The Holiday Read online

  Whose midlife crisis had snowballed into an affair.

  Who had been lying to me for weeks, maybe months.

  Not for the first time, I wondered whether Rowan had brought us here to impress him, to impress my husband. If that was what was really going on. The free holiday and the villa and the champagne were all to impress Sean. An in-joke, of which only the two of them were aware. They had worked out a way to come away on holiday together – the rest of us just happened to have been invited along for the ride.

  Stop it.

  Stop. It.

  Russ extended a hand and Sean shook it, both men nodding awkwardly.

  Sean had strong hands. I loved his hands. They were already starting to darken with exposure to the Mediterranean sun. I noticed something else about him as he reached to drink from a bottle of water: a pale line of skin around the fourth finger of his left hand.

  Where his wedding ring should have been.

  17

  Ethan

  Ethan tore a bunch of dark grapes from the vine, picked the biggest one and put it in his mouth. He bit into it, the juice sweet and sharp on his tongue, chewing slowly to savour the taste. Turning away from Jake and spitting the pips on the ground before plucking another from the bunch, savouring the pop as the grape burst between his teeth. Pluck, chew, spit, repeat. He’d never been in a vineyard before. He’d never eaten grapes straight off the vine before, either. Always from the supermarket packet, always washed and rinsed because Jen – calling her that instead of Mum wound her up a treat – insisted they were washed, never eaten when they were even slightly soft or had been left out of the fridge or might have had flies buzzing around them.

  The still afternoon heat was brutal. He and his brother were in the middle of the vineyard down the hill from the villa, stretched out in the shade of a row of vines bushy with green leaves and fat red grapes. It was more private here; they couldn’t be seen from any of the balconies unless they stood up.

  Ethan propped himself up on one elbow, plucking another bunch of grapes from the nearest stem.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘are you going to ask her then?’

  ‘Ask her what?’ Jake said.

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Nope.’

  Ethan slid a grape between his lips.

  ‘Whether she’s with anyone.’

  ‘What the fuck do you know about it? About girls? About anything?’

  Ethan shrugged. It was one of his brother’s sure-fire wind-ups: girls. Wind him up and watch him go, and if he stood close enough when Jake kicked off, maybe – just maybe – Mum would notice him, too. He ran through a few options: straight to the point; or maybe the rumour about Rosie’s party; or the rich rugby boy; or go for the nuclear option? Nah. That was best kept for another time. Might as well get straight to the point.

  ‘So do you fancy her?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Jake said.

  ‘You do, don’t you?’

  ‘Fuck. OFF.’

  ‘That’s a yes, then.’

  ‘You’ve got literally no idea what you’re talking about. You haven’t got the first clue what I do or don’t think.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You’re such a twat.’

  ‘Oh, I’m a twat? That’s brilliant.’ Ethan reached for a lie with enough weight to do some damage. ‘I’m not the one making a twat of myself over some girl who’s done every lad in Year 11.’

  Jake’s head snapped around.

  ‘Say that again.’

  Ethan shrugged again.

  ‘Just saying what I’ve heard.’

  ‘You heard wrong,’ Jake said. ‘Way wrong. That’s total bollocks, what you’ve heard about her.’

  ‘OK, fair enough.’ Ethan paused a beat. ‘So you do fancy her, then?’

  Jake got to his feet, his hands tightening into fists. ‘You never know when to shut the fuck up, do you?’ He threw the half-eaten bunch of grapes he was holding into the undergrowth. ‘You never know when to stop.’

  ‘That’s funny, bro, that’s a good one.’ Watch him go. ‘Especially coming from you.’

  Ethan braced himself for the first blow.

  They used to fight a lot when they were younger. Ethan had figured out how to light the fuse at a young age: niggle – provocation – anger – confrontation – scrap. Dead arms, Chinese burns, barked shins, stinging ears, pulled hair, bent fingers and bruised balls on a daily basis. Then they had both started getting bigger, almost at the same time, and a few months ago things had got a whole lot more serious without either of them realising before it was too late. They found themselves having a next-level scrap, a full-on, proper, adult-sized fist fight over – Christ, Ethan had no memory of what even caused it, over something, anyway – and it had ended with split lips and black eyes, bloodied noses and bruised knuckles, Mum screaming at them to stop and Dad running downstairs and physically pulling Jake away from him, pinning him to a wall, Jake’s eyes crazy-wide, the way they always looked when he really kicked off. Ethan had grinned at him with blood on his teeth, dizzy from punches but jubilant, ready for round two. Blood on both of them, on their clothes, on their knuckles, big fat drops of it on the cream carpet. Mum had an absolute shitfit. It was kind of hilarious.

  That was the day Ethan discovered he liked the taste of blood in his mouth.

  But since then there had been an unspoken truce. Each knew the kind of damage he could do to the other. Jake was taller and had a longer reach, but Ethan had strength and power on his side. Both knew that whenever they had a proper fight now, both would end up bloodied – whoever won.

  ‘Stand up,’ Jake said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just fucking stand up and you’ll find—’

  He stopped mid-sentence, staring back up the hill.

  ‘What?’ Ethan said, following his brother’s stare.

  Lucy was walking towards them between the parallel rows of vines. Ethan sat up to get a proper look at her. She was wearing a white vest top and short cotton skirt, sunglasses on top of her head, blonde hair still damp from the beach. The white top was very white, almost dazzling in the bright sunlight, so that it was hard to look at her. She was all-right-looking, he supposed. Better than all right – she was hot. Tall, nice face, slim but with big tits, not much to fault her on, really. Way out of Jake’s league, although he didn’t seem to realise, which was pretty funny.

  She walked slowly, unselfconsciously, taking her straw hat off when she reached them.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

  ‘Not much,’ Jake said, trying for nonchalance.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Bit bored. You?’

  ‘God, yeah. This heat is savage, isn’t it?’

  ‘I kind of like it.’ He brushed a hand through his fair hair. ‘What do you reckon, then?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘This place.’

  ‘Pretty amazing,’ she said. ‘The pool’s great.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ethan had to agree: all in all this wasn’t a bad place. Not bad at all. Much better than the crap rentals they usually had to put up with on summer holidays.

  Lucy fanned herself with the straw hat, one hand brushing her long blonde hair back away from her face, before setting it on her head with the brim tilted back.

  She gave Jake a big smile. ‘It’s just so hot out here and there’s no shade at all, is there?’

  ‘Fancy a drink?’

  ‘What’ve you got?’

  Jake produced a half-sized bottle of vodka from the pocket of his black cargo shorts, unscrewing the cap and handing to her. She took a swig and grimaced as she swallowed, coughing as she handed it back to him.

  ‘Prefer it with a bit of coke,’ she gasped.

  ‘I’ll get some from the house, if you want.’

  ‘No, no.’ She laughed and held a hand up. ‘It’s fine.’

  Jake took a swig from the bottle and set it down in between him and Lucy.

  Ethan though
t about asking for a go on the vodka but didn’t want to give his brother the opportunity to say no, to embarrass him in front of her. He watched them chatting, his muggy older brother and this hot girl with her chest stretching her vest top. The beautiful people. Laughing together, having fun together, and she wasn’t even pretending this time like she sometimes did. The three of them went to the same comprehensive and knew each other as schoolmates – even though they were in different years – as much as they did family friends. Jake trying to be all cool and casual, Ethan thought, spitting another pip into the dry earth. It was obvious that his older brother didn’t want him to be here. Well, tough shit. I’m not going anywhere.

  ‘So,’ Jake said, turning his back on Ethan to block his view. ‘You OK?’

  Lucy nodded. ‘Yeah. Just want to get GCSE results day out of the way.’

  ‘Me too. Bet you’ll get all nines though.’

  She snorted. ‘Don’t know about that.’

  ‘Everything else . . . all right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She took another swig of vodka. ‘Peachy.’

  Ethan’s ears pricked up at her tone. There was a silence between the two older teenagers for a moment, as if something was passing wordlessly between them. Ethan leaned around to look at them but he was too late. The moment had gone.

  ‘Right,’ Lucy looked further down the hill, ‘who’s coming down to the woods, then?’

  She set off without waiting. Both brothers scrambled to their feet, one on either side of her.

  ‘Bit weird,’ she said, ‘all of us being away together, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, though,’ Jake said, kicking a rock out of the way with his trainer. ‘It was going to be crap otherwise.’

  ‘I’m glad you guys are here as well.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She smiled. ‘You can keep my annoying little brother entertained. Stop him from bothering me all the time.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Ethan added, ‘We’ll keep him out of your way, Lucy.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Hey, how was your birthday, Ethan?’

  ‘All right. Did Nando’s with some mates. As of last week I’m officially the same age as Jake.’

  Jake snorted. ‘No, Ethan, you’re not.’

  Ethan smiled to himself. It was one of the weird things about his older brother: they’d been having this same stupid argument every year for maybe the last ten years, and he never failed to get riled up about it. It was one of those old, reliable subjects that Ethan could always fall back on when he was bored and in need of some sport.

  ‘Technically, I am.’

  ‘Shut up, Ethan, you mug. I’m a year older than you.’

  Ethan smiled, half-turning to Lucy as they walked down the hill.

  ‘We’re both fifteen,’ he said. ‘His birthday is 19th August and mine’s 17th July, so every year there are like thirty-three days when we’re the same age. See?’

  Lucy looked from one boy to the other.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But not really the same,’ Jake said, gesturing with his hands for emphasis. ‘’Cause then we’d be in the same school year, and we’re not.’

  They walked on in silence for a moment through the gently sloping vineyard, dry earth scuffing beneath their feet.

  ‘I’m seventeen in September,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ve asked for driving lessons for my birthday.’

  ‘Bet you’ll smash it,’ Jake said.

  ‘My dad said he’ll insure me on his car if I pass. Want to be the first of my friends to drive.’

  ‘Cool,’ Jake said. ‘Hey, you know what? We could have a go here, if you want.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take one of the hire cars out. It would be a right laugh.’

  Lucy frowned, turning to look at him.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Why not? The roads are dead around here. Good practice.’

  ‘What about . . .’ she gestured back towards the villa. ‘The adults?’

  ‘They wouldn’t have to know.’

  Lucy looked across at him, trying to work out whether this was a joke.

  ‘Er . . . maybe. I’m not sure.’

  They reached the edge of the vineyard, the vines giving way to scrubby grass and a dense copse of trees, a path winding away from them in between oak, pine and some others that Ethan didn’t recognise from home. The three of them moved gratefully into the shade beneath their branches. Lucy took off her straw hat and fanned herself with it again.

  ‘Is this the boundary, then, the edge of the estate or something?’

  ‘Nah,’ Ethan said. ‘These woods are all part of it.’

  ‘What’s in there?’

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Dunno. Let’s find out, shall we? Come on.’

  He set off down the path into the trees, on his own.

  Jake turned to Lucy. ‘You coming?’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘It’s got to be cooler in the woods than it is out here.’

  18

  My book lay unread in my lap. Every time I picked it up and read a few lines, my mind slid off in another direction as I wrestled with the painful truth of my husband’s infidelity: the poison at the heart of our marriage.

  Sean had been upstairs having a nap since we returned from the beach. It seemed incredible to me that he could act perfectly normal, that he could appear normal, in the face of what he’d done and what he was still doing. How could he carry on this pretence so blatantly that he wasn’t even wearing his wedding ring any more? What had Rowan whispered to him at the beach? Was Russ right to suspect her of having an affair? It was exhausting thinking about it all the time. I sat up on the sunlounger and looked around. Russ was pushing Odette around the pool on a pink lilo. Rowan was nowhere to be seen. Alistair was wandering around the gardens with his mobile, snapping pictures of . . . I wasn’t really sure what he was taking pictures of. He turned his back to me and held up the phone again, zooming in on something. A bird in the tree, maybe? He was a bit too far away.

  I lay back on the lounger and closed my eyes, the bright sunshine an orange glow behind my eyelids. Tonight, the four of us were going out for dinner: Rowan, Jennifer, Izzy and me. I was going to have to be careful, keep my emotions in check, because right now every time I opened my mouth I felt like I was going to cry or confess everything – especially if someone tried to be nice to me. I was coiled up so tightly with worry and fear and desperation that it felt as if it might burst out of me at any moment. But I had to keep a lid on all of that long enough to make sense of what was happening. If I could get on the front foot, find out what Sean was doing, I could prepare myself for what was coming. And maybe that would mean a better chance of keeping my family together.

  A shadow fell over me, a figure blocking out the light.

  ‘Kate?’ It was Jennifer, the sun creating a halo of light around her head.

  I opened my eyes, summoning a smile.

  ‘Hi, what’s up?’

  ‘Have you seen Jake? Or Ethan?’

  ‘Not recently, no. Not since we—’

  ‘I haven’t seen them since we got back from the beach.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you tried texting them?’

  ‘Yes, but they’ve not replied.’

  ‘Maybe they’re in their rooms, or the games room?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve checked already. No sign of them anywhere.’ She threw a look at Rowan on the far side of the pool, then bent down over my sunlounger. ‘I think Jake was a bit upset.’

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘About what Odette said at the beach, that the boys had told her she couldn’t play with them.’

  I lowered my voice. ‘I don’t think she meant anything by it, did she? Maybe she was just a bit confused.’

  ‘Jake hates liars. He gets so wound up when people say things about him, when they try to get him in trouble.’
r />   ‘I don’t think she was doing it on purpose, Jennifer. She’s only five.’

  ‘That’s perfectly old enough to know what a lie is.’

  I sat up. ‘Look, do you want a hand looking for the boys?’

  Her expression softened. ‘Would you?’

  ‘Of course. I haven’t seen Lucy in a while, either. Perhaps they’re all hanging out together somewhere.’

  *

  The late afternoon sun was still strong and my sleeveless top was starting to stick to my back with sweat. Jennifer and I walked on through the vineyard, looking for the three teenagers, green creepers high on either side of us, calling their names as we walked towards the woods.

  At the edge of the vineyard there was an unmarked dirt path leading on through the trees. The path wound around a pair of towering oaks, their bark gnarled with age, past pine and tall, slender cypresses and olive trees that crouched low to the ground. The trees thickened as the path dropped into a dip, curving away, then up and around again, past a big standing rock and a fallen tree, exposed roots twisted like intestines spilling from a wound. A waist-high sign, faded and peeling with age, bore the word ATTENTION! in large red letters, above some other French that I didn’t quite understand. Below the text was an outline of a cliff face, rocks tumbling down the side.

  It was cooler here, the occasional call of birds the only sound above the whispering leaves in the canopy of the trees high above. We walked on, Jennifer quickening her pace and me hurrying to keep up. Ahead, the trees thinned out into a clearing, an open area where the sun was stronger, a dusty spur of open ground where the trees seemed to stop abruptly. A shaft of sunlight pierced the thinning tree cover and I was momentarily blinded. Blinking and raising a hand to the light, I looked up and caught a glimpse of red through the trees. A T-shirt?

  Jennifer broke into a jog, calling her boys’ names a bit louder.

  ‘Jake? Ethan?’

  I joined in.

  ‘Lucy?’

  We emerged into the small clearing and skidded to an abrupt halt.

  To the right, there was a sign indicating a steep path winding down to the gorge below. Directly in front were two olive trees, perhaps fifteen feet apart, the tattered remains of an orange plastic mesh fence hanging limply from each trunk. Between the two olive trees was a dusty outcrop jutting into empty air, a shelf of rock that led to nothing but a vertical drop straight down into the gorge below.