MID TO LATE MAY
Cally
‘Do you think, Jack,’ Cally asked her husband, ‘it’s the Serena Ross who’s left this?’
‘Who?’
Jack was busy unpacking their sons’ bags, sliding the T-shirts and shorts, and the pants, socks and jumpers, Cally had laundered ready for their two-week stay by the sea, onto the shelves in the wardrobe of their double room. The boys would have to sleep on the small pull-out sofa in the sitting room. He didn’t look up.
‘Serena Ross. She’s an actress. She was all over the papers recently. Pulled out of a film or something. Tom Marchant’s in it. Breaking Ice, the film’s called. He’s still in it but she’s not, so it said in one of the Sunday papers. There seems to have been some sort of affair between them. He’s married.’
‘So far so normal for the film world I’d say. Cynic that I am.’ Jack laughed. ‘Anyway, left what?’
‘This necklace.’ Standing in the open doorway of the bedroom, watching Jack, Cally uncurled her fingers to reveal a lozenge-shaped amethyst about three centimetres long and half as wide, on a gold chain so fine Cally thought she might be able to get it through the eye of a needle. Cally didn’t wear jewellery much, except her engagement ring if she and Jack were going out, which wasn’t often these days. Her hands were for ever in water, or cleaning up something after the boys, or gardening, and rings got filthy or slid off and she lost them. And when she was hairdressing she only wore her wedding band because anything with a raised stone might scratch a client. But she liked this necklace. ‘Amethyst. It’s my birthstone. There’s a note to say it’s a gift. I can keep it if I want to and leave a welcome gift for the next occupant, also if I want to. Not obligatory.’
‘Just as well,’ Jack said. ‘We can’t run to leaving expensive jewellery for people we don’t know.’
‘No, I know we can’t. But we might leave something when the holiday’s over.’
‘Over?’ Jack said, looking up sharply at Cally. ‘We’ve only just got here! I’m sorry it’s not the Maldives or somewhere five-star, but I thought, well, you know, a holiday might be just what we need.’
Cally thought Jack sounded petulant – he certainly looked it, slapping down the boys’ socks and pants on a shelf – as though he was irritated she wasn’t showing enough gratitude for the holiday he’d booked as a surprise. Cally struggled to think of something to say. Why didn’t you at least show me the details of 23 The Strand before booking? was uppermost in her mind, but to say that would put a chill between them, although with the boys around they wouldn’t argue about it. There had been far too much ‘chill’ between them lately. A combination of things – pressure of work for Jack, bouts of flu the boys had been laid really low with, too much time off work at the salon for Cally, which had put her job in jeopardy. And also… no, Cally wasn’t even going to think about that.
‘It’s a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be,’ Cally said, trying to diffuse the atmosphere. ‘Thankfully!’ she added, laughing. ‘I mean, when we came along the promenade I thought you’d booked us into one of those beach huts.’
Near the information office where Cally and Jack had picked up the key, the boys squealing with delight and sliding about on the tiled floor while they waited, impatiently, to be seen, was a double row of beach huts, each no bigger than their garden shed at home, all with brightly coloured doors. One row faced the sea, and the other the green. A few were open with people sitting outside on deckchairs, sipping mugs of tea or reading.
‘As if!’ Jack said. ‘Those get taken down in the winter and you’re not allowed to sleep overnight in them. I did check before we came, Cally. Besides, you couldn’t swing the proverbial cat in one of those!’
‘Of course you did,’ Cally said, aware she kept saying the wrong thing or, if not the wrong thing, something that irritated Jack, demeaning – in his eyes at least – his kind gesture in booking the holiday. She reached down to ruffle four-year-old Noah’s hair. He was being quiet and pensive for once, as though he was puzzled about where he was, and why.
‘Can we have a cat?’ Noah asked. ‘A tiger? Or a lion?’
Cally laughed. Noah was for ever asking for a pet – a dog, a cat, a hamster, a parrot. So far Cally and Jack had resisted all entreaties, even though it was good for children to learn about love and loss when the pets died. Died? Why were words like that cropping up all the time now? Was it the same as when a friend got a new make of car, and suddenly you started seeing those cars everywhere – same model, same colour?
‘Can we?’ Noah persisted. ‘You said swing a cat, Daddy! I can swing a cat.’
Cally wagged a finger playfully at Jack and shook her head. The trouble was, Noah was all ears. She’d have to be careful what she said in front of him from now on. They both would, once she found the courage to tell Jack about the lump. She so didn’t want it to be real, the tiny, granite-chipping lump she’d found in her left breast, just below the nipple. She so didn’t want the information she’d seen on the internet when she’d Googled lumps/breasts to be one hundred per cent correct. There had to be a margin for hope. She hoped telling him here would be easier. She’d been on the verge of telling him at home but the moment was snatched from her. The boys had been in bed fast asleep, and Jack had done the supper dishes while Cally had a shower and changed into her night things. Then Jack had come in with a mug of cocoa for her and that was when Noah had woken up screaming. They’d both rushed upstairs. That he’d woken with a nightmare had been Cally’s first thought, but when they got there they could see he was running a temperature. He didn’t go limp in Jack’s arms when he picked him up, but remained rigid, holding his hands to his head. And then he’d been monumentally sick. Cally had checked for a rash but in the low light of the bedroom she couldn’t be sure if it was a rash she was seeing or the pressure of the fabric of Noah’s pyjamas on his skin. So she’d called her mother on her mobile to come and sit with Riley, while Jack used the landline to ring for an ambulance. In the early hours of the morning, with Noah’s temperature back down and in his own bed again, Cally realised that, for the time she’d been dealing with what could have been a serious emergency, she’d completely forgotten about her own health worries. And now, she wanted to deal with it in her own time, in her own way. It was her lump after all.
‘Please, Daddy?’ Noah persisted, dragging Cally’s mind back to the present. ‘You said. I’ll help look after it.’
Cally thought, after the rush to hospital, that she would willingly give him anything he asked for. Jack too. But that was a subject Cally and Jack didn’t agree on one hundred per cent; that a pet would be good for the boys. Cally thought it was a natural way to teach them responsibility, and gentleness, instead of the rough and tumble that was their normal life, but Jack didn’t agree. He saw pets as tying, and she had to agree that a pet would have given them an extra problem to deal with before they could come away to the seaside.
‘And me!’ Three-year-old Riley always wanted whatever it was his older brother had. Once, he’d had a meltdown because Noah needed medicine for a stomach upset while Riley had nothing wrong with him. It had taken ages to quieten him down.
‘No. Sorry,’ Jack said. ‘Not a cat. I’m allergic to them, I’m afraid.’
Desperate not to risk a meltdown from Riley over having a pet cat – or not in this case – Cally came up with an idea.
‘Shall we go down to the beach? Now? We can come back and make toast in the chalet afterwards.’
‘Yes!’ the boys said in unison.
‘We’ll go along to the little tea station and buy buckets and spades. And maybe some flags for the tops of sandcastles if they have them…’
Cally’s voice trailed away. She remembered, as a child, that when her Aunt Frances took her on holiday with her cousins, they always bought a new bucket and spade each season and had sandcastle-building competitions, and always there would be flags on the top as well as shells and bird feathers. If worst came to worst with the lump Cally had found, she’d be making memories for her boys on this holiday, wouldn’t she? Once they started school proper she wouldn’t be able to take them out of school for holidays. A lump caught in her throat at the thought she might die before they even started school proper at five years old.
‘You okay?’ Jack asked. He put an arm around her shoulder but didn’t pull her close as he usually did. Cally felt herself still under his touch and hated herself for it. But how could she tell Jack about the lump she’d found? Now? Right at this minute? She couldn’t. She’d just promised the boys a trip to the beach, hadn’t she?
To make amends for the chill she knew she was conveying to Jack, she reached up and touched his hand.
‘I’m fine. Why?’
‘Well, I’ve noticed you’ve begun to say something and then you stop. You did it more than a few times at home for a few weeks before we came away. I was going to ask you about it, but then Noah gave us that little panic.’
‘He did, didn’t he? All well again now.’
And I want to be able to say those words about myself soon – all well again. In the middle of the night when Cally woke, her mind racing with thoughts for the future, for all their futures, those were the words she wanted to believe most. Wee-small-hours thinking was so bad for the soul, she knew that, but she couldn’t stop herself.
‘But are you?’ Jack asked. ‘Well, I mean.’
He drew Cally to him then and she so wanted to say that no, she wasn’t well, she’d found a lump and she was too, too scared of what it might mean; she might have cancer, she might have to go through horrid treatments, and she might still die at the end of it. But there were two little boys waiting for her to fulfil a promise she’d just made.
‘I’ve said. I’m fine, Jack.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘Honest’.
‘I hope so,’ Jack said. ‘We’ll talk about it later, eh? Only I’m worried. It’s like you forget what it is you’re going to say sometimes.’
‘Do I? I…’
‘There you go,’ Jack said. ‘You’re doing it again.’
‘Just tired,’ Cally said. ‘It’s been manic at the salon. So many went sick with that norovirus. We were lucky to miss it. I did double shifts, remember?’
Cally loved her work as a hairdresser. She loved cutting best of all. ‘Anyone can gild a lily,’ was what Hannah, her tutor, had told her, ‘but a lily is beautiful without the gilding. You have to have a solid foundation to work on and a good cut is paramount.’ So many clients asked for her now that she rarely did colours or perms these days.
‘Hmm,’ Jack said, as though he didn’t quite believe it was just tiredness and overwork. ‘You would tell me if…?’ It was Jack’s turn for his voice to trail away, as though he couldn’t remember what it was he was going to say, or didn’t want to say what should be coming next. ‘If anything was wrong? Whatever sort of wrong it might be?’
Cally pressed her lips together and nodded. She couldn’t tell Jack what was bothering her, not yet. Not on the first day. They had to have some good and happy days first. She had to make memories on this holiday for Jack as well as the boys. And she and Jack needed to get back to their close and loving relationship, and it was her fault cracks had begun to appear – not because she’d found the lump but the way she was dealing with it. She’d lost count of the times Jack had come up behind her when she’d been online searching for information, and she’d closed down the site with a stab of the exit icon.
‘Cally?’ Jack had said the first time he’d walked into the spare bedroom they’d set up as an office and eventual homework space for the boys. ‘What’s that you don’t want me to see, eh? Shopping channel? Hmm?’
And Cally had lied and said, ‘Something like that,’ because wasn’t she shopping around for information?
But Jack was less jokey about it after the fourth time – the time she’d had an email from someone she’d contacted on a cancer support chat site; someone who was in the same position she was right now. A man. Tony. Up until then it hadn’t really crossed Cally’s mind that men could get breast cancer too. Cally and Tony had exchanged a few emails and she’d been reading the latest from him where he’d said he wished he hadn’t told as many people his fears in the beginning because they’d immediately begun to treat him as though he were made of eggshells and would shatter at any moment. He’d urged Cally to think about when, and who, she told.
‘You’re getting a lot of emails these days,’ Jack had said, coming up behind her. He sounded more concerned than accusatory – as though he suspected something was up but didn’t know what.
But Cally had been more alert by then. She’d heard him coming and exited Tony’s email, and it was one from an old school friend, Ruthie, that filled the screen as he came to stand behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders.
‘Won’t be a moment. Ruthie’s having another crisis. Someone called Mark wants to take her to meet his mother. Well, you know Ruthie, she’s never going to commit!’
‘Spare me!’ Jack had laughed. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, shall I? Tea or coffee?’
‘Hot chocolate,’ Cally said. She needed the comfort of that at the moment. She’d reply to Ruthie’s email tomorrow. And Tony’s. And then, maybe, she’d share her fears with Jack. Maybe.
‘Come on, boys,’ Cally said, struggling to make her voice sound bright and enthusiastic. She’d missed an opportunity to tell Jack before coming away and now she was beginning to regret that. She could have been starting treatment, if treatment was what was needed, couldn’t she? But Jack had sprung the surprise of the holiday and it would have been like throwing his kind gesture back in his face to have told him then. He needed a holiday as much as she did. ‘Last one on the beach gets chucked in the water!’
Cally found she couldn’t tell Jack about the lump on the second or third day either. Every morning when she showered, Cally felt tentatively for the lump, praying it had gone or at the very least reduced in size. It hadn’t. The first few days after she’d discovered it, she’d felt it at least twenty times a day – every time she went to the loo so she’d know, with the door locked, she couldn’t be interrupted, and each night in bed when she was sure Jack had fallen asleep beside her. But now, on holiday, she only felt for it once a day. It was reducing the horror a little not to be constantly touching it.
Each day Cally and her family spent most of their time on the beach, coming back up to the chalet to eat their lunch and tea, squashed together on the tiny deck if it was warm enough, or inside when it wasn’t. Noah and Riley loved being barefoot, sand between their toes, in their hair – loved the freedom of being able to run on the sand without their parents urging them to be careful of the kerb, or other hazards, as they did in everyday life.
‘I want to swim!’ Noah announced on the fourth day.
‘Me too,’ Cally said, ‘but it’s too cold. Even to paddle. Your feet will go blue if you paddle.’
‘Blue feet are silly,’ Noah said.
‘They are,’ Cally agreed.
‘I swim!’ Riley yelled, racing away from them. Jack leapt up and went after him, tucking the small boy under his arm, legs and arms flying like windmill sails in the storybook Cally often read to the boys at bedtime.
‘Is it really too cold?’ Jack said, sotto voce, when he came back with Noah.
‘It’s May, Jack,’ Cally said.
‘I know. But the tide’s coming in over sand that’s had the sun on it for a while. I used to go in the sea with the Cubs when I was six or seven.’
‘Riley’s only three. I don’t want him to get a chill.’
‘No, but they’ve got to learn to take risks. Live a little dangerously now and then. It’s not as though I’m going to stand here and watch him drown, now is it?’
Cally didn’t answer that because, really, it needed no answer. Jack was as committed to their boys as she was. And so they left it at that – the issue unresolved, but only showing up their differences; Jack prepared to have a go and sort out any problems as they arose, and Cally seeing dangers and problems everywhere. She shivered then, despite the sun’s still being warm on her cardiganed-shoulders, to think that, should she have to face the worst-case scenario of all and no longer be around, Jack would more than likely let the boys paddle in May.
‘Time to get back?’ Jack asked. ‘You shivered then.’
‘Did I?’ Cally said, touched he’d noticed and yet alarmed too, as though he were constantly monitoring her mood. ‘I was thinking of something.’
‘Well, I hope it involves what we might eat later. All this fresh air is making me ravenous.’
And I seem to have lost my appetite.
‘It does. Pancetta, olive and tomato pasta,’ she said. A little white lie because she hadn’t been thinking about supper at all, and at home Jack often cooked, starting to prepare meals from whatever he found in the fridge and cupboards while she was fetching the boys from their grandparents’ house.
At least he’ll be able to feed them.
‘Sounds good to me. You go on. I’ll pack up and bring the boys back with me via the supermarket. I’ll get something for us for later.’
‘I’m getting quite used to this little kitchen,’ Cally said as she put away the crockery and red-handled cutlery Jack had washed and dried. ‘Galley kitchen, I suppose. But everything we need is here and within an arm’s length.’
‘Bijou it said in the brochure,’ Jack said. ‘I didn’t have a clue what that meant, apart from it being the name of the jeweller where I bought our wedding rings, so I thought maybe it meant jewel or something.’
‘It was Bijoux, with an “x”, where you bought our rings,’ Cally said. ‘It does mean jewels, translated from the French, but it also means small and compact, I suppose.’
‘Like you,’ Jack said.
‘Oh, Jack, you say the nicest things. I’m taking it as a compliment anyway.’
‘As it was meant. Now come and sit down. Wine time now the boys are asleep, although we won’t be able to get up to any noisy athletics or we’ll wake them!’ Jack, seated in the small leather bucket chair, a throw draped over one arm of it, patted the other one, inviting Cally to come and sit beside him.
She went. She sat. It would have been churlish not to. Jack had nipped up to the small supermarket in the middle of town to fetch wine while she’d been cooking the pasta sauce. She didn’t know how she was going to turn down his offer of ‘noisy athletics’, as he put it, should their kisses and cuddles move from the sitting room to the bedroom and on to other things, as they usually did at home.
‘It’s quite lovely in here with the lamps on low,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Do you think sometimes, Jack, that we’ve got too much stuff? Our first flat was small and we filled that up, and now we have a much bigger home, we’ve filled that up too.’
‘Everybody does,’ Jack laughed. ‘I daresay even the Queen looks around her sometimes and wonders if she’s got too much stuff in her palaces.’
‘Yeah,’ Cally laughed. ‘But I like the pared-back look of this place. I mean, we only need a knife, fork and spoon each for everyday use, and a plate and mug each, and yet when I open drawers and cupboards at home they’re stuffed with the things.’
‘Eh?’ Jack said. ‘You’re coming over all deep here! Time to relax a bit. Jack filled a glass to the brim with chilled Sancerre and handed it to her.
‘It gives me space to think,’ Cally said, accepting the glass and taking a large gulp of it, ‘with less stuff about, I suppose.’
She yawned. Jack gave her rather a sharp look.
‘Sorry. You’re not boring me. Honest,’ she laughed. ‘It must be all the sea air.’
‘Phew! I thought it might have been something I said.’
No, it’s something I haven’t said.
But now? Could she? Should she? Wouldn’t she want to know if there was something bothering Jack? If he’d found a lump somewhere and hadn’t told her, she’d be furious with him for shouldering the worry on his own, she knew she would. And yet…
‘Nothing you said,’ Cally told him. ‘Only it’s been a long day and I think I’ll go to bed when I’ve finished this.’
‘It’s only nine o’clock, Cally! The boys have only been asleep an hour.’
‘I know. But we might wake them if we chat.’
‘Then we won’t chat,’ Jack said.
‘And do what instead?’
‘Kiss. Cuddle. Progress to other things. The rug here looks nice and thick. Comfy. Not for nothing do they call that fabric “shag pile”.’
‘Jack!’ Cally said, although just a few short weeks ago she’d have gone for that suggestion hook, line and sinker. Jack was a tender and considerate lover. It was rare for her not to climax.
‘Or, like I said, we could go in for some noisy athletics. In the bedroom with the door shut. It’s what couples do on holiday,’ Jack said. ‘And we haven’t yet, have we? Since we’ve been here, I mean.’
‘No, Cally,’ said, ‘we haven’t. It’s not that I don’t want to but—’
Again Cally couldn’t finish her sentence and she was beginning to hate herself for her weakness.
‘Are you going to tell me what this is all about?’ Jack asked, sitting up straighter. He reached for Cally’s free hand, and held it between both of his.
‘It isn’t about anything, Jack,’ Cally lied, looking into his mud-brown eyes. She saw all the worry frowns on his forehead and knew she was putting them there. ‘I really am tired. I was overdoing things at the salon. And I know the boys are safe with both of us there but the ocean is just so big and vast and everyone knows there are things like riptides…’
‘Not here there aren’t,’ Jack interrupted her. ‘I checked it out. It’s why I chose this place – for the boys’ safety.’
‘But I can’t help worrying.’
‘Well, do you think you could try not to? It wouldn’t be good if your anxiety got transferred to the boys somehow and stopped their adventurous spirit. Now would it?’
‘No. You’re right. I’ll try harder.’
Cally pulled herself off the edge of the chair, careful to do it so as not to disturb the boys, and stood up. She had to end this conversation. She had to go to bed. She had to try and get some sleep. She had to pray that in the morning the lump would be gone and she and Jack would be as before, making delicious love on the rug.
They woke to rain and high winds and a crashing sea the next morning.
‘We can still go out,’ Noah said. ‘We can splash in puddles and splash in the sea.’ He clapped his hands together excitedly, hopping up and down on one foot. How scrumptious he looked in the early morning, fresh from sleep, his hair tousled, his cheeks still pink from warm slumbers. Cally would have to cut off his blond curls soon – already they were reaching his shoulders and more than one person had thought he was a girl, much to Noah’s indignation.
‘We can’t,’ Cally told him, ‘because I haven’t brought wellies.’
Noah stopped hopping, thumped his feet down hard on the wooden floor of the chalet and folded his arms across his chest and went into a sulk. Riley followed suit. And Cally made a mental note to add ‘be prepared for every weather situation when you take the boys out’ to her list for Jack, should the worst happen to her.
‘We could bake instead,’ Cally said, trying to save the situation. She’d packed the bare essentials of flour and sugar and butter. And raisins, because the boys loved to snack on raisins. ‘Welsh cakes. You love those.’
Cally’s Aunt Frances had made Welsh cakes regularly, even on holiday. Cally breathed in deeply and it was as though the scent of cinnamon was in the air – that and the acrid aroma of slightly charred mixture where the cakes had been left a bit too long on the griddle. Cally had loved those burnt bits. Everyone knew burnt anything – toast, barbecue food, Welsh cakes – could be cancer-producing, didn’t they?
‘Yeah!’ Noah said, punching the air. Riley followed suit.
‘Then, that’s what we’ll do. Until the rain stops and then we’ll think again. You can watch CBeebies until we’re ready to bake.’ She reached for the remote and switched on the tiny TV that sat on a small shelf just above the mock fireplace. ‘There you go,’ she said, finding the right channel. Both boys sat, thumbs in mouths, ready to watch.
Cally could make Welsh cakes without having to read a recipe because she could judge the quantities fairly accurately as her aunt had done before her. Cally felt a pang that her aunt had died – at fifty-two, which was far too young to die. Cancer. Did it run in families? Cally had a feeling it did. She shivered just thinking about it.
‘She would have adored them,’ Cally said as she wiped off the countertop ready for baking.
‘Who would? What?’ Jack asked.
‘Aunt Frances. Our boys. Sorry, I didn’t realise I’d spoken out loud. She used to make Welsh cakes. My brain was making the connection.’ There were tears in her eyes and she turned away from Jack in the hope he wouldn’t see them.
But Jack had obviously seen because he said, ‘You okay?’
Cally bit the insides of her cheeks to stop the tears from falling. She’d read somewhere in a magazine that that was what celebrities did, what royalty did, so they didn’t cry in public. It worked for Cally now anyway. She turned round to face Jack, a smile on her face.
‘Fine. There’s only a little ceramic frying pan to make the Welsh cakes in but it should do. We’ll only be able to make a few at a time though.’
She bustled about collecting the ingredients, finding the pan.
Jack came and stood behind her, put his arms around her waist and pulled her gently back towards him.
‘Did you sleep better last night? You were dead to the world when I looked in on you at half past nine.’
Dead to the world? Why did you choose that expression, Jack? Why?
‘Heaps better, thanks,’ Cally said, forcing her shoulders to go down from somewhere up around her ears. She leaned in to him, jiggling her shoulders to get a better fit.
‘You talk in your sleep, you know?’ Jack said, kissing the side of her neck.
Cally, startled, felt herself stiffen in his embrace. Do I? What might I have said?
‘Do I?’ she asked, feigning a nonchalance she didn’t feel. ‘Anything interesting?’
‘That was a very concerned “Do I?” Jack remarked. He kissed the side of Cally’s neck again, letting his lips linger, making a little sucking movement.
‘Jack, I’m sorry but I just don’t have time for this,’ Cally said. ‘The Welsh cakes. You know. The boys will get bored of the TV in a minute and…’
She reached for Jack’s hands and pulled them apart where they rested on her waist.
‘There you go, not finishing your sentence again. I don’t believe for a second you’re fine,’ Jack whispered in her ear. ‘There’s something. I know there is. And I’m scared. Scared it’s something to do with you and me.’
‘No, not that,’ Cally said, turning to face him.
‘But there is something,’ Jack said. ‘You’ve all but gone and admitted it with that response.’ He cupped her face in his hands, looking deeply into her eyes. ‘Your reluctance to make love, your…’
‘What are you two arguing about?’ Noah asked. ‘I don’t like it.’
Cally disentangled herself from Jack and rushed to Noah, folding him in her arms.
‘We’re not arguing, darling. We’re just talking about something. Come on. Welsh cake-making time.’
And the moment passed. The boys loved watching the bubbles rise in the cakes as they cooked. Cally even let Noah flip one over and helped Riley do the same. When they’d cooled a bit she dusted them with sugar and they ate them warm and fragrant and full of memories for Cally of when she’d done the same with her Aunt Frances and her cousins.
‘Oh, I have to get a photo of that,’ Cally said, pointing at the boys, both with sugar all over their lips. Riley even had some in his hair – it looked like snow crystals. She reached for her phone. Either Cally or Jack had taken photos of the boys at every stage of the Welsh cake making. More memories for Noah and Riley. Even though Jack didn’t know – yet – that was why Cally was taking so many.
‘Can we go out when we’ve eaten these?’ Noah asked. ‘I can eat lots and lots!’
He reached for a second Welsh cake and began to cram it into his mouth.
‘Not too many,’ Cally said, wagging a finger at him, mock stern. ‘And we’ll go out if the rain eases off a bit.’
But the rain did not ease off. Cally began to feel suffocated in the small space of the chalet.
‘Jack,’ she said. ‘I’ve just got to get out.’
‘Okay. It’s not cold. The boys can go barefoot on the sand. They’ll probably go in the sea and get wet anyway.’
‘No. On my own, I mean.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t sound like that about it,’ Cally said. She fingered the amethyst she’d worn around her neck since the minute she’d found it there waiting for her. Her gift. It made her feel calm touching the cold stone, as though it held some sort of healing quality.
‘Like what?’
‘Defensive.’
‘Well, how am I supposed to sound? I’m getting the brush-off at every turn…’
‘You’re not! I’ve told you, I’m just very tired, and I’ve been stressed at work. I couldn’t work if my mum didn’t have the boys, but I have to drive them there and fetch them afterwards and… and we’re in danger of arguing and you know the boys don’t like it when we do.’
‘Which isn’t often, is it?’
‘No. It isn’t,’ Cally had to agree. ‘But I really must get out. Clear my head a bit. Get a bit of exercise.’
‘Okay,’ Jack said, sounding resigned. ‘Seems we’re not wanted on this voyage, boys.’ He ruffled the boys’ small curly heads with his large, tanned hands.
How safe they look in his hands. They’ll be fine. Still a family. If…
‘It’s not that, and you know it, Jack,’ Cally said with a bit of a wobble. ‘I’ll just go and find something to wear.’
Cally didn’t have wellies so trainers would have to do. And a cagoule that was probably more sieve than waterproof. As she hurried along the promenade in front of the chalets, the rain began to ease off. The relentless hammering on the roofs of the chalets and into the puddles forming on the promenade had changed to what her Aunt Frances would have called a ‘mizzle’. A sort of misty drizzle that soaked you just as much as heavy rain did but at least it didn’t beat against your skin.
How often she was thinking of her Aunt Frances here. More so than at home, that was for sure. She knew, had her aunt still been alive, that she would have shared her fears over the lump with her, before telling her own mother. She still dreaded telling her mother, which she knew she would have to soon, because the lump wasn’t going away. It wasn’t getting any bigger either but Cally had read enough on the internet to know there was no significance in that. Her mother, she knew, would smother her with love and want to take over everything – looking after the boys, the housework, the cooking; she’d probably turn up every day with a cottage pie or some macaroni cheese – ‘To save you having to do it, darling. While, you know, you fight this thing.’ But she didn’t need smothering with love, did she? She needed a good talking-to so she’d stop being so reluctant to tell Jack, who had a right to know – Cally knew that now.
Cally had no idea where she was going as she strode out towards the pier. A sign screwed to the low beach wall indicated there was a two-mile walk from where she was standing to a point the other side of the harbour and back.
‘That should do it,’ Cally said out loud. Although what the ‘it’ was she wasn’t certain. Certainly it wouldn’t make the lump go. But it might help her focus on what her next step was. To get through this fortnight, see a doctor and then a specialist on her own, or tell Jack first? To tell him here or when they got home? She felt sick with the possibilities.
Cally found a handful of coins in the pocket of the cagoule. Enough to buy a coffee somewhere if she wanted to. She hurried on.
Jack and the boys didn’t deserve to have their holiday blighted by her low – no, not low, worried – mood, did they? She wondered what Jack might be doing with the boys. Perhaps he’d found another TV channel to watch with them – cartoons maybe – and was sitting with them both cuddled up on his lap, his arms around them, holding them safe. Or he could be reading to them. Jack loved to read to the boys and it was always he who did the bedtime story every night. And Cally loved to watch him, peering through a crack in the bedroom door, listening to the lower timbre of his voice, watching until the boys drifted off to sleep, and sometimes Jack with them.
‘And you, Cally Jones, have got yourself too wrapped up in your boys and not enough in your husband, who is second to none,’ she said, wagging a finger at a bemused gull standing on the sea wall. ‘He won’t take much more of my self-absorption will he, Mr Seagull?’
The gull flew off. And that’s why men have affairs, Cally told herself – because their wives forget they married a man, making them semi-redundant once they’d fathered the children they wanted. Sometimes, Cally knew, she put Jack below her boys, her parents and her job.
‘Guilty as charged,’ she called after the gull, who was now landing at the water’s edge.
She walked on, picking up pace until she was almost running. She had to jump over a large puddle that had formed in a crack in the pavement, and just for the moment she jumped over it, and looked down, it became a mirror and Cally saw that she was smiling. She’d read somewhere that the human mind doesn’t know the difference between a real smile and a false one, and if you just keep smiling your mood will lift, and you’ll become happier. She’d just have to keep smiling then, wouldn’t she? And keep walking.
Cally went past the marker for the two-mile walk and under a small arch that led to the harbour.
Trips around the bay it said on a blackboard propped up against a kiosk that had seen better days, with peeling paint and a plank broken at the bottom of the door. On another it offered ferry rides, Every hour on the half-hour. Both kiosks were closed. Cally and Jack had never taken the boys on a boat – they’d like that, or Cally hoped they would. She’d suggest to Jack they book tickets for another day – one when the sun was guaranteed to shine.
But first, coffee. Cally drew out a handful of coins from the pocket of her cagoule. They were rather wet, as she was. But no matter, she had enough to buy a cappuccino – how comforting one of those was when you needed it. And besides, while she drank it, it would give Jack more time with his boys. Cally’s smile widened, just thinking about that.
Jack stood in the open doorway waiting for her. The rain had stopped completely and there was a hazy sun trying to break through. It was warmer too.
‘Phew! You’re back,’ Jack said as Cally walked up the steps to 23 The Strand in her now-sodden trainers because she’d walked back along the beach, walking through the bits covered with a thin film of water where the tide had gone out.
‘Have I been long?’ she asked. In truth, she had no idea how long she’d been out but could see now that the sun – hazy as it was – was almost overhead. Nearly lunchtime.
‘Two hours, thirty-three minutes, and about fifteen seconds,’ Jack said.
‘Are you sure about that?’ Cally said. She couldn’t help smiling. Jack had been worried about her. He’d missed her. He loved her and she’d hazard a guess he didn’t want to be without her. It was a good feeling and yet a terrible one because what if he ended up missing her, like, for ever…
‘Give or take a second,’ Jack quipped. ‘The kettle’s on. Or shall we celebrate your return with a pre-lunch glass of wine? Seeing as we’re on holiday?’
‘Wine. Please,’ Cally said. On impulse she kissed Jack on the lips, just a swift kiss, the way she kissed the boys, but it conveyed how much she loved him, or she hoped it did. ‘I’ll just get out of these sodden things.’
The shower was warm rather than hot, and hardly a power shower, but it helped revive Cally. She roughly rinsed her hair too. Towelled herself dry as best she could in the cramped space.
‘Jack! Could you pass me my dressing gown?’ she yelled, opening the door of the bathroom a tad. ‘I’ll dress in our bedroom.’
Jack was back in seconds, just as the towel Cally had wrapped around her still slightly damp body slid to the floor.
‘Pity the boys are here,’ Jack said. ‘I could ravage you.’
He reached out a hand and the ends of his fingers caught Cally’s left breast. She flinched. Wrapped both arms around herself protectively.
‘Cally?’ Jack said, fear in his eyes. ‘What’s wrong? Is there someone else?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I’m not sure I believe that.’
‘You must.’
‘Must I? You’ve never recoiled from me before…’
‘I know. I’m sorry. It’s me. I’ve got something I need to tell you and I don’t know how to do it. Or when. But right now I’m freezing.’ She held out her hands for the fleecy dressing gown with roses on it that she’d got in a charity shop – it was rather less than fashionable but it was warm and strangely comforting. And she needed comforting now. ‘And I will tell you but I don’t want it to be in front of the boys. Soon, I’ll tell you soon. Jack, I love you. Perhaps more now than when I married you. There is no other man for me and there never will be. Can you hang on to that?’
‘Strange compliment,’ Jack said, but he gave Cally the lopsided grin she so loved, the one that gave her butterflies in her tummy – the one that told her Jack loved her just as much as she did him. ‘But I’ll take it.’
Cally and Jack took the boys on a boat trip that afternoon.
‘I can hardly believe it’s the same month, never mind the same day,’ Cally said. ‘It’s so warm now compared to this morning.’ Just a few short hours ago she’d been trying to settle her demons, getting herself soaking wet in the progress, and now here they were, almost back to how they’d been – her and Jack – before she’d found the lump.
‘We’re opportunists, that’s what we are,’ Jack said. He leaned towards Cally and kissed her cheek. ‘Got the boat almost to ourselves as well.’
‘Well, it is early in the season. Still May. There’ll be more people around next month, I expect.’
‘Are there whales?’ Noah asked. ‘The man said.’
‘He did, didn’t he?’ Cally said.
The man who’d sold them the tickets at the kiosk had said they were a bit late coming out to see the dolphins because they liked to feed in the mornings off Berry Head. Then he’d said a whale had been spotted in the bay the previous summer. A few lucky holidaymakers had seen it from his very own boat and had photos to prove it. Gosh, how exciting that would be, to see a whale. They’d come back.
Gosh, the first positive thought about the future since I’ve been here.
‘Can I see? Can I have a whale for a pet? I’ll help look after it. It could live in the bath.’ Noah was pink-cheeked with excitement at the thought.
‘I want to see a whale,’ Riley said. He slid from the seat and was at the rail in a nanosecond before Jack reacted and leapt up to grab him. ‘A big whale.’
‘Maybe a goldfish,’ Jack said, scooping his youngest son into his arms and carrying him back to the wooden bench where Cally and Noah sat.
‘Two goldfish,’ Noah said. ‘One for Riley and one for me.’
‘Two it is then,’ Jack said.
And there it was – Jack’s first sign of acceptance that, perhaps, his boys needed pets in their lives.
‘We’ll go to the pet shop as soon as we get home and buy a big tank and some weed for them to hide in,’ Cally said.
Goodness, the second positive thought in such a short space of time.
‘We’re going to look for whales!’ Noah announced. ‘Come on, Riley!’
He grabbed his little brother’s hand and they went over to scramble up onto a large, varnished, wooden box in the middle of the boat. They were safe there, sitting with their legs dangling, feet from the deck, but clinging on to one another.
‘Do you miss the computer?’ Jack asked suddenly.
‘Why?’ Cally asked, sharply, her little bubble of happiness deflating a little. How quickly moods, and thoughts, could change.
‘Well, you’re on it a lot at home and you haven’t got access here.’
‘I’m not on it a lot,’ Cally said, knowing just how defensive she was sounding. ‘Just half an hour or so while you read to the boys and settle them for the night. Facebook mostly, seeing what old school friends are up to.’
‘Not everyone is as they seem on chat sites or Facebook,’ Jack said, immediately planting a seed of doubt in Cally’s mind that maybe Tony, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, might fit into that category, although Cally was fairly certain he didn’t. ‘And any information you might Google is only as accurate as however knowledgeable the person who put it there is.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Cally said.
‘Well, you do now. I’ve looked up things about engineering when I’ve been at work and on more than a few occasions the info has been utter tosh.’
‘Oh,’ Cally said. How naïve of her to have accepted everything she might have looked at as being one hundred per cent the truth – if what Jack was saying was true.
‘And emails,’ Jack carried on. ‘I’ve noticed you get more of those than you used to.’
Cally and Jack used the same computer at home but it was a golden rule that neither tried to access the other’s emails. Cally knew Jack’s password in case there was ever an emergency and she needed to be able to contact his bosses, and he knew hers, but that’s all it was, a safety net. Wasn’t it?
‘Have you been spying on me?’ Part of her hoped he had and that he had seen her browsing history and would ask why she was looking at cancer sites, and then it would open the conversation she knew they must have.
‘I’ve not used your password to look, no. I’d never stoop that low. I like to think we’ve got a better, more trusting, relationship than that.’
‘And we have,’ Cally said. There’d never been a second in all the time she’d known Jack, and been married to him, when she’d questioned the truth – or not – of what he’d told her. But all the same, she couldn’t just blurt out here what was troubling her. She knew she’d probably burst into tears and there were other passengers, and the crew, to think about. They wouldn’t want her raw emotions spread in front of them. And Jack would be torn between comforting her and checking the boys were okay. ‘So, can we just get on and enjoy the trip?’
The boat’s engine slowed then. One of the passengers was pointing to some rocks near a cove that were exposed now the tide had gone out.
‘Oh, it’s a seal!’ Cally said.
She leapt up and went to the boys, lifting them down to take them to the side of the boat where they’d see the seal.
The captain came over the tannoy to tell them that this seal loved to swim up to boats and catch any fish thrown to it.
‘And I just happen to have some mackerel here!’ he laughed. ‘And I can see two little boys who would be very good at feeding seals, I should think.’
‘Me! Me!’ Noah and Riley yelled in unison.
Jack came up behind Cally and put his arms around all of them, and her awkward moment had passed.
Another memory was being made for her boys and she must relish the moment.
‘And to answer your question,’ Cally said, leaning in to him. ‘I’m not missing the internet. Not one bit.’ And she wasn’t, because she knew now that it had only been fuelling her fears – a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as the old adage had it. She wriggled in closer to Jack, the slight frostiness that had been between them melting a little.
‘Good,’ Jack whispered in her ear. ‘That’s music to my ears.’
But still Cally couldn’t find it in her to tell Jack what was worrying her. She found that the best way not to have to tell him was to have the boys around all the time. When Noah wanted to paddle but Riley didn’t, Cally went with him. Even though she could have reached out and grabbed him from where she’d been sitting had he fallen.
‘The sea is sucking my feet,’ Noah giggled. ‘Look, they’re disappearing!’
Cally looked. As the tide pulled back out again, leaving the sand full of water, Noah’s small and perfect feet sank down, the tops covered with a sheen of water.
‘Do you like it?’ Cally asked.
‘I love it, Mummy,’ Noah said. ‘It tickles. I like tickles.’
‘In that case…’
Cally bent down and tickled Noah, making him squirm, making him laugh. And she found she was laughing too. A genuine laugh. Making memories for Noah.
‘Can we live here?’ Noah asked. ‘I like it here.’
‘We can come back,’ Cally said. ‘Maybe,’ she whispered under her breath. Then in a louder voice she said, ‘Yes. Yes, we will.’
‘The zoo today, boys,’ Jack said, lifting Riley onto his shoulders ready to board the bus. An open-top bus ran a round robin service. Cally and her family scrambled up to the top deck and sat in the two front seats – Cally with Noah, Jack with Riley.
‘Grandstand view,’ Jack said as the bus made its way past the pier.
‘Will there be whales?’ Noah asked.
‘Where?’ Jack said.
‘At the zoo.’
‘No, I shouldn’t think so. Although the man who took us out on the boat the other day when we saw the seal said they do get a whale come into the bay sometimes.’
‘See whales now!’ Riley shouted, and Cally and Jack shushed him in unison.
‘But there will be crocodiles,’ Cally said. ‘At the zoo.’
‘Crocodiles!’ Noah shouted, looking terrified and yet thrilled beyond belief in equal measure.
‘Crocodiles!’ Riley emulated his big brother.
‘Definitely,’ Cally said.
‘Sing the song!’ Riley yelled. ‘Sing the song!’
One of the songs Riley loved from the playgroup he went to two mornings a week was about a crocodile.
‘You must never smile at a crocodile, ’cos a crocodile has got an evil smile,’ Cally began to sing softly, almost a whisper.
But the boys had other ideas and began to sing the song, with wild facial gestures and much snapping of arms to indicate a crocodile’s jaws, very loudly.
Jack looked slightly embarrassed at the noise his sons were making.
‘Sorry,’ Cally mouthed at him.
‘Nah,’ Jack said. ‘It’s all right. We’ll let this one go. I expect there’ve been worse things on the top deck of a bus!’
And so the boys made more than a few repetitions of the crocodile song, and when they got to the zoo, Jack bought bags of special food for them to feed the animals and birds. Cally burst out laughing when Noah showed more interest in the locks and bolts on the gates of the pens than he did in the animals inside them.
‘He’s going to be an engineer,’ she said.
‘I should hope so,’ Jack said. ‘Or I’m a rotten role model.’
And could you take on the role of mother, if…?
Cally knew the answer to that – yes, he could.
Like all small children when they saw a big, empty space, Noah and Riley wanted to run into it. The paths in the zoo were wide and, at this time of year, not as crowded as they would be in the summer holidays with more children about.
‘When do we lose the ability to be so uninhibited?’ Jack asked. ‘Look at them!’
Noah and Riley were tearing around on their sturdy little legs, their blond curls blown every which way by the light breeze and their frantic activity. They were both squealing with delight, making car noises. Cally wished she could rush off in the sort of gay abandon Noah and Riley were achieving. Perhaps the lump would go if it knew she didn’t care about it, that she wasn’t going to let it get her.
‘Bang, bang,’ Riley said. He had found a stick from somewhere and was pointing it at Noah. ‘I deaded you.’
Dead.
Cally’s blood ran cold at Riley’s innocent choice of word in a game all children played, however much she might not like them playing it.
‘How happy they are,’ Jack said.
And they were. Cally took her phone from her bag and began taking photos. Lots of photos to go with those she’d already taken on this holiday. More memories. If…
‘It’s going to cost an arm and a leg getting that lot developed,’ Jack laughed.
Cally still loved to hold a photograph in her hand, rather than look at it on a screen, which was the norm these days. Already she had about six large albums full of photographs of the boys.
‘Some things are priceless,’ she said softly.
Jack linked his arm through Cally’s.
‘Like you. You’re priceless to me, sweetheart.’
Cally leaned in to him, full of sadness for what might yet turn out to be, yet full of love as well. It was all too much to bear, and the tears began to fall.
So, there in the zoo, with the boys running around, shouting their heads off, cheeks pink with exertion, Cally told Jack, their arms leaning on the wooden rail of the pen where strikingly beautiful zebra were nibbling grass.
‘I’ve found a lump.’
‘Where?’ Jack asked, putting an arm around Cally’s shoulder.
‘In my left breast.’
‘When? When did you find it?’
‘Two weeks ago? Three?’
‘Why didn’t you say?’ Jack sounded concerned rather than cross that she hadn’t mentioned such a serious worry.
‘I don’t know now. I should have. But I thought I might have been imagining it. That, maybe, I’d twisted a muscle or something and that it would unkink itself if I ignored it. At first I kept finding it with my fingers all the time. I couldn’t stop myself searching for info on the internet either.’
‘So, that’s what you were looking at?’
‘Yes, mostly. I found a chat site for cancer sufferers where they share their stories. Someone on there – a man called Tony – got in touch. I didn’t know men could get breast cancer.’
‘So, the email you were so keen for me not to see was from him?’
‘I wouldn’t have minded you seeing it, but I hadn’t told you and I didn’t want you jumping to conclusions.’
‘Oh, Cally. You’ve been shouldering this on your own. And I must confess I did begin to wonder if, you know, another man had come into your life. I hated myself for even thinking it, and I didn’t know how to handle it. So I thought it might be best if we got right away from our usual environment, and the computer, and just went back to being us.’
‘We’re always going to be “us”,’ Cally said. ‘And I’m really sorry now I told a chat site before telling you. Tony was one of many men on there – those who have, or have had, cancer, and those widowed by it. Tony said he wished he hadn’t told people when he did. He said he wished now he’d had all the correct information and a prognosis under his belt before he did, because people can have a lot of crackpot theories.’
‘This Tony is right there. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, sweetheart,’ Jack said. He pulled Cally closer. ‘We’re both guilty of not telling one another what fears we had in our minds, I think. I ought not to have booked this holiday without giving you the chance to say whether you wanted to come or not.’
‘I’m glad you did now,’ Cally said. ‘Or I’d still be searching cancer sites, and reading other people’s often very sad and scary stories night after night, and instead it’s been lovely sitting on the deck while the boys sleep, watching the moon cast its avenue of light on the water, and hearing the soft shush of the waves. It didn’t make the lump go away but it didn’t make it worse either, and for that short while I was able to forget.’
‘Sometimes the simplest things are the best.’
‘But I’m frightened, Jack,’ Cally said.
‘And I’m frightened with you. I can’t pretend anything else at this moment. But we must hang on to the fact that no one’s told you the lump is cancer yet. But if it is you need more than one soldier to fight a battle. And I’ll be right beside you. So, my next question – do you want to go back home right now and get the ball rolling, as it were, or…?’
‘No! Really, no. There will be fewer chances as the boys get older to holiday in school time like this. We’ll stay.’
‘And holiday like we’ve never holidayed before.’ Jack drew Cally towards him and kissed her cheek.
‘We will. And the weather seems to be on our side at the moment. And when I get back I want to cut back on work. Maybe just two days a week. I know Mum loves having them but the time with them is so short, isn’t it? Can we afford for me to only work two days?’
‘Yes, and yes,’ Jack said. And there were tears in his eyes as he said it.
‘Show me, Cally,’ Jack said.
They were lying in bed, both fresh from the shower, both naked. Cally was on her back, and Jack was lying on his side looking at her.
Cally took Jack’s hand and guided his fingers to the lump.
‘It’s not very big,’ she said.
‘Does it hurt?’ Jack asked, his fingers gently probing.
‘No.’
With Jack’s fingers caressing her, Cally felt a shiver of something. Desire? Yes, that’s what it was, desire.
‘Oh, I think I’ve found it. About the size of half a pea?’
‘Yes.’
Jack slid his other arm underneath Cally’s neck, and then pulled her towards him. He rocked her gently, back and forth, back and forth, kissing her hair, kissing her forehead.
‘I can’t find words,’ he said.
‘How about “Let’s make love”, Cally said. ‘Get some good old endorphins running through me. They’re supposed to be healing.’
‘You sure? I mean…’
‘Sure,’ Cally said, silencing him with a kiss.
‘Windsurfing?’ Jack laughed. ‘In May? This is the UK, you know!’
‘I know. The windsurf school hires out wetsuits. Life jackets. I really, really want to have a go.’
Cally pointed to a windsurfer whipping along parallel to the beach. A small wave was breaking behind him, and a smaller one in front. The sail was a fabulous shade of magenta. No, amethyst. The same shade as the stone on the necklace Cally had found waiting for her at 23 The Strand. It seemed almost like an omen. A good omen.
So Cally walked to where the windsurfing school was set up at the far end of the beach.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m a total novice at this but I’d really love to have a go.’
‘Hi. Great. We can do that. I’m Elisabeth – with an s not a z,’ the girl laughed.
‘I’m Cally, with a y not an ie and not short for anything.’
Elisabeth helped Cally into a wetsuit and secured a life-support.
‘Be careful,’ Cally said as Elisabeth tugged on the straps. ‘I hurt a little bit.’
Which wasn’t true. Cally had no pain around the area she had found the lump.
‘Oh, you’ll forget all that when you’re out there,’ Elisabeth laughed. ‘You’ll have the sun on your face – along with a lot of water, I expect! – and you’ll be concentrating so hard on standing upright that anything that’s bothering you in life will just fade away into insignificance.’
I hope so, Cally thought but didn’t say.
But so it proved. Cally found standing on a moving board with the force of a constantly shifting sea beneath her easier than she ever imagined it would be. Whole minutes went by when she didn’t think about the lump. Elisabeth encouraged her to go further and further each time. Cally was zipping along now and she could see Jack and the children on the beach. Jack was kneeling down scooping buckets of sand to make a pit of some sort for the boys to play in.
‘Hey!’ she shouted, but the breeze and her own speed whipped the word away.
But Jack must have sensed her because he looked up. He waved. And then he blew her a kiss. And in that moment there were no other people in the world, and nothing else mattered except their love. She’d been stupid to keep such a massive worry to herself, and silly beyond belief to think she had to cope on her own. Life was for living, and that was just what she was going to do.
Dear new occupant,
I was left a gift by the previous occupant and this is my gift to you – Welsh cakes made by my sons and me. My husband was chief taster and he says they are ‘Ace!’ I hope you will enjoy them with a cup of tea, sitting on the deck perhaps. I arrived here a worried woman, but this place has smoothed out my worries and I’m going home with a more positive outlook. Whatever your reasons for coming here I wish you a happy time. If you feel like leaving something for the next occupant of 23 The Strand, please do – but it’s by no means obligatory.
Cally – and Jack, Noah and Riley too.