‘I know where we are, Mum.’
‘Can’t you at least pretend to be enjoying yourself?’ I’m aware that I’ve swerved down the wrong track, and that it’s not going to help. But still I barge on: ‘Or we might as well be in Luton!’
He peers at me through narrowed eyes. Then, to signify that our exchange is over, he swivels away and jabs his nose back into his book.
I hope I’ve always been a kind and supportive mum.I’ve been on hand to help with his homework (although he usually got on with it without fuss) and welcomed his friends round to guzzle enormous quantities of pizza and popcorn. In fact, considering Charlie’s shyness, I was so relieved he had a small group of mates, they’d have been welcome every day of the week. Every weekday morning through the primary school years I went that extra mile to make exciting packed lunches, apart from that one time on the Cubs trip, when I forgot to send him off with anything at all. (‘It’s okay, Mum,’ he’d said stoically. ‘Someone gave me a few crisps.’)
Since Charlie was seven it’s just been the two of us, and whenever I worried if I was a good enough mum, I’d remind myself that I was doing my best and that my reserved little boy was very loved. Which meant I was doing a pretty decent job, didn’t it?
But now I’m standing over him in public, barking at him to ‘hydrate’. I’m the kind of mother who snaps,We might as well be in Luton!
What’s happened to us? We’ve always been so close, the two of us. Other mums often said how lucky I was to have such a great little mate. And now I catch him visibly flinching when I approach. As if I might be about to make him turn out his pockets or shine a glaring light in his face.
Nearby, a group of extremely attractive teenagers (no parents bothering them!) are draped all over each other on a raggedy patchwork of bright towels. Some are snogging enthusiastically. Poor Charlie, I reflect. He should be like them, not trapped on holiday with his fifty-one-year-old mother. An elderly couple walks past us, hand in hand, and an English family with two little blonde girls stop to pick up shells to drop into a bucket. Everyone apart from us is having a perfectly lovely time.
I start to walk away from Charlie, realising with crushing dismay that our beloved island no longer thrills him. In fact hewouldrather be in Luton, because Luton is only eleven miles away from the Hertfordshire village where we live. Then he’d be close to his friends, apart from his best mate, Remy, who is currently enjoying a very different kind of holiday from ours.
I’ve probably only got away with so many magical summers here with Charlie because, these past few years, we’ve brought Remy too. My mother dotes on him and he’s no trouble at all. In fact, he feels like family. However, this year he politely declined to come with us. Apparently he had ‘other plans’.
I stop and glance back at my son, slumped miserably now with his fine dark hair flopping over his sharply angled face.
‘Charlie?’ I call out.
His head jerks up. ‘Yeah?’ He sounds less hostile, I think. Maybe he feels bad about being snappy and will try to be more pleasant from now on.
‘D’you have any sunscreen on?’ I ask.
A scowl. ‘Can you stop going on?’
‘I’m not going on, I only asked …’ Now my maternal laser-gaze has landed on a distinctly pink upper arm. He’s already burning in the late July sun. Striding back, I pull a plastic bottle from my raffia beach bag and hold it out for him. ‘Here, you need a bit of this on.’
He shrinks away as if I’ve offered him a rotting fish. ‘No, I’m fine.’
Fine for the burns unit, yes!‘Come on, Charlie. Just put some on—’
‘Leave me alone!’ he commands. But I can’t, can I? I can’t just smile and say, ‘Okay, see you later.’ Then, under my breath: ‘Don’t come running to me for calaminelotion!’ I can’t accept that at seventeen he’s old enough to make his own decisions regarding UV protection.
I can’t just leave it, and I know that’s wrong.
So, I’m not a ‘good mum’, am I? I’m ridiculous, treating this almost fully fledged adult man like a little kid. The teenagers on the towels can see it. As they murmur between themselves and look over sympathetically, I can sense Charlie wishing he could dig a hole in the sand and crawl into it.
Maybe it’s because of what happened, and the fact that we’ve been a tight little unit for a decade now; the two of us rock solid (toosolid probably), trotting out to the cinema together long after his peers had found their parents disgusting and refused to have anything to do with them, beyond the necessities.
Charlie was never like that. He was a wonderful kid, so stoical and brave, even when he’d witnessed something he really should never have seen. And he’d been gamely up for adventure when we’d left our London home, closing the door on all the tension and sadness one final time.
‘You’ll love it out here,’ my best friend Kim had said of the pretty Hertfordshire village where she’d settled with her husband and their twin daughters a few years before. ‘It’ll be a fresh start for you and brilliant for Charlie. We can’t wait to have you close to us!’
I was still worried because he’d never found it easy to make friends. The ones he had in London were quiet, bookish types, like him. How would he manage, having to start all over again? But, happily, he liked the idea of moving to the country. He’d always loved being in nature and camping, all that outdoorsy stuff – especially sitting outside the tent and looking up at the stars at night.
We found a cosy red-brick cottage with an overgrown garden, and moved just after Charlie’s eighth birthday. Kim had been right: it was good for him, for both of us, to start afresh. I tore into the garden, shaping it just the way we wanted it, with Charlie a willing helper, always at my side. Digging, planting, laying gravel paths; it was our joint project and we were immensely proud when it began to bloom beautifully.
It was wonderful being close to Kim too. While I’ve never shared her enthusiasm for cold-water swimming, I’ve been happy to provide a thermos of hot home-made soup and watch from the sidelines while she’s plunged into our nearby lake. Meanwhile her twin girls, who are a little older than Charlie, regarded him as a delightful new playmate. They knew he was into his books and science and astronomy, and they loved him for who he was.
To my delight, he also found a new best friend in Remy, who lived down the road, and after a few weeks he barely mentioned his old London friends at all. I made new friends too, with Remy’s mother among them: Ellie, who seemed rather brusque at first but was kind and welcoming beneath the brittle exterior. Charlie’s new life centred around school, Cubs and then Scouts. Secretly, he still played with his Lego long after most kids would have put it aside. Only Remy knew about that, and they’d build intricate space missiles together. But most of all, Charlie was drawn to a Victorian observatory perched on top of a hill, less than a mile from our house. They ran events for parents and children and we trotted along to them together, with Charlie enthusing about meteors and comets (‘They’re like a snowball of gas, shooting through space!’) all the way home. Even after the other kids had stopped bringing a parent along, Charlie still liked me to go with him. He just enjoyed being with me,as I loved being with him. And he never seemed embarrassed about that.
However, he’s not in the Young Stargazers anymore and recently there’s been a marked shift in attitude. I catch his agitated looks and sense him wishing I’d vaporise into the atmosphere when all I’ve done is ask how school went that day.
I keep telling myself that this is fine and normal andexactlyhow things are supposed to go. Most kids start to go off their parents much younger, when puberty hits. Kim reckoned her girls suddenly found her appalling when they moved up to secondary school. ‘Bella stormed out of the kitchen,’ she told me once. ‘All I was doing was unloading the dishwasher!’ And Charlie’s almost a man, for goodness’ sake. Of course I’m repugnant to him.
