A week ago, Josie would have disagreed outright with such a statement. In her opinion, life was better if you had everything mapped out. Husband – check. Children – check. House with all the trimmings – check. If everything was arranged and in its place, there was no room for the bad stuff to sneak in and ambush you.
That was what she’d thought a week ago, anyway. Now that her life had been invaded by turmoil and chaos, Josie couldn’t do anything other than get through each day as it came, and be grateful if everyone was OK at the end of it. Forget planning, forget mapping everything out. If her boys were happy right now, this minute, then that was good enough. That was enough to cling on to.
Nell stirred and pushed up her sunglasses to rub her eyes. Then she sat up, shaking grass from her hair. ‘Bliss,’ she said, stretching her arms above her head. ‘Fancy pushing on? We don’t have to go far, just look for somewhere to spend tonight.’
Josie nodded and got to her feet. ‘I’ll get the map,’ she said, grabbing the car keys from the table. ‘We can see if there’s anywhere interesting coming up.’
With a last quick glance over her shoulder at Toby and Sam – who were both astride one of the lower branches, looking through their curled-up hands like telescopes – Josie slipped on her sandals and walked to the car.
‘Off on holiday, are you?’ the orange-faced woman behind the bar asked as Josie came back through the pub with the road atlas.
Josie hesitated. ‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘It was a bit . . . spontaneous. We only decided to go last night.’
The woman raised her eyebrows. ‘Lucky you. I wish I could hop off for a jaunt like that,’ she said approvingly.
Not that lucky, Josie thought, but she said nothing, just smiled and made her way out to the garden again. It was funny the way other people made assumptions about your life, she thought. That woman really did think Josie was lucky, but then all she’d seen of Josie’s life had been her sons, and the fact that they could afford a nice lunch out together, and that now they were heading off on holiday, on a whim, just for fun!
Josie shook her head at the irony.
Actually, we’re going
away because my husband has left me for a marriage-wrecker, and I’m trying my hardest to stave off a nervous breakdown and make sure my boys enjoy themselves
, she added in her head.
That do you?
She spread the road atlas out, and she and Nell pored over the page.
‘I’ve never been to Stonehenge,’ Josie ventured, pointing at it.
Nell wrinkled her nose. ‘Salisbury is a bit of a ’mare to drive through,’ she said. ‘I think we should avoid it.’ She leaned over thoughtfully. ‘Where are we anyway? I can’t spot our village.’
Josie pointed it out for her. ‘So if we look around here in a – what? A thirty-mile radius,’ she began, ‘then . . .’
‘Oh! Look, we’re near Lymington,’ Nell exclaimed, not paying her any attention. Her eyes sparkled and she reached in her pocket for her phone. ‘That’s where Rob lives – well, not for much longer actually, according to my mum. Shall I ring him? I’m sure he’d let us stay.’
‘What, Rob as in your brother?’ Josie asked.
‘Rob as in my brother,’ Nell confirmed, pressing a button on her phone. She held it to her ear and waited, face alight. ‘Hi, stranger,’ she said, then laughed. ‘I’m OK, how are you? All packed?’
Nell began chatting away, and an image of Rob’s face floated up into Josie’s mind. Rob! She’d had an embarrassing crush on him when she and Nell had first been flatmates, gone all coy whenever she’d answered the phone to him and made sure she washed her hair and squirted perfume in her cleavage if she knew he was coming round. Not that he ever seemed to notice, too busy getting ready to go off on another adventure most of the time to give the eye to his kid sister’s mate, but all the same . . .
Josie found herself smiling to think of him. Rob was just as well travelled as Nell, and with a permanent tan, it seemed. She vaguely remembered him working in Nepal a few years ago, leading mountain treks or something equally exciting-sounding. Before that he’d been a volunteer in Mozambique, some kind of mechanic, she thought, and before
that
. . .
‘Excellent,’ Nell said, grinning as she hung up. ‘We can stay. I’m dead chuffed I’ve got a chance to see him; he’s off to Zambia at the end of the week. Some new voluntary thing, Mum said.’
Josie rolled her eyes and smiled. ‘Of course he’s off to Zambia. I’m amazed he’s actually in this country at all,’ she said. When had she last seen Rob? She’d been kept up to date by Nell of his various comings and goings, but the last time she’d actually clapped eyes on him . . . Oh, yes! Of course. It was just after she’d split up with Nick, before she started seeing Pete. Years ago. Josie frowned. There was something else. Something she hadn’t remembered. What had happened that night?
Nell rolled her hand into a tube and shouted through it to the boys. ‘Ahoy there, shipmates! This is your captain speaking!’
Toby shouted through his own small hand. ‘What?’
‘Land ahoy!’ Nell called. ‘Prepare to lower the gangplank and become landlubbers!’
‘Aye aye, captain!’ Sam yelled.
‘And then we’re going to go and meet my brother,’ Nell told them, with a grin. ‘You two are just going to love him.’
She’d drunk too much the last time she’d seen Rob, that much Josie could remember. She had a brief flashback of the beer garden swaying around her. Oh God! She hadn’t made a pass at him or something awful, had she? Why wouldn’t her brain remember?
‘Anchors away!’ Toby bellowed suddenly, and hurled himself off the branch.
‘Toby!’ she cried, just getting there in time to catch the full weight of him as he plummeted headlong. ‘Be careful!’ She hugged him, and then set him down and held out her arms for his more cautious brother. ‘Honestly, Tobes, you’re just an adrenalin junkie,’ she scolded, too relieved that she’d caught him to be cross.
Nell scooped him up and tickled him. ‘Just like my big brother,’ she said with a grin. ‘Didn’t I say that you were going to love him?’
It was almost five by the time they reached Lymington, a pretty town on the edge of the New Forest. ‘Nice,’ Nell commented as they drove past the old stone quay, where clusters of children were crabbing off the side.
Josie felt prickly with tiredness and almost immune to the charms of the cobbled streets she glimpsed, with their sweet little boutiques and ice-cream shops. ‘Look, boys, see all the yachts out there?’ she asked, leaning over the back seat to point out of Toby’s window. They were getting hungry and grouchy by now, and had started pushing each other in the back seat. They were immune to Lymington’s charms too.
‘Stop fighting,’ she snapped for the tenth time. ‘Toby, keep your hands to yourself. Sam, stop winding him up.’
Josie was starting to wish they were back home, jammed safely into the usual conveyor belt of routine. Tea . . . bath . . . story . . . sleep. She was already dreading putting the boys to bed in Rob’s house. They’d never been the most brilliant sleepers to start with, but were even worse when they were away from their own bunk bed. And she’d no doubt have to camp in with them – she was sure Rob didn’t live in a mansion where they could all have a room to themselves. And they d be waking each other up the whole night . . . How was she going to manage her nightly sobbing session when she had her boys snoring either side of her?
Oh, why had they come? Why had she let herself get talked into this? She wished they were round her kitchen table right now, eating shepherd’s pie together like they did every Wednesday night. Rob didn’t have kids of his own, he probably hadn’t even thought as far ahead as tea yet, he might not even have any food in the house . . .
‘Mum, he kicked me!’ whined Sam.
Josie swung round irritably. Sam’s nose was running and he had snot trails on his cheek. His mouth was turned down as if he were on the verge of tears. Toby was kicking a petulant leg in the air as if he might very well lash out again. He grabbed his sword with a glint in his eye and a sidelong look at Josie, deliberately provoking her.
‘Both of you just pack it in, or I’ll—’
‘Here we are,’ Nell said at that moment, pulling up outside a small terraced house at the end of a lane.
‘And not a moment too soon,’ Josie muttered, unclipping her seatbelt thankfully. ‘Right, boys, get your shoes back on.’
Nell got out of the driver’s seat and stretched her legs. Josie let the boys out of the back, helped them with their shoes and grabbed their overnight things. ‘Where are we?’ Sam asked, staring around as they went up Rob’s front path. The front garden was scruffy and unkempt, full of rubble sacks and old planks of wood.
‘We’re at Nell’s big brother’s house, remember?’ Josie said. ‘This is where we’re all going to sleep tonight. Like campers! Like . . .’
‘Well, I don’t like this house,’ Toby said loudly, and Josie shushed him as they approached the door.
‘It’s not very pretty is it?’ Nell agreed. ‘He’s been helping a mate, Mark, do it up,’ she explained to Josie, knocking on the door. ‘And, by a stroke of luck, Mark’s away all this week, hence room for us to stay.’
They stood there waiting for a few seconds, and an image of Rob as she’d last seen him rushed into Josie’s head. He’d just come back from a two-month holiday in . . . where had it been? Sri Lanka that time? . . . and was bronzed and unshaven, his tousled brown hair a shade lighter from the sun as it fell almost to his shoulders. She could picture him at the table in the pub garden now, could remember precisely the way he’d held his pint glass with both hands while he told them stories of his travels. He’d been wearing an unusual green disc pendant round his neck, and a white cotton shirt – really thick, heavy cotton, it had looked. She remembered wanting to stroke it. She remembered the way he’d made them all laugh with his stories.
Had
she made a pass at him? She remembered thinking about it, daring herself to . . .
‘All right?’ Nell asked, cutting into her thoughts. ‘You look a bit weird.’
Josie nodded, trying to shut out her memories. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.
And then the latch was clicking and the door was pulled open and there stood Rob, in a white T-shirt and jeans covered with daubs of paint, his hair shorter now and his chin smooth. ‘Hey!’ he cried, laughing, and reached forwards for Nell, hugging her to his chest. ‘Hello.’ His eyes fell upon Josie and he grinned at her, then stood back and crouched down to the boys’ level. ‘And look at you two!’ he laughed. ‘Top light-sabre,’ he added solemnly, which made Toby wriggle with pride.
Rob stood up and hugged Josie, two strong arms around her back. ‘Lovely to see you again, Josie B,’ he said into her hair. He smelled of soap and sawdust, clean and honest.
And then Josie had a sudden flashback to that warm, boozy evening: a moment – several moments actually – when she’d caught him looking at her in a strange, wondering way, holding her gaze with those blue eyes of his . . .
And the way he’d come back from the bar, and deliberately squeezed in next to her . . .
And then the two of them pausing before they said goodbye, something unspoken in the air before they went their separate ways . . . him to catch the night bus, her to walk home with her mates.
She distinctly remembered lying in her bed that night, wishing she’d leaned in for a kiss. Wishing she’d asked him back to her place.
And then, of course, two weeks later she’d met Pete and Rob had been forgotten. Until now.
Don’t be silly, Josie, she told herself, as Rob let go of her. You must have imagined it all. Don’t be ridiculous!
‘Come on in, guys,’ Rob said, stepping back so they could walk into the hallway. ‘Anyone hungry?’
‘Me!’
‘Me!’ shouted the boys at once.
‘Anyone like shepherd’s pie? Made with real shepherds?’
There was a pause while the boys thought about it. ‘Yes!’ ‘Me!’ they yelled.
‘And me makes three,’ Nell added, with a laugh. ‘How about you, Jose?’
‘What? Um . . . Yes,’ Josie said, snapping herself out of her reverie. She turned to close the front door behind her, thankful that Nell couldn’t see the strange expression she knew was on her face.
I’ve not had enough sleep lately, she told herself sharply. And that half of lager has gone straight to my head. My mind is playing tricks on me!
But there was just something about Rob’s low, amused
voice,
those blue eyes of his that made her feel twitchy.
You’re being silly, she told herself again, following Nell as she headed towards the kitchen. This is called Misplaced Attention Syndrome and it’s totally because I’m missing Pete. She gave her shoulders a shake in an attempt to throw off her strange feelings. And then she put a big smile on her face and caught up with Nell.
When the shepherd’s pie had been well and truly polished off – the coincidence of it hadn’t been lost on Josie – Rob showed them where they’d be sleeping. ‘The boys can have my room,’ he said, ‘and you and Josie can sleep in Mark’s room, Nell. Is that OK?’
‘Where are you going to sleep, then?’ Nell asked.
‘On the sofa,’ Rob replied.
‘Are you sure?’ Josie asked. ‘I can sleep with the boys, and you and Nell go in together if you want.’