Christmas at the Beach Hut Read online

  ‘Shall I go up and get Hattie?’ asked Kiki, who’d obviously heard this conversation a million times.

  ‘Sure,’ said Lizzy, and Kiki legged it up the stairs. ‘Come through to the kitchen,’ she said to Meg. ‘Would you like a coffee while she gets ready? I’m so sorry. I was supposed to get her up at half eight but I completely forgot.’

  ‘Hey, it’s not your responsibility,’ said Meg. ‘She has an alarm on her phone, right?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Lizzy. Meg had a point, but Lizzy always felt as if everything was her responsibility; her fault. ‘Thanks for taking them into Birmingham. I haven’t got the time. I’ve got so much to do still. I only finished work last night and I’m so behind …’

  She led Meg through the living room, keenly aware that it was in a mess, that the decorations weren’t up, that the cards weren’t on display, then through into the kitchen.

  ‘It’s no problem. I need to go in. I have a load of stuff still to get. It’s never-ending, isn’t it?’ Meg looked around the kitchen and its chaos approvingly. ‘What an adorable kitchen.’

  The kitchen wasn’t big, but it was cosy, with its quarry tiled floor, a fireplace lined with shelves and a huge picture window that looked out over the walled garden. The Kinghams ate in here too, at an old pine table with mismatched chairs. There were years and years of clutter jostling for space on the shelves and the walls. It needed a major de-clutter and a deep clean, thought Lizzy – now she was jobless there would be time …

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, discreetly putting her hand up to remove her antlers and depositing them on the kitchen table, conscious she was still in her pyjamas. ‘I have been up for ages, by the way.’ She pointed at the smouldering ruins on the side. ‘The Great British Burn Off …’

  Meg wandered over to inspect them. ‘Oh, they look fine. Just a little bit singed. Stick a load of icing sugar on them. No one will notice.’ She broke off a corner. ‘Yum.’

  ‘Coffee?’ said Lizzy, and Meg nodded.

  ‘I just want to say,’ she said, sliding into one of the chairs, ‘I’m so grateful to Hattie for making friends with Kiki. It’s been tough for her, moving school in the middle of her A levels, but she had a bit of trouble at St Margaret’s. It’s so lovely that they’re friends. Hattie’s a good influence.’

  Lizzy glowed with pride. There was nothing nicer than praise for your children.

  ‘The two of them get on well. She loves coming over to you.’

  Hattie was slightly in thrall to Kiki, whose father made pop videos and a lot of money.

  Meg smiled. ‘I’m taking a back seat in the business while she finishes. My husband’s away more than ever so I think it’s important for me to be around.’ She blinked and for a moment there were tears in her eyes. ‘I worry that I wasn’t there enough when she was younger and it made her go off the rails a bit. I think she’s back on track now. She seems to be working hard.’ She sighed. ‘When does the worry stop?’

  ‘Hey,’ said Lizzy, putting a cup of coffee in front of her and sitting down at the table opposite. ‘We all do the best we can. We can’t hold ourselves responsible for everything.’ She patted Meg’s hand. ‘Isn’t that what you just said to me?’

  Meg gazed at her. Lizzy wondered what issues she was mulling over in her mind; what her fears and worries were. She recognised the combination of panic and anxiety in Meg’s face, for she felt it herself, constantly. The fears for your children only grew bigger as they did, as they became people in their own right and started making decisions for themselves. Not always good ones.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Meg. ‘We’re too hard on ourselves. But it’s tough. I might only look thirty, but I feel a hundred and eight.’ She laughed and lifted her coffee cup. ‘Anyway, cheers. Here’s to burnt brownies. Who cares?’

  I do, thought Lizzy. She’d wanted two trays of perfection, and to be standing in front of this stunning woman looking like a respectable human being, in a house that didn’t look as if someone had dropped a bomb.

  ‘Mum!’ Hattie burst into the kitchen, Kiki in her wake. ‘You were supposed to get me up!’

  She looked different lately, thought Lizzy, the glamorous influence of Kiki and Meg apparent in her newly bleached hair sporting a streak of kingfisher blue, her skater’s figure perfect for the tight military blazer and minuscule velvet skirt she was wearing. She looked fantastic.

  Lizzy felt a pang, recognising that any influence she had over her daughter’s sartorial style had finally evaporated. For a moment, she remembered a smocked gingham dress and a pair of red sandals with little brown feet buckled inside.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ said Kiki to Meg, who was finishing her coffee.

  Hattie and Kiki were as agitated and keen to go as young racehorses.

  Lizzy beckoned Hattie over, rummaging in her handbag, and gave her twenty quid.

  ‘Here’s some money for lunch,’ she said, sotto voce.

  ‘I’m not sure that will be enough,’ Hattie whispered back. Lizzy raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Well, it’s all I’ve got,’ she said, fixing her daughter with a meaningful glare.

  Hattie hesitated, and Lizzy could see her processing a choice of possible replies. Then she smiled and leaned in to give her mother a kiss. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘Make sure you’re back by sixish,’ said Lizzy. ‘We’re doing the tree tonight, remember? As long as it arrives …’

  They always decorated the tree together, as a family, but they’d left it very late this year – not for want of Lizzy trying. She’d been badgering Simon for days to get the tree delivered. He had a contact who could get them cheap, but this year’s tree still hadn’t materialised. Simon had promised it would arrive today. In the meantime, he wouldn’t let Lizzy get one from somewhere else.

  ‘He’s only charging thirty quid for a six-footer, straight to the door,’ he’d told her before he left for work this morning. ‘That’ll cost you seventy anywhere else.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s no use if it doesn’t turn up.’

  ‘It will. Today. I absolutely promise.’

  ‘You said that yesterday. And the day before.’

  ‘He’s given me his word. It’ll be here by lunchtime.’

  ‘Great. We can decorate it tonight. I’ll do the usual.’

  They always had lasagne, and Lizzy always played the soundtrack from The Snowman while they were doing it. For the last few years she’d had to fight for it, as the twins wanted their own music thumping away in the background, but she always won. It was her tradition and she knew they secretly loved it; they teased her when she cried when ‘Walking in the Air’ came on, because it was so heart-soaringly joyous. The decorating of the tree was Christmas to her, when they all came together and made the house ready.

  Lizzy walked Hattie, Kiki and Meg out to the front door and waved them goodbye. As they climbed into the SUV, a flat-bed truck with a huge Christmas tree on the back careered to a halt behind it.

  Lizzy gave a wide grin and pointed madly at the van so Hattie could see it, giving her a double thumbs-up. Hattie gave her a discreet thumbs-up back then turned away. To be fair, no one wanted their pyjama-clad mother waving at them from the doorstep.

  ‘All right, love? Where’d you want it?’ grinned the Christmas-tree man, clambering out of his cab. ‘I’ve got a peach for you here, the pick of the bunch. Nothing but the best, your husband told me.’

  Lizzy clapped her hands in delight. Simon hadn’t let her down.

  Christmas was going to be perfect.

  4

  Back in the kitchen, she did all the washing-up, cut the brownies into tiny little squares, throwing away the burnt edges, and dusted them with icing sugar as Meg had suggested. She’d make some chocolate fridge cake later, with cranberries and pistachios – she couldn’t burn those, but her inner Nigella would be satisfied.

 
Then she called up her Christmas spreadsheet on her iPad: an alarming plethora of presents still to be bought and wrapped, food to be prepared, chores to be timetabled, tasks to be delegated … There was still so much to be done. She felt a little bubble of panic but then told herself it was fine: she’d left work, she had nothing to do but concentrate on Christmas.

  As events manager at Craven Court Hotel, she had always been run off her feet during the festive season, firstly with the office parties they held every night in the run-up – three-course dinner, half a bottle of fizz and a DJ for £24.95 a head meant they were always full to bursting – then getting the hotel ready for the guests who had booked their Indulgent Christmas package: three nights including a present from Santa (cashmere gloves for the ladies; leather wallets for the men).

  So Christmas had always been a mad scramble. Snatched lunch-hour shopping trips. Favours called in to sneak the afternoon off for carol concerts and nativity plays. Broken resolutions to make everything from scratch which inevitably ended in buying luxury mince pies and sausage rolls and Christmas cake from Marks & Spencer, paying extra to make up for her culinary neglect. One year she’d actually had to pinch a box of crackers from the hotel as she’d forgotten to buy any. And she always had to go in on Christmas Day just to check everything was running smoothly: that Santa hadn’t turned up drunk, they hadn’t run out of pigs-in-blankets and the fairy lights on the box bushes outside hadn’t fused. Everything had to be perfect.

  This year, it was time for everything at Pepperpot Cottage to be perfect. There had to be an upside to voluntary redundancy.

  To be fair, her ‘voluntary’ redundancy hadn’t been all that voluntary. But Lizzy could read between the lines. The new regime wanted to get rid of the dead wood. They didn’t want a middle-aged events manager. They wanted someone young and vibrant who had their finger on the pulse of social media and the latest cocktail craze. Lizzy had seen, in the brochures for the other hotels in the group, the skin-tight cheongsam dresses the staff were expected to wear and had thought Oh dear.

  ‘Take the money and run,’ said Simon cheerfully. ‘And if you don’t want to get another job straight away, you don’t have to. I’m earning enough these days. Take some time out.’

  Lizzy looked at him, puzzled. It would never have occurred to her not to work. She wasn’t a lady who lunched. Or a gym bunny. She’d always been a working mum. Not being one wasn’t an option.

  It was funny, though. Back at the end of the summer, when she’d ‘volunteered’ and they’d said thank you and told her when her last day would be – 21 December – she hadn’t batted an eyelid. She had felt confident that she would be able to find another job. But now, confident was the last thing she was feeling. Especially after the rejection from Missingham Manor. It was the fourth thanks but no thanks she’d received.

  She took in a deep breath and told herself to forget about applying for jobs for now. She could have the rest of December off, as a reward for all those Christmases she had worked round the clock and run herself almost ragged, juggling everything and smiling constantly. This year she was going to really enjoy every moment, soak up every detail – and hopefully get a rest into the bargain. It was a terrible time of year to look for work anyway, so she would hit the ground running in the new year, refreshed and filled with resolution.

  She looked up at the clock. It was nearly half ten and she still wasn’t dressed and she had a doctor’s appointment at quarter past eleven – one of the many things she was shoe-horning into this three-day window.

  She ran up two flights of stairs to the twins’ rooms at the top, and knocked on Luke’s door. There was no reply so she went in tentatively. He was still fast asleep, the curtains drawn.

  ‘Luke!’ She tapped his shoulder and he stirred, rolling onto his back with a groan.

  ‘Hey, Mum,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Listen, I’ve got to go out. Will you do me a favour?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Course.’ He looked up at her with bleary eyes.

  ‘Can you get the decorations down from the attic for me? Put them by the tree in the living room? They’re just by the water tank – three boxes full. You can’t miss them. They’ve got Xmas Dex written all over them.’ Lizzy knew, when explaining to men where to find something, you couldn’t be too precise.

  ‘OK.’

  Lizzy looked around the gloom of the bedroom. She could see plates and mugs and clothes strewn everywhere.

  ‘And can you have a bit of a tidy?’

  She hated nagging. It had been a long, hard term for both of them with their mocks looming after Christmas. But there was no need for squalor. They could indulge in that as much as they liked once they were students.

  ‘Yeah. Sorry, Mum. I know. It’s disgusting. I’m a slob.’ Luke gave her an endearing grin. ‘But it’s my job.’

  ‘I’d be very worried if it was tidy in here. Anyway, I’ll be back later this afternoon but if you could sort your bedroom and get the decorations down you’ll get a gold star from me. We’re doing the tree tonight – it’s just arrived, thank God.’

  Luke nodded. ‘Cool.’ He reached for his phone and started scrolling through his apps. She’d lost him, thought Lizzy. He’d be counting his Instagram likes – there was little point in any further communication. She bent down and ruffled his hair fondly. He batted her hand away with a smile, not taking his eyes away from his screen.

  ‘Attic. Decorations. Don’t forget.’

  ‘Love you, Mumma,’ he sang. It was the twins’ mantra – their way of telling her she didn’t need to go on a minute longer; they’d received the message and understood.

  He didn’t look up as she left the room.

  Lizzy ran down to her bedroom, jumped into the shower then pulled on a pair of jeans and her Christmas jumper. It had a pudding on the front with a sprig of holly. Usually the jumper put a smile on her face and put her in the spirit, but when she looked in the mirror an image of Meg, with her slender legs and that mane of hair that was artfully tousled to look not-done, flashed into her head. She tried to tug the bottom of the jumper over her bum to get the same outsize effect that Meg had sported, but either it had shrunk or she had got bigger because it only just reached past her waistband.

  Looking in the mirror also reminded her she had been meaning to put an application of Frosted Chocolate Brown through her hair for weeks, but hadn’t had time. And it was such a messy business and got all over the bathroom and the towels. Anyway, flashes of grey were fashionable right now, weren’t they? Wasn’t getting older all about embracing your imperfections these days? Flaunting the flabby bits? Celebrating the silver?

  It didn’t matter, she told herself. She was going to the doctor, not a fashion show. But she felt a sense of gloom creep over her. That insidious mix of uncertainty and panic which had become all too familiar of late, and which she couldn’t control. She would be bobbing along quite happily and it would sneak up on her. She had, initially, blamed the redundancy, but it wasn’t just the redundancy that was making her feel like this. There was something else, something she didn’t like to think about: the fact that, come next September, there would only be two of them in these four walls. Every time she thought about it, she felt that cold iron fist around her heart, that needling in her stomach and a terrifying sense of dread that had, eventually, sent her to her GP a month ago.

  ‘I feel as if I’m going mad.’

  The GP had looked at her, raising her eyebrows to indicate she needed more information.

  ‘Everything seems pointless. Especially me. And I can’t sleep. I wake up at two and lie there for about three hours worrying. Then I fall back to sleep and can hardly drag myself out of bed come morning. I’ve got no energy. I’ve put on about a stone. And I feel …’ Lizzy grasped about for the best word. ‘Full of dread. But I’ve got nothing to worry about. Well, no more than most people …’ She gave a helpless smile. ‘Thou
gh my twins are going off to uni next September, so there’s that.’ She took in a deep breath. ‘Sometimes I just want to crawl out of my skin and run away.’ She finished with a sigh, and to her horror felt her eyes fill with tears. ‘Oh God.’ She put her fingers up to her face and wiped them away. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I think,’ said the doctor, ‘that what you are feeling is quite normal, given your age.’

  Lizzy nodded.

  ‘Well, yes. But I didn’t expect to feel so overwhelmingly awful.’

  ‘If things don’t get better, we can look at prescribing something. Antidepressants. Or HRT. But they don’t work for everyone and I think it might be better in the first instance to see if you can plough through.’ She wrote a list. ‘Cut back on caffeine and alcohol and spicy foods. Get plenty of exercise and fresh air. Take up something that will help you relax. Yoga or pilates.’

  She’d handed Lizzy the piece of paper. Lizzy looked down at it doubtfully. It didn’t fill her with confidence.

  This morning, she was going back to see the GP again. She’d had a month to put the doctor’s suggestions into practice, but if anything she felt worse, as if she wasn’t in control of anything. As if life was dictating terms to her, rather than the other way round. She’d always been so positive and upbeat, but now it all felt like wading through treacle. Small things became big obstacles. She’d tried to hide it from everyone – Simon was under enough pressure without worrying about a hormonal wife – but she felt she needed someone to tell her it was OK to feel like this and that it was normal and that it would get better. That she would feel like herself again.

  She gave herself a thumbs-up in the mirror, telling herself that asking for help didn’t make her a failure, then spent fifteen minutes looking for her car keys. Which turned out to be in the car.

  This happened all the time. Further evidence she was going completely barmy.

  She arrived at the surgery with two minutes to spare. She walked up the steps, trying to count how many times she had been inside this building. Until she’d become pregnant with the twins, she had barely darkened the surgery doors. Thereafter it had felt as if she was there every week for one thing or another for her or for them. Blood tests and check-ups and jabs. Mastitis. Colic. Chicken pox. Ear infections. Eczema patches. Smear tests. The appointments had tailed off for the twins when they reached their teens and became more robust and she herself hadn’t been in for anything until the appointment a few weeks ago.