, trying to lose weight, and cutting out midweek drinking. Along with taking bin bags full of old shirts and jeans to the charity shop and buying new clothes, ditching the stubble, getting his hair cut shorter, and generally making more of an effort with his appearance.

  Along with having an affair.

  They were all signs, I supposed. Big, flashing neon that said something was going on in his life, his head, his heart. A change was happening. The indications were there, but I had misread them. I’d seen them as positives, when they were anything but. Although he�
��d already ditched the running, a few weeks ago. Just stopped. Needed all of his energy for other things, presumably.

  At the end of the villa’s tree-lined gravel drive, I turned right and headed along the narrow road toward Autignac. It was still early, but the sun was already high in the cloudless sky, beating down with a relentless heat that half blinded me as I ran. In my rush, I’d forgotten to bring my sunglasses and had to squint as I jogged along the road that ran along the boundary of the estate, trying to get a rhythm going in limbs still stiff and heavy with sleep. The air was thick with humidity and I’d barely made it past the end of the tall white stone wall when I felt the first sweat under my arms and at the back of my neck.

  Sometimes Sean and I ran together—in the beginning, anyway, after we had caught the running bug and had opportunities when the kids wouldn’t be home alone. But then he’d started training for half marathons, running late into the evening after Daniel had gone to bed, when all I wanted to do was put my dressing gown on and wind down with a bit of TV. In any case, he was too quick for me, and I usually felt like I was holding him back.

  Was that what I was doing now? Holding him back? And what was I supposed to do if I ran around a bend in the road here and found them strolling arm in arm, hip to hip? Or sitting on a bench, sharing a stolen kiss? I knew what I had to do—force it out of them right there by the roadside, get them to admit what was going on, confess.

  I ran on.

  By the time I reached the village, my T-shirt was stuck to my back with sweat and I was breathing hard in the clammy heat. The square was quiet, just a couple elderly women gossiping outside the boulangerie, a handful of others enjoying an early coffee in the shade of the town hall. No sign of Sean and Jennifer. I looped around the far side of the village, beyond the main square, coming back around and rejoining the little road that led up to the villa.

  Halfway up the little hill at the back of the house, my legs got so heavy I had to stop for a minute, standing at the side of the road, hands on my hips. The trees were thick here, oak and pine and olive trees, with the white of the villa walls just visible above me at the prow of the hill. I walked the rest of the way.