‘So, can we have a dog, Mum?’ Freddie asks as they all trot downstairs.
‘Oh, Freddie, don’t start that now …’ She zips up the children’s overnight bags which are packed and waiting in the hall.
‘But you promised!’ he exclaims.
Kerry sighs, calculating how much there’s still to do – breakfast, washing up, the gathering together of the last of her own bits and pieces – before she can be granted her small blast of freedom.
‘I can’t think about getting a dog right now,’ she tells him, filling two bowls with the only cereal her children will tolerate (virtually pure chocolate –
confectionery
, not breakfast, as Rob once pointed out).
‘Why not?’ Mia asks, fiddling with the banana-shaped hairclip at her forehead.
‘Because I’ve got too many other things to think about right now.’
‘What things?’
Oh, you know – getting this house sorted out and you two settled into your new school, not to mention figuring out how I’ll earn enough money and make some friends – you know, have an actual adult to talk to occasionally …
‘Just things,’ she says, turning away to make coffee.
‘Daddy would get us a dog,’ Mia says with a sigh.
‘Yeah,’ Freddie snarls. ‘We’ve got the meanest person on earth as our mummy.’
*
Anita is clearly
not
the meanest, most despicable person on earth, as Freddie and Mia are delighted to be having a sleepover at her place tonight. Having grown up in Shorling, where Kerry first met her during one of her numerous holidays to Aunt Maisie’s, Anita and her family headed inland as soon as the Cath Kidston wellie brigade surged to the coast.
‘Can’t stand it,’ Anita had announced at the time. ‘It’s all artisan-this, artisan-that. What if I want a completely un-artisan pint of milk or some frozen peas?’
The final straw had been trotting along to the cheap and cheerful kids’ clothes shop, from which Anita had managed to kit out her four children, and discovering it had turned into a chi-chi boutique selling cashmere pashminas for babies.
‘Wish they still lived in Shorling,’ Mia declares as they turn off the main road and follow the twisting lane towards Anita’s Sussex village.
‘Me too,’ Kerry says, more forcefully than she means to.
‘Did they move ’cause
we
live there?’ Freddie asks.
‘No, of course not,’ Kerry laughs, glancing back at him. ‘They came here a couple of years ago, long before we thought of moving to Aunt Maisie’s. Anyway, they’re not too far away. Only forty-five minutes. Look – can you see the church spire in the village? We’ll be there in a few minutes …’
‘Yey!’ he cries, unclipping his seatbelt in readiness and ignoring Kerry’s barked command to put it back on again. Minutes later they are pulling up outside Lilac Cottage, the ramshackle house which Anita and her husband Ian plan to renovate, but haven’t got around to yet.
‘So it’s the big surprise today,’ Anita says, hugging her friend as their children greet each other in a whirl of excitable chatter.
‘Yep.’ Kerry smirks. ‘Scare the socks off him, poor sod. He’ll probably have a cardiac arrest.’
Anita laughs as all six children descend on a tray of just baked, as yet un-iced cakes. Cramming their mouths, they surge as one – tailed by Bess, an excitable spaniel – into the living room where the TV is turned on at deafening volume.
‘Our mummy doesn’t like dogs,’ Freddie announces loudly, causing Kerry to laugh mirthlessly as Anita hands her a mug of tea.
‘Bad, bad Mummy,’ Anita teases her. ‘Imagine, not wanting to be wading through great drifts of hair and being hammered with vet and kennel fees.’
‘I know. I’m such a bloody kill-joy, aren’t I?’ She sinks into the faded sofa, nudging aside a distinctly doggie-smelling blanket. Everything about Anita’s house is tatty but immensely comfortable. Armchairs and rugs are strewn with dog hair and toys, and scratched internal doors are further evidence of canine presence. Anita recently told Kerry with a resigned shrug, ‘What we’ve done, you see, is the
opposite
of one those home make-overs.’
‘Our goal is to actually destroy this place,’ Ian had laughed with a roll of his eyes. Although his work as a marine engineer takes him away for weeks at a time, Kerry slightly envies their marriage. (‘Oh, he ticks all the boxes,’ Anita, ever the pragmatist, once joked.) Whereas she’d once found Rob at his laptop at 2 a.m., sweating over his Style
Tip of the Month page, Kerry can’t help thinking of Ian’s job as
proper work
. Not that penning
Cuckoo Clock
songs could remotely be called that, of course.
Anita takes a seat beside Kerry and pushes back a mass of light brown curls. ‘A home-made cake, your
gorgeous dress and blow-dry …’ she remarks. ‘Poor Rob’ll think you’re having an affair.’
‘Probably,’ Kerry agrees. ‘I’ve even booked a restaurant for tonight – a little Thai place where we went for our first proper date.’
‘You two are
so
romantic.’
‘D’you think so?’
‘Oh, come on, Kerry. You know much Rob adores you. He’ll be bowled over by this. What are you planning for tomorrow?’
‘A long lie in, hopefully. Then we’ll head back here to pick up the kids about two-ish, if that’s okay with you …’
‘No rush,’ Anita says firmly. ‘They’ll be as happy as Larry all together. Just make the most of your weekend.’
Kerry glances over to where Ruby, Anita’s only daughter, has wandered into the kitchen with Mia.
‘We didn’t win the sandcastle competition last year,’ Ruby complains. ‘It wasn’t fair. Ours was the best, wasn’t it, Mum?’
‘It was pretty impressive,’ Anita says. ‘Why don’t you join forces with Freddie and Mia this year? I’m sure you could come up with something amazing …’
‘D’you still go back to Shorling for that?’ Kerry asks, remembering her and Anita’s unsuccessful attempts to win when they were their daughters’ ages.
‘Yep, never miss it, even though the stakes are much higher these days. Remember when it was just plain old castles? We’re talking complex architectural structures now. Last year, the winners built Buckingham Palace and even had little guards in front with fluffy black hats made from glove fingers.’
Kerry shudders. ‘Good God. That must’ve been the parents’ work, surely.’
‘Of course it was,’ Anita says with disdain. ‘Kids barely get a look-in these days.’
‘Can’t we do it together?’ demands Mia, looking hopefully at Ruby.
‘Well,’ Kerry says, ‘if it’s okay with everyone …’
‘’Course it is,’ Ruby declares.
Anita laughs. ‘There you go then. Team Tambini–McCoy!’
‘We can plan it today,’ Ruby adds, while Mia crams another cake into her mouth.
Anita turns back to Kerry and grins. ‘Just like us, aren’t they, when we were that age?’
Kerry nods, overcome with a wave of affection for her friend.
‘
Who’s
just like you?’ Mia asks.
‘You two,’ Kerry says, smiling. ‘Anita and I were your age when we first became friends, did you know that?’
Mia nods. ‘Uh-huh. You were on holiday and had no one to play with …’
‘… And there she was,’ Kerry continues, ‘this wild little girl in a grubby T-shirt and knickers with a bucket of mussels that she’d collected. Hey,’ she adds, ‘maybe that’ll happen to you too, Mia. You’ll find a best friend just like that, the way I did.’
‘Ruby’s my friend,’ Mia says simply, taking her hand.
‘Of course she is,’ Anita says. ‘Anyway, maybe we’d better let Mummy get off to see your daddy now?’
‘I suppose I should.’ Kerry gets up, quickly brushing Bess’s hairs from her dress. ‘Thanks so much for this – I really owe you one.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Anita says firmly. ‘And listen, you scrub up very well, Mrs Tambini. I have a feeling Rob’s in for a pretty special birthday.’
Kerry glances down at her red dress. ‘I just wanted, you know … a big ta-daaaa moment when I walk in through that door.’
‘It’s ta-daaaa all right,’ Anita laughs.
It takes a full ten minutes for Kerry to say her goodbyes, and Anita and all six children come out to see her off. As Kerry finally drives away, she glances at the paper carrier bag on the passenger seat, containing Rob’s birthday cake in its huge, square tin. Ignoring the twinge of doubt in the pit of her stomach, she tells herself that she’s doing the right thing.
Rob is slumped over the washbasin in Nadine’s bathroom, breathing deeply and trying not to throw up. It’s gone ten and there are two missed calls from Kerry on his mobile. How did he manage to sleep in with the traffic noise and merciless sunlight streaming in through Nadine’s huge living room window? Booze, of course. Far too much of it, on a virtually empty stomach too. All he ate last night was a meagre slice of lemon cake.
The thought of Kerry having phoned, and the prospect of explaining where he’s been, causes Rob to retch painfully into the washbasin. So what
did
happen last night? He has absolutely no recollection. Oh, he remembers the early part all right – being made a fuss of at Jack’s, like he actually belonged in the new team, then coming back to Nadine’s and her quizzing him about moving to Shorling, then … just a big, fuzzy blur. Surely, he tries to reassure himself, the very fact that he can’t remember anything would indicate that nothing went on? God, he hopes so. He has never once felt even the faintest urge to sleep with another woman and, despite Nadine’s obvious attractiveness, the very possibility that it might have been on the cards hadn’t even occurred to him last night. Perhaps she’d been drunker than she appeared, and had just happened to stumble onto the sofa bed and under the covers, wrapping her naked body around his entirely by accident. After all, mistakes happen. Eddy is always regaling the office with the time he peed into a former lover’s clarinet case, and how he once tried to exit a girl’s bedroom via her wardrobe …
Rob glances up dizzily from the plughole and focuses on a glass bowl sitting on the windowsill. It contains those effervescent ball things for the bath. Mia had some in her stocking last Christmas, he recalls with a twist of acute discomfort, containing secret glitter which clung to the sides of the bath for weeks. Nadine’s chalky orbs are encrusted with shrivelled petals, suggesting to Rob what his traumatised liver might look like right now.
Oddly enough, gazing steadily at the bath bombs is helping him to untangle his thoughts. By now, he’s managed to convince himself that he simply fell asleep last night. Yep, he’d definitely have been too drunk to manage anything else. Thank Christ for the withering effects of alcohol on a man’s ability to ‘perform’, as they rather cringingly describe it in
Mr Jones
(it always makes Rob think of bounding into a woman’s bedroom brandishing flaming torches, followed by a naked cartwheel).
We didn’t do anything
, he tells himself firmly, peering at his waxy reflection in the mirror.
Even if I’d been able to, which I definitely wouldn’t, part of my brain would have yelled ‘Stop!’
Yet there’s still the tiniest, niggling doubt, and he needs to know for sure. Could he possibly think of a way of asking her without it sounding completely insulting? ‘Er, I know we had a really nice time last night, but, um … would you mind filling me in on the details? It’s just a bit … hazy.’ Which leads him to picturing Nadine and Eddy having a good old chortle in the office first thing on Monday morning. They
did
have a bit of snog, Rob recalls now as bile rises in his throat, but that’s not the end of the world.
I only kissed her
, he imagines himself confessing to Kerry, before the saucepan clangs over his head, rendering him unconscious on the kitchen floor.
Mopping a lick of sweat from his brow with Nadine’s fresh white towel, Rob considers what to do next. Hell, he’s already missed that first appointment. He’d better dress quickly, hurry home and get ready to show the next lot of people round the house. That would at least make him feel purposeful, which might help to cancel out the pool of unease currently simmering away in his stomach. They’re due at one, he vaguely recalls, and he needs to clear up before they arrive. Then he can head down to Shorling and carry on with his weekend as if nothing has happened. He needn’t even wake Nadine. Sure, it might be a little awkward on Monday, but he’ll steel himself and just be casual with her and find out the actual facts then. That’s Nadine sorted, he decides, inspecting his tongue in the mirror and deciding it looks corrugated. So what about his wife? He could confess everything (not that there’s anything
to
confess), but what would that achieve? Despite being apparently ‘good with words’, according to Eddy The Patroniser, he doubts if he could fully convey what actually happened (especially as he still can’t recall the details).
‘Rob?’ Nadine’s voice makes his heart jolt. ‘Rob? You okay in there?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he calls in an overly-bright voice through the locked bathroom door. No way he can disappear quietly now. He clears more foul-tasting gunk from his throat and spits it into the basin.
‘Want some breakfast, sweetie?’
Sweetie? Good lord … ‘Uh, no thanks.’ He shudders and splashes cold water onto his face. Then, after patting it dry, he unbolts the door.
Nadine is standing there in the cool white hallway, a tiny lilac T-shirt flung on over a pair of little fleecy tartan shorts. She’s not wearing a bra, which is distracting.
‘Hey,’ she says with a sleepy grin.
‘Hey,’ he says, focusing firmly on her face.
‘Are you
really
okay?’ She raises a dark brow, and the flecks of last night’s eyeliner around her cornflower-blue eyes are oddly fetching.
‘Well …’ He rakes back his hair and follows her into the living room. ‘Guess I overdid it a bit.’
‘It was your party, you’re allowed to.’ She takes his hand and leads him to the sofa which has already been folded away. ‘It’s okay, Rob,’ she adds. ‘It was really nice, actually …’
‘Was it?’ he croaks.