Summer at Shell Cottage (8 page)

Marylebone was one of Harriet’s favourite places to browse, with the heavenly cheese shop, gorgeous boutiques and cool Scandi design shops tucked into the stately Victorian mansion blocks
and Georgian houses.
Yet today, she felt defeated.
By the time she’d slunk empty-handed from the last clothes shop she could bear to trawl through, she wished more than ever that Robert had
taken her up on the offer of coffee and a chat.
He was the lovely sort of husband who could reassure a woman about her thunder thighs in a way that was actually convincing.
Or else he’d just
take the mick out of her for caring and turn the whole thing into an affectionate joke, somehow managing to cheer her up and make her feel devastatingly attractive to the whole of humankind before
she knew it.

She wondered for the hundredth time how his lunch meeting was going .
.
.
and then let out a gasp of excitement as she noticed that the Marylebone Tavern was just across the street.
Ooh!
Quel coinkydink,
as Molly would say.
Should she peer through the window?
Pretend to be casually passing by and –
Oh!
Robert!
Fancy seeing you here!
Why yes, of course, I’d
love to join you for dessert.
Wine, too?
Ah, go on, then, why not?
Hi there.
Great to meet you.
Did I mention I’ve always wanted to go to the States, by the way?
Like, seriously,
always?

Better not.
But there was no harm in nonchalantly crossing the road, was there?
No harm in dawdling along slowly past the restaurant with maybe just a very quick gander inside.
No harm at all,
she assured herself firmly, unable to resist seeing handsome, talented Robert there in his best shirt, living the dream.

It was only when she was on the other side of the street that she noticed something odd.
The inside of the restaurant seemed dull and dingy unlit.
There were no tables set up outside either
– strange, on such a glorious summer’s day.
And then, as she drew level with the front door, she saw to her bewilderment a ‘Closed’ sign in the glass pane.
Closed for
two weeks due to renovations,
read a printed piece of paper.

What the .
.
.
?
She stood stock-still in the street and removed her sunglasses in case her eyes were playing tricks on her.

Closed for two weeks due to renovations.
No.
There was nothing wrong with her eyes.
The Marylebone Tavern wasn’t open – so where the hell was Robert?

One hundred miles or so away, around the back of a multistorey car park in Stratford-upon-Avon, Molly was fervently kissing Ben Jamison and gasping as his hand tugged her
school blouse out of her skirt’s waistband.
‘Oh, Ben,’ she said, her breathing fast and shallow.
His fingers slipped under her blouse and her nerve endings fizzled deliriously as
he touched her bare skin.
Then his fingertips grazed the underside of her breast and it was as if fireworks were star-bursting inside her.

Oh.
My God.
No way.
Was this really happening?
It was amazing.
He
was amazing.
And to think she’d nearly been swayed by Chloe, badgering her to go on the Tate Modern trip with the
rest of their mates!
She’d just had a feeling about today, though.
All those meaningful looks she and Ben had exchanged across the classroom recently.
She’d had an inkling he might like
her but hardly dared hope anything would happen.
Yet now .
.
.

‘Oh,’ she gasped, deliciously shivery at what his fingers were doing, the sensation of his mouth on hers.
He pressed his body against her and she could feel the hardness in his
groin.
She’d never actually felt a penis before in real life.
She hadn’t even really
seen
one, not properly, unless you counted the dodgy film she and Chloe had sniggered over
on Chloe’s iPad last time they’d had a sleepover.
The thought of taking her clothes off and letting a guy do
that
to her had always seemed faintly gross in the past.
Like,
ewww.
Why would you?

Now she knew.
Now she got it.
Talk about a revelation.
Talk about a voyage of discovery!
She felt as if she was journeying to a brand new place and never wanted to return.
For a brief wild
moment, she felt as if she would do anything he asked her to.
Anything.
Right here behind the car park.
Nudity.
Penis-touching.
All of it!

There was a disapproving cough behind them just then, audible even above the drum solo of Molly’s heart and her gasping breaths.
Ben must have heard it too because he stopped kissing her
and pulled away hurriedly.
Molly noticed an elderly lady giving them a very hard stare as she walked past them a few metres away, towing a tartan shopping trolley, and her cheeks flamed.

Ben laughed softly.
‘Whoops,’ he said, removing his hand and straightening his tie.
‘I guess we’d better get back and meet the others.
Find out some more about
Shakespeare.’
He traced a line down the side of her face and she felt her stomach somersault.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said thickly.
‘Oh, the things I could do to
you, Molly Tarrant-Price.’

She giggled, feeling nervous and delighted and wanton all in the same moment.
‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ she said, unable to look at him for blushing.
He was
hot,
though, with those teasing blue eyes and dark hair.
Different from the boys she’d fancied before, too.
For a crazy moment, she wanted to pull him close to her again, resume the kissing.
But
he was checking his watch and the spell was broken.

‘Shit.
We’re gonna be late,’ he said.
‘Look – let’s just keep this to ourselves for now, yeah?’

‘Sure,’ she said, trying to act cool, like it was no big deal to have been snogging gorgeous Ben Jamison with such passion.
She’d already decided she wouldn’t blab about
what had just happened anyway not even to Chloe.
Gossip went round school so fast, the last thing she wanted was everyone whispering behind her back.

He smiled at her and the rest of the world seemed to melt away, disapproving old ladies, gossiping friends and all.
Then he leaned down and kissed her again, squeezing her breast this time.
‘That’s just for starters,’ he said, low and husky, and the breath caught in the back of her throat in another gasp of desire.

Somehow or other, Molly managed to smile in reply but the rest of her body seemed beyond control, flooded with a mad racing deluge of endorphins.
Oh my God.
Ben Jamison, the most gorgeous person
in the entire school had kissed her and told her she was beautiful.
His fingers had been on her actual body.
He’d said, ‘That’s just for starters,’ as if he wanted more.

Whoa.
Head rush.
This was like being in the best sex dream ever, only it was real.

Heart fluttering, skin tingling, Molly tucked her blouse back into her skirt and followed him as they went to meet the others for the backstage theatre tour.
Her head was in such a whirl, she
could hardly see where she was going.
How on earth was she going to concentrate on Shakespeare and acting and stuff after
that
?

It had been a whole month now since Freya had answered the phone to hear her husband say those terrible words, ‘Hi, love, it’s me.
Listen, don’t worry, but
I’m in hospital.
I’ve been stabbed,’ but she still found herself reliving the absolute horror all over again whenever the memory flashed into her mind.

Stabbed.
Her adrenalin had spun into hyperdrive with that one single syllable, her mind freezing in panic, bile rising in her throat.
Back when she’d been a junior doctor, working
in the busy A&E department of the Homerton Hospital, she’d seen countless stabbings, umpteen raw red slashes and punctures, where flesh had met a blade due to revenge or passion or sheer
random violence.
They had stitched up and mended each one, mopped up the blood and sent them home again, knowing that there would be plenty more to come, a never-ending stream of young men in the
wrong place at the wrong time, often having tangled with the wrong people.

And now Victor had been added to that unfortunate club.
Stabbed, in the line of duty.
Stabbed, saving the life of his colleague Tony.
Freya had burst into the accident and emergency unit that
day with pure dread running through her veins.
It had only been a fortnight since her father’s funeral, and she still hadn’t surfaced from the plunging depths of grief.
Now she found
herself flooded with a new and terrible fear that she was about to lose her husband too.
‘No,’ she begged under her breath, just in case a benevolent god might be in the vicinity.
‘Not both of them.
Please.’

Victor had made light of the situation on the phone, of course – ‘just some nutter with a knife,’ he’d said.
But he was tough, Vic, a real man’s man.
He was one of
those blokes who’d say, ‘I’m fine!
Barely a scratch,’ if he’d fallen headfirst down a mineshaft.
Until she saw the damage for herself, she was officially in panic
mode, fearing the worst.

Thank goodness, then, that it wasn’t until she
had
seen him and knew he was going to be okay that she discovered it hadn’t been ‘some nutter with a knife’ at
all; it had been a psychopath wielding a samurai sword – a samurai sword!
– and that all kinds of horrible damage might have been done.

The story was quite something.
Vic and his colleague Tony had been called out to a disturbance in the Barclays bank in town, and arrived to find a crazed-looking man brandishing a
seventy-centimetre gleaming sword and threatening the terrified staff.
Lee Carlson, they now knew he was called: thirty-seven, local, no previous convictions.
(‘A bit of a loner’,
according to his neighbours and former colleagues.
Defaulting on his mortgage payments, according to his bank.
‘Just so fucking angry with banks and shit’, according to the man himself,
once he’d been locked in a cell and had given a statement.
Like that made it all right.)

Victor and Tony had tried to calm Carlson down but he’d been wild with rage, out of control and swinging the sword above his head.
He took offence to Tony calling him ‘mate’
and went berserk, launching himself at the terrified young bobby without warning.
Victor responded instinctively, grabbing a rack of insurance and pension leaflets and throwing it at Carlson,
before wrestling him to the ground.
Unfortunately, though, while the two men grappled, Carlson managed to swing the sword around, catching the back of Vic’s shoulder.
The stab vest had saved
him from too much damage, thank goodness, but the blade had sliced the top of his arm, creating a shallow wound that required stitching.
‘I’ve had worse nicks shaving,’ Vic had
said (showing off because his colleagues were present, Freya thought) but there was some bruising and tenderness as well, and he’d walloped his head pretty hard when he and Carlson went
down.

Back-up had arrived moments later, the weapon was confiscated, Carlson was hauled off to the nick, and an ambulance was called for Vic.
Tony, who’d escaped unscathed, was wide-eyed with
shock.
‘You saved my life,’ he kept saying dazedly, as if he couldn’t quite believe it himself.
‘You saved my life, mate.
The man’s a bloody hero, I’m telling
you.’

Since then, the ‘bloody hero’ had had his photo taken for the local press, and been interviewed on local radio, much to his amusement (‘Just doing my job.
Any officer would
have done the same’).
He’d also had a pat on the back from the detective superintendent and been bumped up the queue to go off to this public order training course in Gravesend, which
he was absolutely thrilled about.

Freya, meanwhile, felt as if she was still reverberating from the shock.
They all were.
She had played down the whole thing as best she could at home, but on the day of the incident, Dexter had
said over dinner, ashen-faced, ‘You can die from being stabbed, can’t you, if the knife goes through one of your major arteries?
I saw it on
24 Hours in A&E,
Mum.
He could
have died, Mum!
Shit!’

‘The stabbing man
is
in prison now, isn’t he?’
Libby had asked on numerous occasions, and particularly at bedtime, however much Freya had tried to reassure her.
‘He’s not going to come out and get Dad, or anything, is he?’

As for Teddy, Freya had received a phone call from his teacher at school to inform her that Teddy had started a gruesome playground game called ‘Stabbers’, and please could Freya
have a word with him about it?

Yes, Freya had had plenty of words with her gory son about it since then.
She’d sat up for several nights with Libby too, soothing her after bad dreams.
And she’d seen Dexter break
his own non-hugging rules and lean against Victor on the sofa a few times once he was home from the hospital, as if seeking the physical reassurance of his dad’s living, breathing presence.
They had all been left reeling by the reminder, yet again, of life’s fragility.

Freya, for her part, hadn’t wanted Vic to go on this two-week course so far from home.
Tormented by all the terrible parallel outcomes that left her widowed weeks after losing her father,
she had wanted him right there in Oakthorne where she could keep an eye on him, where she could curl up beside him at night, safe in the knowledge that the family were all together under the same
roof.

Not that she’d said as much out loud, of course.
Freya was a coper.
She didn’t go in for weakness or vulnerability, priding herself that her upper lip was so stiff it might as well
be reinforced concrete.
But God, it was hard work trying to manage everything on your own while your heroic husband was away, learning how to be even more heroic – especially when she could
have done with being rescued just a little bit herself at the moment.
Here she was, eating dinner with the children on automatic pilot, for instance, and all she could think about was whether it
would be setting too appalling an example if she mixed herself a vodka tonic right now, just to take the edge off things.
Probably.

‘Mum!
Are you listening?
I said, Libby dropped her fish on purpose.
Look!’

Freya blinked and tried to re-engage with the real world instead of her drinks cabinet.
‘Sorry, what?’

‘You
said
if she did that again, she’d have to go to bed early.
Mum –
look
!
It’s there on the floor!
Are you going to tell her off, or what?’

Twelve-year-old Dexter could be very severe when it came to busting his younger sister for her various teatime-related crimes.
Unlike Freya, who would never refuse a plate of food unless
unconscious or on her deathbed, Libby ate like a sparrow – pecking up a few meagre crumbs then claiming to be full.
There was nothing wrong with a delicate appetite, obviously – what
Freya wouldn’t give for one herself – but it was the endless list of excuses she had to contend with that wore down her sanity.
Last week tears had trembled in Libby’s round blue
eyes when Freya had cooked roast lamb (‘I don’t want to eat a
lamb
!
They’re really cute!’).
At the weekend, there had been the cup of milk
‘accidentally’ knocked into her plate of sausage and mash (‘I didn’t do it on
purpose
!’) and the handful of garden peas that Freya later found in her
daughter’s trouser pocket (‘
I
didn’t put them there!’).
Today it seemed that the salmon fillet had made a balletic leap of its own accord from Libby’s plate
onto the vinyl flooring, re-enacting a feat of athleticism it might once have made upstream in happier times.

Victor was able to display impressively abundant patience when it came to his daughter’s culinary whims but Freya, always the one to cook, felt she was being driven slowly round the bend
by one excuse after another.

‘MUM!
You need to tell Libby off.
Tell her!’

‘Yeah,’ Teddy chipped in, always happy to see a sibling in trouble.
‘Tell her, Mum.’

Dexter was turning red in the face; he was up from his chair and pointing, enraged both by the slack parenting on display and the fact that his sister might actually get away with her
transgression.
A seam of self-righteousness ran through her son; his catchphrase as a four-year-old had been ‘That’s not FAIR!’
in such thunderous tones, it was enough to make
even the most hardened criminal mastermind break into a sweat of self-reproach.

Freya did not have the energy to conduct a judicial review into crimes against salmon right now, though.
‘Never mind,’ she said wearily to Dexter.
‘Let’s just finish our
tea, all right?
I’ll clear it up later.’

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Libby stick her tongue out at her telltale brother and smirk with triumph.

Dexter’s eyes shone with outrage.
‘Right,’ he said, and you could almost hear the cogs whirring furiously in his brain.
‘So you don’t care about fish on the floor,
then?
Fine!’
And with that, he picked up his plate and tipped it sideways, so that everything on it – salmon, noodles, carefully chopped spring onions and baby corn, sticky sweet hoisin
sauce, the lot – slithered off, landing with a series of splatters.
There was a percussion of falling cutlery, the fork skidding straight under the fridge.
‘Tala
manca
,’
Teddy breathed in shocked delight and promptly hurled a mushroom overarm across the table, not wanting to miss out on any badness.

‘That’s enough!’
shrieked Freya, her temper reaching breaking point.
The hoisin sauce and olive oil were congealing stickily; the treacly mixture already gumming up the grooves
of the expensive textured vinyl flooring laid a mere three months ago.
It was going to be a bugger to clean up.

‘Dexter Castledine, that is not acceptable,’ she yelled, voice shaking.
‘Go upstairs to your room and think about your behaviour.
All of you, in fact.
Just get out of my
sight.’
Her voice rose to a hysterical shriek.
‘Go!’

‘What about pudding?’
Teddy asked, looking mutinous.
He had a sweet tooth like her – he was anybody’s for a tube of Smarties.

‘No pudding,’ Freya said in a strangled voice.
‘Just go.’

They went, and she poured herself that vodka tonic and knocked it back in a single gulp.

You’d never know to look at him now but Dexter’s very existence had wavered perilously for the first few weeks of his life.
Born prematurely, he and Freya had spent
an agonizingly stressful twenty-four days in the NICU at the local hospital after his unexpectedly early arrival.
Twenty-four gruelling days during which every emotion it was possible for a human
being to experience seemed to have been ripped from within her and hung out on public display.
She felt turned inside out with worry, vulnerable and frightened.
So this is what parenthood
means,
she thought, frazzled on caffeine and hormones and lack of sleep.
This is how it feels to love a person so desperately that you’d literally breathe for them if you
could.

Poor Dex, so small and shrunken in his perspex bed, a tube up his nose, a woollen cap on his bald head, the soft new Babygros heartbreakingly too long on his stick-thin legs.
It was the first
time in Freya’s life that something had gone this wrong, spinning out of her control like a car on a wet road.
The experience had shocked her so fundamentally that for years afterwards she
would find herself holding her son close, listening to the steady thump of his heart to reassure herself that he was healthy and strong.