In the Summertime (8 page)

She went into the shop. A couple of the boys from before were still there, talking like experts about wetsuits – something about gauges and percentages. She listened in as she flicked through a rail of discounted T-shirts, noting the ya-ya drawls of private-school accents. Maybe they were from London as well. She wished one of them would notice her and … well, anything really. Just a smile would be something, especially from the streaky blond one with the gold ear stud, just so she felt she was worth a look. But they were a couple of years older than her, at least. She was probably invisible. Willow wouldn’t be – she’d make sure they clocked her, just flicking her hair about and maybe bumping into one of them. But then Willow was the oldest in her
school year – she’d be fifteen in September, practically
adult
. Silva was the baby of their group and had only got her periods just after Christmas. It was hard keeping up with a best friend whose fake ID was never (according to Willow anyway) challenged in clubs. In fact it was hard keeping up with a friend who even
went
to clubs.

The boys were talking about something called sex wax now. What
was
that? It sounded weird. Where did you put it? Was it like … bikini waxing or something? She’d never be able to ask because she’d look like a numpty for not knowing. Whatever it was it must be gross.

Silva hoped her gran wouldn’t be too long because although she’d said she was OK with going by herself to the Sail Loft, she actually felt a bit shy about sitting at a table alone and actually ordering something. You’d look like a loser, sitting all by your lonesome. She probably just had time to try something on, maybe a little skirt or one of the flowery dresses that she wouldn’t wear back home but which looked so cool on the girls here. Another boy (nerdy geek style this time, though with nice grey eyes) came in with a tall stringy dad and they started looking at wetsuits.

‘You’ll need a life jacket as well, Freddie,’ the dad was saying, pacing about and being loud. ‘And some gloves and, hey, how about this hat?’ The dad put a baseball cap on back to front and smirked at himself in the long
mirror on the wall. The surf-boys made faces at each other.

‘Dad …’ Freddie mumbled, looking embarrassed. Silva glanced at him, feeling sympathetic. He smiled shyly and she could feel herself blushing so she grabbed a dress and rushed into the changing area, pulling the curtain shut behind her.

The dress was a terrible choice. She put it on and pulled the loose fabric back at the waist. She must have picked out a size twelve or something – it was way too big for her. She unzipped it quickly and just as she was pulling it over her head the curtain was abruptly pulled back.

‘Aha, it’s occupied. Sorree!’ The boy she’d wanted to notice her was now staring at her body, which was exposed to the whole shop. ‘Aw, everyone, look at these cute li’l pink knickers!’ He was laughing loudly and taking his time putting the curtain back again. Silva flung her shorts on, hands shaking as she fastened them, and hurtled out of the shop, almost tripping over the big, white-trainered feet of the Freddie boy. She ran up the lane and into the courtyard of the Sail Loft, collapsing panting into a chair at the far back close to the hedge and in the face-cooling shade of a big umbrella.

‘Don’t you want to sit in the sun?’ Clare arrived seconds later, when Silva was still trying to erase the cringeworthy picture of the gorgeous but horribly
teasing surf-boy – along with everyone else in the shop – staring at her Hello Kitty underwear. I must have looked about
nine
, was all she could think. What a great start to the holiday.

Miranda was running late. She’d never been to the little airport at Newquay before and although it looked easy enough to find on the map, once she was off the main road there were too many winding lanes to make the trip a fast and smooth one. At least the urn full of ashes was no longer rolling about in the boot of the car. Clare must have taken it out some time during the day. Miranda would have to ask her where it was, if only so that Harriet wouldn’t fling open a random cupboard door and start screeching if she found her father’s remains where she’d expected the biscuit tin to be. Bo and Silva, bless them, wouldn’t even think to comment. How much more adaptable and unconcerned children are, she thought. Or maybe it was just hers. And maybe they simply had no curiosity … She mustn’t over-analyse – that way lay another dollop of single-parent self-recrimination. They were fine.

And of course, now that Miranda at last had the St Mawgan air base in sight, Dan was phoning for the fourth time and she couldn’t ignore him any longer otherwise she’d end up having to take a call from him later when she’d got Harriet in the car. If that happened, Harriet would do the thing she did where she kept asking why on earth Miranda ever even spoke to him. OK, so he was an idle, useless sod, but he was the idle, useless sod who was father to her children. She couldn’t expect her sister to understand that you never quite escaped those. She pulled over into a farm gateway to find out what was so urgent.

‘I was chatting to Bo on Facebook,’ he said, sounding cheery. ‘He says you’ve rented a nice big fancy place down in Cornwall. Sounds idyllic.’

‘It’s not
that
big,’ Miranda told him, wary about what might be coming next. ‘It’ll be full once Harriet’s got here.’ Damn, she thought, it might have been better not to mention Harriet was coming. Straight into his trap.

‘Oh, right. Well, hey, if you’ve got room for your sister, you can find a sofa or something for your children’s father, can’t you?’ he said. ‘I’d really like to come and see them on their holiday. One big happy family and all that.’

She thought about the last time they’d tried that one, because, in the interests of bringing up the children without their seeing only lasting rancour, she had given it a go. They’d gone for a weekend in Barcelona where
she’d discovered that Dan, for once in his life pulling the macho ‘I’ll organize everything’ card, had booked them all into one inadequate family room in a truly nasty hotel, in which he’d assumed, staggeringly, that she’d share a bed with him. Still, at least being reacquainted with Dan’s bathroom habits had squashed any guilt she’d occasionally felt about leaving him and depriving the children of a live-in father. As a hygiene role model, she’d told him as they boarded the plane home, frankly she’d do better to shack up with a zoo animal.

‘No really, Dan, there isn’t the space. Truly.’

‘Well, if you’ve run out of rooms we can always bunk in together, you and me.’ Dan chuckled at her down the phone. Miranda opened the window and took a deep breath of fresh evening air. Did the concept of ‘divorce’ mean nothing to him?

‘I don’t think so, Dan, do you? I’ve got Mum here who’s still feeling fragile, Harriet who’s just been dumped by her boyfriend and the children who need entertaining. Sorry, but I don’t want to have to look after you as well. Tell you what,’ she went on quickly before he could think of another weaselly argument, ‘why don’t you have them on their own after we get back? There’ll be another week or two of the summer holidays left. Maybe you could take them somewhere?’

‘Gee, thanks. I get palmed off with a few leftover days, do I, while you get them for most of the holidays?
Remind me, don’t we have some sort of proper childcare arrangement in force?’

Through the windscreen, Miranda could see a plane touching down on the runway. She had to get going.

‘We do and I’ve never argued about that, as you know. But you also agreed to this trip, for the sake of my mother, remember? And now the children are older they get a say as well, surely? And they really wanted this. Please, Dan, don’t be difficult.’

‘But I can’t afford to take them away, not right now.’ No, well you wouldn’t, not while you’re spending most of your life on the sofa eating Pringles, watching
Cash in the Attic
and wondering why the living the world apparently owes you isn’t actually forthcoming, Miranda managed
not
to say, saving the thought for possible emergency use later.

‘OK. Then how about you have them to stay with you?’ she suggested, switching the engine back on and indicating to pull out.

‘Well, you know I would, but Mum finds teenagers a handful,’ he countered.

‘Now that I doubt,’ Miranda said, laughing. ‘After all, she manages to cope with you.’ She made the goodbye a swift one, drove the last half-mile to the airport, quickly parked and hurtled into the terminal as the first passengers were coming out.

‘Manda! Where
were
you – I’ve been waiting
ages
!’ Harriet looked close to stamping her foot with
indignation. It was a gesture that would, Miranda immediately thought, go well with the pretty fifties-style lilac full-skirted shirt dress and five-inch wedge shoes she was wearing. She’d always had a great dress-up sense of style and now only lacked a cute pillbox hat and little white gloves.

Miranda hugged her and she immediately burst into noisy sobs, which meant that Miranda could hardly point out that she knew Harriet hadn’t been waiting – she’d just seen her walk across the tarmac from the plane right that minute.

‘Oh, don’t cry, darling,’ she said, patting her gently as if soothing a fallen-down child. ‘It’s all going to be fine, I promise. Now, where’s your luggage?’

‘Over there.’ Harriet sniffed and pointed to a carousel on which several large matching pink cases were going round by themselves. Most people had grabbed theirs quickly and already raced out.

‘Fine. Shall we get them?’ Miranda didn’t think this was a good sign. Had the footballer’s defection left the girl completely incapable? The indications pointed to ‘yes’. So that would be someone else in the house who would need careful handling, then. She left Harriet mopping her eyes while peering into a small mirror and loaded the bags on to a trolley. They were very heavy and there were rather a lot of them. Had Harriet brought everything she owned? Miranda had assumed this was just a flying visit to lick her wounds and gather
a bit of strength. With difficulty, and with Harriet trotting uselessly alongside, she shoved the unwieldy trolley – which of course had to have a wonky wheel – out towards the car park. One lone man stood outside the terminal, staring round and looking confused, a squashy old leather bag on the pavement at his feet.

‘There’s never a feckin’ cab round here when you need one, not unless you sprint like a bloody gazelle through this damn place,’ he grumbled in the general direction of Miranda. It was happening again, she realized: yet another person who looked somehow familiar. Or maybe it was something to do with the voice. A bit Irish, a bit London. Except yet again it actually was someone she’d known, and amazingly he looked hardly different at all from the last time she’d seen him. Barely older somehow (how did that happen?), still shambolic, a bit like a cleaned-up tramp but in a bobbly soft grey cashmere sweater.

‘I don’t suppose by any remote feckin’ chance you’ll be travelling anywhere near a back-of-beyond place called Chapel Creek, will you?’ He smiled at Miranda, who’d stopped mid-trolley-struggle.

‘Come
on
, Miranda. Don’t talk to him,’ hissed Harriet. ‘He was drinking on the plane.’

‘And don’t tell me you weren’t,’ Miranda murmured back. ‘I know gin-tears when I see them.’

‘Yeah, and so what? You’d feel the same in my shoes.’
This was probably true. Miranda gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze.

The man was still looking hopeful, still giving them the smile full of Irish charm.

‘I actually know you,’ Miranda said. ‘Aren’t you Eliot Lynch?’

The smile turned into the broadest beam and he laughed. ‘I so am! Jaysus, I haven’t been recognized on the street for a long time now. You’ve made my day, so you have. You’ll be a reader then?’

‘Er …’ How to say without hurting his feelings that yes, she was a voracious reader, but not really of his sex-and-spies genre. ‘I remember you from years ago, over at Chapel Creek. I was friends with Jessica and Milo? Down here in the summers?’

Harriet was scowling, picking at her nails. ‘Can we get going? Please?’

‘I can give you a lift, Eliot. I’ve seen Jess today – she said you were coming. I’m Miranda – do you remember us all?’

Eliot looked at her for a few long seconds, ‘Oh, my Lord. Miranda. Daughter of the lovely Clare and all grown up so pretty. Tell me, is your mam well? I always had a soft spot for her.’

‘She is.’ This wasn’t really the moment to elaborate, Miranda decided; she could tell him about Jack later on the journey. ‘And she’s in Chapel Creek. We’ve rented your old house for a few weeks. Come on,’ she said, as
his face showed he was taking this in rather slowly. ‘The car’s this way. Shall we get going?’

‘I’m not going to do this every day,’ Miranda warned everyone the next morning as she bustled around the kitchen cooking a huge late fry-up breakfast for them all. ‘It’s just a one-off treat and a sort of welcome to Harriet. After this you can all fend for yourselves in the mornings. Bo, please will you take knives and forks and stuff out to the terrace table? It’s warm enough to be outside. Has your gran come back from her swim yet? She did say nine thirty.’ And that had been pretty much all she’d said as she was leaving the house by herself when Miranda came down the stairs.

‘Would you like me to come and swim with you?’ Miranda had asked, thinking her mother might like some company, but Clare just gave her a sad little smile, shook her head and closed the door softly behind her. When Miranda had got back the night before, Clare had already gone to bed, so she’d had no chance to tell her about meeting Eliot. Bo and Silva had been curled like cats on opposite sofas, half asleep and watching a film full of old-school car chases. Harriet, pleading emotional exhaustion, had carried just one of her smaller bags upstairs, leaving Miranda to follow with the two heaviest.

‘Pretty room,’ Harriet had commented, getting her phone out and checking for a signal. She went to the
window and pulled the curtains firmly shut, then opened one of them the tiniest chink and peered out.

‘Is there something out there?’ Miranda asked, going to take a look. She remembered how bats used to swoop low over the village and she pulled the fabric back a bit.