‘I know, but . . .’ She couldn’t explain. It was the loss-of-control thing, that was what was bugging her. It was the wanting Pete to sort it out, and not being able to ask him. Oh, it was just
everything
all of a sudden!
‘There’s the turning,’ Nell said, leaning forward and pointing just then, and Josie jammed on the brake.
Inner hope, the signpost read, and Josie steered the car into an even smaller lane than they were already on. ‘Inner Hope,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I almost thought you were making it up when you saw it on the map.’
‘I’m feeling more hopeful already,’ Nell said, wiggling her toes with a contented air. ‘Right then, who’s going to be first to spot the sea?’
It had gone past their usual lunchtime, and on any other day the boys would have been clamouring for food. Today, though, they seemed to have forgotten all about lunch, such was their excitement to be approaching the coast. A tense silence fell upon the car as Josie drove down a leafy lane, past a few houses and into a village.
‘There!’
‘The sea!’
‘I saw it first!’
‘No,
I
did!’
It lay in front of them, the cove: a sparkling bolt of blue sea with a sandy beach sloping up from it, and the headland rising a deep forested green beyond. A couple of sail-boats bobbed up and down on the water, and a dog bounded along the sand, its faint barking carried to them on the breeze.
Josie forgot all about the broken window for a moment as she drank in the view. She could smell the salty sea air through the open window and breathed it in hungrily. It smelled of escape. It smelled wonderful.
‘We’re here,’ she said, in a kind of wonder. ‘We made it.’
The village at Hope Cove was small, not much more than a pub, a shop and a clutch of hotels and B&Bs. It was quiet, too, after the half-term rush of two weeks before, the owner of one of the B&Bs told Josie. She booked them into two rooms for a week, and told them they’d picked a good time to visit. ‘It’s meant to be sunny for the next few days,’ she added with a smile at the boys. ‘I hope you two have got your buckets and spades with you!’
Ten minutes later they were all down on the beach. The boys, in trunks and sun cream, wasted no time in starting a castle and moat. Josie sat on the warm sand with her arms around her knees, staring at the waves as they crashed to shore. There was something hypnotic about the way the rollers came in relentlessly, their white foaming heads rising and falling in a rhythm of sound and movement ‘I feel really happy,’ she confessed to Nell. Is that awful of me? I can’t explain it. I want Pete to be here too, but I’ve kind of accepted that he isn’t, and won’t be.’ She shifted slightly, feeling the grittiness of the sand underneath her. ‘And at this moment, it’s actually bearable.’
Nell shuffled closer to Josie and put an arm around her. ‘You deserve better than him, you know,’ she said lightly. ‘He’s not good enough for you.’ She got to her feet and held out a hand. ‘Come on. Those boys are making a right pig’s ear of that castle. Not nearly enough shells for my liking. Let’s go and help.’
The next few days revolved entirely around beach life. Each morning dawned bright and warm, and the hours sped by in a pleasant haze of paddling, digging,
ice
lollies, sandy pants and sun cream. They went rockpooling in Thurlestone, the next beach along, catching blennies and red-eyed devil crabs, and even saw a wash of purple-rimmed jellyfish on the sand one day. ‘Come on, you two, who dares pick one up and chuck it at Mummy?’ Nell had teased, causing Josie to squeal and dart away.
Toby and Sam had barely mentioned Pete now that they were the kings of the
cove,
with their spades permanent fixtures in their hands. They had peeling noses and freckles, and berry-brown arms and legs. They whooped and yelled from dusk till dawn, and were quiet only when they stopped to eat There were no more wet beds from Sam, and a whole lot less sword-wielding from Toby. Displacement had definitely been the right solution, Josie thought in relief.
Yes, the days were easy. It was just the nights that were still long and dismal, as she tossed and turned in the sand-scratchy sheets of the bed. It was hard not to be swamped with thoughts of Pete the whole time. Josie still felt haunted by that scene in The Eagle – it seemed like a horrible dream, now, her marching over to the pair of them like that – and had replayed it countless times in her head. She kept thinking she could smell Sabine’s perfume, a musky, sexy sort of scent, as if it had caught on her somehow. The scent – phantom or not – made her feel nauseous. And whenever she did manage to fall into sleep, Josie dreamed about her rival every night. It was like being bewitched.
Still. She was glad they were away from home. In fact, she didn’t ever want to go back. Why would she? What did she have to go back for? The boys were busy all day on the beach here, and weren’t winding around her ankles like they did at home, demanding entertainment. And she didn’t have to face all the other mums and their sympathetic faces at playgroup and gym club either.
‘Sorry to hear what’s happened . . .’
‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help . . .’
Is it true, that Pete’s walked out?’
Yes! Yes! It was true, all right? It was like Chinese whispers, the way her bad news had spread through the neighbourhood, rushing from house to house like the wind, whispering into open windows and gusting through letterboxes.
‘Have you heard? Have you heard? He’s left her. Yes, for some young girl!
If she was brutally honest with herself, she was frightened of going home again. There. She’d admitted it. Frightened of having to mend all the pieces of her shattered life, jigsaw it all back together somehow, when she knew it would never fit properly again. It would be like a broken pot; you’d always be able to see the cracks, however carefully it was superglued. Any pressure and the whole thing would disintegrate again, implode.
It was all very well having Nell here, looking after her for the time being, but Nell wouldn’t stick around for ever. She had her own life to sort out. And then, when they drove away from Devon and Nell said goodbye and went up to Wales, it would be down to her, Josie, to soldier on alone. It was terrifying.
She punched her hard pillow into a more comfortable shape and racked her brain for a masterplan. What would feisty Nell have done in her place? Surely she wouldn’t have caved in and accepted Pete’s decision as pathetically as Josie had done? Surely Nell would be out there, fighting to give the relationship another chance if she believed it was worth it?
‘Did you think I’d crumble?’ she heard Gloria Gaynor sing in her head. ‘Did you think I’d lay down and die? Oh no, not I!’
Josie’s eyes opened wide in the darkness as the glimmerings of an idea appeared in her mind at last. Did she dare? Did she have any choice?
‘Peter Winter, I’m coming to get you,’ she whispered aloud. She went to sleep with a smile on her face, and dreamed of being held.
‘Good luck, and thanks. Thanks for everything.’ Josie threw her arms around Nell, not quite wanting to let go. Already Devon seemed like a rose-tinted dream. Saying goodbye to Nell felt like putting the lid on it all. Fun-time over.
Nell hugged her for a long time. ‘Thanks for having me,’ she said at last. ‘Thanks for kicking my arse about Gareth. It was just what I needed to hear. Let’s hope we both get our men back this week – on
our
terms.’
‘Yeah,’ Josie agreed fervently. ‘Let me know how you get on, won’t you? I’ll be thinking about you.’
‘Same here. You are doing
so
well, you know. Have you got your plan of action all worked out?’
Josie nodded. ‘Kind of,’ she said. A flurry of butterflies swirled around in her belly at the thought. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a lift to the station, by the way?’
Nell shook her head. ‘I’ll walk,’ she said. ‘It’s a gorgeous day.’
‘Bye then,’ said Josie, hovering on the doorstep.
‘See ya,’ said Nell, and then she was off.
Josie shut the door. It was Thursday morning now. They’d got back from Devon late last night No messages from Pete. No Pete camped out on the sofa. Only two terse messages on the answerphone from Barbara wanting to see the boys and demanding that Josie ring her back. Three sympathetic messages from her mum, asking if Josie wanted her to come and stay. And a whole number of beeps, where someone had phoned up and rung off without leaving a message. Lisa, probably. Not that Josie wanted to hear from
her,
of course.
Still. She had her plan now, didn’t she? She could wait.
Josie had woken at five-thirty, and had been so wide awake that she’d got up and done the first load of holiday washing before anyone else had even stirred. The boys were at playgroup now, the plants were all watered, the post opened and sorted, and the four cups of tea that she’d already had were sloshing around inside her.
She couldn’t put it off any longer. She was going to launch her first strike in the Win Back Pete campaign. The fight to save her marriage started here!
Pete worked in a dull grey office building on a horrible eyesore of an industrial estate, about two miles out of town. No wonder he was having a mid-life crisis, thought Josie as she parked the car a short while later. It was enough to make anyone feel depressed, coming to work in such an uninspiring place every day. Maybe that was the problem! If she could just persuade him to find a new job, it might be the kick-start he needed. Forget Sabine, forget all this other-woman shit . . . Maybe if she sent his CV off to a few recruitment agencies she could find a new job for him!
Josie looked at herself in the rear-view mirror. One step at a time, she reminded herself. She had to get him back before she could start interfering in his career.
She scrabbled in the glove compartment for her lipstick and rolled some on, smacked her lips and blotted them on a tissue. She checked her hair for dandruff-flake-free at the moment, she’d only just washed it that morning. All the same, she’d have to be careful to remember not to scratch her head at any time in his office. Freefall snowstorm was not the effect she was going for. Her chin was still flaky and dry, despite all the Vitamin D it had had from the sun, and her forehead resembled a page of Braille with all the stress pimples on it. Never mind. She had a tan, at least. She always looked better with a tan. Besides, he wouldn’t be looking at her chin or forehead, would he? Not with the outfit she was wearing today.
Josie looked down and saw the plunging line of cleavage she had on display, tanned boobs pushed up together, jostling for space in the low V of her white blouse. Was this top a bit
too
revealing?
She hoicked it up a little, suddenly self-conscious, then pulled it back down two seconds later. Pete had never complained about it before. Quite the contrary. He’d always had a thing about her boobs, so who cared what the rest of Mortimer Insurance thought? Desperate times called for desperate measures and all that, and you had to go into battle prepared, didn’t you? She couldn’t just stroll in there without making an impression.
She sniffed her armpits surreptitiously. Blew into her hands and smelled her breath. Then she squared her shoulders.
So. Here she was, in the car park, just a few hundred metres away from an unsuspecting Pete. Was she actually going to go through with this? Did she really have the bottle?
She hesitated as she caught a glimpse of her cleavage in the mirror. Maybe this was a bit rash, a bit . . . desperate, after all. ‘What are you going to do?’ Nell had asked curiously, but Josie had avoided details.
‘Get him back, that’s what I’m going to do,’ she’d replied. Lock myself in his office, and seduce him over his own desk to remind him what he’s missing, she’d thought. She couldn’t risk telling Nell and seeing doubt on her friend’s face, though. Even a flicker of uncertainty would be enough to stop her doing this, she knew.
Josie swallowed. The thing was, now that she’d thought about Nell and the doubtful expression she might have – would have – worn at hearing Josie’s plan, her nerve was ebbing away. There was still time to abandon the whole thing, still time to change her mind . . .
She
should
change her mind. It was madness to imagine herself strutting brazenly into his office, charlies on display, grabbing him by the tie and pulling him towards her . . .
No. She simply could not do it. Would not.
She was just about to turn the key in the ignition and go home when she happened to see her wedding ring, still there on her finger, shining up at her where a shaft of sunlight had angled through the windscreen on to it.
And then she hesitated all over again.
It was a sign, wasn’t it? It was
definitely
a sign.
She took a deep breath. Be brave, Josie! Be bold!
She grabbed her handbag, checked the broken window was still wedged shut – it was, thanks to Nell shoving in a crease of cardboard to hold it up – and got out of the car.
Yes. Oh, yes. She
would
go through with it. She had to put up a bit of a fight, after all, didn’t she? She couldn’t just give up on her marriage!
‘Peter Winter, I’m coming to get you,’ she muttered again as she pressed the automatic locking button on her key. ‘Ready or not.’