The Summerhouse by the Sea: The best selling perfect feel-good summer beach read!

‘You need to turn it off, Rory, it’s driving you mad.’ Claire got into bed and turned her sidelight off, casting the room into gloomy darkness. Rory’s face was lit only by the blue glow of the laptop.

‘I won’t be able to sleep.’

‘You haven’t tried.’

‘I know I won’t be able to.’

Claire shuffled up the bed a bit. ‘They say that blue glow stops the melatonin that helps you sleep.’

Rory gave her a look.

Claire breathed in through her nose and out again. ‘It’ll be OK, Rory. I mean, maybe it’s not a bad thing? Maybe it’s a chance to do something new?’

Rory felt his jaw clench. ‘I don’t want to do something new. This was my dream. I was living my dream and I just wanted to keep on living it. Forever. And ever. Till I died or got so old that I couldn’t physically manage to do it, but even then would know that I could do it if some new technology was created to keep me alive. Jesus.’ He bunched his hands into fists. ‘I don’t want it taken away from me.’

Claire was looking up at him from her half-sitting position. ‘We’ve got to find a bright side to this.’

He stared at the pattern on the curtain, just visible in the black. ‘There is no sodding bright side. My life is basically ruined.’

‘Well why did you plan to kidnap the bloody goose?’ Claire bashed the duvet with her hand then immediately sighed, as if she hadn’t meant to say what she’d said. Like she’d been holding it in. After a pause she said, ‘The way you talk about it, it’s like you have no acknowledgement of the fact you still have us, you still have your home. This is one part of your life, Rory, and we’ll fix it.’

They both stared straight ahead at the curtains, the only noise the sound of rain tapping on the window.

‘And Rory,’ Claire said a little softer, turning to look at him while he stayed staunchly turned away, ‘what use is a BAFTA if it’s for something you’ve faked? Surely it would ruin everything about accepting it. You’d stand there and do some speech and know you’d packed the stupid goose off in a black bag in the middle of the night.’ She shook her head in disbelief at the very idea. ‘Christ,’ she said, ‘I don’t even know who you’re doing it for any more, because it isn’t for me or Max. I don’t think it’s for you because you don’t seem to be particularly enjoying it. You used to love your job, Rory. And that made all the sacrifices we made OK. But look at you . . . You’re tired and stressed and angry. You’re not even making films you like any more. And God, if any of this is to impress your father then, do you know what? You could just go and buy one of those cheap knock-off statues and tell him you won. He wouldn’t know the difference.’

Rory didn’t reply.

Claire huffed a frustrated breath and slid back down the bed, rolling away from him to go to sleep.

Rory listened to her breathing in the quiet. He could tell she was faking the slowness of her breaths to make it seem like she was asleep. He wondered if maybe she was crying.

Usually he’d lean over and see, but this time he didn’t. He went back to refreshing. Over and over. Watching the tweets tumble down his feed, vitriol and hatred all directed at him.

He felt like he was outside his body, looking down on himself sitting in bed, lit blue, with his wife silently crying beside him. He was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling that he hadn’t had since he’d sat on the floor in the corner of his bedroom after learning that his mum was leaving. He felt the same hot, wet tears of shame. Of utter, overwhelming helplessness.

He felt Claire stir.

Tears were now rolling uncontrollably down his cheeks, hitting the computer, the sheets, his T-shirt. He tried to wipe them away but it was physically impossible, there were more than he could feasibly hide.

‘Rory?’

He looked away.

‘Rory?’ Claire sat up, her voice concerned.

He shook his head.

He felt her arms snake round his shoulders and move down around his upper arms as she hugged his back and he tried to pretend that he wasn’t crying and her hands weren’t getting soaking wet.

CHAPTER 9 (#ulink_10f50c5d-21fc-576a-bfdf-60f2ea77f6d6)

Ava had caught the bus into town and spent the afternoon trying to escape the scorching sun. Immersing herself in little tourist shops and the swanky new department store, trying on clothes she didn’t need and drinking too much coffee. The thought of going back to her grandmother’s house was so overwhelming that she considered booking into a hotel, but the practicality of her suitcase still being there made her get the bus back to the little beach town again.

She walked down the path to see paddle-boarders gliding out into the dusk on ice-flat sea, barely leaving a mark on the water. It was late and Nino’s, the new restaurant, was still going strong. Couples queued for tables while the heat enveloped them like candyfloss.

She took a seat at the run-down Café Estrella, where in contrast she was one of the only people at a table. The old men who’d been playing chess earlier now sat in the corner smoking cigars, while a couple of guys propped up the bar.

Ava was just Googling Nino’s reviews when a voice said, ‘Ava? Darling, is that you?’

‘Flora!’ Ava turned in the direction of the woman wandering up from the beach. Her hair wet from the sea, an old black sarong with faded pink flowers tied across her chest, ratty old plastic sliders on her feet.

‘May I?’ she asked when she reached Ava’s table, pointing to a chair.

‘Of course,’ Ava nodded. ‘It’s your café,’ she added with a laugh, surreptitiously closing the TripAdvisor page of glowing reviews for Nino’s.

‘I barely saw you at the funeral,’ Flora said, squeezing the water from her hair.

Ava remembered spotting Flora in a veiled black hat and waving across the throng of mourners. Now though, she had to suppress her shock at how much Flora had changed. This was a woman who Ava had seen reduce grown men to gibbering wrecks. Her own brother had spent a summer filming the café for his degree show and followed Flora around like a puppy.

A British food writer, Flora was famed for her looks. Her figure. Her glossy blonde hair and perfect pout. But instead of the voluptuous glamourpuss, sitting in front of Ava was a really tired-looking middle-aged woman with weathered skin and hair in need of a retouch.

‘How are you?’ Ava asked.

‘Hot,’ Flora said, crossing her legs and sitting back in her chair, fanning herself with the menu. ‘Old.’

Ava shook her head as if she didn’t know what she was talking about.

Flora called to the waiter to bring over some drinks. ‘Sherry?’ she said to Ava, who nodded.

Ava was struggling to work out what Flora was doing late-night swimming while her café slowly faded away, losing all its trade to the place on the opposite side of the path. ‘They’re new,’ she said tentatively, gesturing towards the heaving restaurant.

Flora didn’t turn to look. ‘There’s three of them who run it. City boys. Came from Barcelona. Stole my business.’

‘Oh,’ said Ava.

‘Yes,’ said Flora. Then she sighed. ‘No. Who am I kidding? It hasn’t been the same since Ricardo left and now I’m stuck with the bloody place.’

Ava did a sort of half-neutral, half-sympathetic face. While it was public knowledge that Flora Foxton had fallen head over heels for up-and-coming Spanish chef Ricardo Garcia on a cookery show she’d filmed across the Mediterranean, Ava wasn’t sure how much she was meant to know about events leading up to Ricardo’s departure. It was safe to say she knew every single minute detail, as relayed by her grandmother in unnecessary whispers over the phone, as if Flora might hear them through the wall, across the path and all the way over at the café.

Valentina Brown had never trusted Ricardo. She had scoffed on the phone when he had presented Flora with a knot of turquoise thread instead of an engagement ring. Ava had said that she thought it was quite romantic. As had Flora, clearly, as she proceeded to solely finance the set-up of the very successful Café Estrella from the profits of her once-bestselling cookery books, to allow Ricardo to show off his modern take on classic tapas. The critics mocked the location but Ricardo drawled in interviews that ‘People will travel for the best’ and refused to budge from his little beachside idyll. It was this same arrogant passion that had made Rory’s graduation film such a success. And Ricardo had been right. People had come. The café had garnered a coveted Michelin star. But while whipping up his fancy new tapas and proclaiming himself the saviour of Spanish cuisine, Ricardo’s growing reputation had put him in the spotlight of the rich and famous, who whisked him off to prepare birthday feasts on mega yachts and cater weddings in the Hollywood Hills – all a world away from Flora and their little beach café.

When Flora told Val that Ricardo had left her for a very young American underwear model who he was now living with in Chicago, Val had whispered on the phone to Ava that she was not surprised one little bit, and added with quiet confidence, ‘Never trust a man who gives you a piece of string instead of a ring.’

Now, as Ava sat opposite Flora, she saw the heartbreaking reality of what had previously just been idle gossip. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said.

‘Well, what are you going to do?’ Flora sat back in her chair, piling her damp blonde curls on top of her head and wrapping them with an elastic band from her wrist. ‘People came here for him and, well, he’s not here, is he!’ She looked round at the empty café tables. ‘And that lot, they’re young.’ She nodded her head backwards towards Nino’s. ‘They’ve got the energy to triple fry their chips and serve their oysters in shot glasses. Which frankly, to me, sounds disgusting anyway, but people seem to like it. They talk about it a lot.’ She gave Ava a wry little look and then, glancing out to the sea, said, ‘I just hide in the back nowadays, ghost-writing cookery books for skinny celebrities and avoiding my accountant.’

Ava laughed.