‘Yeah. C’mon, I bet you’ve got a good eye, just like your mum. It’ll be fun.’
So that’s what they did. Not that Charlie tells his father any of this – that they hung out in the garden and he took pictures of Esther sitting on the old stone wall in the cool December sunshine. He doesn’t tell him that she looked so beautiful in those pictures, with her dazzling smile and her long red hair blowing around her delicate face. He doesn’t tell his dad that, the night before, as darkness fell and Remy and Freya had gone home, he and Esther had sat in his room looking at the night sky through his telescope.
‘This is amazing,’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve never seen the stars as bright as this. We hardly see them at all in London.’
‘There’s too much light pollution there,’ he said. ‘Even out here there’s quite a bit of it.’
‘So where isn’t there any? I mean, where’s the best place to see stars?’
‘There are a few places,’ Charlie replied. ‘There’s a Scottish island that’s meant to be the best, though. The best in Britain, I mean.’
‘Have you been there?’ she asked.
‘No, but I will.’
She smiled then, and hugged him. ‘I know you will,’ she said. She slept in their little spare room that night, having borrowed one of his oversized T-shirts to wear. Charlie liked it, that she was near. Not inthatway. In a friend way, he meant. Because Remy used to stay over, or Charlie would stay at his, and he knows things move on and change, and he really is happy that Remy’s doing so well with his music, which is brilliant, and he’s happy that Remy’s with Freya now, because Charlie’s life is moving on too.
He has a new friend. They joke and message constantly. They send each other funny little films and chat about all kinds of stuff.
Esther posted the pictures Charlie took of her and the jewellery people loved them. He doesn’t tell his dad this, because Frank reckons photography should be difficult, and involve a proper camera, tripod, lights, all that, to be any good. Like it must requireequipment.All this time he’s been chattering on about a film he’s making, about how he’s trying to raise the finance and it’s going to be gritty and real, he says. It’s going to be amazing.
‘So, what’ve you been up to?’ Frank asks finally.
‘Nothing much,’ Charlie says.
‘Looking forward to Christmas?’ As if he’s nine years old.
‘Yeah, I s’pose so …’
‘Doing much?’
‘Just the usual,’ he replies.
‘Aw.’ Frank sniggers. ‘You’re spending too much time huddling over your books, son. Live a little!’
CHAPTER THIRTY
LAUREN
It’s not that I mind Esther coming with James for weekends at my place. Of course I don’t. I’m flattered that she obviously enjoys being here, and I’m surprised – and delighted – that she and Charlie seem to get along so well. But at the same time I’d love it just to be us two, me and James, for a couple of days – like it was in Corsica. Yes, my parents were there, and Charlie too, but James and I could just disappear into the hills, or down to the beach, for great swathes of time and no one minded or even seemed to notice.
Those two weeks were heavenly and it hasn’t felt quite the same recently, with James staying in London unexpectedly a couple of times, when Esther needed time with him. I’ve tried not to be resentful, and to remind myself that our kids always come first – even when he admitted that, actually, Esther had seemed completely fine. ‘Which is good of course,’ he’d added. ‘I mean, it’s not that Iwantedanything to be wrong …’
I knew what he meant, though. Why had she wanted to see him so urgently, just when he’d been about to driveout to spend time with me? A tiny part of me wonders if he’s being manipulated, and that Esther isn’t terribly keen on him being with me at all. Sure, we do great pictures together and she’s perfectly polite and pleasant company. But there’s a tiny hint of something else going on, I’m sure of it. And I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.
And now Christmas is hurtling towards us and it feels even more important to figure out how we’re going to spend some time together. Which sparks an idea for a gift …
I’m horribly out of practice when it comes to gift-buying for men. At least, a man I’m dating. Way before we’d split up, Frank had decided it was ‘silly’ to spend money on each other, meaning it was far too much effort to hoof around the shops (online shopping hadn’t existed then). And faulty-oven-fuse George and I hadn’t reached the gift-giving stage. I want to give James something thoughtful, that he’ll really enjoy. But what would a fifty-two-year-old vet – who’s not terribly interested in ‘stuff’ – possibly want?
Clothes? Asweater? Surely we’re not at the stage where knitwear is the default option. Aftershave, then? I know James well enough to know he doesn’t wear it.
He’s actually very hard to buy for in that he just isn’t interested in fancy things. I don’t mean he’s completely unsophisticated; just that being given a posh pen, or some kind of gadget, would probably baffle him. His leather wallet is old and battered, but I know he’s fond of it as Esther saved up her pocket money to buy it for him about ten years ago. We’re certainly not at a sock- or dressing-gown-buying stage, and he doesn’t wear pyjamas – at least, not when he’s with me.
What he does keep saying, jokingly – although I suspect there’s a grain of truth in it – is that he’d love to propelus back to Corsica, ‘away from all of this’. Away from endless family shenanigans and a relentless workload, he means. As I’ve gathered that he only has a short break over Christmas, that’s not really on the cards right now. But a little probing reveals that his practice closes for four days over New Year, and when I suggests he ‘keeps it free’ he says, happily, that he’d planned to do just that.
‘What d’you have in mind?’ he asks.
‘A little surprise,’ I reply. Then, secretly, I pore over accommodation for a little jaunt, just the two of us, far away from it all. As it’s New Year there isn’t heaps available – but there’s enough. I gaze at cosy hotels in pretty Dorset villages, wooden lodges with hot tubs in the depths of the New Forest and even a luxury tree house in Wales. Then I remember how fondly he’s talked about all those Cornish holidays with Esther when she was younger; how Esther had insisted on walking a section of the South West Coast Path in flip-flops. I can’t help smiling at that, and admire his dogged optimism that it was going to turn out all right. We only do our best, after all. We don’t set off intending for our kids to have bleeding feet.
