The Holiday Read online

  Of all my friends, she was the one that Sean got on the best with. They had always kept in touch – even while she was working abroad – in a way that none of my other friends had. They would exchange jokey texts about shared interests, about sport, films and home town reminiscences, that I was only ever on the periphery of, never really involved in.

  Izzy had ended up getting engaged to Sean’s best friend, Mark. But the marriage had never happened – and I didn’t want to think about that, about what had happened to him. Not now.

  I sipped my coffee.

  ‘When do we get to meet him, this new chap?’

  ‘Not for a bit.’ She gave me a wink, her eyes twinkling. ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘There you go, being cryptic again.’

  She fingered her necklace, a cloudy green stone surrounded by a crescent moon, rolling the slim leather cord between her fingers.

  ‘It’s just going to need some careful handling, that’s all.’

  ‘Is he the shy, retiring type?’

  ‘Not exactly. There aren’t many of them from my home town.’

  ‘He’s from Limerick too?’

  She nodded. ‘Spooky, isn’t it? How things turn out? Spend half your life abroad and end up seeing someone who grew up a mile from your house.’

  I suddenly realised what she meant, my heart dropping into my shoes. Surely she couldn’t possibly be so brazen about it, could she? In front of me, talking to me? But that was Izzy all over – it always had been. She had always been a straight talker, never sugar-coated anything, never compromised, never took the easy path. There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting. That was her way, her Buddhist faith.

  And that’s why she can’t keep a man, Russ had once said in an unkind moment.

  I tried to smile along. Just keep smiling. ‘Oh my God, Izzy.’

  ‘What?’

  Keeping my voice level, I said, ‘He’s married, isn’t he?’

  Izzy raised an eyebrow, fixing me with a weird look. ‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’

  ‘But is he?’

  ‘What makes you think it’s even a he?’

  ‘Well, your previous boyfriends, for one thing.’

  ‘This is true.’

  ‘So: married?’

  ‘Are you asking that question as an officer of the law?’

  ‘Of course not. And us CSIs are civilians, anyway. I’m asking as your friend.’

  ‘Can’t tell you yet. Soon.’

  ‘Does his wife know?’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘I think there might be . . . suspicions.’

  The question that she had never really answered came back to me, pushing its way to the front of my mind.

  Why did you come back to the UK, Izzy? Why now?

  All of a sudden I was seeing that question in a whole new light.

  Before I could decide what to think about Izzy’s revelation, Odette marched up to us with a look of utter determination on her face. She was in a pink sparkly swimming costume, with pink armbands, pink goggles on her head, a pink inflatable ring around her midriff and a blow-up dolphin under her arm. Also pink.

  She planted her feet apart, fists on her hips.

  ‘Right,’ she said, her high voice cutting across our conversation, ‘who wants to go to the beach?’

  15

  The beach at Cap d’Agde was crowded.

  The Mediterranean was a brilliant, sparkling blue, small waves whipped up by a gentle onshore breeze that brought a note of coolness to the merciless midday sunshine. Our little group was subdued after last night, our towels grouped around a pair of large parasols, bags and books and a big blue cool box piled at the centre of our encampment. The smell of suntan lotion mingled with a salty breeze off the sea and cigarette smoke drifting over us from a French couple nearby. I rubbed suntan lotion into Lucy’s back and shoulders as she held her long blonde hair out of the way with one hand, thumb-typing on her mobile with her other. I was glad to be here, glad to be distracted – in the thick of things – rather than back at the villa, letting my mind wander to dark places. I felt as though I was living in some TV drama, and everywhere I looked a camera was zooming on each of my best friends’ faces, shouted accusations coming one after another.

  Is it you? Or you, or you?

  Sean had been more attentive than usual, carrying bags, setting up umbrellas, fetching chilled water and snacks for me and the kids. Was he trying extra hard because of what he’d done? What he was still doing?

  Jennifer was beside me on a large straw mat, propped up on her elbows, surveying the packed beach around us. A serious-looking paperback – The Optimistic Child: A Revolutionary Approach to Raising Resilient Children – lay untouched on the sand next to her. She had been a star athlete when we met, playing tennis and hockey in the national university leagues. At five feet ten, she was the tallest of the four of us and had managed to maintain a lean, strong physique with a weekly routine of tennis, Pilates and jogging. There had been a time when I didn’t particularly enjoy being next to her on the beach, or at the pool, or anywhere in a swimming costume. I was the pale Englishwoman, always trying – and never quite succeeding – to get back to my wedding day weight, next to this toned, tanned Californian who never appeared to put on a pound.

  I thought I had got over that particular insecurity. Maybe not. It seemed to have returned, with a vengeance, today.

  ‘We seem to have chosen the wrong day to come to the beach,’ I said. ‘It’s like half of Béziers is here.’

  ‘Isn’t Cap d’Agde supposed to be a nudist beach?’

  ‘That’s around the headland, a bit further up. Why, do you fancy it?’

  Jennifer laughed. ‘Are you kidding me? Lots of old guys with their junk hanging out? Ee-yew.’

  ‘Better a busy beach than a naked beach, then?’

  ‘For sure. The boys like it, too.’ She indicated a small inlet where Jake and Ethan were busy digging in the sand. ‘It’s so lovely to see them playing for once, properly playing, like they used to. Like children should play. Rather than sitting in a dark room staring at a screen.’

  Her two boys were building a dam across a little stream running down to the sea. Jake was on his knees, piling up sand, while his younger brother circled him, pointing and directing operations. They were both thoroughly absorbed in their game. It was odd – sweet, but still a little odd – to see these two lanky teenagers engaged in the same beach games they would have played when they were toddlers.

  I finished rubbing lotion into Lucy’s back. She smiled a thank you and lay face-down on her towel, her skin glistening in the sun. Neither of us had mentioned our conversation last night, but she seemed a bit better today, a bit calmer. She was getting on well with Jake and Ethan, which I was pleased about. Something to take her mind off things, keep her from brooding so much.

  ‘Sometimes I forget that your boys are only just in their teens,’ I said. ‘Since they got so tall.’

  ‘Jake’s already bigger than Alistair, you know,’ Jennifer said. ‘Won’t be long until Ethan gets there too. It feels so strange to suddenly become the smallest one in the family.’

  Sean had taken Daniel to the beach café for an ice cream. Russ lay flat on his back in the shade of a big beach umbrella, straw hat over his face, pure brandy sweating out of his pores. I’d never thought you could actually smell the alcohol coming off someone’s sweat, but today I could. It was coming off him in waves, a sickly-sweet odour that hung around him and snatched at your nostrils when you got too close.

  Jennifer sat up, resting her chin on her knees. ‘I’m sorry about earlier,’ she said to me. ‘Sometimes I just . . . I don’t know, open my mouth without thinking, I guess.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I know what you were trying to say.’

  She smiled, staring across the sand towards her boys. ‘Can you imagine life without them?’ she said quietly.

  ‘Who?’
<
br />   ‘Your children.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Seems impossible, doesn’t it, that once upon a time we were just us? Alone, I mean. Flying solo, no kids, no husbands.’

  Izzy spoke up without opening her eyes. ‘Some of us still are.’

  Jennifer gave a little start of surprise. ‘Oh! I thought you were asleep. Sorry, Izzy, I didn’t mean anything by it.’

  Izzy smiled and turned over onto her front. ‘It’s fine. Flying solo has its advantages.’

  Jennifer smiled, embarrassed, and waited for her to settle.

  ‘When we first met,’ she said, ‘it seems like another life, a different lifetime. Do you think it’s changed us?’

  I shrugged. ‘Of course. It’s inevitable, isn’t it? If we were still the same now as we were twenty years ago, that would be . . . weird. Life shapes us, doesn’t it?’

  In good ways and bad, I thought, trying to work out where Jennifer was heading with this.

  ‘I mean it changes everything.’

  ‘I don’t know about that – I still feel like who I was back then. Just a bit more sceptical.’

  ‘I remember when Jakey was tiny, probably six months or something, and I was already just pregnant with Ethan. The three of us went to Cromer for a week, to be by the sea. And while we were there we went out on a boat trip along the coastline, just for an hour or so. I was holding Jakey in my arms, and I looked at Alistair and knew, with absolute certainty in that moment, that if the boat went down and there weren’t enough life jackets – and I could only save one of them – I would save Jake without even a second’s hesitation. Not even a second. I would watch my husband drown if it meant saving my baby. It was like a scientific fact, like gravity; you couldn’t argue with it or deny it. And before I knew what I was doing, I could hear myself telling him this – I just came straight out and said it, without really realising I was saying it. I felt awful. But it was true.’

  She fell silent for a moment, the breeze coming off the sea ruffling her blonde hair.

  I said, ‘That’s natural, I suppose. A mother’s instinct.’

  ‘Yes, but do you know what Alistair said? He said he was just thinking the same thing. That he would save Jakey if he could only save one of us. So we both recognised, in the same moment, that each would sacrifice the other if it meant saving the baby.’ She was smiling a little now, shaking her head. ‘At that moment, sitting on that boat and feeling a bit seasick in Cromer harbour, it felt that something changed between me and Alistair. Changed from it being about me and him, into something else. Like it was the end of one chapter in my life and the start of another.’

  I didn’t know what to say in response. This weekend, since seeing the messages on Sean’s phone, I’d felt that a chapter in my life was about to end, too. Rolling grains of sand between my thumb and forefinger, I wondered if Jennifer would be the cause. Tall, beautiful Jennifer, who’d turned Sean’s head when we first met as teenagers. Tense, worried Jennifer, who’d given off an air of brittle unease since we arrived in France.

  She asked, ‘Have you ever thought that too? About Sean?’

  I shrugged, staring out at the ruined fort that occupied a tiny island in the bay. ‘Not in so many words. But I suppose we’d all say the same thing, wouldn’t we? We all put our kids first: it’s what we’re programmed to do.’

  ‘It’s just that I worry about them so much,’ Jennifer said. ‘All the time. I can’t switch it off. I’ve tried to, but I can’t.’

  ‘Same here. But Lucy and your boys will be at a point soon where they’re big enough to look after themselves.’

  ‘Can’t imagine that. They’ll always be my boys. Always.’

  I looked around briefly to see who might be listening in. Izzy seemed to be dozing again. Russ was dead to the world, face covered by his hat. Alistair had wandered off somewhere to take pictures. The others had gone to get an ice cream and find out about renting a pedalo.

  A little way out to sea, flying low and slow, a small plane trailed a long banner advertising Luna Park fairground.

  Leaning closer to Jennifer and lowering my voice, I said, ‘Is everything . . . all right?’

  She looked up. ‘Of course. Everything’s fine. What do you mean?’

  ‘You just seemed a little, I don’t know . . . What you said earlier about life changing people. Sounded as if you had something on your mind.’

  Jennifer looked away then, her mouth set in a hard, straight line. She turned back and seemed about to answer when Ethan wandered up, his hairy legs covered in a layer of sand.

  ‘Is there anything to eat, Mum? I’m starving.’

  Jennifer reached into the cool box and held out an apple to her younger son.

  He frowned. ‘Is there anything else? Any biscuits?’

  ‘Just fruit and water.’ She leaned forward and put the apple in his hand.

  Rowan returned from the café, holding three ice lollies in their wrappers. She looked around. ‘Where’s Odette? Was she playing with you and your brother?’

  ‘Nope. Not seen her.’

  ‘I thought she was with you.’

  ‘She was for a bit, but she kept kicking holes in our dam. Said it was boring.’ He took a huge bite out of the apple. ‘Said she was coming back here.’

  ‘Well, where is she?’ She looked at her sleeping husband, laid out on his towel. ‘Russ?’

  Ethan took another bite from his apple, shading his eyes with one hand as he scanned the beach. ‘Is that her, over there by the water?’

  16

  It was Odette. Standing at the water’s edge, sun glinting off the shiny panels on her pink bathing costume, ankle-deep in the lapping surf. The tide was out and it was a good fifty or sixty metres away from our spot on the beach. It made me uncomfortable, seeing her alone near the water.

  Rowan put a hand to her chest. ‘Why is she on her own?’ She raised her voice and waved both hands over her head. ‘Odette!’

  As we watched, a tall figure walked up to her. Bent over to talk, before taking her hand. A man in baseball cap and sunglasses, his shirt open. I only needed to see him for a split second to know who it was. His stride, his profile, the way his shoulders moved, the way he held her hand.

  Sean.

  Hand in hand, he walked Odette back to our little encampment of towels, Daniel trotting along beside him carrying two big bottles of water.

  Rowan went down on one knee, taking her daughter gently by the shoulders.

  ‘You gave me a fright, Odette,’ she chided. ‘You must promise that you’ll never go into the sea again without someone to look after you, OK? Do you promise?’

  ‘Wasn’t in the sea,’ the little girl mumbled, stubbing at the sand with her toe. ‘Only in the tiny waves.’

  ‘Russ?’ Rowan said, her face lined with worry. ‘Why weren’t you with her?’

  Russ sat up. ‘Eh?’ He blinked in the bright sunlight. ‘She was supposed to be playing with the boys, making a dam. I told her not to go into the sea without me, but she doesn’t bloody listen.’

  ‘Perhaps if you weren’t sleeping off a hangover,’ Rowan said, her voice rising, ‘you would have noticed her in the water on her own! Christ, you’re so irresponsible!’

  ‘It’s all down to me, is it? As usual.’

  Odette whispered something into her mother’s ear.

  Rowan frowned. ‘What do you mean, honey?’

  In reply, Odette turned to look at Jake and Ethan, pointing her tiny index finger at them. ‘It was the boys,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘What was, honey?’

  ‘Their fault.’

  Rowan frowned over at the two teenagers.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Wanted to play with them but Ethan said I couldn’t, said I wasn’t allowed.’ Her index finger prodded the air for emphasis. ‘He told me to go and play on my own, in the water.’

  Ethan’s face was a picture of calm. ‘That’s not true,’ he said, his voice steady. ‘She was
trying to tell us what to do all the time, she wanted to build a fairy castle instead of a dam. She was kicking holes in it, letting the water through. Then she said she wasn’t playing and stormed off.’

  ‘Never!’ Odette said.

  ‘Did!’ Jake said loudly. ‘She’s just trying to get us in trouble!’

  Sean held his hands up as more voices collided in disagreement.

  ‘All right, all right, the main thing is she’s safe now, right? So why don’t we all have an ice cream or something.’

  Rowan stood up and went over to Sean, hugging him tightly, arms clasped around his broad back. ‘Thank you, Sean, thank you,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘I don’t know what to say. Thank you for keeping an eye out for her.’

  He hugged her in return, biceps flattened against her back.

  ‘No worries,’ he said quietly. ‘It was nothing.’

  They stood there like that, not saying anything else, simply holding each other tight.

  Two people, two parents, giving and receiving thanks for the safety of a young child.

  Holding each other.

  For just a little too long.

  Just as they were about to part, half-turning away from me, Rowan turned her head and stood on tiptoes, her lips near his ear. Just for a moment. Sean tilted his head down so his ear was almost touching her lips. Her hands at the back of his neck. His expression softening into a smile. A few seconds, nothing more, then they moved apart into an awkward silence.

  Had I imagined it?

  Had she whispered something?

  What did she say?

  What was that?

  Finally, they separated. Rowan smiling at my husband, the hero.

  My husband, who seemed to be losing his way in life.