‘You went along with the story,’ Jamie reminds me. ‘Pretending they’re a couple, I mean. Most people wouldn’t have done that.’
‘We didn’t have much choice,’ I explain as we make our way across the flat, wide beach. ‘Eddie just sprang it on us. I can’t understand why. So he and Lyla had a one-night stand? Her mum seemed nice, y’know. Kindand supportive, not judgemental. I’m sure she’d get over it. And Lyla – well, she’s young, but she’s an adult. Surely you reach the point where you stop lying to your parents?’
‘I don’t know about that.’ Grinning ruefully, he wraps his woollen scarf more snugly around his neck.
My heart squeezes. ‘Oh, Jamie. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’
‘It’s okay. But people can be weird.’ He smiles and shrugs, his gaze following a gull as it soars overhead.
‘I know, love. It must hurt so much.’ I touch his arm.
‘Still the same scenario at home?’ Prish asks sympathetically. With his boyfriend, she means. In their late thirties, Jamie and Lewis have been together for several years, and are happily settled in a rented cottage a little way inland. We’ve had numerous gatherings in their beautiful garden on balmy summer’s days. Yet whenever Lewis’s parents visit from down south, Jamie has to decamp to the spare room and Lewis to the sofa bed, while Lewis’s parents share their double bed. And for the duration of their stay, Jamie and Lewis act as if they’re just housemates – although Jamie tends to make himself scarce as much as possible. I don’t blame him. It’s a ridiculous pretence and, understandably, Jamie finds it hurtful and ridiculous that Lewis can’t find it in himself to be honest to his mum and dad.
‘Yep, no progress there,’ Jamie replies with a shrug.
I look at him as we turn back towards the steps. Reasoning, pleading, delivering ultimatums that he’s never followed through; he’s tried everything to persuadeLewis to tell his parents that they’re a couple. It seems blindingly obvious to me, and crazily out of time to perform such a charade when everyone else knows they’re together. A cottage in the country, for goodness’ sake, with a vegetable patch and an adorable brown and white collie! It all says cosy coupledom – but somehow, Lewis’s parents don’t register this, or resolutely choose not to.
‘D’you think you can carry on like this?’ I ask tentatively.
‘Forever?’ Jamie grimaces, stuffing his hands into his jeans pockets as we make our way back towards the library. ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’
‘Maybe he’s just scared,’ I suggest.
‘Scared of being written out of the will?’ He smirks.
‘You don’t really think it’s that, do you?’ Prish exclaims.
‘Sometimes I do,’ he admits. ‘I mean, they’re a bit pompous and stuffy but they’re notthatscary. And even if they were—’
‘You’d tell them,’ Prish suggests, ‘if it was you.’
He nods. I know Jamie’s parents don’t merely accept Lewis, but love him, as the son-in-law that he is. ‘Anyway, how’s your dad these days?’ he asks, turning to me.
I smile. ‘Oh, you know, his usual charming self.’
‘Told him about Eddie’s baby yet?’ Prish crooks a brow.
‘I’m … sort of building up to that.’
‘The girls know, right?’
‘Yes, they do.’ At twenty-one Bella likes to assume the role of the most sensible one in our family – and to say she was shocked is an understatement. ‘Does he realise what he’s getting into?’ I’m sure he doesn’t, I’d replied. ‘Hashe even met a baby before? Does he know which way up they go?’
Ana had a different take. ‘D’you think it could actually be the making of him? He might surprise us all!’
‘And what about you, Nana?’ Jamie teases. ‘Got your head around being a granny yet?’
‘Not really,’ I admit. ‘I still can’t believe it’s happening.’
‘You’re going to love it,’ Prish says with a smile. ‘Let me tell you, having grandkids is the most wonderful thing.’ At fifty-eight, Prish is divorced and sporadically ‘swimming optimistically in the sea of dating’, as she puts it, on rare occasions when it’s fun. More often, ‘sea’ is switched for ‘cesspit’, and she and Jamie often rib me about how lucky I am, being with Frank. But they see him only at barbecues and parties, chatting and laughing, at his sunniest.
Later that evening I look out from our kitchen and glimpse the feeble light at the shed’s window. Tucked away at the bottom of our back garden, the shed has been quietly decaying for years. There’s a workbench in there, but mainly it’s been used only for storing my garden stuff. Until Eddie’s announcement, that is. Since that day, the man who ravished me so deliciously in that Parisian hotel room seems to have been spending every spare moment out there.
Tonight I venture out and knock lightly on the shed door, hoping to coax Frank back into the house. ‘Come in,’ he calls out. Then: ‘You don’t have to knock, y’know.’
It feels as if I do, but I let it go and step inside. ‘What are you doing in here?’ I ask, hoping it doesn’t sound accusatory.
‘Just stuff,’ he replies with a shrug. He’s sitting at the old workbench with various bits of wood and tools and scraps of paper scattered all over it.
