Summer at Shell Cottage (10 page)

Of course, Harriet had sneaked a look at Simon’s Facebook page and gawped with increasing crossness at all the photos of him and beautiful Anne-Marie, arms entwined around each other.
She
had also seen the photos of their prospective new home: a charming brick farmhouse in the Dordogne with its own vineyard – ‘Chateau Reynolds!’
as all his mates were teasing in the
comments.
There were green fields and a stream and proud golden sunflowers, way taller than Harriet had ever managed to grow in their tiny east-facing garden.

However idyllic it looked, though, Simon seemed to have neglected one crucial factor in all of this: he would be living in a different country from his fantastic fifteen-year-old daughter, not
to mention his criminally ignored young son.
Did that not bother him?
Did he not feel a wrench at the thought of such distance between them?
How could it be that he didn’t feel the pull of
his own flesh and blood, anchoring him right here in London?
There was no way Harriet would ever uproot and move somewhere miles from her daughter.
It would not even occur to her!

Harriet had done her best to be civil about Simon at all times in front of Molly.
In fact, so desperate was she not to fall into the trap of slagging him off and making him the scapegoat for
their marriage break-up (even though he was totally to blame), she overcompensated, and was often ridiculously generous about him rather than expressing her true feelings.
But there were times
– like now – when it was very hard to think of a single kind thing to say about him.
There were times, in fact – also now – when she just wanted to smash his face in for
being such a self-obsessed, daughter-neglecting twat.

Of course, he hadn’t thought to contact Molly and let her know the news himself.
He had that little respect or consideration for her feelings, it was a surprise he still remembered she
even existed.

Going to be a daddy!
was one of the captions on his Facebook page, written underneath a photo of him with his hand proudly on Anne-Marie’s swelling belly.
It had taken every bit
of self-control for Harriet not to leave a waspish comment underneath.

Going to be?
You already are, Si.
Or do your other children not count any more?

She turned off the computer instead before she could start typing.
It would only make things worse for Molly she reminded herself.
With a father like Simon, and all the many disappointments and
let-downs this meant, her daughter already had enough problems, without Harriet adding to the burden.

Over in Oakthorne, Freya had undergone one of the less pleasant afternoons of her career.
Melanie Taylor had arrived for their meeting, as arranged by Elizabeth, but was not in
any mood to sit calmly and listen to Freya’s polite lines of self-defence.
She was out for a scalp, shrilly listing all the reasons why Freya should be sacked for incompetence, starting with
the big one: that Ava was still poorly in hospital.

‘Perhaps if we all calm down a minute—’ Elizabeth interrupted soothingly.

Melanie didn’t want to be soothed.
‘I’m not the one with a bottle of gin in my handbag!’
she shrieked.
Her eyes glittered with venom, the veins in her neck stood out like
cords; she was a lioness prepared to go for the jugular on behalf of her injured cub.

Freya flinched in her chair.
Oh Christ.
She’d forgotten all about the incriminating Hendrick’s bottle.
The unopened, undrunk Hendrick’s bottle, she wanted to protest, but she
didn’t dare.
Not when Elizabeth had turned to look at her, a small frown rucking that pale forehead.
It took every shred of composure Freya possessed to hold her head up high.
‘I am a
professional,’ she said, even though this didn’t feel strictly true any more either.
‘I wouldn’t dream of drinking alcohol while at work.
I certainly don’t have an
alcohol problem.’

‘We both know there was a bottle of something stashed in your bag,’ Melanie retorted, so loud Freya was sure that Sanjay, the nurse next door, would be able to hear.
Melanie scented
blood and was not about to let this one go.
‘Don’t you dare insult me by lying about it.
Pissed, were you?
Is that why you barely looked at Ava?
Too drunk to know what you were
doing?’

‘No!’
Freya cried hotly, not daring to look at her manager’s face.
Please believe me, Elizabeth,
she prayed, sweat pooling in her cleavage.
It was another stifling day
and she’d made the mistake of wearing a long-sleeved rose-coloured silk blouse and black skirt, somehow forgetting that the surgery was like an oven in hot weather.
She could almost feel her
make-up sliding down her face.
‘No,’ she said again, trying to sound crisp and in control.
‘I was absolutely not drunk.
And I did check over Ava.
I listened to her chest, I took
her temperature and looked in her ears .
.
.’

‘So why didn’t you tell me she was critically ill?’
Melanie’s voice was at shrieking pitch again.
‘Why did you let her nearly
die
?’

‘Let’s calm down a little,’ Elizabeth interjected, making downward motions with her hands.

‘I didn’t nearly let her die,’ Freya said to Melanie.
‘I wouldn’t.
I’m a mother myself, I’ve—’

‘I don’t care,’ Melanie spat.
She looked as if she wanted to fly across the desk that separated them and sink talons into Freya’s eyeballs.
‘I couldn’t give a
shit if you have children.
I hope they get ill like Ava, and then you’ll know how
I
feel.’
She burst into a torrent of sobs, and Freya gasped, winded by Melanie’s
terrible words.
How dare she?

Elizabeth put a firm hand on Freya’s arm – the subtext:
Do not rise to this
– and said, ‘Perhaps we should try this meeting again when Ava’s
better.’

Elizabeth guided Melanie out of the room while her bitter words thumped through Freya’s head like a bad fairy’s curse –
I hope your children get ill like Ava!
What
sort of a mother said something like that about somebody else’s child?
What planet was this woman on?

She leaned back in her chair, all the fight knocked out of her, wishing desperately for one of her dad’s bear hugs by way of comfort.
If only.
Would her father have been terribly ashamed
if he could see the mess she was in right now?
She could hardly bear to think about it.
He had always been so proud of her.

‘Are you all right?’
Elizabeth asked when she returned a few minutes later.
‘Don’t take any notice of what she said, she’s just upset.
I’m sorry you had to
sit through that, though, very unpleasant.’

Freya nodded, not trusting herself to speak all of a sudden.

Elizabeth gathered her papers together.
‘Listen, I’m satisfied you carried out the right checks on Ava but .
.
.
well, Mrs Taylor is clearly something of a loose cannon right now.
She may want to take this further, in which case .
.
.’
She spread her hands wide, an apologetic look on her face.

‘In which case, we’re in for round two,’ Freya said, feeling resigned to her fate.

‘Exactly.
But put it behind you now if you can.
You’re off on holiday soon, aren’t you?
Well, leave all this with me and we can pick things up when you’re
back.’

The matter seemed to be over and Freya was about to stand up when she had a sudden flashback to being in the critical care unit with baby Dexter.
Despite everything, she did understand
Melanie’s helpless, desperate rage.
‘Maybe I should just say sorry,’ she blurted out, feeling bad for the woman.
Wasn’t that the human thing to do here?

The words came out in a mumble but Elizabeth’s eyebrows shot up as if Freya had shouted them.
‘
Sorry?
For what?’

‘Well, for .
.
.’
Freya ground to a halt.
‘I did examine Ava properly that day, Elizabeth.
I definitely did.
But I know I’ve been a bit distracted recently.
I probably
wasn’t firing on all cylinders.
So maybe I should just—’

Elizabeth was shaking her head.
Very, very firmly.
‘No.
I don’t think that would be wise.
Saying sorry is tantamount to accepting culpability It’s a tacit acknowledgement that
you have something to be sorry
for,
ergo admitting you’re in the wrong.
Mrs Taylor could use it against you – she could sue you, twist your words .
.
.’
Again came that
shake of the head.
‘I strongly advise you not to do that.’

‘Right,’ Freya said, feeling chastised.

‘I mean, you could be putting your job in jeopardy.
You saw what she was like today flinging accusations around.
And if the baby deteriorates .
.
.’

Bile rushed into Freya’s mouth and she felt nauseous.
She didn’t want to think of baby Ava deteriorating.
Bronchial pneumonia was bad enough for adults to fight off, but for infants
there was a very real chance of death.
How would she be able to live with herself if the worst happened?
She suppressed a shudder.
‘Okay,’ she said.
‘I get the picture.
I’ll
keep quiet.’

Elizabeth nodded.
‘Hopefully this will all have blown over by the time you’re back from your holiday,’ she said.
‘And your husband’s home tonight, isn’t he?
So put it out of your mind for now.’

Freya and Victor had met on holiday in the south of France sixteen years ago this summer.
Until then, she’d only ever dated fellow med school students, all of whom had
strutted round the university campus like cockerels puffed up with self-importance, God’s gift to women, the sort of men who made you feel they were doing you a favour even speaking to you.
That summer, Freya had just split up with a particularly arrogant specimen, Matt, and had jumped at the chance of a girls’ holiday to take her mind off her feelings of rejection.

She was in a rented villa with six female friends and, as sheer bountiful luck would have it, the neighbouring villa was stuffed full of six English blokes.
‘Happy holidays all
round,’ her friend Becky whistled, the afternoon they arrived, leaning out of the window to gawp into the grounds next door.
‘Take your pick, ladies.’

Freya fancied dark, Latin-blooded Vic from the off, spying from the balcony as he dived into the next-door pool.
He was the best diver by far, with his broad back and athletic body, and watching
him plunge into the water left her deliciously shivery.
She and her friends took it upon themselves to go next door with a neighbourly bottle of tequila that evening, and all twelve of them chatted
and laughed together long into the night.
The next day they teamed up again to hire motorbikes and explore the local area and by dint of good fortune (and admittedly some jostling with her friend
Cathy, who also fancied him), Freya wangled a ride with Victor.
Sitting behind him, knees gripping his body, feeling the engine throbbing beneath her as they wheeled around dusty coastal roads, the
scent of rosemary, lavender and hot tarmac in her nose .
.
.
it was one of the most exhilarating and downright erotic experiences of her life.

The first time he kissed her was a few evenings later when all twelve of them traipsed down en masse to the small town nearby, for pizza and cheap carafes of red wine.
Afterwards the others left
to investigate a local band the waiter had tipped them off about, but Freya and Victor exchanged a secret glance and said they’d stay for one last drink before catching up.
The sky was
violet-blue, darkness gradually filling in the edges, and Freya felt heady with lust and sunshine and too much red wine.
They were laughing about something – she had no idea what, now, maybe
Vic’s terrible French accent which he kept putting on to crack her up – and then the atmosphere shifted, and the evening felt suspended, suddenly, as if everything else around them had
melted away.

‘Freya,’ he said softly, and her name sounded like a poem on his lips.
Then they were leaning towards each other, and his lips grazed hers – softer than she’d expected
– and it was as if she’d fallen head first into him, into his kiss, his arms, his very being, as their bodies pressed together.
Electricity seemed to tingle all around her; her blood
thrummed, her nerve endings quivered in ecstasy.
She felt like Sleeping Beauty, awoken with a single kiss, after all those wasted years of cocky med school boyfriends.

Afterwards, as they drew apart, the world seemed to have changed up a gear: the colours were more vivid and dazzling, the very air around them was charged with passion, and her heart was
thumping with joy and excitement.

‘Do that again,’ she had demanded, half laughing, but giddy too, with the shock that one man could have such a physical effect on her entire body – on the entire world around
her!
She was a scientist, a doctor – she thought she knew the human form and all its vagaries.
But she had never felt like that before.

She thought about all of this as she drove to the childminder’s after work, both because she was desperate to see her husband again after his fortnight away, and also because she was
horribly aware of how much the two of them had changed since that first summer.
Three children and house moves and work stress later, the holiday in France seemed like a mirage these days, a dream;
something that had happened to a more carefree person who was game for anything.
Look at her now – in trouble at work, a bad-tempered mother, too exhausted for sex, several stone heavier .
.
.
When was the last time they had kissed like that, with such rampant desire?
Did Vic ever look back and wonder what it would have been like if he’d chosen Cathy instead, or another woman
altogether?

Parking outside the childminder’s, she gave herself a talking-to before getting out of the car.
Come on, Freya.
Pull yourself together.
Victor the conquering hero was on his way
home to them, right now.
She had to make sure he was glad to be back.

‘Sir Dextrous!
Lady Libby-Loo!
And the Tedster!
Come here.
I’ve missed you guys!’

The minute Victor walked through the front door, the children leapt on him like wild animals and he hauled them all up off their feet in a huge bearlike embrace, even though Dex was well over
five foot these days.
‘Cor, look at you lovely lot.
Everyone all right?’

‘Did you bring any presents?’
asked Libby without answering the question.
‘Oh, Dad, I’ve got a really cool joke for you.
Knock, knock.
Dad – knock,
knock!’