The Holiday Read online

‘So, are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’ he said. ‘Or do I have to guess?’

  He put his hands in his pockets and extended the crook of his arm. Reluctantly, I linked arms with him.

  ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ I said.

  ‘I thought you’d be happy to be here.’

  ‘I am,’ I said without looking at him. ‘Busy day.’

  ‘Are you feeling all right? Was it that dodgy sandwich you had on the plane?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  He considered this for a moment.

  ‘Seriously, what’s up, Kate?’

  Apart from you putting a bomb under our marriage?

  ‘Nothing’s up,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve hardly seen you all afternoon.’

  ‘Just a bit tired, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s probably the heat getting to you.’ His voice was light, but he was choosing his words carefully. ‘It was like a blast furnace today.’

  ‘Probably.’

  For a moment, I thought about asking him right then and there – just coming out with it. Get it over with, like ripping a plaster off in one quick pull.

  Who is it? Which one? Rowan, Jennifer or Izzy?

  But I knew it wasn’t the time. I had no concrete evidence – not yet. The messages on his phone would be long gone by now.

  Not until you have proof. He will simply deny it otherwise.

  Sean tried another tack to get me talking.

  ‘Wonderful spot for a holiday,’ he said.

  ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Do you ever wonder,’ he said wistfully, ‘what it would be like to come somewhere like this every year? Every summer? How amazing would that be?’

  ‘Sean, we couldn’t even afford to come here once, let alone every year.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. Doesn’t it make you feel like . . .’ He tailed off, gesticulating with his free hand. ‘Oh, I dunno.’

  ‘Feel like what?’

  ‘Like we should be able to afford it by now. That we should be able to do nice things for the kids, be able to splash out on a summer holiday like this.’

  ‘Maybe a bit.’

  ‘Y’know, I was in the pool earlier and I looked at the villa, and the balcony, and the vineyard, and I just thought, Christ, I’m about to turn forty, and there’s literally no way I could ever stay somewhere like this without Rowan making it possible.’ His Irish accent always got stronger when he’d had a few drinks, and it was in full flow now. ‘I mean, is this going to be out of my reach forever? There are a million places in the world that I want to see, but I feel as though I’ve barely even started – and my time’s already half-over. What the hell have I been doing with my life?’

  ‘How many beers have you had?’

  ‘Not enough,’ he said with a sigh.

  We walked on in silence for a moment.

  I said quietly, ‘I think it’s just nice that we’re even able to come here once.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I get that; it’s just knowing how far out of reach it is to us in our normal lives. Makes me feel like a bit of a failure.’

  ‘You’re not a failure.’

  ‘I’m not exactly a success. A network security manager for a medium-sized IT business.’ His voice took on a sarcastic edge. ‘It’s every young lad’s dream, isn’t it? Not.’

  ‘You protect people and the things that are important to them.’

  ‘I protect data. Not really the same thing.’

  ‘Yes, but what’s that saying? Life’s a journey, isn’t it? Not a destination.’

  ‘Christ.’ He laughed. ‘You must be pissed too if you’re quoting Aerosmith lyrics at me.’

  ‘I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson, actually. But you know what I mean.’

  ‘Feel like I’ve spent the whole of my thirties doing, I don’t know . . .’ He held his hands up in the air. ‘I don’t know what I’ve been doing. And now they’re gone forever and before we know it, in another couple of years Lucy will be out of the door to university. Even though—’

  ‘Do you think she’s all right?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lucy.’

  He hesitated, and I felt his arm stiffen slightly against mine.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘What makes you say that?’

  I paused and slowed our pace, to let the others get a little further ahead.

  ‘She just seems . . . not really herself recently. Quieter than usual, but more snappy.’

  ‘I don’t think she can be quieter and more snappy at the same time, love.’

  ‘You know what I mean. She seems more distracted than normal, on her phone all the time.’

  ‘She’s always on her phone. It’s compulsory for generation Z, or whatever they’re called.’

  ‘She’s worried about her GCSEs, I suppose.’

  He paused, seeming to consider this for a moment.

  ‘Makes sense.’

  ‘Even though she’s predicted stellar grades in everything?’

  ‘She’s always been a bit highly strung – and you know what teenagers can be like.’ He shook his head suddenly and picked up the thread of our earlier conversation. ‘Christ, it only feels like five minutes ago that I was bringing her home from the hospital in her baby seat and changing my first nappy. Now I’m knocking on forty and I’m losing my bloody hair and it feels like, What the hell just happened?’

  ‘I don’t care about your hair, Sean.’

  ‘Every day I look in the mirror and it’s creeping further and further up my bloody head. You know, the other week I was in town and I caught sight of this old feller’s reflection in a shop window and I thought, Who’s that old bastard? He’s definitely trying too hard. Then I realised it was me. Jesus.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know. Too many beers, that’s all. Rowan’s done amazingly well, though, hasn’t she?’

  I pulled my arm from his, a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘She has,’ I said quietly. ‘Yes, she has.’

  A new thought occurred to me. Maybe he’s just trying to soften the blow, talking about Rowan like this. Half-drunk and justifying what he’s done, in front of me. Being as honest as he dares to be. Preparing me, trying to anaesthetise me a little bit against all the pain that’s coming.

  Was she the one? Had Sean chosen her over me? Was this week all about impressing him with a luxurious villa in the south of France?

  I rubbed my eyes. This was how I was now, ever since seeing the messages on his phone. Everyday insecurities, the little things that niggle at all of us from time to time, had taken on monstrous form. They had grown big enough to throw a shadow over everything, every thought, every comment, every waking minute. All the time. They were always there, whispering in my ear, forcing me to dissect and analyse everything he did, everything he’d done in the past.

  Another thought came galloping hard after the first.

  Maybe it was all my fault. Maybe I had driven him to this. Pushed him into it. Maybe I wasn’t attentive enough, loving enough, maybe there wasn’t enough sex. Maybe I should have done more, tried harder. Maybe I wasn’t thin enough, interesting enough, clever enough, rich enough to hold his interest for the long haul.

  What else was wrong with me?

  Maybe I—

  Stop it. Just stop. Self-pity is the enemy. It will get you precisely nowhere.

  The truth was, my little bubble of comfortable married complacency had been cracked wide open and shattered into pieces. Instead of being sure, and secure, and safe, I was now in a new place – with absolutely no idea where I stood. For the hundredth time I kicked myself for avoiding a confrontation this afternoon, for chickening out instead of asking him about the messages as soon as I’d seen them. Now, more than ever, I knew the truth of the old saying: a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

  Maybe it was the wine, but just walking with him, talking to him the way we’d always done, feeling his skin on mine
, reminded me again of everything we’d had together. All the good things, now and in the past.

  Everything we stood to lose.

  I knew our situation was bad, but he was still my husband. And maybe he was still worth fighting for.

  9

  The village square in Autignac was strung with fairy lights that criss-crossed the space above our heads, a warm glow against the long shadows of approaching dusk. The village church, its restored Romanesque steeple rising into the darkening night sky, formed one side of the square while the little trio of boulangerie, boucherie and charcuterie were shuttered and dark on the other side. A skinny tabby cat sat on a first-floor window ledge, blinking down at us with luminous yellow eyes.

  The restaurant was bright and busy. We sat at one of a dozen wooden tables arranged in the square, catering to tourists staying in the villas and apartments in and around the village. It was almost eight o’clock, but the air was still warm, thick with the smells of ribeye steak and roast duck, rich sauces and local red wine. Candles and glasses and half-empty bottles lined our table.

  I sipped my wine and tried not to think about Sean and the messages, what it all meant. But I couldn’t help it. I’d spent the evening examining everything – every conversation, every look, every silence, minutely – holding each moment in my hand and studying it from every angle, trying to prise the truth from it like a pearl from a clam.

  Like now, for example.

  He was chatting amiably to Rowan about her business, genuinely interested, smiling and engaged, giving her lots of eye contact. He was a people-pleaser, always had been, always seemed to know the right thing to say to get on someone’s good side, always wanted to find the good in them. Was that what his affair was, how it had started? One of my friends coming on to him so strong that he just couldn’t bring himself to say no? Couldn’t bring himself to upset her?

  Perhaps I had the beginnings of a theory about what might be going on.

  Sean was already a glass of red wine ahead of me, on top of the beers he’d had back at the house before coming out. Russ had been constantly refilling everyone’s glasses every time he filled his own – which was often – the crimson flush of alcohol already blotting his cheeks. I couldn’t decide whether Rowan’s husband didn’t like our company, or just liked his booze. A bit of both, probably. His chair was empty for the moment as he stood beneath the carved stone portico of the church, taking long slow drags on a cigarette.

  Odette, in a bright yellow dress, ran around and around the long wooden table, chasing the cats that occasionally appeared from the shadows to pick up titbits dropped by diners. She narrowly avoided colliding with a waiter and skipped away again into the gap between two tables, a defiant grin on her face.

  ‘Odette,’ Rowan said for the third or fourth time, ‘please come and sit down, your dinner is about to arrive.’

  The little girl shook her head, long ginger bunches jiggling from side to side. She ran off again, giggling and dodging around the tables of other diners.

  Further down the table, Daniel was reading his Harry Potter book while Lucy was slumped silently in her chair, absorbed by her phone.

  Jennifer’s boys were also transfixed by their mobiles. They had never looked particularly alike, but they seemed to grow further apart in looks as they grew into their mid-teens. Jake, the older of the two, was his mother’s son with fair hair and grey-blue eyes, beautiful long eyelashes and cupid’s bow lips. Tall and slim, long-limbed like her – he was going to be a heartbreaker. His younger brother, Ethan, on the other hand, had all his father’s genes: dark hair and olive skin, eyes so deep brown they were almost black. Just fifteen, he was already stockier through the shoulders and waist, his legs thick with hair.

  People sometimes remarked to Jennifer they didn’t look much like brothers.

  They do to me, she would always say with an adoring smile.

  Russ returned to the table as the food arrived, steaming plates of creamy chicken in mushroom sauce, entrecote with camembert, turkey escalope, pan-fried potatoes, pasta salads and mountains of pommes frites, along with two more bottles of La Grande Cigale Blanc.

  Odette finally came and sat down, her little face wrinkled in disgust.

  ‘Don’t like that,’ she said, pointing a small finger at her plate. ‘Or that.’

  Rowan leaned over and began cutting it up for her.

  ‘Of course you do, darling, it’s just chicken like you have at home.’

  ‘Smells funny.’ She pointed at Rowan’s bowl of pasta salad. ‘I want yours, Mummy.’

  ‘You have yours, darling. Look, it’s chicken, do you see? You always have chicken.’

  ‘Want yours.’ Her high voice was suddenly strident and sharp, cutting through the rest of our conversations. ‘Don’t want chicken.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like mine, Odette, it’s got garlic in it.’

  ‘My chicken’s stinky.’ She pushed her chair away and stood up, stepping back from the table.

  ‘Sit up at the table, please,’ Rowan said calmly.

  ‘No!’

  Watching their argument unfold, I realised that everyone else at the table was doing the same, looking at the confrontation but trying to pretend that they weren’t. Rubbernecking at the scene of a domestic incident like drivers gawking at a motorway pile-up.

  Odette tossed her head and started walking away.

  Keeping her voice even, Rowan said, ‘Odette, darling, if you eat some of your chicken you can have pudding afterwards.’

  ‘Don’t want pudding.’

  ‘How about you just have some of the fries instead of—’

  Russ turned suddenly in his chair, his face an angry shade of red.

  ‘ODETTE! COME BACK HERE AND SIT DOWN!’ he bellowed, his deep voice echoing off the old stone walls. ‘NOW!’

  A hush fell over the little village square as all the other diners turned to look – a dozen conversations halted mid-sentence, forks frozen mid-air, wine mid-pour – eyes flicking between the tiny child and the tall man. Every customer and every waiter staring at the stand-off.

  For a moment, the only sound was a muffled chink of crockery from somewhere inside the restaurant.

  Russ was sitting next to me and I could feel the anger crackling around him like static electricity. I didn’t know where to look. I certainly couldn’t look at Rowan. I caught Jennifer’s eye, opposite me at the table, and saw my own expression mirrored there.

  Odette slowly returned to the table, slumping back in her chair and folding her arms.

  Rowan squirted ketchup onto the side of her daughter’s plate.

  ‘Thanks, Russ,’ she said quietly, her voice dripping with sarcasm in the silence. ‘But I don’t think that was completely necessary, was it?’

  Russ ignored her, pulling his daughter’s chair as close to the table as it would go.

  ‘Now eat,’ he said to her, his voice low and hard.

  Slowly, the murmur of conversation returned to the tables around us as people went back to their meals.

  With a tear running down her face, Odette picked up a single chip, dipped it carefully in the ketchup, and began to eat it with tiny bites.

  10

  An awkward silence descended on our table, broken only by the clink and tap of cutlery on plates, Odette sniffing back her tears and the bustle of the waiters around us. Russ picked up his own cutlery and began furiously sawing at his steak, the rest of us mutely resuming our meals. The atmosphere was as thick as soup, but no one wanted to be the first to break the impasse.

  Eventually, Alistair and Jennifer both spoke up at the same moment.

  ‘Hey, boys—’

  ‘Have you—’

  Jennifer gave an embarrassed smile and gestured to her husband to continue.

  ‘Hey, boys?’ Alistair said to his sons, leaning forward over his turkey escalope. ‘Do you know why this square is called Place du 14 Juillet?’

  ‘Nope,’ Jake said, not looking up from his plate.

 
; ‘To mark the fourteenth of July. It’s a big day in France – do you know why?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Can you guess?’

  Jake studiously avoided eye contact with his dad as he shovelled pommes frites into his mouth.

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘From the French Revolution,’ Alistair said, holding his hands up. ‘Bastille Day.’

  ‘Bastard day?’ Jake said, grinning.

  Ethan sniggered through a mouthful of food.

  ‘Jake!’ Jennifer said sharply. ‘You know what I’ve told you about swearing.’

  ‘Dad started it.’

  ‘Bastille Day,’ Alistair repeated. ‘When the revolutionaries stormed the biggest fortress in Paris. It was a great victory for the—’

  Jake gave an exaggerated yawn and turned back to his plate.

  ‘— common man,’ Alistair finished.

  Jennifer picked up the baton and the conversation drifted to a couple I knew vaguely through the PTA, Laura and David something, who had been the subject of a maelstrom of school-gate gossip in the last week of term.

  ‘Apparently,’ Jennifer said conspiratorially, ‘he was only doing thirty-six in a thirty zone when he was clocked by the camera. Not exactly dangerous. But he already had nine points, and he’d done that tedious speed awareness course already, so he was going to lose his licence. Only problem is, he’s a sales director for some big food company, drives every day for work.’

  ‘So he asked his wife to take his points?’ Rowan said. ‘Say she was driving, not him?’

  ‘That’s what I heard. She agreed, but somehow it came out that she was in Brighton that day – something she put on Facebook – and the police got to know about it, and the you-know-what really hit the fan.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ Rowan said. ‘So she’s taking the rap for it?’

  ‘They’re both taking the rap – he’s lost his licence, anyway, and she’s in hot water for lying to the police. They both blamed each other.’

  ‘Awful,’ Rowan said again.

  ‘Isn’t it? I heard they’d separated and he’s moved out.’

  Alistair said, ‘It was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back. There must have been other . . . concerns in their marriage, things we don’t know about.’