Nothing to Lose (22 page)

Sighing with deep contentment, she wriggled down more comfortably in her seat, sang along to ‘Postman Pat’, and knew that she hadn’t been this happy for years.

Ampney Crucis was probably like none of them had expected. Certainly, when April had visualised it, she’d known it would be small, but had imagined it to be a scaled-down Bournemouth or Southend: very lively, with tons of attractions for the tourists, and shops and amusement arcades and funfairs and – well – a typical brash British seaside resort.

The minute that Jix turned the Toyota on to the Ampney Crucis road, April fell hopelessly in love.

The narrow road wound away downhill towards the signposted village, shaded beneath overhanging chestnut trees; and the roadside verges were head-high with curly acid-green ferns, which escaped the confines of their white picket fences and brushed against the windows of the people carrier. One side of the road was woodland, with sandy pathways just visible, twisting up and down beneath the trees, and a stream bubbling and crashing alongside them. Opposite, there were houses, a higgledy-piggledy mixture of tall red-brick villas and tiny cottages, all with picture-book gardens. On the horizon, past the few shops, there were pine trees towering into the very blue sky. Banks of gorse and bracken flopped indolently across pavements, and even the air was calm, floating in through the open windows with a sort of heavy languor.

Jix, driving slowly, looked across at April. ‘There’s no traffic. No people. It’s like – like a film set . . .’

‘No it isn’t – it’s like heaven.’ April felt the lump growing in her throat. This was it. The place she’d come with Noah and Bee, once they were a real family, once September was over, and find the roses-round-the-door dream home.

Daff was staring out at the quiet streets, the tiny shops, the square grey church as they passed. Tears slid down her plump cheeks and April touched her gently. ‘Daff? What’s up?’

Nothing, sweet. I’m just being silly . . . It’s so lovely – like you see on the telly – like villages I thought I remembered from the past, but thought I’d probably got confused about. Oh, you know, rose-tinted glasses and all that. My mum and dad brought me to places like this when I was young Bee’s age, and I’ve never forgotten them, but this – this is even better than that.’ She sniffed. ‘It’s the most perfect place in the world.’

Cair Paravel, who had been sleeping since the New Forest, snoring, his whiskers twitching, woke up and rumbled a warning growl at Daff.

She dabbed at her damp eyes with a tissue. ‘See! Even he agrees with me.’

April had the map on her knees and as the people carrier approached a crossroads in the centre of the village, she tapped Jix’s arm. ‘Left, I reckon, if we’re going to see the sea. The greyhound stadium is further on, but we’ve got plenty of time to discover that later.’

As they turned left, the light changed instantly. The sky was luminescent, and where the end of the road dropped away, there was a sense of nothingness. April tried to swallow the lump in her throat again. The wind-stunted pine trees on either side of the street swayed slightly, dipping away on the near horizon, forming a tiny valley at the edge of the cliffs. There was a pub called the Crumpled Horn on one side of the road, and a traditional beach cafe on the other, and then nothing but this image of pale, quivering infinity.

‘Mummeee!’ Bee’s shriek shattered the silence. ‘Is that it? Is that the sea?’

Jix turned round. ‘Yep, Bee, that’s the sea. You can just see it through the trees, can’t you? It looks like the sky’s turned to liquid, doesn’t it?’

April chewed her lips. Jix’s voice was husky. It would never do for them all to be in tears at the same time.

The cliff-top car park was almost deserted. Still, April reckoned, as it wasn’t quite nine o’clock this was probably to be expected. No doubt as the day progressed, hundreds of cars would line up along the shingle and tufty grass – and hopefully some of them would stay on for the greyhound meeting. Nearly nine o’clock. Still more then twelve hours to go before Cair Paravel hit the race track; twelve hours, April thought blissfully, unfastening her seat belt and unbuckling Beatrice-Eugenie, to explore this little piece of paradise.

With Cair Paravel clipped securely to his lead, and Daff ensconced behind the steering wheel, staring out with no fear at the vastness in front of her, Jix, April and Bee wandered to the edge of the cliffs.

The vast, quiet beauty took April’s breath away. The sun was climbing steadily in a cloudless sky, already tingling her shoulders, and below her, a set of sand-encrusted wooden steps twisted their way down the cliffs towards a row of brightly coloured wooden beach huts.

‘Blimey!’ She nudged Jix. ‘Look at them. Aren’t they the business? God, imagine how brilliant that must be – having one of those for your holiday, sitting in splendour. Oh, and look! There’s some more steps leading down from them to the beach, and – my God – look at the colour of that sand!’

She wanted to jump up and down and shout with delight. Never, ever had she felt this sense of freedom. The coastline curved away in both directions, disappearing round gorsy headlands, forming a perfect curve of pale golden sand. The sea, like shot silk beneath the sun, was splodgy with moving colour – green and grey and turquoise and pale blue – flecked with spindrift foam where the gentle waves formed and fell over an ocean bed gully. With a pang of recognition, April thought it was exactly like Noah’s painting – the very painting that had made it possible for them to be here in the first place.

She’d have to tell him. In September she’d tell him about this place, and how exactly right he’d got the ocean’s colours – and then she’d bring him here to see it for himself and she knew that he’d fall in love with it, and Bee – and hopefully with her all over again – and the dream would become a reality.

Putting this future bliss on hold, April hauled herself back to the present. Cair Paravel had his snout lifted to the air, inhaling the new scents greedily, his whippy blue tail doing its rotor blade impression. Bee was wide-eyed and speechless. Jix looked much the same.

‘Shall we get all the gubbins, then?’ April asked. ‘And make our way down to the beach? We might as well pick a good spot while it’s quiet.’

Jix, his hair blowing in the breeze like a television shampoo advert, eventually dragged his eyes away from the view and looked embarrassed. ‘Yeah – it’ll be brilliant . . . Um – did your parents take you to the seaside when you were a kid?’

‘Not often. A couple of times, I think. They never seemed happy, though, even then, and a day out always seemed to end in them having rows and me crying. Then later, they always seemed to be too busy – and we never had proper holidays or anything. Just weekends with friends of theirs who lived in the country. Why? Did yours?’

‘When Dad was alive, yes.’ Jix, with Bee on his shoulders, headed back towards the people carrier. ‘But he died when I was five, and that’s when Mum started to lose her grip on things. Her agoraphobia got so bad soon after that that we never went anywhere much.’

April smiled, understanding. ‘So this, today, is as much an adventure for us as it is for Cair Paravel, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah. Probably more so. It just seems so sad, doesn’t it? People of our age have probably been jetting off on package holidays all their lives, but we’ve hardly ever seen the sea, even in England.’

‘I’ll let you into a secret, then. I’ve never been abroad. Never even been on a plane.’

‘Nor me,’ Jix sighed.

April pulled open the door of the Toyota. Daff was happily engrossed in a word-search puzzle, and listening to Radio 2. She smiled. ‘Going to get into your bathers, then? Take Bee in for a paddle?’

‘Definitely.’ April nodded. ‘And we’ll take Cairey with us; there doesn’t seem to be any restriction about dogs on the beach. Oh, Daff, it’s such a pity you can’t come as well.’

‘I might later.’ Daff nodded towards the windscreen’s view. ‘It looks lovely down there. Maybe if I closed my eyes I could make it. Once I’d done the steps, I’d probably be fine just sitting on the beach.’

Jix gave his mother a hug. ‘Done deal! We’ll go and test the water – and then come back for you.’

It took them two bundling journeys to get everything they needed from the people carrier on to the beach, with both Beatrice-Eugenie and Cair Paravel working themselves up into a frenzy of excitement, and Jix and April pausing every few steps to gather up dropped buckets and towels and flip-flops, and to admire the view.

April, clutching Bee’s hand tightly, felt overwhelmed with happiness, watching her daughter’s chubby legs reach down, so steadily, one step at a time, her eyes fastened as if hypnotised on the constant rush and fall of the sea. She, of course, had the easy part. Jix, who was carrying the bulkiest items, also had to contend with Cair Paravel’s sudden joyous discovery of low-flying sea gulls.

The sand was pale and smooth, and April, plumping Bee down, kneeled in the coolness and sifted the multicoloured grains through her fingers. Bee laughed out loud, kicking her bare feet into the sand, beating her palms on the beach, entranced by so many new sensations. April, overwhelmed with love, let the tears trickle down her nose, then quickly forced herself to arrange the towels, open Cair Paravel’s water bottle, unpack the swimsuits, and generally pull herself together.

‘Cossie time, then!’ Jix buried Bee’s feet. ‘And I’ll race you into the sea!’

Constantly telling Bee to stand still, and that she mustn’t go near the water on her own, and yes they’d all build sand castles in a minute, April wondered fleetingly if she’d be brave enough to bare her body. Oh, to be Bee’s age, she thought, as she tugged her squirming daughter out of her shorts and T-shirt, and pulled on the rather pretty and slightly too small second-hand swimsuit. At Bee’s age, changing on the beach, however crowded, wasn’t a problem: for April, the prospect of wriggling out of the denim dress and her bra and knickers and trying to squeeze into the shiny violet bikini which Naz in the charity shop had assured her would fit like a glove, was a very different matter.

Maybe, she thought, looking back at the cliff top, she should go and change in the public loos. Maybe she’d have to dump the dual responsibilities of daughter and dog on to Jix yet again while she retained a modicum of decency.

Jix had managed to tether the quivering greyhound to an impaled spade, and despite the fact that several other families had clambered down the steps and were setting up camp quite close to them, had shed scarves, bangles, and the tie-dye vest with reckless abandon, and was unzipping his jeans.

‘God!’ April squinted up at him. ‘You’re not skinny-dipping, are you?’

‘You wish,’ Jix grinned. ‘Nah. I’ve come fully equipped.’ He held up a pair of frayed denim cut-offs in one hand and a huge bath towel in the other. Wrapping the towel round his waist, he wriggled and contorted his body until his jeans were round his ankles. Removing the towel he grinned again. ‘
Voilà!
It’s all down to dexterity and practice, you see.’

April blinked. If she’d imagined Jix’s body at all – which she hadn’t, of course – she’d have put money on it being pale, emaciated and weedy. She’d have lost her own bet. The slender, well-muscled torso and the long lean legs that had been hidden beneath the hippie facade came as a complete surprise.

She stopped staring and smiled at him, feeling almost shy. ‘Do you know, I was just thinking, I must be the only woman in Bixford who
doesn’t
know what you look like without your clothes on.’

‘Your loss.’ He poked out his tongue. ‘Now it’s your turn. If you don’t get undressed soon your daughter is going to burst with impatience. Do you want me to hold your towel? I promise I won’t look.’

‘And pigs might . . .’ April retorted, grabbing the largest towel. ‘Just shut your eyes – Oh, sod it! You made it look so easy.’ She wrestled with the towel and various zips and buttons for a few more minutes, then sighed crossly. ‘We ought to have one of those beach huts up there; then I could change in privacy.’

And we will, she thought, gripping the towel with her teeth and shimmying her body in the hope that her dress would slide to the floor. When Noah comes back, and I bring him down here, we’ll have one of those – maybe the peach one, or that bright red one, or the duck-egg blue . . .

‘April, you’re making a right dog’s breakfast of that,’ Jix interrupted the thoughts. ‘Here. I’ll hold the towel.’

‘Oh, God – OK

Wriggling, highly self-conscious, April tussled with the age-old dilemma of removing one set of bra and pants and getting into another without turning into Gypsy Rose Lee, and all with Jix only inches away. Feeling suddenly very vulnerable, she turned her head to look back up the cliff. The beach huts were opening up their doors now as holidaymakers arrived. People in shorts, encouraged by the heat of the morning, were unpacking cool boxes and shaking out towels and bathing costumes on the wooden slatted verandas.

Concentrating hard on fastening the bikini top under the towel, April noticed the girl dressed sombrely in baggy black, sitting slumped alone outside the prettiest hut – all apricot and red and cream – her dark hair dangling down hiding her face, her shoulders hunched up. April sighed. Poor thing. Probably had a row with her boyfriend or something. What a pity. Being miserable on her holiday – and in such a beautiful place.

‘OK?’ Jix jiggled the towel. ‘Decent?’

‘What? Oh yes, I think so.’ April moved away from the towel with extreme caution. The violet bikini was very snug, but she hoped it covered all the bits it should.

Jix whistled appreciatively. ‘When we go back to Bixford you are going to have to wear that on the debt-collecting round! I know certain people who’d pay well over the odds for a glimpse of you in that!’

Grinning, she punched him. ‘Get off! Is Cairey safe there?’

Jix wiggled the spade. ‘As houses. He’s got water and a biscuit. He’ll be fine.’

Cair Paravel, sprawled on all the towels with his biscuit trapped between his front paws, gave a docile thump of his tail.

‘Good boy.’ April kissed the top of his head. ‘You stay on guard. We won’t be long.’