Without Looking Back (7 page)

Millie gasped dramatically.

‘So where are we going then?’ Louis asked. ‘Surely you can tell us now.’

Dad sighed. ‘You’ll see when we get there, Louis.’

Max rolled his eyes. It seemed he was tiring of this surprise thing too.

After breakfast, when Dad suggested they get back in the car and ‘press on’ with the journey, he met with howls of protest.

‘All right, all right,’ he said quickly. ‘Let’s go for a wander and stretch our legs.’

At the end of the car park was a long strip of grass overlooking the motorway. Millie went skipping down it, looking for daisies. Max found a partially deflated football and kicked it over to Louis. They began a makeshift game, using their jackets as goalposts, and even managed to persuade Dad to join in.

‘Not fair! Whose side are you on?’ Louis shouted as Dad kicked the ball between his goalposts.

‘I’ll have to be the third team,’ Dad said, laughing.

‘No, wait,’ Max said. ‘We’ll get Millie. Then it can be two against two. Millie!’ he shouted.

‘Bags me be with Dad,’ Louis said quickly.

‘No way! Millie has to be with Dad – Dad’s too good!’ Max protested.

‘I’m flattered,’ Dad said, practising his goal-scoring.

‘Millie!’ Max yelled. ‘Come and play!’

‘I’m busy! I’m making a daisy chain!’ she called back.

‘You can be on Dad’s team!’ Max shouted.

She hesitated for a moment, then put down the daisy chain and came running over. ‘But you have to let me get the ball, you have to let me get the ball!’

They started the game, Max and Louis against Dad and Millie. Dad got stuck in, and despite her size, Millie was like a bullet, accustomed to being roped into games of football with her older brothers. Louis felt chuffed
that Max had wanted him on his team and the two of them did their best to outplay Dad and Millie, who were both prone to bending the rules. Millie liked to engage in rugby-type tackles, throwing herself round the legs of her opponent and knocking him to the ground, and at one point there was a real rugby scrum, with them all piling on top of Dad. When they were too out of breath to run any more, they decided to have a penalty shoot-out. Louis went in goal, and while Dad and Millie were arguing over who was going to take the ball, he did a couple of backflips. He felt happier than he had in days. Perhaps this holiday was going to be a success after all.

Back in the car, Millie soon fell asleep again, grazes and grass stains covering her elbows and knees. Dad had the French radio on very low and Max was plugged into his iPod again . . .

After a while Louis realized he must have dozed off, because quite suddenly the sun was high, blazing down from a massive stretch of blue sky. He sat up groggily to look out of the window and saw that they were surrounded by the most extraordinary scenery – green and brown mountains and, in the distance, the shimmering water of a vast lake.

‘Where are we?’ he asked Dad.

‘This is the Lake District,’ Dad replied. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

‘Yes,’ Louis replied. He could scarcely believe they were still in England. ‘Is this where we’re going to be staying?’

‘Yes,’ Dad replied.

‘With another one of your friends?’

‘No, we’re renting a little farmhouse,’ Dad said. ‘It’ll just be the four of us.’

Louis smiled.

Sometime later, they turned off the road and onto a long bumpy dirt track that snaked its way across rough grassy hillside towards a small farmhouse, set half a mile back from the road. As they approached it in the juddering car, Louis saw that it was two storeys high, built of grey stone with a slate roof.

‘The house is a hundred years old,’ Dad explained, finally switching off the engine and getting out of the car. He took a deep breath and gazed around. ‘These two acres of land belong to it. Crikey, just look at all this space.’

As they followed him out, the air was very still, broken only by the faint twitter of birdsong. Max dug his hands into his jeans pockets and gave a low whistle.

‘Wow,’ Millie breathed softly. ‘Beautiful.’

Behind the farmhouse, the grassland rose gradually towards a towering peak. On the other side, several miles away, more green peaks pointed up towards a brilliant blue sky. Below them, a huge, inky-blue lake stretched out like a sheet of glass. A cluster of houses in the distance suggested a village. A cool wind lifted Louis’ hair and stroked his bare arms. He shivered. They had arrived in the middle of nowhere.

They quickly began to explore the premises, Millie running about in excitement. To the left of the house, a corrugated-iron door led to a vast barn, empty save for a few bales of hay and some bits of broken machinery. Inside the farmhouse, the small kitchen was dark and damp, all the surfaces were covered with dust, and there was an evil smell coming from the fridge. The narrow corridor was dark and cold and the brown carpet was in dire need of vacuuming. The living room was not much better: an old, disused fireplace and a sagging brown couch. A steep flight of stairs led up to a manky green bathroom with cracked tiles; then came a small study, followed by two decent-sized bedrooms, one containing a single bed, the other a double.

‘So I don’t get my own room,’ Millie realized, doing the maths.

Max shrugged, clearly unimpressed by the inside of the house. ‘Looks like only one of us gets their own
bed
.’

There was the sound of Dad’s feet on the stairs and he appeared, slightly breathless, carrying some bags. ‘Now don’t look so disheartened. The house has potential. We’ll just need to buy a few things, that’s all.’

‘But we’re only staying here for four days,’ Louis said. ‘What’s the point?’

‘The point is’ – Dad took a deep breath – ‘I want my children to be comfortable. Now, who’s got a pen and paper . . .?’ He rummaged in Millie’s rucksack. ‘Let’s make a list.’

‘Oh, can I do it? Can I do it?’ Millie grabbed the pen and paper from Dad’s hand. List-making was one of her passions.

‘OK.’ Dad sat down on the sagging mattress. ‘Let’s just start with the basics. We need cleaning products to get rid of all this dust. I think there’s a vacuum cleaner in the closet downstairs but I’ll need to check it works. Bed sheets – one double, one single. Pillows, one each – that’s four. Four pillowcases. One double duvet and duvet cover. Three single duvets and duvet covers.’

‘Why?’ Max asked. ‘We’ve only got two beds.’

‘Hold on, hold on,’ Dad said. ‘I’m just getting to that. Now, we’ll need two single beds—’

‘Two beds!’ Millie began to laugh. ‘We can’t buy beds, Daddy!’

‘Yes we can,’ Dad said quickly. ‘Meg has asked me to do the place up for her.’ His eyes shifted uncomfortably.

‘This is Meg’s place?’ Max wanted to know.

‘Her holiday home. Yes. Now, let’s move on . . .’

An unsteady feeling started in the pit of Louis’ stomach again. If Papa had rented a farmhouse for four days, why hadn’t he gone through a travel agency and got a place that was clean and already contained enough beds? It didn’t make sense. Beds took time to be delivered, and by the time they arrived, they would probably be on their way back to France.

‘We’ll also need some kind of mattresses to tide us over till the beds come,’ Dad said. ‘Right, let’s go down to the kitchen and see what’s needed there.’

They spent the rest of the day in a crazy whirl. Dad really seemed to be taking the task to heart, for he set them all a list of jobs while he disappeared with the car. On his hands and knees, scrubbing out the stinking fridge with Brillo pads, Louis wondered what on earth was going on. In the corridor, Max was vacuuming the carpet, and in the living room, Millie was wiping down all the surfaces. It was as if Dad was planning to live here
permanently. All of a sudden, the thought stopped him. That was it! Dad was planning to move to England! He was going to rent the house from Meg and wanted them all to help out with getting it habitable. He was buying them beds because he was planning to have them all come and stay with him during the holidays while Maman was still working. That must be it! But he needed to get the house into tip-top shape if he was ever to persuade Maman to let them visit. So what about the court case? Well, perhaps Maman had already backed down. Perhaps Maman had said,
Fine, you can have the kids to stay, but only if you move out of that tiny flat in Paris and get something decent
. And so that was what Dad was doing!

Dropping the Brillo pad, Louis jumped up to share the news with Max and Millie, leaving out the bit about the court case. They were as excited as he was, but Max suddenly said, ‘Hold on. Why then all the secrecy? Wouldn’t he have just come out with the plan and told us about it right from the start?’

‘Maybe he wanted to surprise us,’ Louis said. ‘Or maybe he doesn’t want Maman to know yet.’

‘D’you think she’ll let us come here every weekend?’ Millie crowed happily.

‘Not every weekend, it would be too expensive,’ Max
told her. ‘But perhaps for the school holidays, instead of paying for that stupid summer camp.’

‘But I don’t want to just see Papa in the school holidays!’ Millie complained. ‘And I don’t want Papa to move to England!’ Her bottom lip wobbled ominously.

‘Let’s just wait and see,’ Louis said quickly. ‘Dad will have to tell us soon. And maybe it’s just a holiday home for him too. We don’t know yet.’

They went back to their respective tasks. An hour later, things were already beginning to look better. Louis’ back was killing him, but the fridge no longer smelled, the kitchen surfaces were clean and the floor was washed. Max had progressed to vacuuming the bedrooms and Millie had finished the dusting and moved on to scrubbing the bathroom. Louis threw open all the windows to get rid of the musty smell, and when Dad came in, there was a mini gale buffeting through the house.

They went out to help unload the car: the vast boot was full of things, from saucepan scourers to dishcloths, from pillows to doormats. Max cut the price tags off everything and Louis and Millie went to make the beds. Then Dad got to work with a hammer, smashing up the large, cumbersome desk in the study to turn it into Millie’s room.

That evening everyone was shattered, and they went to bed after eggs on toast, with Dad promising to take
them into town to explore and do some more shopping the next day. Louis and Max flipped a coin for the single bed in their bedroom and Louis won, so Max got the mattress on the floor. In the ex-study, Millie found a spider, which produced much hysteria and resulted in her sharing the double bed with Dad. But as soon as Louis’ head hit the new pillow, he fell fast asleep.

Straight after breakfast the next morning, they got in the car and drove into town. Now that they were calling the farmhouse ‘Dad’s new holiday home’ he seemed to have relaxed a bit about it and was no longer being quite so cryptic. It was fun, furnishing a new home, and Max and Millie made long lists of all the things they thought he needed. Max’s list mainly involved electrical equipment – from computers to PlayStations to Xboxes. Millie’s list included a pet cat. Dad laughed as he drove and told them to go easy.

In the end they got a portable television with an inbuilt DVD player, a wooden dolls’ house that Millie almost collapsed over, two beds placed on order, and a washer-dryer. They walked around Kendal, sat on a bench and ate a strange meal of fried fish with chips, and then Dad took them to a bike shop and told them they could choose any bike they wanted. They were in seventh
heaven. They hadn’t been allowed to have bikes back in Paris because the roads were too dangerous. Around the tiny village of Grasmere, it seemed, there were very few main roads, but lots of long, smooth paths weaving around the lakes and in and out of the valley. Millie found a pink bike with a wicker basket that seduced her almost instantly. Louis chose a robust-looking mountain bike with eighteen gears. Max took ages choosing his bike, reading all the literature available, going through the different gears and speeds and makes with the very obliging shopkeeper until they were all ready to throttle him. But when they were just about to leave, a strange thing happened. The shopkeeper asked them where they were all from and Millie had just started to say ‘Paris’ when Dad interrupted her with ‘New Caledonia’.

‘Oh, that’s a lovely part of the world,’ the shopkeeper began. ‘We have relatives over there who—’

‘Do excuse us but we must really get going,’ Dad said, ushering them all out of the shop.

Outside, Max was laughing at Dad. ‘Why did you tell that old man we came from New Caledonia?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t like him,’ Dad said quickly. ‘I didn’t like the way he was looking at you. I think there was something funny about him. I didn’t want him to know where we were from.’

‘But he seemed really nice!’ Millie protested.

Dad suddenly pointed out that because he hadn’t got a roof rack for the Peugeot yet, Max and Louis would have to cycle home. ‘I’ll drive as slowly as I can and you can follow the car,’ he said.

But Max had a better idea. ‘We can go and explore!’

‘You’ll get lost,’ Dad said.

‘No we won’t. I remember the way back – it’s not exactly far,’ Max retorted.

Dad looked reluctant but, after a moment’s hesitation, gave in. He unfolded his map over the bonnet of the car and talked them through the five-mile route home. Millie protested that she wanted to come too but Dad distracted her with talk of going home to erect her dolls’ house. With last-minute warnings echoing in their ears, Max and Louis cycled off.

As they came out of the town, Louis spotted a pay phone on a street corner and skidded to a halt.

‘What are you doing?’ Max demanded, slowing down reluctantly.

Louis dug his hand into the pocket of his jeans for the change Dad had let him keep when he’d paid for the bike.

‘I’m gonna call Pierre. Tell him I’ve gone on holiday. He’ll be so jealous!’

‘You don’t know the international dialling code—’

‘Yes I do.’

‘Fine. Then catch me up,’ Max said, turning his bike round and disappearing down the winding road.

It took several seconds for the long beeps to sound. As soon as Pierre answered, a row of zeros began flashing on the display, the phone demanding to be fed again.