The Beach Hut (17 page)

My God, she realised. The Milton men were just like their father. She pushed back the distasteful memory. She brought it out as seldom as she could, but it was always there in the back of her mind. Graham Milton pushing himself on her in the beach hut late one evening, when the others had all gone star-spotting - there was a meteor shower. His whisky breath, his hot hands on her breasts, his insistence that no one would have to know, that it was all right, that she needn’t feel guilty . . . She had never told anyone, not Jane, not David. They could continue to worship the slimy old goat for as long as they liked, but she knew if she said anything she would end up being the guilty party, the one who had been parading around in a bikini, the one who had been giving the come-on.

Like father, like sons. Though not David, she hoped. He had his faults, but she had never suspected him of infidelity. She wasn’t being naive, he just wasn’t that type. Besides, he wouldn’t get a better time in bed with anyone else. She was pretty sure of that.

She felt shaken, though. Her judgement had let her down. Chrissie prided herself on her ability to suss people out, and she’d got it badly wrong with Adrian and Serena. She felt betrayed, too. They were happy to use her. They’d clearly discussed it in quite cold-blooded terms.

Chrissie didn’t let anyone use her. She wouldn’t let anyone trick her into buying The Shack. If she did end up putting in an offer, it would be her legacy, for Jack and Emma and Hannah, and the rest of the Miltons could bloody well wait until the end of time for an invitation.

She put on a slick of red lipstick and shook out her hair. She adjusted her dress so another inch of her cleavage showed. She smiled, her eyes glittering, and then she walked out of the toilets and back into the club, straight onto the dance floor and into her husband’s arms.

‘You ever double-cross me,’ she whispered to him. ‘You ever two-time me or fuck me over, and you are finished.’

He looked at her, startled, then laughed.

‘You’ve been at the wacky baccy with Adrian,’ he said. ‘You’re being paranoid.’

He wrapped his arms round her and pulled her to him. The music curled itself about them. She put her head on his shoulder, wondering if she could trust him, wondering if that rogue Milton gene was inside him too.

Across the dance floor, she saw Adrian and Serena slip out of the door. At the bar, Philip was watching her, lazily, his eyes narrowed.

She shivered.

‘Just because you’re paranoid,’ she thought, ‘doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’

Frankly, the sooner The Shack was sold, the better.

J
anet watched in pride as her son drew out the foundations of his castle carefully in the sand. He had the exact measurements written on a piece of paper. He had all the tools he needed by his side. He had several hours before the tide came back in for his trial run. And three more days to run through it again. Three more days until the competition.

Her heart constricted slightly when she thought about it. The competition was the highlight of Alan’s year. He spent months preparing, experimenting with different designs, then practising. If anyone deserved to win, it was Alan. And of course, for the past three years, he had. The look on his face as he clutched the trophy to his chest made it all worth while, but Janet always worried this was the year he would lose. As soon as they arrived at the beach hut, she became tormented with doubts, almost crippled with the fear of his dejection if the trophy was handed over to someone else. And it could happen. The Everdene Sandcastle Competition was becoming bigger and bigger, the prize money was considerable. People were coming from all over the country to take part. Businesses were sponsoring competitors to put their logos on the front of their castles. The local news team were coming this year to film it; there were rumours of a whole programme being made. There were food stalls, drink stalls, entertainment, glamorous girls distributing leaflets. What had started as a bit of fun on the beach had become big business. Like anything good in this country, it had sold out. Gone commercial.

Janet’s hands gripped the rail of the veranda as she watched her son coming back up the beach with two large buckets of water. Water was as essential as sand in the building of a castle. It was the moisture that held the construction together. She watched as he poured his cargo carefully over his plot and mixed it in to get the perfect texture. It was a science as much as an art.

Of all the epithets thrown at Alan’s condition over the years, simple was the one his mother liked most. Simple meant easy. Simple meant straightforward. And to Janet, that was exactly what he was. There were plenty of other words that had been used. Not all of them euphemistic. Backward. Not all there. Retard. Two sandwiches short of a picnic. Challenging.

Special needs, they would have called him now, of course.

Not that she had ever really had a proper diagnosis. They blamed lack of oxygen at birth. She had known something was wrong when she was in labour. Call it a mother’s instinct. The pain had been unnatural; she could sense the baby inside her belly writhing in discomfort. The midwife had told her sharply not to be so stupid when she described her fears. Childbirth was supposed to hurt.

Now, of course, they would have had him on a monitor. They would have known the cord was wrapped around his neck. They would have known her baby was in distress, and they would have taken the appropriate action, instead of leaving her for hours, sick with dread, until she had finally delivered him.

Her beautiful, wonderful, damaged baby.

They hadn’t known anything was wrong at the time. On the surface, he looked perfect. But gradually, as he failed to develop as fast as his peers, a picture emerged, and the difficult delivery had become the scapegoat. By then, Janet adored her son more than any other mother had ever loved a child.

Not once did she bemoan her situation. She seemed to accept quite happily that it was her lot to look after him. He was slow to potty train, slow to speak, slow to learn how to use a knife and fork, but Janet never got frustrated. She had the patience of a saint with Alan, and he always got there in the end, which made her all the more proud of his achievements.

Unfortunately, her husband wasn’t as enamoured. He had no patience with the little boy, and would shout at him when he was slow to react, or got things wrong. Janet caught him looking at his son with contempt and loathing once too often. Eventually she told him to go. They would be better off without him. Alan didn’t need someone breathing down his neck and belittling him. He needed love and encouragement, not ill-concealed scorn. Her husband didn’t need telling twice.

For the past thirty years, it had been just the two of them. Of course it was hard. She was a single mother with a disabled child. Her husband, once he had gone, didn’t see it his duty to make any contribution towards his offspring and she certainly didn’t demand it. She could manage. She
would
manage. She devoted herself to Alan entirely, and woe betide anyone who suggested she might need a break. Why would she need a break from the person who was her reason for living?

When he was in his early twenties, the social services put pressure on her to let Alan go into sheltered accommodation. They insisted it would do him good to have a bit of independence. They were confident he would be able to manage. But Janet refused. He belonged with her. She was there to look after him. She didn’t want any respite. The thought of waking up without Alan in the house filled her with dread. What on earth would she do without him? The snotty social worker dared to suggest she was being selfish, that she didn’t have Alan’s interests at heart. Didn’t have his interests at heart? She had devoted her whole life to him. Bloody social workers - they weren’t happy unless they were interfering and making you feel bad about yourself. She soon sent her away with a flea in her ear.

Then there had been what she had come to think of as the Rachel fiasco. That had given her a terrible scare. Alan attended a centre three afternoons a week. She had come to collect him early, because she needed to pick up a prescription from the surgery on the way home. She had found him holding hands with a woman, sitting on the bench in the garden. Appalled, she had grilled the people who ran the centre and found out the truth. Alan and Rachel had been ‘close’ for weeks. The staff didn’t see what the problem was. They thought it was sweet.

Janet thought it was dangerous. It upset the status quo. It upset the balance of Alan’s life, to bring in a third party. Besides, what if this Rachel was just toying with his affections and ended up breaking his heart? Worse, what if they got too close and . . . It was an instinct, after all, to mate, wasn’t it? It would be a disaster.

Janet had to nip it in the bud. She quickly made arrangements for Alan to attend another centre, in another town. It meant a bit more travelling, but it didn’t matter. He was confused at first, but he soon settled in. She didn’t worry that he might ever find his way to the old centre. Alan didn’t understand the bus timetable, and had a hopeless sense of direction. He’d never be able to find his way back to Rachel, and Janet was super-vigilant to make sure he didn’t transfer his affections to anyone else.

It was soon after the Rachel fiasco that he had discovered sand sculpture. He’d seen it on the telly, and he wanted a go. He’d always been good at art. He was five when she realised he had a talent. The pictures he drew even at that young age were vivid and accurate. And so she fed his talent over the years, spending all her extra money on materials for him, marvelling at how this part of his brain had obviously remained intact. She went to the Early Learning Centre and bought him a big blue plastic sandpit, then filled it with sacks of pristine sand. And he began to sculpt. Simple things at first-a horse’s head, a turtle. Then more complicated-a sphinx, a dragon, a minotaur. She was delighted that he had found a new passion, and hoped that it helped dim any memories of Rachel that he might be harbouring. He had mentioned her once or twice, but the sand sculpting seemed the perfect distraction. He wasn’t really a people person, Alan. He was a doer.

Someone had told Janet about the annual sandcastle competition at Everdene. She had saved hard for months to scrape together enough money for them to go. A beach hut seemed like the perfect place for them to stay, and so she rented one for a week. He would be able to practise on the sand right outside their door. And she didn’t like hotels or bed and breakfasts. They never did things properly, the way she would. They went there on the bus, Alan excitedly clutching his sketches, his case filled with the tools he would need.

He hadn’t won the first year. It had all been a bit strange and new, and he had been nervous. But they’d had a wonderful time. The sun shone down on them, and Janet had enjoyed being a bit lackadaisical. They’d thrown out their routine. She didn’t have to do any housework, not really. Or proper cooking. They’d made the most of the chip shop, and the pasty shop, and the kiosk on the front that sold crab sandwiches and little paper cups of cockles. They’d even gone for scampi at the Ship Aground, sitting outside on one of the tables that overlooked the beach. Oh, and cream tea at the big hotel on the front. It didn’t matter that they’d gone a bit over budget. She’d just have to do without for a couple of weeks - not get her magazine, or have her hair done. They both agreed at the end of the week to come back next year.

The second year he had been better prepared and more confident in his surroundings, and had the victor’s flag stuck by the front of his drawbridge. Janet had taken a picture and had it blown up to put over the fireplace in the lounge, along with the trophy that sat on the mantel-piece. It still made her heart burst with pride. He’d won the two years running after that as well.

Janet’s biggest fear was that somehow the judges would decide it would be fair if the prize went to someone else this year. She had heard a few grumblings the year before about it being a fix, but how on earth could it be a fix? She certainly had no influence over anyone. It was judged purely on merit. But still she felt uneasy. She had no idea how Alan would react if he didn’t win. Maybe they shouldn’t have come back. Maybe they should have quit while he was ahead. Was she wrong to expose him to it again, getting his hopes up?

Her misgivings faded once they arrived at the hut and settled in. After four years it had become a home from home, and they had their rituals. Janet unpacked their belongings and rewashed all the cups, plates and cutlery provided in the hut - you never knew if the previous person had done a proper job - while Alan went to find the perfect pitch for his practice runs. Over the next couple of days, he acquired quite an audience - teams of young boys eager to help, to run down to the sea with buckets. He was incredibly patient, showing them the meticulous care needed to construct the perfect sculpture, how you started from the top down, how you could use a drinking straw to blow out the more intricate pieces of carving. And at the end of the day, he let them destroy his creation before the tide came in to do it for him. Janet always felt sad to watch the fruits of his labour crushed underfoot, but he never seemed to mind. A sandcastle wasn’t for keeps, he told her.

The day of the competition finally arrived, gloriously sunny. There seemed to be more competitors than ever this year, and Janet felt butterflies as she wandered up and down the different plots, expertly assessing their potential, eyeing up the tools they had brought with them. There were lots of families who didn’t have a hope, who were presumably just in it for the fun - the dads taking it very seriously, while the kids hopped up and down with impatience, waving their spades. By the end of her tour, she estimated about five serious contenders who were consulting elaborate sketches, and who had a look of determination in their eyes.

Alan was quite happy in the middle of his plot. Having practised three times on site he had it down to a fine art, and was busy laying out the foundations. There was a couple next to him not taking it at all seriously-a pair of teenagers messing about, pouring sand down each other’s backs. At one point the girl squealed and ran away backwards, not looking where she was going and nearly crashing into Alan’s plot. Janet clenched her fists, but the girl realised what she had done, apologised to Alan prettily, so Janet relaxed.