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Perhaps she shouldn’t have waited for Poppy to come to her. Since when did a child ever volunteer information? It was down to the parent to chisel it out of them. Charlotte had let Oli take the lead in so many things, she’d virtually forgotten it was completely possible to act of her own free will.
Either way, she supposed Oli did have a point regarding the timing of his announcement that he was destroying her life. Breaking his news whilst the children were away gave her time to ‘draw up a party line’. (His suggestion.) There was still the August holiday in Italy with the Pickerings to consider. They’d pre-paid a breathtaking sum for the villa. He wouldn’t want her to miss out on their last holiday as a family, he’d said.
His thoughtfulness knew no bounds.
Her rings glinted under the LED lighting they’d installed over the sink. Oli had thought the one tiny window would be sufficient, though this particular corner of the kitchen was always a bit of a cave, even on a bright summer’s day like today. When his mother had deigned to wash a teacup a few years back and deemed the area a black hole, workmen had appeared the next day.
Perhaps there were enough magpies in the world.
She slid the final breakfast plate into one of the top slots of the drying rack, flinching as the china grated against the slim steel rungs.
The plates – *ahem!* – dinnerware that had been ‘recommended’ by his mother were grey. Pebble-stone, if anyone was asking. Her mother-in-law had been her guiding light as they (she) had put together the wedding list all those years ago. Advice she had craved like air. Only now was she beginning to realize just how suffocating it had actually been. There was barely a single item in the house that her mother-in-law hadn’t had a hand in.
Lately – since her birthday, in fact – each time Charlotte made a cottage pie, as she had last night (just a small one in the racing green stoneware dish she knew Oli preferred to the cobalt), she thought of her own mother’s battered enamel pie dishes. The tins had been the only things in the house that had matched. More than likely she’d been given them by her own parents. A wedding gift? A freebie, more like, for signing up with a building society.
A sudden, painful longing for the pans tore at her. Not replicas of the pans. Not Jamie’s version of the pans. Nigella’s or Gordon’s. But those exact, battered, paint-chipped, never-entirely-clean enamel pans that her mother had brought to the table weighted with toad-in-the-hole or poor man’s steak pie (a strangely moreish concoction of mince, onions and gravy granules). A rhubarb crumble when she’d had a good day.
She dried her hands on a duck-motifed hand towel and hung it, crisply refolded, on one of the rungs of the range, then pushed it a bit to the right so that it was centred.
More than likely the pans were clogging up a landfill site now. Her aunt had come in and swept the place clean after her mother had died. Binned the lot before Charlotte had had a chance to go up to Sheffield and select an item or two that Oli wouldn’t object to.
All of which left her as the sole remaining proof her parents had done something with their lives.
She put away last night’s wine glasses. Delicate crystal stemware matched to the wine. A Chablis that Oli had been given by a grateful client. He’d picked it out for them last night because he hadn’t been convinced it was ‘up to’ sharing with guests, even though it had had excellent reviews. Back at the sink she stared at last night’s dinner plates, this morning’s breakfast plates, the egg and coffee cups. All roosting on top of the drying rack. It looked like an Instagram photo.
In one swift move she swept the entire lot onto the hard, unforgiving floor.
So, this was what Old Mother Hubbard felt like.
Freya shook the contactless payment device as if it were one of her children’s piggy banks. This, in lieu of closing the shop, going home and murdering her husband. Seriously? Monty couldn’t find one measly pound to put in the shopping trolley so he wanted her to go to the shops? She was at work. That thing that kept them out of debtors’ prison?
She tapped out a text. Sofa cushions. Trouser pockets. Bottom of the laundry basket. Felix’s bed. The spotty mug with the pens in it. When she finished she slammed the phone down so hard her solitary customer yelped.
‘Sorry.’ She made a lame flexing gesture. ‘Didn’t know my own strength. Anything I can help you find? Unicorns are just over there.’ She pointed at her most popular line, as if the woman couldn’t actually make her own way around the shop. It was hardly vast.
When she’d signed the lease some fifteen years ago, it had felt huge. Like a dreamy, brick-lined Aladdin’s cave. Her very own blank canvas, glowing with limitless possibility.
‘Are there any of the raccoon T-shirts left?’
Freya’s mouth stretched back into an apologetic wince. ‘Sorry. We’re off camping tomorrow and I didn’t get another run in.’
The young woman hauled her dreadlocks over her shoulder, interested. ‘What festival are you going to?’
Freya laughed. As if. Buying tickets for her entire family to go to a festival was not an option. ‘Just camping.’
The woman’s half-hearted smile faded before it’d had a chance to catch purchase.
Freya soldiered on. ‘Sorry about the shirts. You know how it is. End of term. Sports days. Flute concerts.’ She’d actually missed both. Monty had taken videos. ‘Anyway, we love camping, with or without the face painting.’ She was losing the girl fast. ‘Any interest in the unicorn range?’
The woman glanced at the door as if targeting an emergency exit. ‘Not really.’
She took her chance to flee when a gaggle of Japanese tourists bundled in. They looked as if they were from one of those futuristic films that Felix adored, all candy-floss-coloured hair in quirky ponytails and jet-black, razor-sharp bobs. Giggly and raving about something one minute, dismissively silent the next.
They looked at the walls more than the T-shirts, which was a shame.
The previous lessee, a joss-stick vendor who’d decided she’d rather live in Bali where ‘the energy just spoke to her’, had painted the interior gold. When Freya had finally got some time and money together a few years later, they’d all bundled in on a Monday and got to work. The exacting plan Freya had drawn up – immaculate white walls with painted anthropomorphized animals ‘wearing’ the T-shirts – had almost instantly degenerated into one of those wacky painting scenes reserved for rom-coms. Dabbing one another on the nose. The ear. The hair. Until, inevitably, it had ended up as a paint fight. She’d been furious at first then, as ever, Monty had made it fun and she’d decided to keep the paint-splattered interior. When Monty had taken the children to the zoo the following day, she had tactically accented an area or two to heighten the Pollack-esque effect.
She didn’t need to know Japanese to absorb the fact that the shop needed rejuvenating. Fresh paint. A new presentation style. Gallery lighting rather than the filament bulbs they’d all been obsessed with back in the day. Lighting she should have installed in the first place because she had always hoped, one day, to ease out the money-spinning T-shirts and start showing her own more high-end designs. Designs she simply didn’t have the resources to make any more. Funny T-shirts that no one seemed to want – or that weren’t funny?
The Japanese squad headed towards the door. ‘The #Impeach hoodies are half price!’ Freya called out.
They left without a second glance.
She should’ve moved to the shop opposite the Amy Winehouse statue when she’d had the chance. The rent was astronomical, but the footfall would’ve had her back in the black in no time.
She stared at her empty shop, then dropped her head into her hands and moaned as another ‘where is …?’ text popped through from Monty.
One week. It was all she was asking for. One week without being responsible for anything other than enjoying her family. Lazing about by the seaside. Eating burnt sausages. Foraging for seafood suppers. Board games in the tent if it poured down with rain. They were, after all, going to Wales.
The empty shop was soul-destroying. Particularly after Charlotte’s text from last week. How, after only two months of ‘dabbling’, Charlotte had managed to turn Lady V’s ‘micro-business’ into the talk of West Sussex … Charlotte was glowing in the Waitrose Weekend article, even if it did look as though Venetia had forced her into posing alongside her. If Freya had any money, she’d ask Charlotte to her shop and get her consultancy advice. Wookies ❤ WonderWomen sleeveless vests weren’t really bringing home the bacon any more. Had she lost sight of her customer base? Had she lost sight of everything?
Blanking the piles of T-shirts that needed stock-taking, the invoices that needed tending to and the lack of customers, ignoring the piles of t-shirts that needed stock taking, the stacks of invoices, the lack of customers, Freya glared at her mobile, willing Monty to make good on something – for both of their sakes. She knew he did a lot of juggling between looking after the kids and her and, of course, the finances, but maybe it was time they had a proper sit-down and talked about moving on from Instagram portraiture. It had yet to reel in a solitary pound coin with which he might then be able to do the ruddy shopping.
Just last night, Freya had pulled Monty down to the bottom of the garden and not so subtly suggested he start pulling his discarded projects out of the loft and putting them on eBay. Regan could benefit from extra violin tuition judging by the last week’s concert, Felix’s school trip kept rearing its ugly head on the ParentPay website. She didn’t want her children to go without because their father might fancy making probiotic yoghurt again. Or because you can’t face up to things either, whispered the little voice in her head.
He’d started to say something about his parents and she’d cut him short. No loans. He was a grown man. It was time to start behaving like one.
Her erstwhile assistant Fallon flounced into the shop in a cloud of tonka bean and myrrh, fresh from a flirting session with the chap who sold upcycled ‘art’ a few shops up the cobbled lane.
‘OMG. Total tomb in here. It’s buzzing everywhere else.’
Freya resisted making a narky comment about hubcap sconces. ‘Just nipping out for a second.’
‘I thought you wanted to stock-take.’
She opened her mouth, about to launch into an oft-rehearsed speech. Freya wanted a lot of things. Financial stability. A job that afforded more creativity than exploiting unicorns and Star Wars characters. A son who didn’t have to worry about whether or not he could have a fun wee trip with his school friends. Peace on earth. She bit her tongue.
‘Back in a mo.’
She wove her way through the crowds, past the four-hundred-odd competing vendors, and made a quick stop at her guilty pleasure, the Himalayan Coffee Man stall. (Guilty, because she’d given Monty a right earful about spending money on ridiculously overpriced coffees the other day.) Her pace slowed as she reached Camden Canal, found a bench and pulled out her phone. They were off camping tomorrow and they would have fun if it killed her.
M – if you can’t find pound, please could you finishing packing? Most stuff in roof box already … These for back of the car. NB: leave room for dog.
Sleeping bags (airing in Regan’s room)
Inflater thingy that plugs into car (shed)
Tent pegs (Think they somehow got mixed up with Christmas decorations, check red box by tree stand)
Ground cloth
Fly sheet (the waterproof thing that goes on top)
Folding camping chairs (not the blue one, it’s broken)
Knives (the one with the brown handle and the one with the jagged edge)
Playing cards
Spatula (the one that gets right under the pancakes)
Cool boxes (air please, and if there’s mould in them make sure you wipe with the non-toxic spray not bleach)
Get children to pack BEFORE they hit Netflix otherwise no bargaining chip.
One onesie each – but not the ones Nanna B gave them this last Christmas. xxF
Freya stared at the email before pressing send. It didn’t read quite as jauntily as she’d hoped. Frankly it was downright bossy, but she knew how Monty’s brain worked. Attention span of a gnat when it came to things like packing. Her mind drifted to her feminista tank-top collection. One slogan in particular pinged out. I’m not with him, he’s with me. It hadn’t been selling all that well either. Was she crushing Monty with the weight of her dreams at the expense of his? She looked at the phone again and tacked on a quick:
PS – make sure you take a portrait of yourself! Fxx
‘I don’t want to go to school!’ Luna pushed her bowl of cereal away, her accompanying wail leaving no doubt as to how she felt about the matter.
‘C’mon Booboo. There’s rules about this sort of thing.’ Izzy shifted tack. ‘Can’t have you turning out a surf bum like your old moms, eh? Anyway, I’ve gotta go out and find a new way to keep you in Honey Nut Loops, yeah?’
Luna pulled Bonzer up onto her lap, her little eyebrows scrunching up tight. ‘I liked our old life.’
Izzy had too. Once.
‘I know Looney. But life comes in all different shapes and sizes and we’re trying on a new one. C’mon. Bonzer loves walking to school.’
‘No he doesn’t! He hates it too.’ Izzy’s daughter blinked away her tears, the tightly cuddled, increasingly large Bonzer masking the bulk of her expression. ‘The other kids won’t make friends with me.’
Izzy’s heart contracted. Sugar.
She knew that feeling. Thanks to her own mother’s wandering ways, she’d been in more than her share of new schools. She’d played the chameleon to make things easier, hence the weird accent. It had worked to an extent, but she hadn’t wanted that life for Luna. It was one of the reasons why she’d set up the surf school. Best-laid plans and all that.
She gave her head a scrub, trying to clear away yesteryear so that she could focus on the here and now.
School.
Mrs Jones, the head teacher at Luna’s new school, had seemed lovely; an experienced, Welsh earth-mother who’d welcomed Luna with open arms.
‘You can tell the other pupils all about what Hawaii is like. I don’t think we’ve ever had a child who’s lived on an island in the Pacific before, how exciting!’
Izzy had convinced herself that the wonderful Mrs Jones and Luna’s equally nice teacher would make everything all right, while she went about the increasingly urgent task of finding a job.
Izzy swept her daughter’s curls to one side and planted a kiss on her forehead.
‘Sometimes it takes a little while to make friends, Boo Boo. They’ll love you every bit as much as I do.’ They wouldn’t. ‘Just give it a bit more time.’
‘One of the boys laughed at the way I said tomato at lunch time,’ Luna sniffed, burying her head in Bonzer’s ample fluff.
Song lyrics wafted across Izzy’s brain, ‘You say tom-ay-to, I say tom-ah-to …’
‘He’s probably just jealous. You’re a world traveller and he probably hasn’t even been to Cardiff.’ She resisted the temptation to hurl insults at the little blighter. Mocking her daughter. How very dare he?
‘I don’t wanna go.’ Luna’s bottom lip was still projecting into the room but Izzy could sense her daughter’s resolve waning.
‘Here baby. Why don’t you wear this?’ She handed her a ratty old tutu. Luckily it fitted over the insipid grey uniform.
Luna tugged it on then gave her hand a squeeze. They still held hands. Izzy was already scared for the day when she might not want to any more. ‘Are we poor?’
‘Poor? Us? No. Why do you ask?’ They weren’t actually. They were simply living … thriftily. It was important. She’d been given a couple of unexpected gifts in life – a savings account she hadn’t realized her mother had been keeping for her and, of course, Ash Cottage from the father she’d never met. Izzy tried not to think about how long the money her mother had left her would last, but it wouldn’t be for ever. She’d never been one to think about the future. Other people did that. She was more of an in-the-moment kinda gal, but this time there was no getting away from it: she’d have to get a job.
‘Some of the kids were saying because we moved from Hawaii to here it must mean that we’re poor.’
Izzy looked out of the window and laughed. Today was a rare sunny day. Apart from the insanely beautiful May bank holiday with Charlotte and the gang (chocolate cake would never be the same again), they’d pretty much enjoyed grey, drizzly, British seaside weather every day. Not that they were anywhere near the sea. The village itself was perfectly serviceable, but heaven knew why her mother and father had picked it. It was near absolutely nothing. Perhaps that had been the point. On Maui everything felt close. In a good way. The twenty-mile drive to Cardiff – or ten to the sea – seemed crazy long after living on an island you could circumnavigate in under two hours. Or maybe it was the constant fear that her van would break down and they’d be stranded. Friendless. With no one to call. She thought of Freya’s invite to go camping and Emily’s regular check-ins. No one within one hundred miles, anyway.
Her daughter was still looking at her expectantly.
‘I can see where they’re coming from, Booboo. Hawaii was pretty amazing, but they’ve got castles here. And … umm … other things. We’re good. Don’t you worry about that.’
‘Then why did we move?’
It was a good question. And one she really didn’t want to answer.
‘To be near friends.’ It wasn’t entirely a lie.
‘But … Auntie Emms lives in London and Freya does too and Charlotte’s getting divorced.’
Izzy squatted down and swept her daughter’s hair away from her eyes. ‘You don’t miss much, do you? Look, just because Charlotte’s getting a divorce doesn’t mean we aren’t going to see her again. In fact we’ll probably see more of her.’
‘Good.’ Izzy grinned. ‘Bonzer likes her.’ She scooped up Bonzer with a grunt and patted his huge paw on Izzy’s cheek. ‘Bonzer loves ice cream.’
‘Well, isn’t that lucky?’ Izzy pulled them both in for a cuddle. ‘There just happens to be an ice cream shop on the way home from school.’
‘Still don’t wanna go.’
‘Loons.’ Izzy held up her hand and showed four fingers. ‘School breaks up in this many. If you finish the rest of the week, how about we jump into the van and drive up to meet Freya and Charlotte on their crazy wild camping trip?
Luna’s blue eyes lit up instantly. ‘Really? Can we bring Bonzer?’
‘Of course we can!’ Izzy crossed her fingers behind her back, desperately trying to remember if Freya had said he was welcome. His incarceration at Sittingstone Castle had led to meeting Charlotte’s new mentor, Lady Venetia, but losing Looney for the two hours before the dowager countess had discovered both child and dog asleep in the castle kennels had scared the living daylights out of her. No chance she was going through that again. If the worst came to the worst, she’d stick Bonzer in a pair of cargoes and vest and pretend he was her husband.
‘Yay!’ Luna jumped up and down, her long, coiled hair flying around her head like a whirling dervish.
‘Right, time to get dressed!’
