And Adrian and Serena did look happy. They had come clean to the whole family - Serena had told Harry and Amelia, and Adrian had told his brother David, then they had told Spike together. Jane was worried about Harry more than anyone - he had been very quiet since the news, whereas Amelia, in typical fashion, had looked at the situation to see what she could get out of it and had already decided she wanted to move in with them in Frome and go to college in Bath. Amelia was a survivor, like her father, but Harry was more sensitive. Still, he’d be near enough to his mother when he went to medical school in Bristol.
She checked her watch - just half an hour before the party began. There was nothing else she could do until it started. She smiled at the sun, asking it silently to hang in there, and went back into the hut to get ready.
Harry was setting up an elaborate sound system for the party, hoping that the music he had downloaded was catholic enough to keep everyone happy. He’d gone for compilation albums of the last four decades, as well as a comprehensive selection of up-to-date hits for the younger generation. If history was anything to go by, the dancing would go on until the small hours.
He was glad he had something to keep him occupied. He was still reeling from his mother’s revelation - about the prospect of having his uncle as a stepfather, although they hadn’t intimated they were getting married. The whole thing had made him feel a bit sick, if he was honest. OK, so he knew his father was no angel. No one had ever said it out loud before, but he knew in his gut Philip played away. He could tell by the way his mother sighed when he phoned to say he would be home late; by the way his father was so robustly cheerful the next day. Almost smug. He didn’t do anything as pat as try and be extra nice when he returned from one of his liaisons: Philip never apologised for anything, let alone something he hadn’t admitted to. So Harry always felt it was his duty to be extra nice to his mother - when he was home from school, at least. The rest of the time he didn’t like to think of her alone and miserable, knowing her husband was out flirting with first-year students, and worse. So the bottom line was he didn’t blame her for leaving, though he was shocked about Adrian. Very shocked. He wasn’t sure about the nasty feeling it gave him in his stomach, though he thought it might be jealousy. Jealousy that Spike was going to get his mum’s attention, while he was off in his first year at uni and supposed to be grown up and independent when actually he felt very small and a bit like crying.
What a wuss. No wonder Florence had run a mile from him. That was the other thing that was giving him a nasty feeling - the knowledge that she would be there at the party tonight. After that disastrous episode with her in June, just after he’d finished his exams, he had fled back home and got a job at Warwick Castle, showing tourists around. But he’d had to come back for the bank holiday party. It was a family tradition, and the last one. So here he was, nearly two months later, hoping and praying that when he set eyes on her he would feel nothing.
Sarah was trying to suppress her inner control freak while the girls helped her ice the beach-hut biscuits. She had baked a hundred - tricky given the facilities, but she had managed - and now they were all spread out on the table while she mixed up icing in shades of pink, blue, green and yellow. She decided the best plan was to give the girls ten to do between them, which they could mess up as much as they liked, and do the others herself. She’d cut out a dinky little template, and was going to decorate them with stripes and a little lifebuoy. They’d be popular with the kids at the party, at least. Everyone who came had to contribute something towards the food, and Sarah had wanted to do something special.
Something that would take her mind off the fact that Ian was refusing to come.
It had, quite frankly, been the worst summer of her life. Ian was not taking being made redundant very well. He had had a spurt of optimism at first, done some networking, applied for jobs he’d seen in the paper or on the internet, but gradually his enthusiasm had waned. He had become bitter, and bad-tempered, snapping at her and the children. Eventually he had stopped making any sort of an effort at all, claiming that it was humiliating to be continually rejected. Sarah had tried to be sympathetic, but inside she was panicking - what if he didn’t get another job? What would they do? She tried to build up her own business, pitching for as many jobs as she could, but it was difficult when the girls were at home, and even though Ian wasn’t working he didn’t seem to think it was his place to look after them. Plus she’d sent her book ideas off to her agent and had heard nothing, which was very dispiriting.
Added to that was the huge difficulty of trying to resist phoning Oliver. He had said to call any time. But she knew absolutely that was not the answer to any of her problems. She relived over and over again in her mind the incredible night they had shared together. It made her feel both guilty and thrilled. What wouldn’t she give to experience that again? She could set it up in a trice, she knew she could, but how could she contemplate cheating on her husband again when he was so depressed?
Gradually, however, she was running out of sympathy. Ian had become so negative, so unpleasant, that life was pretty unbearable. It had got to the point where he had stopped shaving, stopped showering, often didn’t bother getting dressed until gone midday. When she remonstrated, he snarled at her. What was the point? She began to spend as much time out of the house as she could with the girls, which of course meant she couldn’t work, which in turn meant they didn’t even have her money coming in. They couldn’t go on like this for ever, but she didn’t know where to find a solution. When she had suggested he go back to college to retrain, she thought he was going to hit her.
And he wouldn’t go out. They had any number of invitations to parties and barbecues, but he quite simply refused to socialise, because he didn’t want to face the questions. Everyone knew he had been made redundant, because news like that travelled fast.
‘I’m a fucking failure,’ he shouted at her, when she had tried to persuade him to join some friends at a dinner party. ‘I don’t want everyone asking me what I’m up to because I’m up to fuck all.’
She had slunk away, unable to argue, because he didn’t want to hear anyone else’s side of the story.
The beach hut had been the only thing to bring in a reliable sum that summer. He had wanted to rent it out for the bank holiday week too - six hundred quid would go a long way towards paying the mortgage - but she had put her foot down. The bank holiday week was always their week. They needed a holiday. The girls needed a holiday. He had backed down, but he had refused to come. He didn’t want to have to admit his situation over and over again to the rest of the beach-hut owners.
It had been a huge relief to spend the week away from him. The girls, who had become increasingly subdued in the light of Ian’s behaviour, had come out of their shells again. And they were all excited about the party. They had been every year since they’d bought the hut, and it was the highlight of the summer for all of them. Despite the lack of funds, Sarah had been into Bamford and bought them a new dress each. In the sales, so she didn’t feel too guilty. And while she was there, she had seen the most beautiful white beaded chiffon dress for herself, at a quarter of its original price. It was low cut, and almost backless, but if she wore it with flip-flops, it wouldn’t look tarty . . . She wrestled with her conscience, decided against it, took the girls into a café for cake, then just as they were on their way back to the car, she turned around and ran back to the shop, getting there just as it closed.
Once they’d finished the biscuits, she laid them in the cool of the cupboard to dry. It was time to get ready. She kept checking her phone to see if Ian had called to say he’d had a change of heart and was on his way. She knew she should hope that he would, but in her heart of hearts she was relieved when the phone remained determinedly silent.
She looked at her dress on the hanger. It was going to look amazing. She’d got some plain silver hoop earrings to wear with it. Then her heart sank. What was the point of putting on a gorgeous dress when your husband refused to have anything to do with you, and the man you really wanted to wear it for was firmly out of bounds?
Fiona hid in the tiny bathroom of the beach hut, trembling.
This was it. This was her first real test. She could do it. She really could. At least she hoped so. She had to. For herself, for the children, but most of all, for Tim.
He had been absolutely brilliant. After she’d finally plucked up the courage to tell him the truth, he had driven straight down to Everdene to collect her. He had swept her up in her arms while she cried, and for the first time in her married life, she had felt safe. He had been mortified that she had kept her terrible secret for so long, and hadn’t judged her. He had promised to stick by her, whatever she decided to do. He’d found her a wonderful counsellor, who had unravelled everything and put it all into perspective and worked out a plan to help her face life without the crutch she had relied on for so, so long. And once it was out in the open - in her marriage, at least - she found the courage to face her demons.
It was tough. Hideously tough. Every day was a challenge, and a battle, but she was absolutely determined. She had come so close to destroying everything she had. It made her feel hot and shivery when she thought back over it. The years of drunken oblivion, the accident. The one-night stand . . .
She had seen him once. In the Spar. He had smiled at her, tentatively, across the shop. She remembered feeling an overwhelming sense of relief that he looked so normal, so nice. When she had tried to remember him the next day, she couldn’t visualise him properly, and she had been terrified that she had picked up some complete thug, but he looked perfectly respectable - especially now he was wearing normal clothes and not a fairy outfit. She didn’t speak to him, though. She couldn’t face that. And he’d been sensitive enough to respect that. What would she have done if he’d barrelled up to her and said, ‘Hello, darlin’? She had confessed her night of shame to her counsellor, who hadn’t been judgemental, hadn’t said anything really, but she had felt better for getting it off her chest.
Four weeks. She had managed four weeks without a drink. The days were long, the nights even longer, and there were days when her body screamed for the relief. There was nothing to replace it with. Even sleep didn’t bring respite, because she found herself troubled by images of the things she had done over the years, waking up in a sweat as she pictured herself lurching through yet another party, tottering on her heels, making a fool of herself even though at the time she had told herself she was fine, absolutely fine. But she’d done it. Tim had been kind - he had got rid of every drop of alcohol in the house, and didn’t drink either. She didn’t think she could have coped if he had pulled the cork on a bottle of cool Sauvignon each night and expected her to go without. And they had avoided social functions, which hadn’t been too difficult as a lot of people had been away on holiday, and you could always decline an invitation by saying you were away too, or had visitors coming.
But the Everdene beach party couldn’t be avoided. They went every year, without fail. Tim had asked her kindly if she wanted them to duck out, but Fiona didn’t want to. She had to face reality sometime. She had to learn to operate without alcohol in the real world, not in a cushioned, protected pseudo-reality. And at least she felt comfortable here. People in Everdene didn’t seem to judge you, not like at home where you had to watch your every step.
She looked in the mirror. She had to admit, she looked better. She had filled out slightly and looked less gaunt, because when she had been drinking, food had never been a priority. Her eyes looked brighter. She held out both hands flat in front of her. Steady. Usually she would have got ready for a party while drinking two or three glasses of champagne. But not tonight.
She touched up her lipgloss one more time and left the bathroom. Tim was sprawled in a chair reading the paper - he looked handsome in his dinner jacket. He glanced up at her and smiled.
‘The kids have gone already. They couldn’t wait - they wanted to get on the bouncy castle.’
He stood up.
‘You look gorgeous.’ He came over to her and kissed her.
‘Mmmm.’ To her surprise, she found herself kissing him back. And a little flicker of something sparked deep down in her belly. She had felt dead inside for so long. She couldn’t remember the last time they had made love, not really. She was always comatose by bedtime - why would Tim want to have sex with a corpse?
But now, suddenly, the feeling was flooding back. He was trailing his fingers down her back, and it made her shiver with desire. She pushed herself against him, and she could tell he was aroused too.
‘Do you think,’ she murmured between kisses, ‘it would matter awfully if we were just a tiny bit late?’
It was half past eight. The party was in full swing. The pig roast had been devoured, totally stripped. There was nothing left but bone. As the sun set, the smaller children were ushered into the scout tent to settle down, and bottles of champagne were cracked open. Jane had wondered about giving a little farewell speech, proposing a toast, but decided that it was a bit hammy, and she didn’t want to break the carefree mood of the party. It was, she decided, the best one yet. In which case, it was definitely time to move on. Chrissie had talked to her about the possibility of funding a rescue package for The Shack, but they had agreed in the end that so much had changed, it was best to let it go. Chrissie was talking about getting a place somewhere hot instead, so her three would be all right.
Jane felt a tiny bit guilty about the rest of the grandchildren. They’d had such fun here over the years. But if she was honest, they were all growing up themselves. Harry was off to university - he’d have his own plans for the summer from now on. Amelia had hundreds of friends she was always making plans with. And Spike - well, things were going to be different for him In a good way, she thought. She had always thought Serena an excellent mother - far better than Spike’s own mother. She hoped Donna wouldn’t give them any trouble, but she thought not. At the end of the day, all Donna was really after was an easy life, and Serena being around would definitely mean that.