Fern Britton Summer Collection: New Beginnings, Hidden Treasures, The Holiday Home, The Stolen Weekend

Christie came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea-towel. ‘Libby! Come down here right now and eat your breakfast or you’ll be late for school.’

‘I hate you.’

‘Don’t speak to Mummy like that, madam.’

And I hate you too.’

‘She’s definitely from your mother’s side.’ Nick slid an arm around Christie’s waist. ‘See you later, my beautiful, clever wife. Love you. ’Bye, Freddie.’ He kissed them both, and Christiewatched the back of his familiar head as he walked away down the mews.

Her morning happened as every morning happened. Wrestling with Libby’s stubbornness, coaxing both kids into the car and getting them off to their schools. By nine forty-five she was back indoors and ready to clear the breakfast debris. It was then that the phone rang.

The rest of the day was filled with such pain that much of it she couldn’t recall. She had been told that Nick had died, suddenly, on the pavement two hundred yards from his office and that bystanders had attempted to revive him while calling for an ambulance. She remembered the hospital doctor: young, inexperienced at breaking this kind of bad news to a wife who needed to know exactly what had happened to her husband. ‘It was a pulmonary embolism,’ he explained. ‘It could have happened to anyone.’

How? Why? Why? Why?

At last she was taken to the mortuary, where Nick lay in a silent, nondescript room that she supposed had housed many corpses and heard many tears and farewells.

He was cold and gone from her, with a bruise on his cheek where he’d apparently hit the pavement. Had he been dead before he hit the ground? Had he had any warning?

She climbed up next to him and put her arms round him. He was cold. If only she could have closed her eyes and let go of her own life, right there and then, she would have. She stayed there, feeling utterly empty, hopeless. Her sane self stayed outside her body, looking down at the sad sight she made, lying next to him. Someone opened the door, asked if she was all right. Of course, she wasn’t bloody all right. She kissed Nick goodbye for the last time, then sat outside waiting to be told what to do next as she let the silent tears spill onto her coat.

Later, Fred stared at her, silent, his eyes big with incomprehension. Libby wailed, clinging to her as if she was the only life-raft in a stormy sea. ‘Mummy! I didn’t kiss him – I didn’t kiss him. I told him I hated him. It’s my fault. I love Daddy. I want him to come home.’

Libby’s grief was so huge and suffocating that Christie wanted to slap her, to shout at her. In more pain than she had ever experienced, what she wanted to say was right on the tip of her tongue: ‘Don’t you think I want him home too? He’s my husband. The love of my life. I’m his wife. I need you to comfort me.’

But what she actually did was cuddle and kiss and console.

NOW … (#ulink_d76b3057-9ba8-5731-8372-a7b171fdd0e0)

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‘Why do we have to stay with her?’ Libby slammed the door of the battered Peugeot estate. ‘I don’t want to.’

Christie, lugging overnight bags into the car boot, bit back her reprimand about the door, not wanting to provoke her daughter’s temper any further. Instead she forced herself into her best unruffled-mother mode. ‘You know that I’m staying the night with Auntie Mel so she can help me sort out what I’m going to wear tomorrow. You’re going to stay with Granny, who can’t come here because she’s got an early-morning Pilates class tomorrow.’ She tried to keep the amusement out of her voice. The idea of her mother and her friends as Pilates devotees always made her smile.

In the rear-view mirror she could see Libby looking thunderous, her straight hair cut into a neat bob with a fringe that almost hid her frown. Across the bridge of her nose was a smattering of freckles that ran into her flushed cheeks while her rosebud mouth was drawn into a tight line.

‘Can’t we come too?’ nine-year-old Fred begged, as they began to reverse down the drive towards the lane.

‘Freddie, I’ve already explained.’ Christie spelled out what was happening for the umpteenth time. ‘You’ve got to go to school tomorrow and I’ve got a TV show to do. It’s really important that I look good, so I need to see Auntie Mel. If it goes well, there might be more work for me. Then there’ll be more money. And we can do all sorts of things.’

‘Can I have an iPod Touch, then? Ouch!’ he yelped. ‘What did you pinch me for?’

‘Because you’re stupid. You’re far too young for one.’ Libby mustered all the scorn of a twelve-going-on-twenty-five-year-old. ‘Don’t!’ she yelled, as Fred lashed out. She dodged the blow, jabbing him in the leg at the same time so that he squealed.

‘For God’s sake! Can’t the two of you behave like human beings just for once? Is it too much to ask?’ Christie yelled at the top of her voice, shocking the children into quiet.

The two of them kept a sullen silence, punctuated by the odd ‘Stop it,’ or ‘Owww,’ as one poked at the other.

Christie tried to ignore them. What was it with kids? You love them, care for them, anticipate their every whim – but did they consider her? Never. Was it all right occasionally to feel such ambivalence to the two people she loved more than anyone else in the entire world? Yes, she decided, if they were so selfish as not to understand how important the next two days could be for her. For them. The last two and a bit years since Nick had died had been a dark chaos. She had managed to exist and bring up the children as best she could. They were at least fed, clothed and relatively balanced. But she was still a jelly, slopped out of its mould and left spreading on a slippery, edgeless plate.

However, she had made some big decisions. She had given up her appearances on MarketForce, the afternoon TV consumer programme where she was beginning to make something of a name for herself as a good, solid watchdog journalist. After Nick’s sudden death, she couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the children’s day-to-day needs. She had sold up the little mews house full of so many memories and moved back to her mother’s village in Buckinghamshire, where she had found an old, dilapidated money-pit of a Georgian farmhouse. Her mother had told her she’d be mad to buy it so, to prove her right, Christie had blown Nick’s life insurance on it.

‘It’ll be lovely when it’s done,’ said those friends who had left London to brave the countryside.

Only it hadn’t been done. The chimney was cracked, the conservatory was leaking, and the wind whistled through every rattling sash window and door. She was skint. Even though she had Nick’s modest pension and a little from the weekly column she now wrote for the Daily News, plus occasional features for the paper and the odd women’s mag, that didn’t do much more than keep the family in new school shoes and petrol.

Now, though, something exciting and scary had happened. Tart Talk, the irreverent daytime TV7 show, had asked her to be a guest. Her stomach flipped with fresh nervousness. She wasn’t any longer just a widow, with all its connotations of death and sadness, but a woman who had a life of her own to lead. Nick would have wanted that. Wouldn’t he?

‘Come on, Christie. You can do it,’ she heard his voice tell her.

At last, she turned down the road that led to her mother’s neat little brick bungalow. She pulled up outside the low wall that fronted an immaculate garden with a manicured moss-free lawn and regimented borders. Christie turned to the children. Libby was busy texting but Fred was fast asleep.

‘Come on, guys. Time to get out.’ As Libby looked up at her with her big dark eyes, so reminiscent of Nick’s, Christie’s heart melted. ‘Oh, darling, please don’t make me feel bad. This could be really good for us all.’

‘Yeah, I know. I hope Granny’s made one of her sponge cakes.’ Her mood had changed with the fickleness of youth as she hopped out of the car and gave her mother a kiss. ‘Come on, Fred. We’re here.’ She pulled out the bag he was leaning on, waking him with a jolt.

Fred clambered out behind her, bleary with sleep. Christie gathered him up in a bear-hug. ‘Be good, darling. I’ll see you tomorrow after school.’

She had noticed one of the lace curtains in the bay windows move, and knew her mother would open the door at any moment. Not wanting to miss the train by getting caught up in conversation or complaint, she waited till her mother appeared on the doorstep then, as the children waved at her, she locked the car and shouted, ‘Can’t stop, Mum. I’m going to be late. Wish me luck. I’ll see you tomorrow and thanks a million.’

Then, with a wave, she started walking briskly towards the station. As her steps took her further away from her mother’s, she couldn’t help thinking back to a time when she thought she’d never be able to move on.

The hours and days after Nick’s death were wiped from her mind. Christie was visited by waking dreams of him. When the phone rang, it must be him. When the doorbell rang, it must be him. But, of course, it never was, and the blow to her solar plexus felled her more painfully each time. The agony of telling people that she was no longer part of NickandChristie’ was something she began to avoid. The look in their eyes, the sound of their voices on the phone made anger roar into her brain and scorch the backs of her eyeballs. Instead, she asked Mel to tell everyone they knew.

One morning a postman delivered two letters for Nick. She heard them drop through the letterbox and just managed to open the door and give the innocent man an earful of grief-sodden abuse before he disappeared through the gate. She sagged onto the doorstep. As she wept, she seemed to float outside her body and, looking down on herself, she was filled with compassion and disgust by what she saw.

‘Get up, you stupid excuse for a woman. Get up! Comb your hair, get dressed, brush your teeth. Be a credit to Nick. Nick, you bastard!’

She only emerged from this altered state when a small handsmoothed her hair and a little boy’s voice said, ‘Mummy, I’m hungry.’

The words lasered through her. Yes. She was literally the breadwinner now, the one to put food in the children’s mouths, to clothe them and guide them through life. She had to be both mother and father to them from now on.

The protective shell that had enveloped her that day kept her strong as she organised the funeral. Her mother tried to help with the catering. ‘You must have everybody back to the house and feed them, Christine. That’s what I did for your father and it’s what people expect. I suggest sandwiches, nothing too fancy. A big bowl of cocktail sausages always goes down well. What man doesn’t like a sausage? That’s what your father always said. And what about drink? Just a little sherry and lots of tea, I think. You don’t want anybody getting drunk. And make sure they know when it finishes. If people hang about they’ll expect more food. Christine? Christine? Christine?’

But Christie had gone. She couldn’t take her mother’s wittering any longer so she had opened the front door and just walked out. For a brief moment in her life she wanted to be free of responsibility. No more widow, no more mum. Just Christie.

Her escape didn’t last long – half an hour at most – and when she got home, the children were in the middle of supper, eating chicken nuggets at the kitchen table. Maureen was at the sink, making a jug of Ribena. Christie went to her and hugged her. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

‘That’s all right, darling.’

And nothing more was said.

Somehow the funeral drew a line through the chaos of the days preceding it, and gradually Christie’s life began to take on a rhythm of sorts. Not the same as before, but almost bearable. Now that she was solely responsible for the children and could think of nothing else, she gave in her notice at MarketForce and devoted herself to them, so money was tight. When Libby and Fred were settled, she would start working as a journalist again. The one thing hanging over her head was the bank loan Nick had taken out to help his father, not long before he died. The debt was part of his legacy to her. She had promised him that she would never tell Maureen about its existence, and there was no way she would tell her now.

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Deep breathing was not producing the desired effect. Christie’s heart was still racing as fast as if she’d been rigged up to an intravenous caffeine drip. Her palms were clammy and she knew that if she unclenched her fists her hands would be shaking. She inhaled again slowly, trying to focus her thoughts. Catching sight of herself, she immediately wished she’d stuck with the simple black round-necked dress, her original choice, instead of giving in to her fashionista sister. After last night’s couple of glasses of wine, Mel had insisted she went for something more ‘out there’.