The Beach Cabin: A Short Story

‘Queenie told me. The owners have engaged her as their key holder. I can easily get their number off her.’ Penny picked up her phone and started to call Queenie.

‘Hang on, I’m not sure. I’d need to check with Charlotte – they might have plans.’

‘Ed, stop procrastinating. You need to spend some time with your family and that’s that.’

Ed did as he was told. Now that the idea was in his head he ached to see his kids. The last four weeks he’d avoided going home, citing complications with the production. Anything rather than confront the situation and risk Charlotte telling him that she no longer loved him, their marriage was over.

Maybe Penny was right. They hadn’t been seeing enough of each other, that was all. He’d been letting his imagination run riot. Yes, they could sort this all out – a little holiday was exactly what they needed.

‘Please can you get off my foot, Molly?’ Charlotte looked down into the soft adoring eyes of their bearded collie. Molly was a shaggy-coated four-year-old, absolutely enormous and intent on getting as close as she could to Charlotte, which meant that crushed toes were part and parcel of being a dog owner in the Appleby household.

Charlotte eyed the ingredients in front of her. Prawns in their shells. Coconut milk. Now what else was it that Nigel Slater had said should go in? The recipe had been in the Observer at the weekend, but she’d forgotten to tear it out before chucking the paper into the recycling box. She’d decided to give it a go anyway, hoping that she could rely on her memory. A green curry – would that be Indian? Or Sri Lankan? She rummaged in the cupboard and fished out some curry powder. What else? There’d been a green herb of some sort…And was it a lemon or a lime he used? She went to the fridge: there was no lime, so it would have to be lemon, and the only green herb she could see was a slightly withered stalk of parsley. That’d do. Maybe chuck in a carrot or two? And mangetout – she had plenty of mangetout and it was definitely one of Nigel’s ingredients.

Any other evening Charlotte would have abandoned all thought of making the dish as soon as she discovered the recipe was lost, but tonight she was glad of the challenge. She needed something to distract her from the worries racing through her mind. Alex should have been home an hour ago. They’d agreed that she could go to her best friend Poppy’s house for the afternoon, provided she was home by seven. When seven thirty rolled around with no sign of her daughter and no word of explanation, Charlotte had tried to ring her, but an automated announcement informed her that the person she was calling was not available. So she rang Poppy’s mum to ask her to send Alex on her way – only to discover that Alex hadn’t been there in days. Fighting the urge to panic and ring all three emergency services and run up and down the street in hysteria, she’d focused on remaining calm and waiting it out. It wasn’t the first time Alex had disappeared for a few hours with no explanation. It had been less obvious during term time, though Charlotte had managed to catch her out a few times, but now the holidays were here it was clear that Alex was going somewhere she didn’t want anyone else to know about.

There had been none of the usual telltale signs of a boyfriend. No dreamy looks over the breakfast table, or furtive late-night phone calls. Charlotte wasn’t much of a snoop, so she could be wrong, but in her experience boy trouble usually came with bells on, shouting its presence loud and clear. No, this felt like something else. Perhaps if she’d been around a bit more, then Alex would have opened up to her. But she’d been preoccupied with everything that was happening with Henry – she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit taking her eye off the ball.

Charlotte proceeded to chop up all the ingredients with more confidence than she felt. The resulting mix looked nowhere near as lovely as the photos of Nigel’s efforts…

She lit the flame under the deep sauté pan and threw in the vegetables. Behind her she heard the front door shut quietly in the hallway and turned with great relief to see her daughter Alex slipping past the kitchen door in the direction of the stairs.

‘Hi, darling,’ she called out.

Alex’s foot stopped on the stairs. ‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Got a minute?’

Silence, but then, a moment later, the slow plod of reluctant footsteps back down the hall. Alex’s hair had been purple when she’d first dyed it, but it had now faded to a lilacy-blue and was scraped back in a ponytail. Charlotte missed her daughter’s natural copper-blonde hair but hoped it would stage a return one day. Chewing the toggle of her hoodie, Alex hovered by the door.

‘Been somewhere nice?’ Charlotte asked casually. Must avoid an argument, she told herself. Tread carefully.

‘I was at Poppy’s, I told you.’

Damn.Why do you have to lie, Alex? Why can’t you tell me where you’ve been?

‘I’m making dinner. Are you hungry?’ she asked, a touch too brightly.

‘No, thanks. We had KFC.’

We? Who’s ‘we’?

‘What is it?’

Good question. ‘It’s a prawn curry. Nigel Slater.’

Alex rolled her eyes. ‘Why don’t you just stick to ready meals, Mum?’

‘I like cooking.’ It was true.

‘But you’re not very good at it.’

‘I shall ignore your implied insult. I’ve been complimented on my cooking, I’ll have you know.’

‘Only by Granny Alice, who lost her taste buds when a bomb fell on her house during the war.’

‘Not only Granny Alice, actually: many people.’

‘Yeah, right, Mum,’ Alex replied sceptically, turning to leave.

Charlotte was on the verge of letting her go, but then decided it was time to bite the bullet and confront her daughter. ‘Alex, I called Poppy’s mum when you were late home. She said—’

Alex’s explosive response took Charlotte by surprise, even though she’d been exposed to enough teen anger that she ought to be used to it by now. ‘How dare you! You’re always snooping around and following me. Why can’t you let me live my own life?’

‘Alex, darling, I don’t want to interfere, but you’re only fifteen and we worry about your safety, that’s all.’

‘Rubbish! You just want to control me.’

Charlotte struggled to keep her voice even. ‘Alex, I understand how—’

‘No, you don’t! You can never know how it feels to be me!’ And, with this, Alex raced out of the room and up the stairs, slamming her bedroom door behind her.

Charlotte looked at Molly, who was cowering under the pine kitchen table. ‘Well, that went as well as can be expected,’ she muttered, and Molly crept out and sat on her foot again, giving her hand a consoling lick. ‘Thanks, Molly. I can always rely on you to be here for me.’

If only she could say the same of her husband. Charlotte silently cursed Ed for never being home when he was needed. Instead, he was hundreds of miles away as usual while she held the fort at home, though it felt very much like a battle she was fast losing.

He was so much better with Alex than she was; he always knew how to bring her round. Part of the problem was that she and Alex were too much alike: spiky, emotional rather than rational, prone to keeping secrets…But the old Alex had hated confrontation. On the rare occasions when she did get in an argument, she was always the one who would try to make up. The familiar gnawing guilt fluttered in her belly, berating her. This is your fault. If you weren’t spending so much time at the theatre…All that time with Henry when you should be at home…

As if on cue, her phone rang. It was Ed. Hello, stranger, she thought.

‘Hi, Ed. How’s it going?’

‘Yeah, good. We’re finished now for four weeks – Dahlia’s gone off to do her one-woman show in London.’

‘Oh, God, that! What’s it about again?’

‘Um, not sure – something to do with older people having a lot of sex?’

‘Crikey.’

‘Kids OK?’

‘You probably know better than I do.’

Whenever he was away, Ed kept in daily contact with them by text and FaceTime.

There was a pause at the other end of the line. She could picture him floundering over what to say next without putting his foot in it.

‘I was wondering,’ he said eventually, ‘how would it be if you all came down to Pendruggan for a few days? There’s a great place we can stay – it’s right by the beach. We haven’t seen much of each other over the last few weeks—’