for when Anita arrives to whisk them all off to the beach. Thank God for her life-saving friend, offering to take all six children to the sandcastle competition, and allowing Kerry a precious couple of hours for a Private Talk with Rob.
‘What reasons?’ Freddie asks.
‘Freddie, please put some pants on. We don’t have much time …’ She frowns at the food laid out on the table. Although Kerry won’t be there, she feels it’s important to raise her game in the picnic stakes; hence the big tub of strawberries, the sliced peaches and nectarines and the home-made brownies dusted with icing sugar. There are egg mayonnaise sandwiches too, made from rough-hewn brown bread instead of the usual white sliced which her children prefer. Could she get away with sneaking in a bunch of those peelable processed cheeses which the kids love?
Making no move to acquaint himself with pants, Freddie stuffs a strawberry into his mouth. ‘What reasons, Mummy?’ he asks again.
‘Time, for one thing,’ she says briskly, packing the picnic into the hamper. ‘Dogs take a huge amount of time and effort. We’d have to walk him at least twice a day, and train him, and I don’t know anything about how to do that …’
‘I do! You say “Good boy” and give him a biscuit.’ He grins and reaches for a brownie.
‘Leave the food alone, Freddie. It’s for later. Anyway, there are loads of other reasons, like the vet’s bills and all the medicines dogs need …’ He frowns and prods at his genitals.
‘Please stop playing with your willy.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re poking about with the food, it’s not very nice …’ She glances up at the kitchen clock, a sense of dread pooling in her stomach as she realises that Rob is probably half-way to Shorling by now. Kerry has been so intent on maintaining a cheery demeanour in front of the children all week, she’s barely had a chance to figure out how she feels about last Saturday’s incident, and whether she’s still furious with him for spending the night with a teenager. Actually, she’s tried not to think about it too much – been in denial, probably. Which she suspects is terribly unhealthy and has probably triggered the start of an ulcer. Yet, even if he and Nadine didn’t do it, as he has vehemently claimed during their terse phone conversations, she has to admit that it’s still Not Right. In fact, the thought of being alone with her husband makes her feel quite nauseous.
Reluctantly, Freddie snatches a pair of pants from the radiator and pulls them on. ‘Everyone else has a dog,’ he mutters, reaching for his beloved black and orange tracksuit that’s strewn over the back of a chair.
‘You can’t wear that tracksuit,’ Kerry barks.
‘Why not?’
‘Because … because it’s too hot out there. You’ll be all sweaty and uncomfortable, and it needs a wash …’
‘It’s fine, Mum.’ He rolls his eyes, already pulling the wretched thing on. As Mia appears, brandishing her carefully drawn design for a potentially prize-winning sand sculpture – ‘That’s fantastic, darling,’ Kerry says distractedly – she realises she doesn’t have the energy to cajole him out of it. Anyway, at least he’s dressed.
‘You didn’t look at it, Mummy,’ Mia huffs.
‘I did! It’s amazing. You’ve put so much thought and work into it …’
Mia scowls and slams her drawing onto the table. The jeans she’s wearing finish at her ankles, Kerry notices, and her once purple T-shirt has faded to a chalky mauve. Is it worth trying to persuade her to change? Probably not. With the picnic packed, and a bag of towels, plus numerous buckets and spades in readiness by the door, Kerry checks the time again. Anita is due any minute now. As soon as she and the kids are all safely installed in the competition area of the beach, Kerry will hurry off to meet Rob in Hattie’s, a chintzy tearoom at the far end of the seafront.
‘Auntie Anita’s got Bess,’ Freddie reminds her as she grabs a big plastic bottle to fill with diluted orange. She realises that the other children will probably have little cartons of organic apple juice, but it’s too late to worry about that now.
‘Yes, well, that doesn’t mean we have to have one, does it?’
‘But I want one! You said if I was a good boy and I am a good boy …’ He gives the elasticated waist of his tracksuit bottoms a fierce twang.
‘We’d never be bored if we had a dog, Mummy,’ Mia chips in. ‘We’d always have someone to talk to and be our friend.’
Something twists in Kerry’s stomach, and she busies herself by swilling out the bowl she’d used to make the egg mayonnaise.
‘But you do have people to talk to, sweetheart,’ she murmurs. ‘You have me and Daddy and all your old friends in London, and you’ll soon make new ones here …’
‘I won’t,’ Freddie says.
‘Why not?’ Kerry asks. ‘What about those nice boys we were chatting to on the beach yesterday?’
‘They had a dog …’
‘Yes, Freddie, but not everyone—’
‘I don’t want new friends,’ he barks at her. ‘I ONLY WANT A DOG.’ At which the doorbell pings, and Kerry almost weeps with relief as she rushes to greet Anita and her children at the door.
As she hugs her friend, amidst hugs and excitable chatter about multi-turreted sandcastles, she clearly hears Freddie muttering away in the kitchen.
‘I hate egg,’ he announces. ‘It stinks and Mummy does too.’
Chapter Ten
Here she comes, Rob notes with a surge of relief, as Kerry crosses the road towards the tearoom where he’s spent the last twenty minutes waiting for her. It’s a breezy, early September afternoon, and she looks … normal, he’s pleased to see, in jeans and a plain navy T-shirt – not that he didn’t like her in that red dress and heels. Actually, no, he hated the red dress and heels because the image of her all done up is intermingled with the horror of her throwing that cake at him.
Kerry pushes open the teashop’s glass door and marches straight for his table.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she says briskly, dropping her bag onto the floor and plonking herself on the spindly wooden chair opposite him. Her face is slightly flushed and make-up free, her long dark hair tied back in a ponytail with a few stray strands poking out.
‘That’s okay,’ he says, resisting the urge to reach straight for her hand. He can already detect a chilly vibe, which he’d expected, and is determined to do whatever it takes to put things right. This past week has been terrible. While he’s managed to scrape through five interminable days at the office – relieved that Nadine has been perfectly friendly, but not overly-friendly – he’s missed the children dreadfully, and been unable to quell the persistent sense of dread that he’s utterly screwed up his marriage. He’s been unable to sleep, and trying to write his first sex column for Mr Jones caused him untold grief. He sat up for hours in bed with his laptop, trying to dredge up something to write about foreplay ‘with a punchy edge’, when all he could think about was his wife yelling and him ending up splattered in chocolate frosting. In desperation, he’d rattled out a column about using food during sex. (It was sprinkled with phrases like ‘tasty treats’ and ‘finger-licking good’; the days of lengthy essays about classic Hitchcock movies were clearly long gone).
‘Just an Americano please,’ Kerry tells the waitress. ‘You having another, Rob?’ She eyes him coolly.
‘Um, no thanks.’ He glances at his cup of lukewarm coffee, knowing that a refill will make his nerves jangle even more alarmingly than they are now. The waitress glides away and a tense silence descends. ‘So, er … are