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

‘Have you seen your sister’s Instagram?’ Claire said, as she walked into the kitchen. She threw her bag down on to the leather club chair by the window and gave both Rory and Max a kiss.

‘No.’ Rory immediately opened up his Instagram app. ‘What is it?’

‘She’s on her way back to Spain,’ said Claire, pouring herself a glass of water while surveying the mess in the kitchen.

‘She’s what?’ Rory scrolled through Instagram in search of Ava’s post.

Max was now forking up all the bits of chorizo from the risotto while simultaneously watching a Minecraft video on his laptop.

‘You’re not allowed the laptop at the table,’ said Claire.

‘Dad’s on his phone.’

‘I’m not eating anything,’ said Rory, his tone exceedingly similar to his son’s.

‘Rory, get off your phone. Max, get off your laptop.’ Claire shut the dishwasher.

‘You just told me to look at this picture!’ said Rory, incredulous.

Max huffed. ‘I need to watch this.’

Claire gave Rory the kind of look they’d shared for the last ten years. A we’re-meant-to-be-in-this-together look that made him roll his eyes then lean forwards and snap the laptop shut.

‘Oh, what?’ said Max.

‘Just eat your dinner,’ said Rory, his tone still reflective of the earlier risotto argument.

Max glowered at him. ‘What about you?’

Rory had to tear himself away from the photo Ava had posted of the sun rising over a plane wing to make a show of clicking his phone off. Max looked smug.

Claire ate a spoonful of the leftover risotto from the pan. ‘You’re getting closer to that spot on MasterChef, Ror,’ she said with a laugh.

Despite the distraction of Ava on her way to Spain, Rory felt a little flush of pride that someone appreciated his cooking, and raised a brow at Max to show how wrong he’d been. Then he was straight back to the subject of the Instagram photo. ‘I can’t believe she’s gone back already! She’s unbelievable.’

Max looked up. ‘What’s wrong with Aunty Ava?’

Claire bit down on a smile. ‘Nothing. She’s just not your father.’

Rory took a slug of his tea and shook his head as if he was being hard done by. ‘That’s not what I’m saying at all. Although if she were like me I doubt she’d have been hit by a bloody bus and have zero direction in life. You know what she’s like, Max.’ He looked at his ten-year-old son as if he were thirty-five and didn’t just judge his aunt by the presents she bought him. ‘I’ve never met anyone less able to settle down. Aside from my own mother. Talk about thinking the grass is greener. She thinks it’s bloody fluorescent anywhere she isn’t.’

‘She’s got FOMO,’ said Max, standing up to get some ketchup from the fridge.

‘Yes, no – I’m sorry, I have no idea what that means,’ said Rory.

‘Fear of missing out.’

Rory sat back. ‘You’re quite right, she has exactly that. FOMO. I like that.’

‘Where have you been, Dad? Everyone knows FOMO.’

Rory raised a brow. ‘Earning money so that you can know words like FOMO.’

‘It’s not actually a word,’ said Max, ‘it’s an acronym.’

‘There you go.’ Rory raised his hand as if that were the case in point. ‘I’ve been earning money so you know words like acronym. Please don’t put ketchup on that risotto.’

Max squirted red sauce all over the remaining rice. Rory drank his tea to stop himself from saying anything, his fingers itching to get back to his phone and the Eskimo-snow director’s Twitter announcement.

‘At least he’s eating it,’ Claire said, in an attempt to keep the peace, having another spoonful from the pan herself before taking it to the sink to wash up.

Rory stood up, surreptitiously swiping his phone into his pocket so he could go into the living room, check Twitter, and leave the pair of them to their tomato ketchup. But as he started to walk towards the door he paused, a thought suddenly occurring to him. ‘You don’t happen to know where Ava’s staying, do you?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, at your gran’s, I spoke to her earlier. She popped by the office actually to pick up the spare key for her flat – she’s rented it to an airbnb tenant while she’s away. That’s a good idea, isn’t it?’

‘She did what?’ Rory felt his jaw drop in disbelief.

Claire was filling the sink with hot water, distracted, not really listening. ‘Rented her flat to airbnb. I’d like to live in Spain for the summer, wouldn’t you? The beach, the sea, fresh figs, and little coffees and tapas. It’d be amazing. Imagine that rather than having to go upstairs to write a stupid, pointless presentation for a job interview I shouldn’t be having because they should be promoting me rather than interviewing me.’

Rory had completely forgotten about Claire’s impending job interview. ‘It’ll be fine. If it’s got your name on it, you’ll get it,’ he said. ‘Now tell me about Ava.’

Claire raised a brow at him. ‘I will get it, Rory, I would just like to be rewarded for the work I’ve done rather than humiliated by being pitted against people massively junior to me whose only qualifications seem to be their social media followings.’

If he wasn’t so furious at his sister’s blatant disregard, he would have reminded Claire that he’d told her a year ago to work on her social media presence, but Claire’s attention had drifted back to the idea of a summer in Spain. ‘Do you remember when we sat at Café Estrella till nearly sunrise drinking that orange Spanish drink? What was it called?’

‘Licor 43,’ Rory said quickly. ‘I said she couldn’t go.’

Claire was still daydreaming. ‘Shall we quit our jobs and go and live in Spain?’

‘No,’ Rory shook his head. ‘You’re not listening. I told her she couldn’t go.’

Claire made a face. ‘Why?’

‘Don’t look at me like that. Because we’ve got to sell the house. I can’t just sit on a chunk of inheritance while my sister fannies about doing flamenco or whatever it is she wants to do. And knowing her, she’ll go for a week, get bored and come back again. Look at what happened to poor Jonathon. I thought maybe the bash on the head might have made her see sense when he picked her up from the hospital.’

‘Oh God, Rory, you can’t force someone to be with someone they don’t want to be with. Just because you thought they were right for each other, doesn’t mean she had to.’ Claire rolled her eyes then turned away from him towards the sink and started washing up. ‘Can you dry?’

Rory hated drying up, he couldn’t see the point, but Claire was holding a tea towel out for him and it wasn’t worth an argument. ‘OK,’ he said, reaching for the cloth. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with Jonathon. He’s a perfectly decent bloke, she was just being too picky. Sometimes you just need to fix on a path through life and get on with it. It worked for us.’

He knew immediately that he’d said the wrong thing. Claire washed the dish she was holding very slowly. She started to say something then stopped herself.

Rory waited. He swallowed. He dried the saucepan, wishing he could suck the words back into his mouth.

Max, sensing something was about to kick off, picked his plate up from the table, squeezed between them to put it next to the sink, then disappeared with his laptop.

‘Look, I didn’t mean it quite like that. I just meant . . .’ Rory paused. What had he meant? To all intents and purposes, they had had to just plough on with a course in life. They had been twenty-one. Claire had been pregnant. Of course they were going to get married.

Claire was still focused on the now very clean dish.