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After two solid hours of driving, she saw the first signs to Slattercove and Shoresend, so her destination was in sight. Then she spotted a brown local sign to ‘Shore Heights, beauty spot’ and she felt a ghost of warm feelings brush past her nerve endings. She’d been there with her aunt and uncle all those years ago. On a whim, she turned a last-second right up the steep hill that rose and bent, eventually plateauing way above sea level. She came to a stop in the place that had been just bumpy grass back then with a wooden fence to stop people blowing over the edge. The sun had made the waves shine as if they were painted with glitter and the sky was a wash of bright summer blue with the odd white fluff. Now the sea reflected only dark, grey clouds bloated with rain. There were no holidaymakers on the beach below nor up here for that matter. No one was utilising the benchesfixed to tables for a picnic, and she saw the fence had been replaced with a more secure one made of iron. It was up here that her Uncle Ed had picked her up and wheeled her above his head as she pretended to be one of the seagulls circling around them looking for tourist food.
There was a burger van parked up with ‘Benny’s Burgers’ signwritten on the side. She went over to it hoping to buy a well-needed coffee but, as her run of luck dictated, there was a notice in the window saying ‘Back in half an hour’, and as there was no way of knowing when that half-hour started, she thought she might as well hang on for a while.
She sat on one of the benches, lifted her face to the sky and let the sea breeze investigate her as a curiosity:Who is this stranger in our midst? Does she look vaguely familiar to you?She breathed it in and felt it cool in her lungs and salty at the back of her throat and heard the seagulls squawk and caw and wished she could peel the years back and be here again as a child with those two beloved people. As she closed her eyes she felt the desire to pray and her lips moved over words she hadn’t planned but which came out nonetheless.
‘Dear god, help me because I am lost and I don’t know where I belong. Just please guide my first foot on a path, that’s all, point me in the right direction and I’ll figure out the rest. I know you’re busy but if you could just manage that, I’d be really grateful. Thank you. Amen.’
She opened up her eyes and saw a man in the distance looking as if he were on course for the van. Mr Benny’s Burgers, she presumed. Great. She’d done the right thing waiting for him.
Chapter 15
Will loved his dad in a way that filial duty dictated, but he didn’tlovehim. He wanted to, but Chris hadn’t really done that much to earn his love. He didn’t reallygethis son, he didn’t know what made him tick and he thought it was weird that Will wasn’t into football, because he couldn’t understand that other people might think differently about things. And that was probably why they were in the aftermath of today’s debacle, because his dad wouldn’t have considered that Polly might not be up for a surprise wedding. His mother was his dad’s female equivalent, self before others always, and Shauna was her mini-me. Will was the family anomaly, and he was glad about that. He wouldn’t have blamed Polly at all for leaving his dad, if that’s what she was planning to do, and the emptied wardrobes and packed-up boxes rather indicated that she was.
Yes, they all knew about the affair because he’d introduced the ‘new woman’ to the family the same week Polly had left and it was obvious they’d been seeing each other for ages. But two weeks later, she dumped him, and then Polly came home. Will remembered seeing Polly not long after and noting how thin she was, how fragile and sad. A year laterthat sadness was still hanging around her, a grey aura, like a November raincloud.
‘I can’t believe she could show me up like this,’ Chris was saying in a voice that wavered between anger and disbelief. ‘I mean, how could she do this to me?’ he protested, throwing his hands up in the air.
Will was at the end of his tether with his father’s victimhood.
‘How could you do this to her?’ he spat out, unable to stop himself.
‘What?’ said his father, sister and aunt in unison.
‘You can’t surely be on her side,’ Shauna added.
‘It was a weird idea,’ said Will.
‘Nonsense, it was beyond romantic,’ Camay said to that.
‘Ha. That dress, though,’ said Shauna with a delighted shriek of laughter. ‘I’ve never seen anything so horrific in my life.’
I have. Your face, Will almost threw at his sister, except it would have been puerile.
‘Slightly voluminous I thought,’ said Ward.
Camay gave her husband a scathing look. ‘Thank you, Gok Wan.’
‘You must have had an idea that she wasn’t happy,’ said Will to his father.
‘None,’ said Chris. ‘Wewere… happy.’
‘Clearly not,’ said Ward with a huff.
‘Did you ever take her out? To restaurants, the cinema, a hotel? Do coupley things?’
‘Will,’ began his father, an impatient edge to his voice, ‘when you’ve come in from work at daft o’clock, the last thing you want to do is get togged up and go out again. Polly wasn’t bothered about all that stuff. She was a homebird, like me.’
‘I’m guessing not that much of a homebird if she’s justflown the nest,’ said Ward, on his third malt. Camay would have to drive the BMW back home. A small compensation for missing out on that lamb.
‘When was the last time you saidI love youto each other?’ asked Will. He thought that might be a quick guide to the state of their relationship.
Chris waved that stupid question away too. ‘I don’t know. We didn’t go in for sop like that.’
‘I think getting your ducks in a row first might have been a good idea,’ said Ward, fingers creeping towards the Chivas Regal again, ‘before outlaying all that expense.’
‘I thought they were,’ said Chris with a groan. ‘After… last year, I said we should think about the next step.’ He nodded emphatically.
‘What does that even mean unless you’re Neil Armstrong?’ said Will.
