Summer at Shell Cottage (2 page)

Freya Castledine pressed the buzzer on her desk and waited for her next patient, idly scratching an insect bite on her arm.
All the summer nasties had presented themselves at
the surgery today: three cases of hay fever, a woman with a livid red burn on her leg following a holiday in Turkey (it was always the left calf, always following a moped rental, leg pressed
accidentally to the hot exhaust; why didn’t these idiots
think
?), a child with a painful-looking infection following a wasp sting, and a man with the most rancid athlete’s foot
she’d ever seen (and she’d seen a few by now).

Freya supposed she should be grateful that winter was over, along with all of
its
special ailments – pneumonia and bronchitis, hacking coughs and gallons of snot – but
summer had lost its allure for her this year.
It was overrated as a season, full stop, she thought, an image appearing in her mind of the bikinis still languishing hopefully in her drawer, unworn
since she became a mother twelve years ago and promptly piled on three stone.
Summer meant prickly heat and horseflies, the agony of breaking in new sandals, the indignity of baring milk-white legs
in public, and the sheer palaver of juggling childcare with work through August.
Worst, though, was the prospect of a summer holiday without her father this year.
She still couldn’t believe
he wouldn’t be there waiting for them at Shell Cottage, that battered old hat on his head, shouts of welcome, a beaming smile.

Her heart ached at the thought.
Without fail, the journey down to Devon was always arduous and slow, the children bored and fractious, but there had been this kind of magic about Dad which meant
that they’d all be smiling within seconds of their arrival, a new-holiday giddiness awakening inside each of them.
For Freya, it didn’t take much: a long, deep breath of the soft sea
air, one of her dad’s legendary Sundowner cocktails, her bare feet touching the warm sand and hearing the sound of the waves .
.
.
The cumulative effect always made her feel the same way:
that the world was good.
That she’d temporarily sidestepped off life’s treadmill into her own private heaven, where time moved like syrup, where days were unhurried and full of fun.

Oh, Dad.
It was going to be so subdued at Shell Cottage this year without him there, making them all roar with laughter.
However would they manage?

She’d held it together each time she’d been back to her parents’ elegant, book-filled Hampstead home, taking charge when Mum floundered, distracting herself with the million
and one things that needed doing.
But she felt like an overfilled vessel these days, perilously close to bursting and spilling everywhere.
As well as losing Dad, she’d had to cope with Victor
going into hospital, trying to prop up Mum, keeping her wits about her at work and
still
remembering to send Libby in with cakes for the school summer fair, find Teddy’s glasses that
he’d lost for the hundredth time and wash Dexter’s cricket kit .
.
.
It was no wonder she’d taken to sinking into the sofa with a glass of wine of an evening.
Most evenings, to be
fair.
And who could blame her?
The moment she took her first grateful mouthful and savoured its taste was like melting into a warm embrace.
It was the only time of day she felt vaguely human.

And yes, okay, so the glass inevitably turned into two glasses, and sometimes a whole bottle.
And, admittedly, she no longer looked directly at the GOT A PROBLEM?
alcohol awareness poster in the
surgery reception these days.
And yes, all right, so she
had
nipped out on her lunch break to pick up an emergency gin bottle for later because the thought of an evening stone-cold sober
made her feel decidedly twitchy.

So what, though?
Big deal!
It wasn’t as if anybody had noticed anything untoward about her behaviour.
She put out the clinking recycling box in darkness, covering the telltale empties with
the bag of newspaper and milk cartons so the neighbours wouldn’t notice.
Similarly, she hid the hollow ache of grief inside and kept up appearances to the rest of the world.
For the time
being, at least.
She couldn’t help worrying she was clinging on to sanity by the very tips of her fingers, though.
One night, when Victor and the children were in bed, she had actually driven
out to the middle of nowhere, pulled over in a layby and just howled like an animal.
Like a madwoman.

Broken.
That was how she felt.
A little broken doll.

In the past, if someone had come into the surgery and said to her,
I’m broken, I’m devastated, I’m drowning in sadness and only ever feel better after a bottle of
Merlot
, she’d have put on her professionally concerned face and trotted out the usual suggestions: plenty of exercise and fresh air, talk to friends, eat properly, don’t make the
mistake of relying on props like alcohol or caffeine to see you through.

What a load of bollocks.
She’d never be so patronizing again.
Now she would lean over, look them in the eye and say,
I understand.
My God, I understand.
I’ve been there myself,
way down at the depths like you.
The thing is, I have no answers for you, only my own question.
When will it end?

Her door opened just then and she plastered on an expectant smile as an elderly man entered, leaning on a stick and breathing heavily.
Despite the sunshine outside, he wore a blazer over his
shirt and was scarlet-faced and perspiring as a result.
Freya jumped up to help him to a chair.
‘Mr Turner,’ she said, once he had lowered himself into the seat and mopped his shiny
brow with a crumpled white handkerchief.
‘How can I help?’

By five o’clock, Freya was flagging.
She still had one last patient to see but her mind was flitting ahead to collecting the children from the childminder, arriving home
and starting on dinner: pork stir-fry tonight, even though she could already predict that six-year-old Teddy would painstakingly pick out all the sugar-snap peas and leave them in a shiny green
heap at the side of his plate, and that Libby, nine years old and toying with vegetarianism, would talk mournfully about the cuteness of pigs.
Dexter, aged twelve, would eat a huge plateful at
least, but then he was in the midst of a gigantic growth spurt and shovelled in food like coal into a furnace.
(One of these days Freya fully expected to come in to see him gnawing on a chair leg,
having emptied the entire fridge and pantry.) No, the challenge with Dexter would be whether or not she could extract more than a grunt from him when it came to finding out about his day at school.
It could go either way.

Meanwhile, her husband Victor, a detective sergeant, was four days into a two-week public order course in Gravesend, simultaneously learning how to be even more of a heroic figure of authority
and forgetting to call home and wish his wife and children goodnight.
There was over a week left until he came back, and she had the dismal feeling they would seem like strangers to one another by
then.

Anyway.
Whatever.

She glanced at her computer screen, saw that her next patient was Ava Taylor, and groaned.
Ever since Ava had been born six months ago, her mother Melanie had wheeled her self-importantly into
the surgery approximately twice a week, fretting that her daughter had a sniffle, a cough, that she had been glassy-eyed during breakfast, that her breathing sounded ‘a bit quiet’.

‘You understand,’ she’d said conspiratorially more than once, glancing sideways at Freya’s framed desk photo: the children balancing atop a huge wonky sandcastle on
Silver Sands beach, Teddy brandishing a sword perilously close to Dexter’s groin.
‘Us mums, we do worry, don’t we?’

Melanie was right to worry but not necessarily about her daughter.
A mere two days earlier, Richard Taylor, her husband, had shuffled into Freya’s consulting room looking shifty and
uncomfortable before unzipping his trousers and showing her his painful swollen testicles, then describing the burning pain he felt when peeing and the cloudy, blood-tinged discharge he’d
experienced from his small, frightened-looking penis.

Gonorrhoea, Freya briskly told him, before administering an antibiotic injection into his pale, hairy buttock and writing a prescription.
A nice festering case of the clap, which he almost
certainly hadn’t picked up from his wife.
It was strange and not entirely pleasant to have insights into marriages all over town.
Thank goodness nobody could peer into hers right now.

She drummed her fingers on the desk, waiting for Melanie, and her thoughts turned to the bottle of Hendrick’s gin nestling in her bag, along with a rather squashed packet of
Cadbury’s Mini Rolls (for the school summer fair cake stall – they could like it or jolly well lump it).
Good old mother’s ruin – bring it on
, she thought.
Ice
cubes, juicy lemon slice, enough tonic splashed in to make it respectable .
.
.
She glanced down at the bag by her feet.
If Melanie didn’t hurry up, at this rate she’d be uncapping
the bottle and having a swig right now.

Too late.
There was a knock at the door and Melanie wheeled in the buggy, the usual expression of certain doom on her face.

‘Hello there, Melanie,’ Freya said politely.
‘What seems to be the problem today?’

Melanie wittered on about baby Ava feeling a bit hot, and just sort of, you know, grouchy and not quite herself, but Freya was struggling to concentrate, imagining instead the distinctive rattle
of ice cubes being dropped into a tall glass, the hiss of the tonic bottle opening.
You were meant to have cucumber batons with Hendrick’s, weren’t you?
Did they have any cucumber?
The
salad drawer was woefully empty, she thought, remembering the lonely yellowing spring onion and the bag of dried-looking carrots.
Did they even have enough for a stir-fry tonight, come to think of
it?
Bugger it, they might just have to have a takeaway after all.

Freya jerked back to the moment, aware that Melanie had stopped speaking and was waiting for her opinion.
Snap out of it, Freya.
Be professional.

She ran through some basic checks on her patient: listening to Ava’s chest, checking her temperature, and gently sliding a finger into the baby’s warm, wet mouth to prise it open and
look inside.
Ava, perched plumply on her mother’s knee, stared at Freya with interest the entire time, sucking curiously on Freya’s finger when it appeared in her mouth, her round pink
cheeks soft and pillowy to the touch.

‘Well,’ she said afterwards, returning to her seat, ‘I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.
She has a mild fever and her throat looks a bit red, but
it’s probably just a summer cold.’
Ava batted the air with both hands as if playing an invisible piano, then stared down at her fingers, seemingly mystified by their behaviour.
‘Give her plenty to drink and a spoonful of Calpol if she seems in discomfort.’

Melanie didn’t appear satisfied with this bland piece of advice.
No doubt she’d been hoping for a dramatic dash to A&E, sirens wailing.
‘But she’s having trouble
sleeping,’ she persisted, pursing her thin pink lips.
‘She didn’t want
any
of her pear and apple puree at lunchtime and that’s her absolute favourite.
She really
doesn’t seem herself.’

‘She seems fine to me,’ Freya said firmly, approaching the fast-unravelling end of her tether.
Go away, Melanie.
I want to drive home and see my children now, to fry chopped
onions and pork, with a lovely big gin at my side.
I want to sit in my garden with the grass tickling my bare toes and not think about anything for a while.
‘Try not to worry too much.
She’s a lovely healthy baby, with a bit of a sniffle, that’s all.
Give it a few days, she’ll be right as rain.’
And while you’re at it, have a word with that
pox-riddled husband of yours and tell him to keep his pants on more often.

Melanie looked affronted to have her concerns rebuffed as being ‘a bit of a sniffle’.
Mouth pinched in apparent disagreement, she rose stiffly to her feet and returned Ava to her
buggy.
‘Thank you, doctor,’ she murmured in a martyrish sort of way.

Just at that moment, Freya’s phone started trilling and vibrating.
Damn!
She hadn’t realized it was even switched on.
She lunged for her bag but kicked it over in her haste and
– oh Christ – the neck of the gin bottle slid right out onto the grey carpet.
She could almost hear the wail of a klaxon –
Alcoholic alert!
Alcoholic alert!
– as
she leapt from her chair.
Face flaming, she made a desperate scramble for the bag, the phone still chirping away.