Summer at Shell Cottage (3 page)

‘Sorry about that,’ she said with a nervous laugh, once she’d switched it off.
Melanie’s face was impassive as she said goodbye and left, and Freya sank back into her
chair afterwards, feeling rattled.
Had Melanie seen the gin?
Had she noticed Freya’s panic?
Shit.
‘Not your finest hour there, Frey,’ she muttered with a sigh.
She really bloody
needed a drink now.

Ever since Alec’s death, Olivia had been thinking a great deal about her last day with him.
Dwelling on it, you could say.
Should she have guessed what was to come?
Could
she have saved him somehow?
It had all seemed so ordinary to begin with, that was the problem.
Just another beautiful summer’s morning, the two of them eating breakfast on the patio of the
Edwardian Hampstead house where they’d lived for the last twenty-five years.
He was leafing through
The Times
; she was thinking vaguely about how she would begin planting up the
Fortescues’ garden later that afternoon.
Then the phone rang inside the house.
‘I’ll get it,’ Alec grumbled, taking a last munch of his toast and marmalade.

Olivia had carried on sipping her tea and gazing out at the dahlias, which were just springing into vivid splashes of colour: crimson, orange, red.
She could hear the distant sound of someone
practising scales on a piano and the loud
chack-chack
of a blackbird warning that there was a cat prowling nearby.
Then came Alec’s voice, gruff and cross through the open door.
‘How did you get this number?’
he said.
He was always grumpy when he slept badly, and the stifling June heat had played havoc with his sleep recently.
‘You mustn’t ring this
number again!’

An overenthusiastic fan, Olivia thought mildly.
They tracked him down sometimes.
Her knuckles tightened on the teacup as she caught sight of the ravaged leaves of her beautiful carmine lupins.
Slugs again.
She’d really have to sort out the –

Then there came a crash.
A strangled sort of shout.
She ran inside to find Alec prone on the hall carpet, the dropped telephone beside him.
His face was puce, his eyes bulging and shocked; one
hand clutched at his chest.
A faint line of dribble leaked from the corner of his mouth, his lips parting as he tried to speak.
But no words came, only a great, groaning pant of distress.

After that everything happened very fast, as if time had accelerated around her.
Despite the best efforts of the paramedics and then the consultants, Alec slipped into unconsciousness and never
came round again.
She’d sat next to him as he lay unmoving in the crisp white hospital bed, begging and praying for him to come back to her but instead his soul quietly departed with one last
hoarse breath, and he was gone.
Sixty-four years old and his life was over.

Her world felt desolate without him, unbearably empty.
Alec had always been the gregarious one of the marriage, the sort of man who could stride into a crowded room and charm everyone into
becoming his new best friend within minutes.
He was witty and charismatic, generous and spontaneous; the most fun and interesting person in any gathering.
Now that he had died, Olivia felt like a
small tugboat cut adrift on a stormy sea, uncertain where she was heading or if she could even stay afloat.
She had counted on at least another ten or twenty years together; they had planned to
retire down to Devon before too much longer to ‘grow old disgracefully’, as he’d put it.
But no.
One rogue blood clot marauding through her husband’s body had put paid to
that.

Sometimes she wondered angrily who the pestering fan had been on the phone that day –
How did you get this number?
You mustn’t ring this number again!
– and whether
Alec’s subsequent ire had been the last fatal strain on his health.
Had the caller felt a twist of guilt, a prick of conscience, when they read of his death in the newspaper?
Had it even
occurred to them that they might unwittingly have contributed to his demise?

Since that terrible airless June morning three weeks ago, Olivia had functioned on autopilot, the big, quiet house silting up with unwanted flowers, and sympathy cards she couldn’t bring
herself to read.
Maria, their Filipino cleaner, tiptoed around now and then, head bowed as she dusted and polished and occasionally changed the putrefying water in the vases, but Olivia barely
noticed her presence.
It seemed a minor miracle to survive each long, torturous day without disintegrating, turning into a madwoman, clawing at the ground, screaming at the sky.
Alec is gone,
Alec is gone.
She’d never hear his husky laugh again or feel his arms around her; she’d never be warmed by the golden, unswerving spotlight of his devotion.
How was it possible to
go on?

Over the last fifteen years, Olivia had built up a small boutique garden design service, with two members of staff and their own van.
She had always found solace in planting and weeding, but
this summer she didn’t even want to step outside her back door to water her own garden, let alone venture further to tend the flower beds, lawns and shrubbery of her wealthy clients.
What the
hell.
Let them wither and droop, let them dry to a brown crisp.
Without Alec, it all seemed pointless anyway.
Everything did.

The children helped out where possible.
Although she was a busy GP with three little ones of her own, Freya drove down from her home in Hertfordshire to assist with the practicalities of the
funeral, as well as briskly tackling many of the horrible, cold formalities: registering the death, winding up her father’s bank accounts, and wading through the reams of correspondence and
documents piled up under his desk.
Capable and pin-sharp even in the throes of mourning, Freya had always been one for Getting Things Done.
It had been a wrench when she returned home, leaving a
typed to-do list and renewed silence in her wake.

Robert, too, was supportive and helpful, coming over to deal with the extraordinary number of emails which had piled up in Alec’s inbox – a task Olivia herself hadn’t been able
to stomach.
All those polite replies to type, all the condolences to acknowledge, not to mention the myriad work-related conversations that needed untangling.

‘How’s it going?’
she asked, walking into Alec’s study one Friday afternoon to see her son frowning at the ageing computer screen.
It was still strange to find another
person there in her husband’s domain, cluttered as it was with book paraphernalia, several crime writer awards and umpteen souvenirs from his travels.

‘Not bad,’ he replied, stretching his arms above his head.
Robert had the same green eyes and dark hair as his father whereas Freya was like her: fair with pale skin that burned
easily in the sun.
Tall and rangy, Robert was the athlete of the family, walking at seven months old, and not stopping ever since.
Even now, he was wearing a running top with shorts and trainers,
as if he’d broken off midway through a marathon to pop round.
‘Eleanor’s asked, in the nicest possible way, if we think Dad’s last book is going to be publishable,’ he
went on.
‘She said they could supply us with a ghostwriter if we felt it was necessary, although that would probably mean moving publication into next year.’

His last book.
Olivia’s heart seemed to clench.
That wretched book had helped kill him, she was sure of it: the stress of trying to meet the tight deadline, the dread of another big
American tour and festival appearances looming that autumn.
Alec was a professional, always delivering a new novel to his editor in July, with the hardback edition published several months later in
time for Christmas.
Regular as clockwork the schedule went, only this particular book had got to him for some reason.
Her husband didn’t often suffer from self-doubt but in the weeks before
his death, he had agonized to Olivia privately a number of times that he just wasn’t sure about this one.
Some days he would go off to the heath for a walk and not return for hours, still
with the same distracted light in his eyes.
She didn’t even know if he had been close to finishing it when he died.

‘Right,’ she said.
‘Leave it with me.
Is there anything else?’

‘Yes.
Marcus – solicitor Marcus – has come back with a few queries.
Dad left quite a lot of money to someone called Leo Browne.
Do you know him?’

Leo Browne.
She turned the name over in her mind, but it didn’t ring any bells.
Maybe it was an editor he’d worked with in America, or his film agent; she’d never been able to
keep track of all Alec’s contacts.
Her lip trembled as she remembered teasing him about the ridiculous number of Christmas cards he used to receive from friends, fans and colleagues; how he
couldn’t even recall who half the senders were.
They would appear like drifts of snow through the letterbox each morning, an avalanche of festive bonhomie.
This Christmas the haul would be
decimated, though.
She’d sign their cards alone, the white space that bit emptier without his confident black-inked scrawl alongside hers.

She curled her hands into fists, digging her fingernails into her palms.
Come on, Olivia.
Keep it together.
She had to stop allowing herself to be felled with sorrow by every tiny
memory, every single conversation.

‘I don’t recognize the name, sorry,’ she said, after a deep breath.

‘No worries.
Oh, and there’s an email from Katie, checking we’re still set for the summer as usual.’
He gazed expectantly at her.
‘When were you planning to
go?’

Katie was their sort-of housekeeper at Shell Cottage, a cheerful thirty-something woman who lived in Silver Sands village and kept an eye on the place when they weren’t staying there.
During the summer, she was like their good fairy, popping round to clean and make up the beds while they were out.
Had anyone even told Katie about Alec?
Olivia had lost track of who knew the
terrible news and who didn’t.

She leaned against the bookshelves, stuffed in a haphazard fashion with all the foreign editions of Alec’s books.
The idea of being at Silver Sands without her husband was unbearable.
Who
would organize the lilo races and the crabbing?
Who would man the barbecue and lead the legendary hikes out on Dartmoor?
Who would appear on the terrace with a cool drink for her just when she was
feeling thirsty, or rub suncream into her fast-pinking shoulders?
‘I don’t know about the holiday this year,’ she mumbled, looking away.

‘What?
Oh, Mum, no.
You’re not staying here and moping around all summer.
You have to go.
Everyone else still wants to.’

‘It’s just .
.
.
without your dad .
.
.’
She shrugged helplessly.
If she went to Shell Cottage alone, she’d only feel tormented by memories of all those summers gone by,
their precious wedding night, and most recently, last New Year’s Eve, when they’d set off fireworks in the garden, just the two of them, and kissed as if they were teenagers.
How
he’d loved the sheer extravagance of fireworks, the bright pinwheels of colour exploding in the dark velvety sky.

But Robert’s fingers were already flying over the keyboard again.
‘Dear Katie, Thank you for your email.
We are looking forward to our return to the house,’ he read aloud
sternly.
‘If you could have everything ready as usual for my arrival on the .
.
.’
He broke off and glanced up at the calendar.
‘What shall I say, the fourteenth of July?
That
gives you another week or so to tie up a few more things here.’

Olivia hesitated.
She couldn’t imagine going into
London
on her own right now, let alone driving all the way to Devon.
Robert met her look steadfastly with those green eyes, so
like his father’s, and her resistance faltered.
She’d never been able to refuse Alec anything when he looked at her that way.

‘Mum?’
Robert prompted.
‘You could take Dad’s manuscript with you, couldn’t you?
Read it through if you felt up to it.
One last story to enjoy.’

His gaze was unswerving and Olivia found herself nodding in defeat.
‘Okay,’ she said.
Whatever
, as her grandchildren would say.
She could always ring Katie and cancel, she
told herself.

‘Great,’ Robert said, typing again.
He clicked on ‘Send’ with a flourish.
‘I think it’s the right thing, Mum.
The sooner we all try and get back to normal,
the better.
And a holiday is probably exactly what you need.’