‘Stick that on your Style Tip of the Month page,’ she yells as she drives away.
‘
Why
can’t we have a dog?’ Freddie is standing, hands on hips, in nothing but a rather shrunken looking banana-yellow T-shirt.
‘There are lots of reasons,’ Kerry replies, assembling the picnic for when Anita arrives to whisk them all off to the beach. Thank God for her life-saving friend, offering to take all six children to the sandcastle competition, and allowing Kerry a precious couple of hours for a Private Talk with Rob.
‘What reasons?’ Freddie asks.
‘Freddie,
please
put some pants on. We don’t have much time …’ She frowns at the food laid out on the table. Although Kerry won’t be there, she feels it’s important to raise her game in the picnic stakes; hence the big tub of strawberries, the sliced peaches and nectarines and the home-made brownies dusted with icing sugar. There are egg mayonnaise sandwiches too, made from rough-hewn brown bread instead of the usual white sliced which her children prefer. Could she get away with sneaking in a bunch of those peelable processed cheeses which the kids love?
Making no move to acquaint himself with pants, Freddie stuffs a strawberry into his mouth. ‘What reasons, Mummy?’ he asks again.
‘Time, for one thing,’ she says briskly, packing the picnic into the hamper. ‘Dogs take a huge amount of time and effort. We’d have to walk him at least twice a day,
and
train him, and I don’t know anything about how to do that …’
‘I do! You say “Good boy” and give him a biscuit.’ He grins and reaches for a brownie.
‘Leave the food
alone
, Freddie. It’s for later. Anyway, there are loads of other reasons, like the vet’s bills and all the medicines dogs need …’ He frowns and prods at his genitals.
‘Please stop playing with your willy.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re poking about with the food, it’s not very nice …’ She glances up at the kitchen clock, a sense of dread pooling in her stomach as she realises that Rob is probably half-way to Shorling by now. Kerry has been so intent on maintaining a cheery demeanour in front of the children all week, she’s barely had a chance to figure out how she feels about last Saturday’s incident, and whether she’s still furious with him for spending the night with a teenager. Actually, she’s tried not to think about it too much – been in denial, probably. Which she suspects is terribly unhealthy and has probably triggered the start of an ulcer. Yet, even if he and Nadine
didn’t
do it, as he has vehemently claimed during their terse phone conversations, she has to admit that it’s still Not Right. In fact, the thought of being alone with her husband makes her feel quite nauseous.
Reluctantly, Freddie snatches a pair of pants from the radiator and pulls them on. ‘Everyone else has a dog,’ he mutters, reaching for his beloved black and orange tracksuit that’s strewn over the back of a chair.
‘You can’t wear that tracksuit,’ Kerry barks.
‘Why not?’
‘Because … because it’s too hot out there. You’ll be all sweaty and uncomfortable,
and
it needs a wash …’
‘It’s
fine
, Mum.’ He rolls his eyes, already pulling the wretched thing on. As Mia appears, brandishing her carefully drawn design for a potentially prize-winning sand sculpture – ‘That’s fantastic, darling,’ Kerry says distractedly – she realises she doesn’t have the energy to cajole him out of it. Anyway, at least he’s dressed
.
‘You didn’t look at it, Mummy,’ Mia huffs.
‘I did! It’s amazing. You’ve put so much thought and work into it …’
Mia scowls and slams her drawing onto the table. The jeans she’s wearing finish at her ankles, Kerry notices, and her once purple T-shirt has faded to a chalky mauve. Is it worth trying to persuade her to change? Probably not. With the picnic packed, and a bag of towels, plus numerous buckets and spades in readiness by the door, Kerry checks the time again. Anita is due any minute now. As soon as she and the kids are all safely installed in the competition area of the beach, Kerry will hurry off to meet Rob in Hattie’s, a chintzy tearoom at the far end of the seafront.
‘Auntie Anita’s got Bess,’ Freddie reminds her as she grabs a big plastic bottle to fill with diluted orange. She realises that the other children will probably have little cartons of organic apple juice, but it’s too late to worry about that now.
‘Yes, well, that doesn’t mean we have to have one, does it?’
‘But I want one! You said if I was a good boy and I
am
a good boy …’ He gives the elasticated waist of his tracksuit bottoms a fierce twang.
‘We’d never be bored if we had a dog, Mummy,’ Mia chips in. ‘We’d always have someone to talk to and be our friend.’
Something twists in Kerry’s stomach, and she busies herself by swilling out the bowl she’d used to make the egg mayonnaise.
‘But you do have people to talk to, sweetheart,’ she murmurs. ‘You have me and Daddy and all your old friends in London, and you’ll soon make new ones here …’
‘I won’t,’ Freddie says.
‘Why not?’ Kerry asks. ‘What about those nice boys we were chatting to on the beach yesterday?’
‘
They
had a dog …’
‘Yes, Freddie, but not everyone—’
‘I don’t
want
new friends,’ he barks at her. ‘I ONLY WANT A DOG.’ At which the doorbell pings, and Kerry almost weeps with relief as she rushes to greet Anita and her children at the door.
As she hugs her friend, amidst hugs and excitable chatter about multi-turreted sandcastles, she clearly hears Freddie muttering away in the kitchen.
‘I hate egg,’ he announces. ‘It stinks and Mummy does too.’
Here she comes, Rob notes with a surge of relief, as Kerry crosses the road towards the tearoom where he’s spent the last twenty minutes waiting for her. It’s a breezy, early September afternoon, and she looks …
normal
, he’s pleased to see, in jeans and a plain navy T-shirt – not that he didn’t like her in that red dress and heels. Actually, no, he
hated
the red dress and heels because the image of her all done up is intermingled with the horror of her throwing that cake at him.
Kerry pushes open the teashop’s glass door and marches straight for his table.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she says briskly, dropping her bag onto the floor and plonking herself on the spindly wooden chair opposite him. Her face is slightly flushed and make-up free, her long dark hair tied back in a ponytail with a few stray strands poking out.
‘That’s okay,’ he says, resisting the urge to reach straight for her hand. He can already detect a chilly vibe, which he’d expected, and is determined to do whatever it takes to put things right. This past week has been terrible. While he’s managed to scrape through five interminable days at the office – relieved that Nadine has been perfectly friendly, but not
overly
-friendly – he’s missed the children dreadfully, and been unable to quell the persistent sense of dread that he’s utterly screwed up his marriage. He’s been unable to sleep, and trying to write his first sex column for
Mr Jones
caused him untold grief. He sat up for hours in bed with his laptop, trying to dredge up something to write about foreplay ‘with a punchy edge’, when all he could think about was his wife yelling and him ending up splattered in chocolate frosting. In desperation, he’d rattled out a column about using food during sex. (It was sprinkled with phrases like ‘tasty treats’ and ‘finger-licking good’; the days of lengthy essays about classic Hitchcock movies were clearly long gone).
‘Just an Americano please,’ Kerry tells the waitress. ‘You having another, Rob?’ She eyes him coolly.
‘Um, no thanks.’ He glances at his cup of lukewarm coffee, knowing that a refill will make his nerves jangle even more alarmingly than they are now. The waitress glides away and a tense silence descends. ‘So, er … are the kids okay?’ Rob asks tentatively.
‘Yes, Anita’s with them on the beach.’
He nods. ‘That’s good of her. Um, but I actually meant, how have they been these past few days?’
Kerry smiles her thanks as the waitress places her coffee on the table. ‘They’re fine. They don’t realise anything’s happened, of course. Anyway, you’ve still spoken to them every evening.’
‘Yeah, I know. I’ve just been …’ He looks around, wishing she’d agreed to meet at the house, as he’d suggested, rather than in a cafe in the kind of town where you can’t paint your front door without it being trumpeted on the front page of the
Shorling Advertiser
. ‘I’ve been worried about them,’ he adds, taken aback by the intensity of Kerry’s green eyes. ‘Anyway, thanks for agreeing to see me.’
‘Of course I’d see you,’ she says tersely. ‘And the kids’ll be pleased to have some time with you later, especially with you being
ill
last weekend …’
This is what Kerry had told them: that a dreadful cold had caused him to stay in London last weekend, instead of seeing them on his birthday as planned. ‘Don’t make me feel worse than I do already,’ he murmurs.
‘Well, they were a bit put out that they couldn’t give you the cards they’d made, and now you’ve got get well cards waiting for you too. Your correspondence is starting to stack up.’
Get well cards.
God. The thought of Freddie and Mia busying away with their felt tips crushes something inside him.
‘What else could I do?’ she asks. ‘I couldn’t tell them what happened, could I?’
‘Kerry,’ he hisses, relieved that the other customers seem too engrossed in their own conversations to be listening in, ‘I told you, it was nothing.’
Her eyes narrow. ‘I still think it’s weird. Why didn’t you say straight away that you’d spent the night at her place?’
‘Because I knew you’d blow it up out of all pro-portion …’ A tall, statuesque blonde has wafted into the tearoom, and Rob’s heart slumps as she smiles in recognition. Her blondeness is a little brassier than the usual refined Shorling look, her jeans a tad on the tight side and her patterned top daringly low-cut. She is clutching the hand of a small child with a tangle of light brown hair that would really benefit from a little involvement with a hairbrush.
‘Hi,’ the woman says with a big, bold smile, right up at their table now. ‘I think I’ve seen you at Maisie Cartwright’s house, haven’t I?’ She turns to her child. ‘Remember you chatted to those nice children over the wall, darling?’
‘Yes, that’s us,’ Kerry says warmly when the child fails to respond. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen you too …’
‘That’s our favourite part of the beach,’ the woman explains, ‘right across from your house. I’m Brigid, by the way …’
‘I’m Kerry, this is Rob …’ Her chilly demeanour has evaporated. How do women do this, he marvels, switching on a smile so easily as the occasion demands?
‘Not joining in with the sandcastle competition today?’ Kerry asks the child pleasantly.
‘Nah.’
‘We decided to boycott it,’ Brigid laughs. ‘It’s not really for the children anymore. It’s just an opportunity for parents to show off.’
‘Oh, I know,’ Kerry agrees. ‘It’s ridiculous really …’
Please leave
, Rob urges her silently.
My wife and I are busy trying to repair our marriage
.
‘So how are you both settling in?’ Brigid wants to know.
‘Oh, we’re loving it,’ Kerry replies. As the women chatter on, Rob glances from Kerry to Brigid, wondering when they might run out of idle chit-chat.
‘I saw your ad for piano lessons,’ Brigid goes on while Rob clamps his back teeth together. ‘How’s that going?’
‘I’ve had a few calls. Hopefully things’ll start picking up once the children are back in school …’
‘Bet you’ll be inundated.’ Brigid looks down at her sullen offspring. ‘Would you like piano lessons, hon?’
‘Nah.’ There’s a fierce shake of the head.
‘Oh.’ Brigid guffaws. ‘Well, that’s that then. Worth trying, I guess. Anyway, we’ll leave you two lovebirds in peace.’ With another huge grin, Brigid ushers her child of indeterminate gender towards two chrome stools at the high table by the window.
Now, Rob realises, it’ll be impossible for him and Kerry to talk properly. Brigid and her ill-mannered kid are within earshot – in fact, the child keeps throwing him startled glances as if he might have something terrible growing out of his nose – and the companionable chatter from the other customers has died down to a murmur.
‘Is that a boy or a girl?’ he whispers to Kerry.
‘A boy of course,’ she hisses back. ‘His name’s Joe.’
‘It’s just, with that messy long hair …’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ She exhales loudly. ‘Lots of children have hair like that these days.’
Rob stirs his cold coffee, wondering how to steer the conversation towards the matter in hand.
‘Anyway,’ Kerry adds, ‘the sandcastle competition finishes at around three. We should probably make our way down there soon.’
‘But we’ve just got here,’ he exclaims, feeling helpless.
‘Well, maybe we should get there for the judging. They were planning to make this 3D treasure map. Mia’s been drawing a plan and cutting out lots of little flags which she stuck onto toothpicks …’
Kerry’s talking too fast, Rob decides. It’s as if the faint staleness of a decade-long marriage has merged with the awkwardness of a terrible first date. The effect is hugely unsettling, and although Rob is trying to appear riveted, he couldn’t give a damn about little toothpick flags right now. Clearly, she wants to get out of this tearoom – and away from him – as quickly as possible.
While Kerry rattles on, Rob tries to mentally transmit to Brigid that she and her snotty-nosed child must leave the cafe this instant because he
needs to talk to his wife
. He glances at his watch: half two already. Joe is now amusing himself by ripping open paper sachets of sugar and sprinkling their contents onto their table.
Glancing over, Brigid notices Rob’s irritated glare. ‘He’s exploring texture,’ she explains with an indulgent smile as Joe flicks a pile of sugar onto the floor.