‘So that went well. Not. Talk about clearing the place fast,’ Miranda said in the kitchen as she snapped the half-charred wooden skewers into small pieces to put in the bin. It felt quite therapeutic and once she’d finished them she looked around the heaps of dirty plates and dishes on the worktop, hoping there were a few she’d overlooked. There were. Snap, snap, snap. It was ridiculously satisfying.
‘Come on, Mum, it was ace! You should have seen Lola’s face when Freddie told her which team Pablo played for. Excellent.’ Silva had seen Lola grab Bo’s arm and hiss, ‘He’s like, famous. Do you know him?’ Bo hadn’t exactly replied but had nodded in the vague way boys do, using most of his upper body, more an acknowledgement of the question than a direct answer.
‘Yes, well, I’m glad you think so. Look, you and Bo did a brilliant job bringing everything up from the pool, so why don’t you leave your gran and me to do the dishes? There might be something good on TV.’
‘What I’d like to know is how did that Pablo know Harriet was here?’ Clare said, when her grandchildren had left the kitchen. She was rinsing debris from plates and lining them up in the dishwasher. ‘Do you think she’s been talking to him or texting all this time? Did she say anything to you?’
‘No. Nothing. She gave me the impression he’d dumped her for someone else and moved that someone else into the flat in less time than it took to change the sheets. Why he’s suddenly changed his mind is anyone’s guess. I hope she doesn’t go running straight back to him. He seems a total sleazeball.’
‘A sleazeball with no manners.’ Clare sniffed. ‘You don’t just barge in to someone’s house like that and take over without so much as a hello. Even his friend with the camera had the wit to apologize for gatecrashing. I don’t think this Pablo even noticed the rest of us. He’s not the sort I want for my daughter.’ She put a heap of cutlery down on the worktop, went to the window and peered down towards the pool. ‘They’re still out there – he doesn’t seem to have got the meaning of the words “go away”. He’s actually in the pool floating about stark naked. Harriet’s lying on a lounger, would you believe, as if she’s perfectly content. The other man’s not there, or at least nowhere I can see him.’
‘We mustn’t watch them,’ Miranda said. ‘You know what Harrie’s like about being watched.’
‘She means the so-called media, not her own family. Suppose he hits her? Or gives her drugs? Isn’t he on suspension for cocaine?’ Clare looked agitated.
‘If he hits her I don’t fancy his chances of ever becoming a father. And Harriet’s drug of choice is champagne, not cocaine. Don’t worry about her, Mum. She’s all grown up.’
Miranda felt exhausted. It had actually been quite a fun evening although she and Jess and Andrew would have felt more relaxed without the overbearing Geraldine. All the same, that larger-than-life presence had given her and Jessica something to giggle about. As Jess left, the two of them promised to wangle some time with Andrew alone, maybe with a picnic on their old beach, to find out how he and Geraldine had ever managed to get together. Freddie seemed quite a delight. Shy and rather serious but friendly. He’d said he’d join Bo and Silva on the beach in the morning for their first surf lesson.
Clare opened the terrace doors. ‘It’s still very warm, isn’t it? I’ll leave these open for a bit, let some fresh air in,’ she said, going back to the sink.
Miranda wasn’t fooled. ‘You won’t hear anything from up here, you know,’ she teased her.
‘I will if there’s any shouting,’ Clare said, giving her a wicked look, and as if on cue there was a crash of something heavy falling and a noise of breakage.
Miranda and Clare ran outside. Harriet and Pablo – who was out of the pool now and still entirely naked – were standing each side of a large broken pot that had fallen off the wall by the steps. Earth and bright flowers were scattered across the paving. ‘Oh, but come on, babes! You know you want to!’
‘Which bit of “no” don’t you get?’ Harriet shrieked. ‘You’re a lying, immature git and you’ve cost me my job!’
Pablo picked up a heap of napkins that were still on the table and started ineffectually drying himself with them, rubbing his cock and grinning at Harriet. ‘You’re missing this, aren’t you? Come on, admit it.’
‘Fucksake, Pablo, put it away. It’s my job I miss. They’ve suspended me. And it’s your fault.’
‘You don’t need a job, babes, not when you’re with me.’
‘I’m not with you. Just … go, will you?’ Then, as he took a step towards her, Harriet added, at top volume, ‘Pablo, just sod off.’
‘She’ll break the windows, screaming at him like that,’ Clare said. ‘But good on her.’
‘OK, OK, I get it. You need time to think. I’ll give you the night,’ Pablo said, pulling his jeans back on. ‘Duncan! The car!’ he hollered in a voice that was clearly used to being heard from one goalmouth to another on a breezy pitch. Toby the cat came pelting up the steps, ears back.
‘Go on down to her, Miranda. Make sure she doesn’t chase after him,’ Clare ordered.
‘I don’t think she will,’ Miranda said. ‘Not after that.’ They watched from behind a big hibiscus as Pablo jogged off down the drive and the sound of a sporty car screeching away too fast cut through the silent rural night. Duncan blasted the horn four times as a farewell. Miranda went to the top of the steps, ‘Cup of tea, darling?’
Harriet looked up at her, and Miranda was saddened by the amount of misery in her beautiful little face. ‘No thanks, Manda. A bloody big vodka and tonic is what I need right now.’
‘Shall I make myself scarce?’ Clare muttered to Miranda. ‘So you can talk?’
Miranda, weary to the point of falling asleep as she stood, like a horse, nodded. ‘I’ll finish up indoors. You go up and get some sleep.’
‘Don’t let her change her mind about him, will you?’ Clare whispered as Harriet came up the steps.
‘I won’t. Goodnight, Mum.’
Clare gave Miranda a brief kiss and smiled rather wanly. ‘When do your children stop giving you such worry? Still,’ she squeezed Miranda’s arm, ‘at least I don’t have to worry about you. You’re the balanced one. I know I can rely on you not to go to the wild.’
In the kitchen Miranda sat down on one of the Ghost chairs, feeling horribly forlorn. So was this it? She was so sensible and reliable that ‘going to the wild’ was never to be an option. The thought thoroughly depressed her. She wasn’t much given to the pursuit of the wild, but she hated to think it was not available, and would not be an option should it turn up and invite her.
Silva hadn’t given much thought to the wetsuit-rental element of the surf lesson. She knew she’d have to wear one, because all surfers did, but it hadn’t crossed her mind that this could be a problem. Jake the instructor was one of the classic streak-blond beach sorts and in charge of the surf shack. ‘Hmm. You’re a tricky size,’ he said to her, looking her up and down and then flicking through the rack of neoprene suits. ‘Most of the girl ones seem to be out apart from the really big ones and you don’t want it all baggy. But hey,’ he said, moving across to the other rack, ‘try this.’ He pulled a suit off its hanger and threw it across to her. ‘It’s a boy’s fit but quite small. You’ll be OK.’
‘Thanks.’ Silva said, looking at the thing and feeling doubtful. She wasn’t sure about this. When she saw the experienced surfers jogging down the beach they looked as if their wetsuits were almost as supple as their skin. This one felt heavy and thick, and when she dropped it on the sand to take her shorts off it looked like a dead, deflated animal hide, a chunk of old elephant. And she was going to put herself into its skin. Who else had been in there before her? Andrew had told them the night before that the trick was to wee in your wetsuit once you were in the sea, as it kept you a bit warm or something. She’d thought he must be joking but Freddie said not. Surely that wouldn’t work for long? And how hygienic was it to wear something some stranger had peed in? Too yucky. But she wanted to give surfing a go and she’d gone off to sleep the night before picturing herself out there in the sea, floating alongside Jules, who was looking at her as if she was the only girl he’d ever like in his whole life. And even if he just said hello again and smiled a bit, it would be something to tell Willow.
‘And we use these boards for the lessons,’ Jake said, handing what looked like a slender piece of yellow foam to Bo. ‘They’re easy to handle for beginners. We should have you up on the board by the end of the first session. You wouldn’t get that on, say, a Mini Mal.’ He grinned at Bo, clearly expecting him to know what he meant, but Bo was looking past him, waving to someone up the beach. Freddie was ambling down towards them, slow and lanky, already in a wetsuit and carrying a board. Lola was with him, but in jeans. Oh, great, Silva thought, an audience. This was going to be a disaster. Lola would be laughing for days.
‘So Freddie’s a surfer,’ Silva commented to Bo as she grappled with the wetsuit and tried to haul it up her legs while at the same time keeping the embarrassingly scarlet-burned backs of them out of range of Lola’s all-seeing eyes. It wasn’t easy.
‘His dad’s big on windsurfing and sailing. He taught him loads of stuff. Freddie said it was the one thing his mum would let Andrew take him to do without her tagging along,’ Bo told her. He seemed to have got into his wetsuit with no problem and Lola moved close and pulled the zip up at the back for him. Silva turned away – the small gesture looked like too intimate a moment for witnesses. Her brother. Eeuww.
‘Hi,’ Freddie said, dropping his board on the sand.
Jake scowled at him. ‘It’s a two-up lesson, man. Can’t take any extras today, sorry.’
Freddie backed away a bit. ‘Just saying hello,’ he told Jake. ‘Maybe I’ll just get in the water.’
‘See you after our lesson, in the café?’ Silva said, not wanting him to feel bad.
‘Yeah, sure. And good luck. Don’t give up!’ Freddie said, picking up his board and sprinting towards the sea.
Lola leaned on the surf shack and had a good look at Silva. ‘Er … is that wetsuit, um, OK, fit-wise?’ She was looking down and Silva followed her gaze towards crotch-level where the neoprene was too loose and felt weird.
‘There were no girl sizes left,’ Jake said, giving Lola a warning look.
‘Ha – I thought there was something missing.’ Lola laughed. ‘You’ve got all that space in there for a massive cock. You want to stuff a couple of socks down.’
Silva felt like crying and turned away to pick up the foam board. How great was this not being. Here she was in a fat, man-shaped wetsuit that was so long she had to roll it up at the ankles and wrists and felt as heavy as a dead cow. And there she’d been last night, thinking Lola was her friend and fantasizing about Jules. He was probably one of the ones out there on the break line right now, him and the rest of them all lined up to laugh at her. She had two choices: either rip off the suit of shame and storm off back to the house or ignore Lola and get on with it. She looked across at Bo, who came over and gave her shoulder a quick shove. That was his version of a big hug and she felt grateful.
‘Are you a surfer?’ Bo asked Lola as he picked up his board and started following Jake to the sea’s edge.
‘No way. I do boats on the water but not stuff in it,’ she said.
‘Right. Well, we’ll see you later then,’ he said, walking away from her and not looking back.
‘So where did Pablo go? Back up north?’ Miranda asked Harriet as they walked down to the beach café together to get coffee and watch the children’s surf lesson.
‘No. He’s staying at the Pengarret hotel at Tremorwell. Five stars and a spa, he told me, ocean-view suite. He thought that would be enough to get me to go with him. I so don’t get what he’s up to. Last week he didn’t seem to give a flying one if he never saw me again. Told me to put up or get out.’
‘Did you see it coming? Had you been rowing? I mean, you’ve only been together about six months.’
Should be the honeymoon period still, Miranda thought, if the relationship had any long-term possibilities at all. Clearly it didn’t. Even she and Dan had managed several years and two quick-succession children before the terminal rot started and he took to sneaking out to have sex with the girl from behind the counter at the KFC and coming home smelling of chip fat.
‘He asked me to marry him on our second date,’ Harriet said. ‘It was dead romantic but he was pissed and to be honest so was I. I told him to ask me again in the morning but he didn’t. Nor on any other morning but we were OK, you know? Mostly. Everywhere we went, he got recognized, people coming to talk to him.’
‘Most of them girls?’
‘Shit yes, so many girls. And he’s younger than me. Only twenty-four. I suppose it’s what you get. It was like being with a rock star or something.’ She sighed. ‘It was fun. But over. Definitely.’
They’d reached the beach. Miranda glanced up to the road at the top of the hill and saw a little black Mercedes, top down, racing towards the village. Beside the driver – who might or might not have been Steve – was a woman with the kind of blonde hair that wafts about like something from a shampoo advert. Cheryl? In a way she hoped it was – at least if she was out with Steve that would mean Miranda could go to the shop later without having to sneak around waiting to be accused of shoplifting.
‘Will Pablo be sacked from the team?’ she asked Harriet as they pulled up a couple of chairs on the café’s little terrace. A girl came out immediately and they ordered coffee and a couple of Danish pastries.
‘Should we order for Mum as well? I thought she said she’d be down,’ Miranda said.
‘She said she had things to do and not to wait,’ Harriet told her. ‘And Pablo was suspended, not sacked, not that it matters much at the moment, not till the season starts. And he got fined about the same as I earn in a year but he didn’t care. He’s too good to be fired. And anyway – he’s just a footballer, not the next Archbishop of Canterbury. No one expects them to behave. No one except an idiot girlfriend – ex-girlfriend – like me, that is.’
Miranda gazed out at the shoreline. The sun shimmered on the wet sand, reflecting the few clouds that dared to collect in the vivid blue sky. Another glorious day, though the weather forecast that morning had said it would get stormy over the next few days. Bo and Silva were making learning the art of surfing look like hard work, all that falling off the boards and hauling themselves back on. Beyond them, the skilled practitioners slid effortlessly across the waves, bending and turning and gliding in on the water right to the sand then stepping off their boards as casually as if they were getting off a bus. Miranda recognized the gangly figure of Freddie, looking more lithe and skilled than she’d expected. The gawkiness she’d noticed about him now made it seem as if being on land wasn’t quite his natural habitat.
‘You should give it a go, Harriet,’ she said, nodding towards the sea.
‘Why just me?’ Harriet replied. ‘Why not you as well?’ She gave her sister a hard look. ‘You’re not thinking you’re too old, are you?’ She laughed. ‘Miranda, you are, aren’t you! My God!’
The coffee and pastries arrived and Miranda played with the spoon and the sugar for a few moments, ‘Not old. Just, you know, not the right sort of mindset. For surfing and stuff. It’s just not me.’
‘It’s not me either. I don’t have the shoes for it.’
‘Shoes?’ Miranda looked down at Harriet’s high-soled pink espadrilles.
‘Oh, you know what I mean. I like to dress up, not down.’
There was a shriek from the water’s edge and the two of them looked up in time to see Silva gliding along a wave, standing on the board. She looked awkward, but she was actually doing it. She landed on the beach and waved at them. A few of the experienced surfer-boys in the water behind her applauded.
‘She’s got admirers,’ Harriet said, taking a huge, unladylike bite from her pastry.
‘Has she? No, they’re just being friendly,’ Miranda said, watching her daughter proudly.
‘No, she has. Look at her. She’s stunning – that cloud of hair and her pretty body. That blond boy, the one who can surf best, he’s been watching her the whole time.’
Miranda laughed. ‘She’s way too young for all that; she’s still a child.’ Was it only the night before that she was arguing with Clare that it was fine for Silva to wear make-up? Her daughter’s teen years were turning out to be as confusing for Miranda as they were likely to be for Silva. One minute she was recognizing the emerging woman in her, the next trying to keep her in little-girlhood.
‘She’s a teenager – she’ll be in her second year of it by the end of next week, and, yes, a child in most ways but not too young to be noticed by boys or to notice them. I remember all that – going to school on the bus and hoping Mark Brymer would get on and sit next to me. It’s all just beginning. Honestly, Manda, you don’t get it, do you? She’s not too young and you’re not too old. And in your case I don’t just mean for surfing.’
Miranda sipped her coffee and watched as Bo, too, managed to ride a wave without falling off. He didn’t get a round of applause.
‘They’re a bit old-fashioned but I can find space for half a dozen and we’ll see how they go.’
Bloody woman. Clare shut her phone down and felt furious on Jack’s behalf. He’d sold paintings to many a hotel chain, to greetings card companies and to major stores that sold prints all over the world. OK, so he wasn’t madly avant garde or Turner Prize material, nor would he have been made a Royal Academy member, but he was good and the volume of sales should tell anyone that he painted what people liked to have on their walls. And here was this snotty woman from that obscure little gallery in St Piran giving her verdict on the photos of Jack’s work that Clare had sent to her as if she had the job of considering pieces for a major show at Tate Modern. How dare she? Jack had been known and here was a chance for this poxy little venue to take some of his earlier works and offer them at more than tourist prices to the many, many generally loaded summer visitors in this damn place. She should be biting Clare’s hand off.
Clare strode fast and furiously down the path, heading for the beach, hoping to catch the end of the children’s surf lesson. She’d pick up a Guardian from the shop on the way and do the crossword after lunch. Perhaps it would calm her down a bit.
She walked fast past the old phone box with the hideous grinning gnome inside and looked across to where Creek Cottage stood with all its doors and windows open. There was no sign of Eliot but Jessica was outside, hanging T-shirts and jeans on a washing line. She saw Clare and waved, calling out, ‘Thanks for last night. We all loved it!’
Clare waved back, feeling a bit cheered, and went up the steps into the shop where she found Geraldine poking through a box of oranges and being watched by a glaring Cheryl, who was piling her hair up into a pony tail. ‘They’re all the same colour, you know,’ she was saying. ‘That’s why they’re called oranges. I wouldn’t bother expecting to find something different in there.’
‘It’s all about texture,’ Geraldine boomed. ‘Don’t you know anything about fruit?’
Cheryl shrugged. ‘Don’t eat it much.’
‘No, I can see that,’ Geraldine replied. ‘You’d have better skin if you did.’
Cheryl retreated behind the deli counter and Clare heard her mutter, ‘Piss off.’ You couldn’t blame her. Clare went to the newspaper rack and pulled out the single copy of the Guardian. A couple of Daily Mails clattered to the floor and Geraldine turned round at the noise. Clare picked them up and stuffed them back into place.
‘Aha – our hostess from last night,’ Geraldine said. ‘I suppose I should thank you.’ She didn’t. ‘That was quite a disturbance as we left. When we got home we could still hear the cacophony.’
‘Er … sorry about that, but at least it wasn’t for long.’
‘No, but sound does carry so in the country. And especially across water.’
Cheryl was taking notice again and leaned on the counter top. ‘So you’re another from up at the big rental, then?’ she said to Clare. ‘God, you’re a bunch and a half, aren’t you? One slapper, one shoplifter …’
‘Shoplifter?’ Clare said, astonished. ‘But that was twenty years ago!’ How could this girl know about Harriet’s childhood misdemeanours?
‘Shu’up, twenty years? I was hardly born. No, it was a couple of days ago. She didn’t get away with it. You don’t get away with anything, with me,’ she said proudly, arranging a selection of pork pies and various coloured olives on a dish. The words ‘serving suggestion’ popped into Clare’s head, rather incongruously. The girl put together a classy counter display, she’d give her that. The array was close to Harrods Food Hall standard. No wonder the shop got away with the monstrous prices.
Geraldine laughed. It was a deep and alarming sound, rather like the sudden boom of a bittern across silent Norfolk marshes.
‘No mercy with criminals, that’s what I say. A small crime is just a big crime but, er …’ Clare and Cheryl waited while Geraldine’s brain searched for words, ‘but smaller,’ she finished feebly. ‘That doesn’t make it any less serious.’
‘Anyway, that noise last night. All the shouting and the car revving and stuff. There’ve been complaints from people coming in here today. Holidaymakers come here for peace and quiet,’ Cheryl told Clare. She looked ominously serious. ‘I think you’ll be getting a visit.’
‘Oh, really? Who from?’ Clare asked, putting her newspaper on the counter and wishing like mad that the village had more than one shop. She was going to have to nab Miranda’s car in the mornings in future and drive round to Tremorwell for supplies, or make the twenty-mile round trip to the nearest Tesco.
‘From the agency you rent from. About standards. They’re keen on standards here. It’s about not having riffraff upsetting the residents. You’ll likely get a warning.’
‘Ha – that’ll be a yellow card!’ Geraldine guffawed. ‘Like footballers. How perfectly apt!’ Even Cheryl giggled. She was quite pretty when she smiled. Clare wished she’d do it more often.
‘Anyway, it was very entertaining last night,’ Geraldine conceded in a way that implied Clare should be very grateful for her presence at their gathering. ‘Now, let me just have twenty Rothmans and a Daily Mail and I’ll be on my way. Freddie has apparently gone to the beach and I want to make sure he’s got hot porridge waiting for him when he gets back. He chills easily.’
‘Unlike her,’ Cheryl muttered as Geraldine wheezed down the shop steps and set off back to Andrew’s cottage.
‘So, is it true?’ Cheryl switched her smile back on.
‘Is what true?’
‘That Pablo Palmer is here in the village.’ She looked excited. ‘We get famous people down here. Kylie was here doing a video last summer. And the year before, I heard Johnny Depp was buying a house across the water. He didn’t, though.’ Her smile faded for a moment but then returned. ‘So is he?’
Harriet had probably looked this thrilled when she’d first attracted the footballer’s interest. Would she have seen past the fancy restaurants and red-carpet events and the flashy cars? Clare hoped her daughter had more to her than that. If she’d meant what she’d said to Pablo the night before, it looked as if she did.
‘He was here but I don’t know where he is now,’ she said, ‘but if I find out he’s still in the area I’ll let you know.’
‘Wow, thanks!’
‘Nothing to thank me for,’ Clare said, picking up her newspaper and starting to leave.
‘No, there is, trust me. Nothing much ever happens round here.’ She reached across to the basket of fruit Geraldine had been mauling. ‘Here, have an orange. On the house. And keep me in the loop, won’t you? Please?’