Praise for Jenny Oliver

‘Brilliantly written, this is packed full of humour and there is a wonderful thread of love… A perfect holiday read.’

– The Sun

‘This book made me want to dance on the beach with a glass of Sangria in my hand. The perfect summer read.’

– Sarah Morgan

‘This is a real treat. A touching story of love, loss and finding out what really matters on life. I love it!’

– Julia Williams

‘Jenny Oliver writes contemporary women’s fiction which leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.’

– Books with Bunny

‘Intelligent, delightful and charming! The writing is exquisite.’

– What’s Better Than Books

‘A very uplifting story full of happy endings and guaranteed to make you smile…’

– Goodreads

‘A sprinkling of festivity, a touch of romance and a glorious amount of mouth-watering baking!’

– Rea Book Review

‘…it was everything I enjoy…I couldn’t find a single flaw in the book.’

– Afternoon Bookery

‘I didn’t want to put the book down until I had reached the very last word on the last page.’

– A Spoonful of Happy Endings

JENNY OLIVER wrote her first book on holiday when she was ten years old. Illustrated with cut-out supermodels from her sister’s Vogue, it was an epic, sweeping love story not so loosely based on Dynasty.

Since then Jenny has gone on to get an English degree and a job in publishing that’s taught her what it takes to write a novel (without the help of the supermodels). Nowadays, her inspiration comes from her love of all things vintage, a fascination with other people’s relationships and an unwavering belief in happy ever after!

Follow her on Twitter @JenOliverBooks or take a look at her blog jennyoliverbooks.com.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017

Copyright © Jenny Oliver 2017

Jenny Oliver asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008217969

Version: 2018-07-18

For Waldo and Woody

CONTENTS

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER 1

Ava was standing at the crossing when her phone beeped. She took it from her pocket at the same time as glancing left for traffic.

Instead of looking right, Ava opened the WhatsApp message from her brother, Rory: Gran in hospital, it read. She frowned down at her phone and wondered how Rory could ever think that was enough information. But then the horn of the 281 bus stopped all other conscious thought.

The shriek of the brakes filled the air as she saw the huge windscreen, the wipers. The face of the driver in slow motion, mouth open. Her whole body tensed. She felt her hand drop the phone. Time paused.

There was a fleeting thought that this was actually really embarrassing.

And then – smack – she didn’t think anything else. Just felt the hard pain in her hip, then the thwack of her head as she was thrown down on to the tarmac, and an overriding sense of unfairness because she wasn’t yet ready to die.

CHAPTER 2

The nurse waited patiently as Ava tried once more to get through to her brother.

‘It’s voicemail,’ Ava said, apologetic. ‘Everyone’s on voicemail. No one’s answering their phone, I’ve tried everyone. I’m really sorry.’ All her friends were in meetings or on the tube or at lunch, unreachable.

‘It’s fine.’ The nurse’s nametag read Julie Stork. Ava wondered if using her name might aid familiarity – she found it a bit creepy when the man at Starbucks called her Ava because he’d written it on a cup every day, but she could do with an ally. The alternative was another nurse, Tina, who Julie was talking quietly with now. Tina was terrifying. Her uniform stretched tight over her solid figure, hair scraped back in a ponytail, all-seeing eyes like hungry jackdaws. She’d been the one to inform Ava that she couldn’t go home without someone to watch over her for twenty-four hours, while making it very clear that they needed the bed back as soon as possible.

Without the pressure of having no one to come and get her, Ava might have quite enjoyed her hospital stay. Starched white sheets, lamb chops and green beans, sponge pudding and custard, and a tatty out-of-date copy of OK! magazine. But her eyes hovered distractedly to her phone the whole time, her fingers scrolling through her contacts every few seconds, texting, WhatsApping, refreshing.

She felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment as she heard Nurse Tina mutter, ‘There must be someone.’

So when her phone beeped she pounced on it. A text from Rory: Can’t get away. Jonathon coming to get you.

Ava put her hand over her mouth. How could her brother send her ex-boyfriend, of all people? Send his PA, one of the runners on set, anyone. Not the guy he’d set her up with and who she’d split from three months ago.

She sat up quickly to get dressed and out of the stupid hospital gown that did up at the back, the magazine clattering to the floor. She tried to check her reflection in anything she could find: a knife from her plate. She scrunched her flat hair. She felt dizzy. She paused on the side of the bed and looked up just in time to see Jonathon sauntering up the hospital aisle with a sardonic grin on his face.

‘Hi, Jonathon,’ she said with an embarrassed half-smile as he stopped, hands on hips, at the end of her bed.

‘Hit by a bus, eh?’

She nodded. Tried to stand up but felt faint and sat down again. He swooped round the side of the bed to help her. ‘Thanks,’ she mumbled.

‘It’s fine. Take your time.’

She remembered how familiar his face had been. The wide brown eyes and ruddy cheeks. The frustrated look he’d given her when she’d told him that she didn’t think they were going to work as a couple. That she wasn’t very good at relationships and she didn’t think that she was what he was looking for. That she was good at being on her own. And the wide eyes narrowing as he said, ‘Yes you are. You’re going to have to be. Because honestly, I don’t think I know you at all.’

Now he looked all bright and breezy, the collar of his navy striped rugby shirt turned up, jolly eyes sparkling, while Ava was struggling to stand in her open-backed gown. She shuffled on bare feet to close the curtain, a task which Nurse Tina took over, drawing it with a quick flick of her wrist, hustling the exit process forwards.

‘You need any help?’ Jonathon asked, picking up the magazine from the floor and having a flick through.

Ava shook her head.

Jonathon went to stand outside the cubicle as she picked up her socks. The effort of pulling one on was like clambering over a brick wall. Waves of tiredness made her want to snuggle back down into the pillow. She tried to undo her gown but couldn’t reach the strings at the back. Limbs heavy and useless. She tried again.

In the end she sat, hands either side of her, and shutting her eyes said, ‘Jonathon.’

‘Yep,’ his head poked through the curtain.

‘I think I’m going to need some help.’

She saw the raised brow, the slight quirk of his lips. Then he walked in and carefully undid the back of her gown. She held it to her front as she took out one arm at a time and he handed her her T-shirt. She felt him watching with veiled amusement as she tried to get her top on without exposing any more of her body. But when it came to her skinny jeans she finally had to relent, her toes lost somewhere in the tight denim and the waistband halfway up her thighs. ‘Could you help me pull them up, please?’ she said, cursing Topshop. If she wasn’t so completely shattered the humiliation would have been unbearable.

Finally dressed, Ava had to take a second to sit on the bed and get her breath back. She realised the window behind the bed made the perfect mirror as she saw her flat hair and white face staring back at her.

Jonathon gave her his arm and she took it reluctantly to stand up.

‘You know, this is the most vulnerable I’ve ever seen you,’ he said, chuckling at her obvious displeasure at needing help.

They walked out slowly, Nurse Julie watching with an expression that presumed they were a sweet young couple heading home to eat chicken soup and curl up in front of Homes Under the Hammer. Nurse Tina glanced up from her desk with a satisfied nod and handed Ava a leaflet on concussion and signs to look out for.

Ava just wanted to curl up and sleep, but Jonathon was still talking. ‘That’s pretty crazy, isn’t it? Given we went out for more than six months.’ He paused as he held open the door and added with a grin, ‘I’m still a pretty good catch, you know, Ava . . .’

She managed a smile.

As he bundled her into the soft leather seats of his Volvo, the vulnerable, mildly concussed side of her realised how easy it would be to cosy on down with him in front of some daytime TV. To slip back into the warm, comforting familiarity. But she knew it wasn’t right. Her litmus test was to imagine introducing him to her mother, had she been alive. The three of them sitting down to afternoon tea and her mother’s attention drifting as Jonathon talked politely about his job, his hobbies, his military fitness training. Her mother immediately sizing him up as average. Ava imagined herself cutting in with his achievements, with the fun they had, and her mother with an expression that questioned who she was trying to convince.

Jonathon turned to look at her as he cruised down the main road. ‘I’ll drop you at Rory’s and then head straight off, got to get back to work, OK?’

And Ava realised that the ‘good catch’ statement was just that, a statement, to show her what she’d missed. There was no Homes Under the Hammer option available to her, even if she wanted it. ‘Yes, absolutely fine.’

When they pulled up outside Rory and his wife Claire’s Victorian semi, Jonathon came round to open Ava’s door, but she’d opened it on her own. He shut it after her instead.

‘Got all your stuff?’ he asked, as he followed her to the pavement.

Ava nodded. ‘Thank you. You know, for . . .’ She gestured to her clothes and the car. ‘Everything.’

‘It was my pleasure, Ava,’ Jonathon smirked, leaning in to give her a quick peck on the cheek, then waving to Claire who had just opened the front door. As he slipped back into his heated leather seat, he added, ‘It was actually quite enlightening. Getting to see beneath the . . .’ He made a gesture to her face and body, then coughed and said, ‘Not literally. You know what I mean?’ Then shook his head and with an awkward wave pulled the car door shut.

Ava watched him drive away, the grey sky merging with the road and the pavement. She didn’t have time to dwell on what he’d said because her ten-year-old nephew Max came bounding to her side.

‘Aunty Ava! Where’s your bandage? Mum said you’d been hit by a bus. Wow! That’s so cool. It must have really hurt!’

Claire appeared behind him. ‘Sorry I couldn’t pick you up, I was getting Max from football. You OK?’

Ava rubbed her head, felt the tears of the day pushing behind her eyes. She shook her head. ‘Not really,’ she said.

Claire reached out and put her arms around her, enveloping Ava in the kind of hug mums give on TV adverts, that make everything better and smell of fabric softener and strawberries. Ava was momentarily jealous of little Max standing next to her on the drive, eating chocolate digestives and watching YouTube on a laptop balanced precariously on his arm.

Ava stepped out of the hug, brushing her hair back, wincing as she felt the huge bump on the side of her head. ‘Thanks,’ she said to Claire, who nodded in understanding and ushered her inside, into the bright kitchen diner where she sat down on a battered club chair at the far end, next to the bifold doors that opened out on to the decking and the neatly mown lawn.

‘What do we need to do?’ Claire asked as she put the kettle on. Ava handed her the hospital leaflet, momentarily relieved to pass all responsibility over to someone else. Someone who was just innately caring, practical and kind. Who got a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer, wrapped them in a tea towel and put them carefully on her head, who made her a cup of tea and put sugar in for the shock, and went and found a blanket for her shoulders even though the house was completely warm enough.

Claire ruffled Max’s hair as she walked past him, and once again Ava thought how lucky he was.

Her phone started beeping with replies from her friends, finally out of all-day meetings and finished at the gym, asking if she was OK, whether she needed anything. Ava closed her eyes.

Max plodded over with his laptop and the packet of digestives. ‘Do you think anyone filmed it, Aunty Ava? We should try and find out,’ he said through a mouthful of biscuit crumbs. ‘Because you could send it into Ultimate Fails and they’d put you on YouTube.’

The front door slammed and a man’s voice said, ‘That’s enough, thank you, Max.’

Max rolled his eyes. ‘Hi, Dad,’ he said, perching himself on the armrest of Ava’s chair and disappearing back into his laptop.

Rory strode into the kitchen like a businessman might in a film. Cool and confident, a little distracted, emanating stress. He looked like he always did, just older. Top button on his shirt undone, blond hair a fraction ruffled, sleeves rolled up. He looked at Ava.

She felt like a fool with peas on her head and a blanket round her shoulders.

‘You alright?’ he asked, leaning up against the duck-egg kitchen unit.

She nodded.

‘Nothing broken?’ He poured himself a glass of water.

Ava shook her head.

‘Good,’ he said, downing the drink in one.

She was about to tell him how annoyed she was that he’d sent Jonathon to get her when he asked, ‘Up to travelling?’

Ava narrowed her eyes. ‘Why?’

Rory rolled his lips together, ran his hand through his hair. Glanced at his wife who had paused in the doorway. ‘Not good news, I’m afraid.’

‘What?’ Ava asked. She suddenly remembered the WhatsApp she’d read before the bus hit.

‘She’s died,’ he said, typically matter-of-fact. ‘Gran’s died.’

Ava felt her whole body shrink.

‘All very natural. Peaceful,’ he said, refilling his glass. ‘And they don’t waste any time in Spain. Funeral’s tomorrow.’

Ava sat very still, trying to stop her bottom lip from wobbling, not wanting to cry in front of Rory, hugging the frozen peas absently to her chest. Wishing that today and every other day to come was yesterday.

CHAPTER 3

‘Get off your phone, Rory, this is a wake.’

‘I’m not on my phone. I’m just checking something.’

The room was cool and dark compared to the scorching Spanish heat outside. It smelt of furniture polish, clouds of heady sweet perfume and the waxy candles that burnt bright next to bunches of fake flowers on every surface.

‘That’s being on your phone,’ Ava hissed in a whisper.

‘It’s not. Anyway, they’re all on their phones.’ Rory gestured to the group of men in the corner of the little room where their grandmother’s body was laid out behind a pane of glass, resplendent in all her finery – a shocking turquoise silk kaftan, pink velvet trousers, jewelled sandals, her sparrow-like wrists bedecked with chunky plastic bracelets, and around her neck three or four Bakelite necklaces – an outfit she’d had waiting in the back of the wardrobe for this very occasion.

Ava looked over and sure enough, half of the mourners who’d come to pay their respects were chatting away on their beaten-up old phones. Two men played dominos, while a group of women were knitting as they talked animatedly to the deceased.

‘Just put it away,’ Ava sighed, trying to ignore the remains of yesterday’s headache.

‘You’re very self-righteous for someone who got hit by a bus while on their phone,’ Rory said, as he did another quick refresh of his emails before slipping it in his pocket. ‘What do you think they’re saying to her?’ he added, nodding towards the knitting women nattering away to the body.

Ava shrugged. ‘I have no idea. But whatever it is, it’s very passionate. I’m feeling really British.’ She looked down at her outfit. They were both dressed starkly in black, crumpled from the flight and a hot taxi ride from Barcelona airport. Behind them were men who’d come straight from work in overalls, another in a three-piece white suit, and women in rainbow colours, chatting, wiping their eyes. The crying around them was free and open, but Ava held hers painfully tight in her chest, not quite able to let herself go in front of her dry-eyed brother and all these strangers. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to say.’

Rory shook his head. ‘No, me neither. I’m terrible at this kind of thing. I’m only just getting over the fact that we can see the body.’ He glanced backwards towards the door as if looking for a quick escape.

‘You want to sit?’ One of the knitting women turned, her face as wrinkled as a raisin, a touch of smudged mascara on her grooved cheek that she patted away with a neatly folded handkerchief. Beside her she had a little pug dog, his lame back legs propped up on a harness with wheels.

‘Oh no, it’s fine. Fine. You stay,’ Ava insisted.

Ava and Rory had been hovering awkwardly since they’d arrived. If their father had been there, he’d no doubt have taken charge and said something meaningful about how valuable she had been to them all. But as he was in China, cruising the Yangtze River, he wasn’t there to take charge.

‘I have said enough,’ the woman replied, standing so that Ava could take her place and ushering the women next to her to do the same. The candles all around them flickered.

Rory nudged Ava forwards. ‘I’m not really sure what to say,’ she laughed nervously as she felt the eyes in the room watching.

‘Say whatever you like.’ The woman raised her hands as if to encompass the world. ‘You are here to keep her company.’

‘To remind her of how greatly she was loved,’ another woman with bright dyed-red hair added as she went past. ‘Although we all know how much she liked a bit of gossip.’

Ava and Rory took the seats, staring at the figure laid out in front of them, her rouged cheeks and pink lipstick, her costume jewellery glistening in the dull spotlights, her beads, her velvet, her tiny shiny shoes.

Ava looked at Rory.

‘We flew out Ryanair, Gran,’ he said. ‘You’d have hated it. No leg room.’ Then he made a face like he didn’t know what else to say and beckoned for Ava to continue.

Ava swallowed. ‘You look amazing, really great outfit,’ she said. It felt as though the whole room was listening, so she stood up to talk a little quieter, her mouth close up to the glass, eyes staring at the fabric of her grandmother’s kaftan. ‘It feels like we haven’t been out here for ages. I’m sorry about that. I wish I’d seen you.’

Not knowing what else to say she glanced down at the floor, at her black shoes. ‘I’ve worn really boring shoes,’ she added, looking back up, this time at the face she knew so well, now lifeless and powdery. ‘Oh God,’ she put her hand to her mouth, ‘I’m going to really miss you.’ Her voice caught. ‘I’m sorry. Everyone’s watching me.’ She closed her eyes, stared into the darkness of her eyelids and said, ‘I suppose I just want to say thank you.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Thank you, for everything. I feel like you’re going to ring me and tell me that this all went really well.’ She half-laughed, then stopped, because as she stood there her eyes suddenly saw her own reflection in the glass rather than what was behind it. The black of her dress made her body disappear and she saw her face overlaid on to her grandmother’s. Her bobbed brown hair over shocking white curls, open blue eyes overlaid on closed tanned eyelids shaded with a stripe of bright hot pink.

At the same time a group of people bustled in through the door, as more of her grandmother’s friends arrived together, all wild gesticulations and a tumble of easy words, clutching tissues and holding hands. The space around them thronged. Rory stood up, their chairs now odd little empty islands as the number of people standing amassed.

A man in a slick black suit walked to the front and started to sing. Ava’s breath caught in her throat as the sound of this lone deep voice echoed around the room.

She stared at her face merging with her gran’s. With Valentina Brown – Val – her wonderful, opinionated, feisty grandmother, aged eighty-four, her outfit and her funeral preparations ready, her life lived like a peach so ripe it was ready to burst. Died at the same moment as Ava had lived. Like a deal had been struck with the universe to save her.

Ava could almost hear her voice. ‘You stupid girl. Me, I’m ready. You. You are not ready. You have more to give than this! You could have anything you like. Babies, husbands. I know, I know, I’m old-fashioned. Anything, Ava. Life is precious and time is not your friend. This is fate. Don’t sigh. I can hear a sigh down the phone. No respect – just like your mother. Just think for a moment, if this was it, Ava, would you be happy with what you’ve achieved?’

Ava stared transfixed at the glass. Was her life something to be proud of? Had it really been lived as well as it could? If someone had stood at the lectern to speak, what would they have said about her?

Then, just as the haunting song was reaching its peak, Rory’s phone started to ring.

‘Oh man.’ Ava rolled her eyes.

‘Sorry!’ Rory held up his hand. ‘Sorry,’ he said, as he fumbled to turn it off.

Then the coffin lid shut. Ava blinked. The curtain drew around the glass and the reflection popped.

‘Are you alright?’ Rory nudged her on the arm.

‘Yes.’ Ava tucked her hair behind her ears. They followed as everyone in the room headed towards the door.

‘Sure?’ He narrowed his gaze.

She nodded, sliding her sunglasses down as they stepped out into the dazzling bright sunshine of the little Spanish town, a place familiar from holidays – a fifteen-minute drive from their grandmother’s beachside house – visited for the supermarket, the nightclub and a day trip whenever it rained.

The mass of people spewed out into the road, the noise in the air like starlings. And when the procession began it was like burying royalty. People came out of shops to nod their heads, stood in the doorways of the little tapas bars, leaned against the gnarled trunks of the orange trees to watch. The air was perfumed with the hint of late blossom and exhaust smoke, while the sun baked them all like an oven.

There was a band made up of three old guys with a trumpet, an accordion and a tambourine, led by the singer from the wake. The music and the chatting followed the coffin all the way to the cemetery, loud and lively, the wobbling mass of people like jelly through the streets.

All exactly to Valentina Brown’s specifications.

Ava allowed herself a moment of morbid self-absorption to imagine, had it been her, the rainy, grey afternoon, people shaking out their umbrellas and wrapping their black macs tight, complaining about the terrible summer they were having, her father standing quietly in the front pew while Rory gave the eulogy. She glanced at him surreptitiously checking his emails. Great.

At the cemetery the sun flickered through giant fir trees, welcome shade as the group paused in front of a big white wall of little black doors. Behind these niches were the coffins of the people in the gilt-framed, sun-bleached photographs screwed above each door. Faded artificial flowers and alabaster Virgin Marys watched mournfully over the proceedings as rays of sun dappled like fingers of dusty light.

Words were said in Spanish, a blessing Ava couldn’t understand. So she remembered instead her first taste of chorizo and chickpeas, and the sound of Padrón peppers sizzling in the pan, so incongruous in the little Ealing bungalow where her grandparents lived, the crazy-paved outside wall and the gnomes in the garden. Remembered the piping hot doughnutty churros and the pots of warm melted chocolate for breakfast that they ate in their sleeping bags in the front room on swirly brown carpet in front of the two-bar electric fire. And then summer holiday trips in the car, driving endless miles through France and across Spain to Mariposa, the beach town where Valentina Brown grew up. Home of the Summerhouse. Once a ramshackle fisherman’s hut – a place where their great-grandfather hauled his boats to store them for the winter and mend his nets – transformed into a little haven on the cusp of the sea by Eric Brown, Val’s husband, his pale English skin and dislike of sand keeping him happily indoors with his Black & Decker and PG Tips. Summer after summer the roof was tiled, the walls plastered, the bathroom and kitchen refitted, a little terrace added and a first-floor bedroom built into the wooden-beamed eaves. Ava remembered standing in the shade of the palm trees, handing her grandfather nails and spirit levels, while Rory mixed thick cement with a trowel and they both got told off for flicking each other with white paint. And as Eric carefully laid the pebbles for the front path, Ava wrote the words ‘Summerhouse’ in shells and a great discussion ensued as to whether there should have been a space between the words, Rory rolling his eyes at her stupidity and Val appearing to clip him round the ear before bending down and writing ‘Our’ in shells in the wet cement above.

It was the perfect summer hideaway. And when Eric passed away, Val decamped from Ealing to Mariposa full-time, and the Summerhouse became her everyday house. But for Ava and Rory it was still the place that holidays were made of.

‘She had a bloody good innings,’ Rory whispered as Val’s coffin was lifted.

Ava turned to look at him, snapped out of her memories. ‘It’s not a cricket match, Rory.’

He snorted under his breath. Ava looked away, out across the sea of mourners, to the hats and the white hair, the smiles, the open tears, the handkerchiefs, the cigarettes, the hipflasks, the veils and the bright pops of corsage colour.

She saw the fullness of a life take shape in the people come to mourn it and was struck by the single thought: I have been given a second chance.

She turned back to see the coffin carried towards its final resting place, waves of sunlight dancing on the carved wood while glitter-edged artificial flowers shone pink around the niche in the wall like a welcoming cocoon. And as the coffin slid inside the chamber, Ava reached up to wipe the first tear from her cheek.

CHAPTER 4

The little tapas bar was heaving with people, Barcelona warming up for the night. Ava and Rory had been dropped off by their taxi on the way from the cemetery to the airport after Ava persuaded Rory they had enough time for a quick drink. Rory had huffed, reluctant. He didn’t like leaving the airport to chance.

The evening sun was hovering on the cusp of the rooftops. Sparrows jumped in the dust. A guy in the square opposite the bar was playing the guitar, tapping his foot gently, a cap for change at his feet. Ava leant forwards on the little barrel table she was sitting at to watch. Behind the guitar player a couple on a bench were arguing, while across the square little children yelped and shouted on a climbing frame. The coloured lights strung between the plane trees glowed fairground bright.

‘Bloody hell, it’s carnage in here.’ Rory appeared, balancing little plates of tapas on top of two sherry glasses, elbows out like chicken wings from battling his way through the crowd. His phone was ringing. ‘Take these,’ he thrust the drinks at her as he fumbled for his phone. ‘I have to take this. It’s work.’

Ava sat for a second, sipping her sherry, then, with nothing else to do, checked her own phone. Before she’d flown to Spain she’d sent an email to her friends about a dinner next week, the subject line: I’m alive!! Everyone had immediately said they could come. But now her friend Louise, who was thirteen weeks pregnant, was asking for it to be postponed because the date clashed with a midwife appointment. Someone else had agreed, relieved because they had a work do they’d forgotten about; another cited arrangements their partner had made without telling them. Ava scrolled through the emails, mocked by the I’m alive!! subject header on every decline.

She didn’t want to be upset. But this was starting to happen more often: the casual cancel. All she could think was that she rarely said no to an invite. Normally she would have been scrolling through her diary right now to try and find other dates that might work, might pull the group together, write some extra jolly response to keep the momentum going. Ava was constantly rearranging, juggling, to make sure that she could see everyone, do everything, make sure everyone was happy, and she hated the part of herself that wondered why, when she most needed it, they couldn’t do the same for her. Because she knew it was fruitless. They weren’t being callous – it was just the older they got, the harder it was to mesh their lives. They weren’t at university any more, nor loafing about in their first jobs, free and easy. Her friend Louise was expecting twins, for goodness’ sake.

And she wanted Louise to have babies. It was exciting. It would be lovely. But it put paid to Ava’s secret wish that Louise and Barnaby, her husband, might realise they hated each other, divorce, and then Louise would move back in with Ava, and all the fun they used to have would commence once more. Twins made the wish a lot less practical.

Rory reappeared, chucking his phone down on the table. ‘Bloody work. They’re completely incompetent. How long have we been gone? Twelve hours max and they manage to balls it up in my absence.’ He raked a hand through his hair. ‘I can literally feel the stress in my veins.’ Exhaling dramatically, he took a big swig of his drink.

Ava watched him take his seat again, barely pausing to appreciate the warm evening air, the buzz of the square, the sharp, cool sherry. It always amazed her to think of him as someone’s boss, as some bigwig revered documentary-maker, because really he was just her annoying brother who she remembered videoing himself doing embarrassing David Attenborough impressions in the back garden. Now though he was tipped for a BAFTA and was invited for dinners at No. 10. She’d never seen her father look so taken aback as the moment one Christmas when Rory announced that he had been invited to a bash at the Prime Minister’s. Their dad had absolutely no understanding of television bar the Ten O’Clock News, and seemed quite stunned that it could lead to something he would deem a serious accolade. He took himself off to his study, shaking his head with bemusement.

‘Shall we have a toast to Gran?’ Ava said, raising her glass.

‘Yes absolutely, nice idea.’ Rory clinked his glass to hers. They both took a sip.

The dry crispness of the sherry flamed her throat and nose as though she’d inhaled the scent. It tasted of Spain. Of nights sitting on her grandmother’s veranda, bare feet up on the railing, looking out over the little courtyard garden, the man in the house opposite watering the flowerpots on his wall with a tin can on a long bit of bamboo, the rustle of the palm leaves in the wind, the hoot of the gecko, the sweet ripe perfume of fat purple figs and the fresh-river tang of red geraniums.

The bar filled up around them, bodies squishing to get through, and Rory and Ava talked for a while about the ceremony, polite musings about how nice it had been, how much their grandmother would be missed. Then Rory said, ‘So . . . Gran’s house,’ fishing a small drowning fly out of his drink. ‘I’m thinking we get someone in to clear the place out, put it on the market as soon as possible.’ He looked up as he was ushering the fly off his finger on to the barrel table to check Ava was listening. ‘I could do with some cash at the moment. Our mortgage has skyrocketed and Max’s school fees just seem to completely ignore inflation. Yeah?’ He was still in work mode. Used to people doing exactly what he told them.

Ava had the fleeting thought, as he spoke, of how nice it would be to come back to Spain and sort out the Summerhouse herself. She wondered if any of her friends might want to come with her. The list of declines to a simple meal made it seem unlikely. That was the problem with getting older, there were fewer and fewer people to go on holiday with. She imagined herself in the future, resorting to coach trips for company. She didn’t actually mind a coach trip – apart from the fact that everyone watched you get up to walk to the toilet – she just wanted to go on one out of choice rather than desperation.

The alternative would be to come out here on her own. To really grasp the idea of a second chance and head off into the sunset to find herself. But the thought made her uneasy. She wasn’t sure she had the courage for so much aloneness. She had no trouble curling up on her sofa at home watching Netflix by herself all evening, but that was generally because she always knew that the next night or the next lunchtime or the next breakfast she was meeting someone, whether it was a client or a friend or even her dad. There was always someone. Always a dinner, always a drink. And if one person cancelled she invariably found another. Aside from her close friends she had a little black book of acquaintances, an intricate network of possibilities. There was always a dot on her iPhone calendar. She made sure she wasn’t lonely by rarely being alone.

Across from the bar the guitar player paused for a beer, nodding when a couple of people clapped. The mood of the playground opposite morphed as the little kids ran off for dinner and a group of loping teenagers took over the swings.

Ava’s phone buzzed with a text message.

It was from Caroline, a girl she hadn’t spoken to in ages who she’d seemingly called in desperation from the hospital. They’d done work experience together at Peregrine Fox Antiques – which predominantly meant walking Peregrine’s dog and popping out to buy espressos. Caroline had left for a job at an auction house and was now senior press officer. Ava realised she must have underestimated her concussion because she couldn’t actually believe she’d called Caroline for help, given their lack of recent contact and Caroline’s ability to always make her feel as though, while everyone else was leaning in, Ava was lying back taking a nap.

Ava! Great to hear from you! Sorry taken so long to reply – we’re in the middle of a HUGE forgery scandal. All super stressful and not something I should even mention on text. LOL. Will probably be indicted. How’s things?? Your LinkedIn says you’re still working at Peregrine’s btw – need to update.

Ava exhaled, blowing her hair up out of her face, the curl landing back in the same place. She almost laughed. The world itself was conspiring to spotlight her every failing.

Exactly as her LinkedIn profile suggested, Ava was still working at Peregrine Fox Antiques. She loved her job. She sourced antiques for rich clients at the tiny company run by the brilliant, very camp Peregrine Fox. She was good at it. People trusted her. They sold her things for nothing and bought things from her for a fortune while Peregrine drank copious espressos and did the same thing, just more flamboyantly. Ava had an eye for quality that came from trailing round after her mother, who only felt like she’d truly made it in life when the very best became her everyday default. Her eye for a bargain came from trailing round after her grandmother, who had a self-patented technique for elbowing to the front at jumble sales. Ava’s greatest success to date was unearthing a Chippendale blanket trunk in the back room of a Sussex farmhouse that was being used to store muddy boots and dog food.

But now, seen through Caroline’s eyes, it made her feel as though she was still twenty-one and doing the filing.

It felt like a sign.

Ava turned her phone over on the table, didn’t reply to the text. She watched the fly Rory had saved still making its way dozily to the edge of the table.

Rory had taken the opportunity to read his emails again. ‘Going to have to drink up so we can get to the airport,’ he said, eyes glued to his screen.

Ava checked her watch. There was acres of time. ‘You know, Rory,’ she said, swallowing, her mouth suddenly dry, talking before her brain had fully formulated a plan, ‘maybe I might come out here for the summer.’

Rory took a quick slug of sherry. ‘What do you mean? What – to Spain?’

‘Yeah,’ Ava nodded. ‘Maybe I could pack up the Summerhouse. You know, take some time off work. Live in it for a bit?’ He was watching her and that made her carry on, uncomfortable. ‘Maybe this might be a good opportunity for a . . .’ She tried to find the right word. He was still looking at her, dubious. ‘A restart. A re-evaluation.’

The guitar player had started up again. The teenagers on the swings were rolling cigarettes, tinny music from their phones clashing with the guitar. The bar heaved with people, knocking their chairs as they pushed past, hands full, carrying drinks out into the square. It was still warm, but the air around Ava suddenly felt hotter under Rory’s scrutiny.

‘Don’t you think you’d be better off maybe buying a house with the inheritance? Or,’ he paused, tapped the table with his index finger, ‘not running out on perfectly good relationships. How was Jonathon by the way?’ When Ava rolled her eyes in response, he stretched his shoulders back, as though his shirt, or her life, was an annoying discomfort. ‘Those are the kind of things that would lead to your future, Ava.’

She studied him. Noticed how age made him look harder. Like all his edges had squared off. ‘You sound like Dad.’

Rory shrugged. ‘No bad thing. Look, thing is, Ava, I think it’s better that we just sell. I can’t sit on that money while you take a holiday. I’m sorry, I know that sounds harsh. But it’s going to have to be a no. OK?’

She didn’t say anything, knew from experience that it was pointless arguing with her brother, he was like a brick wall. It was the same as when they were kids, his bedroom door always tight shut, Ava desperately guessing the password that might let her in, too naively exuberant to realise that the game was endless because there never was one.

But Ava’s interest was piqued. The idea of a second chance, a different way of living, a change, wouldn’t go away.

She picked up her glass and took another sip. She knew the bus accident wasn’t fate, just a bad combination of WhatsApp and the Green Cross Code. She knew there were no deals with the universe or cosmic signs. But it felt like she had somehow been handed this possibility by her grandmother, and she couldn’t allow it to slip through her fingers.

She imagined sitting by herself on that Spanish veranda, with the view of the courtyard garden and the sweet-scented close night air. And Ava knew suddenly that if her grandmother could do it alone, so could she.

Rory was still talking. ‘It was funny, wasn’t it, when that guy said he felt sorry for Grandad. No more peace in heaven for him.’

Ava laughed. ‘Yeah, it was.’

‘God, I’d have had to say something about you, wouldn’t I? If that bus had got you.’

‘That’s a nice way of putting it, Rory.’

Rory sniggered into his sherry. Then he looked at his watch. ‘Come on, drink up, we’ve got a plane to catch.’

She realised she was suddenly itching to know what he would have said about her if the bus had indeed got her. Intrigued by a possible heartfelt truth, she crossed her arms, glass dangling from her fingertips, and with feigned nonchalance so as not to appear too eager, said, ‘Go on then, what would you have said?’

Rory frowned as he considered the question. Then he downed his drink and grinned. He had a habit of picking up on when she wanted something, and her silent patience was a huge giveaway. ‘I’d say that you were a real pain in the arse growing up but sometimes you can be quite funny now.’

Ava made a face. ‘You wouldn’t have said that,’ she huffed. ‘Come on, what would you actually have said?’

Rory laughed. ‘I’m not telling you what I would have said.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because people don’t say what they think about you until after you die. That’s the bitch. You never get to know.’

Ava frowned. ‘Here they know,’ she said, pointing towards the bustling Spanish street, the air filled with life lived richly. ‘They tell each other stuff like that here. Like, Gran knew by the end that, yes, there’d been bad bits but overall she’d lived a great life. People loved her. All they went on about was how adored she was, how great she was. She knew she’d aced it.’

Rory tipped his head and swirled the dregs round in his empty glass. ‘Well, lucky her, that’s all I can say.’ He got his phone out again and refreshed his emails. ‘Come on, we’ve really got to go,’ he said, standing up, slinging his suit jacket over his arm.

Ava checked her phone. It was piling up with more messages: new dates suggested for the I’m alive!! dinner. The sweetness of friendship that she hadn’t factored on. It made her waver on the decision building inside her to defy Rory and come out to Spain anyway.

The man playing the guitar came round, proffering a hat for change. The waiter swept past, clearing their glasses from the table like magic, the teenagers blew smoke rings up at the sky, the arguing couple stood silently fuming. Ava put a euro in the hat. Rory didn’t.

‘Do you ever think that there’s still time?’ Ava asked, hand clutching her phone as they started to walk in the direction of the main road.

‘Sorry, what was that?’ Rory said, distractedly searching for a taxi, pushing his hair back from his face. ‘God, it’s so hot here.’

‘I said do you ever think there’s still time?’ she repeated, looking straight at him.

‘Still time for what?’

‘To ace your life.’

‘Me?’ he said, looking confused, ‘I am aceing it.’

Ava stared after him, amazed at his unwavering certainty as he strode away to flag down a cab. Then she looked down at the emails on her phone, everyone raring to go for the new date – I’m alive!! – and she knew that returning here on her own would disrupt the steady predictability of her life. Would answer back to all the faults in her life that had been disconcertingly exposed since the bus crash. She imagined her mother would have done it simply for the adventure. It was the very definition of I’m alive!!

And she knew she couldn’t let her brother be the reason she didn’t do it. Nor for that matter the safety of her friends. She opened a new email.

Thanks guys, for trying to rearrange, but I’m not going to make it. I’m going to be in Spain for the summer!

CHAPTER 5

It was pouring with rain. Ceaseless, monotonous, Armageddon-type rain. The sky was like concrete, the horizon a mesh of cranes, half-built tower blocks and jagged scaffolding. Rory was standing in the middle of an industrial estate in East London, on the set of his current documentary project, filming the life of a mute swan and a Canada goose who had set up home in an abandoned Tesco trolley next to a small, dank excuse for a pond. The birds found fame when one of the office workers set up an Instagram and Twitter account for them – #SwanLovesGoose – and across the globe people fell for the hopelessly devoted mismatched duo.

Almost overnight the birds became a symbol of love, peace and acceptance. National treasures, they were mentioned on X Factor and the fun bit at the end of the BBC news. The horrible pond became a conservation area. And Rory snapped up all the rights immediately. As well as the documentary, there was a book written from the point of view of the female swan scheduled for release at Christmas.

‘God, why can’t they just mate? Why can’t they do something?’ Rory was dressed in his blue waterproof, the rain dripping from the peak of the hood on to his nose and into his cold Styrofoam coffee cup.

He could see the money racking up every time he glanced from his camera crew to the two overfed birds sitting on the depressingly grey water doing absolutely nothing. The old shopping trolley sat empty.

Rory used to have a lot of patience when it came to nature. He’d built his living on his ability to wait it out. After critical acclaim for his degree show film about the Michelin-starred beach café next to his grandmother’s house in Spain, he’d followed up with a documentary about the Fête de l’Escargot in France and the traditions around snail-hunting season, which shot him to prominence as one of the youngest BAFTA documentary nominees. He hadn’t won, but his name had been on people’s lips and he’d dined at No. 10, chortling with the PM over canapés. At just twenty-one his star was on the rise, but that same year his son Max had been born. Plagued by reflux, the baby hadn’t slept, the cries echoing round the flat twenty-four-seven. His wife Claire struggling and Rory exhausted, at his worst when he hadn’t had any sleep, his brain frazzled as he tried to work, money painfully tight. It was a ten-month black hole in his life. And when things started to get back to normal the wave of success seemed to have rolled on without him. No longer riding out front, he was paddling to keep up at the back, always a step out of sync. He spent ten months driving across America in search of the quintessential diner, only to find a bigger budget version of the same idea scheduled for release two months before his quiet little film. He worked harder and harder. Obsessively. And yet never bettered the French snail success. More recently, in the relentless quest for the BAFTA, he had taken on more commercial projects which he hated. He’d spent last spring on tour with a controversial young indie rock band, filming a supposed warts-and-all behind-the-scenes exposé that, while highly praised, had been a frustrating six months watching lazy teenagers sleeping, playing videogames and refusing to rehearse. To make matters worse, the BAFTA that year was nabbed by a quirky little film by a virtually unknown director who’d sprung to fame via YouTube, setting off to record the 300 different types of snow that the Eskimos were reputed to have words for.

All Rory’s hopes were now pinned on this swan and goose, which he counted on having just the right amount of commercial whimsy to bag the gong. But not only were the birds doing absolutely nothing, Rory was stressed and tired. The plane home from Spain had been delayed for hours on the runway and he still didn’t feel like he’d caught up on sleep.

He huffed back to his Portakabin, past the catering van. Larry, the chef, nodded towards the fat birds and said, ‘Not much going on, is there?’

‘No,’ Rory replied. ‘Absolutely bugger all.’

‘I’ll go home and get my rifle if you want, shoot one of them!’ Larry laughed. ‘That’d boost the ratings.’

Rory paused. That wasn’t actually a bad idea. He didn’t want to shoot one, of course, but maybe they could do something to chivvy it up a bit. He called to his assistant, ‘Petra, meeting in my office, five minutes. Get the team.’

The Portakabin was cold but dry, except for the trail of muddy footprints and the dripping of six wet jackets on the backs of a hastily assembled group of chairs. Two of the team were perched on the side of Rory’s desk. A packet of custard creams was doing the rounds.

‘Do you think this is what it’s going to be like the whole summer?’ Petra stared out the window at the rain.

George, the assistant producer, shook his head. ‘We don’t have summer in Britain any more. Global warming. We’re just going to be grey and bland forever.’

Petra made a face.

‘OK, listen,’ Rory clapped his hands together then rubbed them to warm up. ‘We need these birds to do something, pronto. And they aren’t doing it themselves. I don’t want to put them in danger, as such, I just want to spice things up. Ideas?’

The only noise was the crinkle of the custard cream packet.

‘Come on, you lot!’ Rory sat back in his swivel chair, hands behind his head. ‘This is what I pay you for. Think. What can we do with them?’

George shrugged, mouth full of biscuit. ‘We could kidnap one. Goose could handle it, I reckon.’

Petra made a sad face. ‘That would be really mean, though.’

‘Petra,’ Rory glared at her, ‘it’s not real. If we kidnap him he’ll be in this bloody Portakabin, probably eating all my biscuits, if you lot leave me any.’

Rupert, a foppish researcher, nudged the one remaining custard cream still in the packet on to the edge of Rory’s desk.

‘I used to live near a farm, actually, one of those ones open to the public that kids go to,’ said George. ‘Just before Christmas some people broke in and stole all the rabbits and ducks and chickens. They think it was for Christmas dinner.’

Rory smacked the table with his hand. ‘I like it. Now we’re talking.’

‘Really?’ said Petra to George. ‘They ate them?’

George nodded.

‘That’s terrible,’ she said. ‘Some people.’

Rory ignored her. ‘So, OK, this is good. We kidnap Goose. Petra, I want you to look into logistics. Get the police in – and what? We spin it that he’s been taken for Sunday lunch? It’s a real shame it’s summer not Christmas. George, can we get someone from that farm on camera? Just having that as a story will get the idea into people’s minds. I like it.’

Foppish Rupert added, ‘My parents have a farm in Hampshire. Goose could stay there for a while.’

Petra looked out the window again at the dank, rainy industrial estate. ‘Probably never want to come back.’

Rory nodded. ‘Well that would be even better. A post-kidnapping lovers’ tiff.’

George laughed.

Petra looked back at them all, expression pained. ‘This is really mean.’

Rory sighed. ‘Yes, we know it’s mean, Petra. But if we don’t do it then nothing happens, the film’s a flop, everyone forgets about the bloody birds and some fox’ll probably eat them or the council will evict them. We’re actually doing them a favour – in a roundabout sort of way. Right,’ Rory stood up, grabbed the biscuit packet, and popping out the last custard cream said, ‘Action that, people. Let’s get back to work.’

CHAPTER 6

Later that day, Rory was sitting at the kitchen table opposite Max, drinking a cup of tea and impatiently refreshing his Twitter feed, waiting for a scheduled announcement about the Eskimo-snow BAFTA winner’s latest project. Feeling confident about his own #SwanLovesGoose kidnapping plan, he’d picked Max up straight from the set in a great mood, then cooked an amazing risotto that Max had picked all the peas out of and said was a bit smelly. They had had a row and weren’t speaking when his wife came home from work.

‘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.

‘Anyway,’ Rory ran a hand frustratedly through his hair, trying to divert the subject away from his faux pas, ‘we’ve got to sell Gran’s house. It’s the only answer. My life is stressful enough without knowing there’s a veritable goldmine sitting across the Channel that could pay off a whack of our mortgage. Have you seen that area? It’s not a sleepy little village any more. Even the bloody hipsters have moved in. I saw them with their beards and their trendy restaurants. You know a place is up and coming when there are lime green single-speed bikes chained to the lampposts.’

‘We have enough money, Rory.’

‘We could have more.’

‘Everyone could have more. We do OK.’

‘Claire, if you saw how much money goes out of my account every month to pay for all this, you’d be saying sell the Spanish place as well, believe me.’

She put the dish down on the draining board. ‘I know how much money goes out, Rory, because the same percentage goes out of mine. You don’t earn that much more than me.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Rory sighed, shaking his head, his tone implying he couldn’t say anything right. Then, after a pause, as they silently washed and dried, he started to feel a little hard done by. He knew he shouldn’t say anything else, but as the feeling grew he found himself unable not to, and added, ‘I think actually it’s fair to say that I do earn quite a lot more than you.’

Claire smacked a saucepan down on the counter and turned around. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes,’ he said. Then, a little less certain, ‘I think so.’

‘Oh my God. You are so frustrating. Why say it? Why do you always have to have the last word? Does it ever occur to you why you earn so much more? Because you got to trot off around the globe to build your career while I stayed here to bring up our child. I was basically your live-in babysitter, Rory. And I’m well aware that it was a choice that I made, but it would be nice if you could recognise it every now and then.’ Claire exhaled, rubbed her forehead, forgetting she had rubber gloves on, and then had to wipe the suds away with her sleeve. ‘I don’t earn as much as you, Rory, one because my industry doesn’t pay as much, but two because it took me twice as long to get where I am because I had a child to look after. Our child. And maybe, if you paid me the amount that childcare costs these days, I would have as much money as you.’

‘I don’t want to have an argument, Claire.’

‘That’s such an infuriating answer.’ She put her hands on the sides of the sink and looked up at the ceiling in exasperation. ‘Who wants to have an argument? If you don’t want an argument, why say it in the first place?’

Rory was starting to feel out of his depth. He wanted it to end, but the stubborn feeling that his point hadn’t yet been recognised made him soldier on. ‘Because the fact is, the majority of the money worries in this family fall on my shoulders.’

‘Oh my God!’ Claire’s cheeks had flushed red with annoyance.

Rory’s phone buzzed. He put his hand into his pocket.

‘Don’t you dare get your phone out.’

Rory stopped, but when he found he didn’t want to let go of the phone in his pocket he was suddenly reminded of the dirty old comforter Max had had as a baby.

Claire sighed. ‘Sometimes it would be really nice not to have to compete for your attention with that thing.’

He could see frustrated tears start to build in her eyes. He knew how annoyed she’d be that she was crying. He wanted to call a little pause, to reach out and touch her arm or something, but equally he couldn’t back down. He felt like pointing out that everyone wants time alone in a relationship and he chose to spend his on his phone – would she prefer it if he started getting the newspaper delivered like his father and disappearing off to read that every evening?

The thought that the Eskimo-snow director’s announcement would have been made on Twitter by now flitted into his mind.

Again Claire started to say something but then stopped, shook her head, as if it were all pointless. ‘Well, as far as I know, we’re not destitute. I think we have enough money for your sister, who nearly died last week, to spend a summer by the beach in Spain. Don’t you?’ She moved away from the sink, pulling her rubber gloves off, and walked over to the fridge to get the white wine. As she poured herself a glass she looked up at Rory and said, ‘I know you work hard, but not everything is about money. I think sometimes you treat us like we work for you. But we’re your family. You can’t just bulldoze over people, because one day they’ll stop suddenly and realise that they are just “ploughing forward on a fixed path in life”.’ She raised her brows as she repeated his words. Rory looked down at the floor. ‘If you can’t see the problem in you saying no to Ava then you’re not the person I thought you were.’ She left the kitchen and disappeared into the hallway, clearly unable to be in the same room as him.

Rory exhaled. He shut his eyes for a second then reached into his pocket and got his phone out. He didn’t want to think about anything that had just happened. He wanted to ignore it all, read the text that had come through, focus back on a world he understood: his BAFTA nemesis’s project reveal and the all-consuming race for the top prize.

But at the foot of the stairs Claire paused and turned. ‘You need to make sure Max has done his homework,’ she said, her eyes widening in surprise when she saw his phone. ‘You know, Rory, I wonder sometimes if it were between me and that sodding phone, who would win.’

‘I got a text.’

‘What does it say?’ she asked, coming back towards him.

Rory opened it, then said, a little sheepish, ‘My parcel will be delivered tomorrow between ten and twelve.’ Then he paused, his mouth curving up into a half-smile. ‘Will you be in?’

‘You’ve got some nerve, Rory,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Don’t give me that look. Don’t think you can get away with it with that look.’

‘You love that look,’ he said. Knowing he’d got her now. It would all be alright.

She glanced down at the rug, straightening the tassels with her foot, to pretend she wasn’t smiling, but he could see that she was. ‘You need to make sure Max gets off that computer and does his homework.’

‘Aye aye, Captain.’

She shook her head. ‘You’re really annoying.’

‘And that’s why you love me.’ He stepped forwards, about to put his arms around her but his phone rang. ‘Oh God, this is work, I have to take it.’

Claire looked up, completely dumbfounded. ‘Don’t you dare take it.’

‘I have to take it.’ Pressing Answer, he said, ‘Hello, hi, yeah, Bruce, what’s happened? What? How?’

But before he could say any more he felt the phone plucked from his fingers. He tried to tighten his grip but he’d realised too late and could only scrabble for the shiny surface. ‘What the hell? Claire, what are you doing? Hang on, Bruce,’ he shouted.

With the aim of the county netballer that she had been until they’d had Max, Claire took a few paces backwards and hurled his phone into the downstairs toilet.

‘What the hell have you just done?’ Rory ran into the bathroom to see his mid-contract iPhone sitting at the base of the loo. He had his sleeve rolled up and his arm in the water before he could even tune into her reply.

‘I’m trying to make you look at me, for Christ’s sake. I’m trying to make you exist right now with me and with Max. You’re never here any more, Rory. You’re never present. It’s like you’re always distracted. And Max is growing up and this bit is meant to be easier. Our life should be getting more fun but it’s not. It feels like it’s getting worse. I don’t want you to feel like you’re stuck with us, with this life. Because to me it’s precious. It’s all I have.’

‘I didn’t say I was stuck with you,’ he said, distracted, hauling the dripping iPhone out of the toilet, trying to get it to switch on, vaguely seeing an expression on her face and a tremor in her hands he hadn’t seen before, and feeling in the pit of his stomach that this was serious, that the ground beneath him wasn’t as stable as he’d presumed it to be, but the call from Bruce was, in that moment, more serious. ‘I’ve got to get a phone!’ Chucking the useless iPhone on top of the loo, he moved Claire to one side, hands on her shoulders.

She pushed him away with a stunned, ‘What are you doing?’

Rory wasn’t listening. ‘Max!’ he shouted. ‘Max, give me your laptop!’ He barged into the living room and commandeered the whizzy new laptop that he had no idea how to use. Rory was an Apple man – all the touch-screen shenanigans on Windows 10 was out of his jurisdiction. He handed it back. ‘Get me on Twitter.’ When Max paused he shouted, ‘Now!’

Max did as he was told.

And there it was.

BREAKING: Rory Fisher to eat #SwanLovesGoose for Sunday dinner!

CHAPTER 7

The little village of Mariposa was exactly as Ava remembered it as a kid. A hidden treasure at the bottom of a winding path off the main road, it was a curl of golden sandy beach and turquoise sea. Houses lined the coast like Neapolitan ice cream: pink sandwiched between vanilla and chocolate, tall to the sky, their shuttered windows like eyes staring out to the bright blue of the Mediterranean. Ava wheeled her bag past the Café Estrella, keeper of so many of her family memories, its terracotta roof tiles speckled with moss, the awning a little wonky, tables spilling out on to a cracked concrete terrace, the sun radiating from the pavement in tentacles. As she’d walked down the slope to the tiny beach town she’d passed a new restaurant, Nino’s, heaving with lunch trade. In comparison, Café Estrella looked worryingly closed.

She paused to look back at the bustling restaurant, wondering for a second about the change, but then found her gaze distracted by the familiar view ahead of her – postcard perfect and etched on her brain for imaginary visits on cold winter days. The pale glinting sea receding to dark navy and melting into ice-blue sky. White fishing boats like gulls bobbing on the water. A line of yellow buoys marking a path for the watersports speedboat. Swimmers diving off orange pedalos, while sunbathers basked on golden sand. Blue and white sunshades with matching loungers. Dripping lollies, barking dogs, the rat-a-tat of bat and ball. The hiss of the shower. The gentle curl of the waves. The birds stalking up and down in the sand.

She pulled her bag further along the path and shielded her eyes to get her first glimpse of her grandmother’s house across the square, the small white villa visible through a rusting black wrought-iron fence. Behind it, like pastel footsteps, more ice cream houses climbed the hill. Their arched windows, geranium-strewn terraces and zigzags of washing lines leading the eye up and up till it reached a large house at the top – stone-coloured brick, shaded by huge sweeping pines, their branches like blackened clouds – and then across from that to the rows and rows of vines that marked the hillside like lines on paper.

Down on the beach, the air smelled of the orange trees in pots around Café Estrella, their leaves shiny as plastic, and the drunken fig that had crushed the wall and lay draped half across the path, its ripening fruit sweetening the air with a perfume so heady, so addictive that the more Ava inhaled the more she needed, as if all the breaths in the world wouldn’t satisfy the craving. Light-headed from all the sniffing, she bounced her case across the cobbles of the square in the direction of the rusty black gates. On the wall above the letterbox was a bell with a little light and the words Valentina Brown (Mrs).

She couldn’t quite believe she was here.

She had wavered slightly when she’d touched down in the UK. Wondered whether to back track and relegate the whole idea to a conversation topic about how her big bad brother had denied her this chance of a lifetime. She had actually half-presumed that her boss Peregrine would be the one to put the kybosh on it – unable to manage without her – but instead he’d been nothing but supportive, waffling on about her loyalty to the company. He could think of nothing more worthwhile than taking a break to find oneself and wished he had done it himself at her age. He and their intern – a dashing young up-start, Hugo, the incredibly self-assured son of Peregrine’s best friend – would hold the fort in her absence. If she was honest, she’d been a little put out by Peregrine’s blasé belief that the company could manage perfectly well without her, secretly wishing herself indispensable. But he clearly wasn’t worried, coming back from lunch with a travel diary, still in the Paperchase bag with the receipt, as a parting gift to seal the deal.

So here she was, unzipping the pocket in her bag for the key, still on the familiar little black bull keyring, a miniature version of the huge cut-outs that loomed high above the roadside on her taxi journey from the airport, reminding her that this was Spain.

She looked across at the Café Estrella. In the darkness a TV flickered. Two old men played chess on a table in the shade. The blackboards were tired and smudged. There was no one there that she recognised. The waiter was drying the cups, his glance flicking between the TV and his few customers. She remembered nights when they’d danced on the tables.

She turned the key in the iron gate lock and walked up the dusty path, past the bougainvillea trailing unchecked over the fence and the pots of plump green succulents. Her fingers were shaking slightly and at the front door she fumbled the key, dropping it on the threshold. Bending down to pick it up she saw the shells. Pressed into the cement by her and Val: Our Summerhouse. She paused and rubbed one of the little shells with her thumb before taking a deep breath, picking up the keys and going inside.

The corridor was dark. The shutters closed. It was stranger than she’d imagined, being there alone. No smells of cooking. No vacuuming or absent-minded flower-arranging or kettle boiling. No stray cats purring. No telephone ringing or swearing at the TV, no diary scribbling or wild gesticulations about making no noise and coming to the window to look at what was going on in the street outside.

Nothing, Ava noted as she pushed the door open, just some junk mail on the mat and dusty dried lavender in a vase.

It was empty, unlived in, musty.

She walked straight through to the living room and opened the windows, the air instantly filling with the salty breath of the sea. She stood with her hands on the sill, looking out at the beach, at the rows of bronze-limbed sun-worshippers and children digging holes in the sand. Then she turned her back to the window and took in the familiar sight of a million old Spanish paintings wonkily filling every inch of the magnolia walls. The sofa, threadbare, spilling with cushions. The coffee table stacked high with big art books, stains on the glass from coffee cups. The shelves toppling with family photographs. The desk by the window covered with papers. Everything exactly as she remembered it but coated with a thin layer of sticky dust.

In the kitchen she tore off a bin bag and went through the fridge, chucking everything out. Then did the same in the avocado bathroom, binning the half-used bottles of shampoo, the night creams and the flattened toothpaste tube. The little half-bar of soap by the bathroom sink, heartbreaking but unusable, too closely tied to the once living.

As she looked, Ava did her best to ignore the growing weight pressing down on her, trying not to dwell on the life that had gone. She blinked away the vision of someone finding her own half-bars of soap, immediately glad that she’d chucked everything out for the airbnb tenant.

Her friends were WhatsApping. So jealous of your weather. How’s it going?

She paused in the corridor to reply, leaning up against the cool geometric tiles. Great. Amazing. It’s the kind of heat that makes you have to move slower. So relaxed.

It was sort of true. It was hot, sticky limbs weather.

No one replied. She checked the time. They were all at work, stressed and manic and attempting to double-screen in meetings. All of them jealous of her holiday, not realising that she was a little bit jealous of them.

She looked up and caught sight of the coat hanging by the front door: bright red brocade with a faux leopard fur collar, ankle length, cylindrical. It had swamped Ava as a kid in the same way it swamped Val in old age. She remembered it being tucked around her on the plane as she slept on the way back from visiting her mother in New York. She glanced to the right, almost to check no one was watching, then leant forwards so her nose was just touching the material and inhaled the scent of citrus, sandalwood and juniper. ‘The thing about men, Ava, is that they like the smell of power. Always wear cologne.’

And she realised, suddenly, that there would be no more such skew-whiff wisdom in her life. Unwanted at the time, unbearably poignant in retrospect.

She took a step back, turned and found herself staring up to the bedroom. The open door at the top of the stairs, the big gilt mirror on the wall, the dusky pink walls. Val’s room. The steps creaked as she walked. It was a lethal staircase, a flimsy banister with no spindles, and steps with open risers. As kids they would lie on their backs to slip through the gaps between each step and see how high they could go and still be able to cope with the drop to the floor. When Val caught them she banned the game, which of course didn’t stop them, but, as usual, it was Ava who got hurt when it all went wrong.

Now she paused on the top step, hand on the wobbly banister, and watched the sun battling its way through a gap in the curtain. There were velvet slippers tucked neatly under the bed waiting for feet. Faded ribbons tied on the gold, scrolled bed frame. A huge canvas of a black and white flamenco dancer leant against a shelf above the bedhead next to the window. Whirlpools of sun and dust eddied in the air.

Ava walked inside. She could see her reflection in the mottled mirror of the neat little Victorian wardrobe. She swallowed. She wanted to scoop everything up in her arms and walk holding it forever.

This was her family. Her stability. One of life’s guarantees. Like Christmas at Rory and Claire’s; the Starbucks next to Peregrine’s shop; Louise trying to be funny on WhatsApp. It was safe here. There was love here. Wonky advice and unending gossip, but a home whenever she needed it. And of course, someone who would talk, unendingly, about her mother; hours they had spent together remembering the stage lights, the smell of backstage at the theatre, the heat of the dressing room, the taste of make-up in the air.

Ava’s eyes trailed across to the carved wooden cabinet and a mirror above it draped with jewels; necklaces glimmered in the sunlight, bowls of rings shone on the surface next to a cluster of little ornaments and glass bottles. Shoe boxes snaked ladders up the wall.

Next to the wardrobe there was a door to a room in the eaves that she presumed housed things like the Hoover and ironing board. Walking over the tread-worn Indian rug, the sounds outside of beach playing and bells ringing, she went to turn the handle but the door didn’t open. The paint had almost melted it shut. She tugged a couple of times, about to give up, when it pulled free to the sound of splitting paint.

It wasn’t a room for the Hoover. It was a dressing room. Ava narrowed her eyes but just saw outlines in the darkness. She searched the wall for the light and when she finally found it, a tatty bit of too-short string, she clicked and a million sequins shone as the little ante-room lit up.

‘Bloo-dy hell.’ She put her hand up to her mouth.

A rail, filled with furs and rhinestone jackets, afghan coats and sequinned ballgowns, bowed under the weight. Pairs of shoes – patent, velvet, some with diamanté buckles – were crammed into every nook and cranny. Black-and-white-striped hat boxes were pushed on to too-small shelves next to baskets of silk scarves and belts curled like sleeping snakes. On a peg hung a fox fur, still with its little face and tiny claws, and next to him an open jewellery box filled with sunglasses. Everywhere she looked there was something: a lipstick that had rolled from its basket, a homeless brooch on a ledge, a bulging make-up bag with a zip that wouldn’t close, a teetering stack of glossy programmes.

Ava stared with her hands on both sides of her face. These weren’t her grandmother’s things but her mother’s. Things she had thought lost, gone, given away forever.

The smell in here was different. No more cologne but sweet, dark perfume. Guerlain’s Shalimar. The grooved glass bottle with its golden seal such a familiar sight in her youth. And lipstick, chalky and red. And the remnants of decadence: money and fur, couture still in dry cleaning plastic, expensive shoes once so carefully protected in soft white bags.

Ava could barely breathe.

It all suddenly felt completely different. No longer just the bittersweet task of packing away her grandmother’s long, beautifully lived life, but of being handed back her mother. As though she was standing there in the poky little room with her, hat shading one eye, lips slicked red, selfish, unreachable, magnetic, magnificent.

Ava backed out of the room, her hand gently closing the paint-cracked door. She walked fast, almost a trot, towards the staircase, the hallway and the front door, and seconds later was outside. Out into the bright heat of the sun, out into the noise of the beach and the shimmer of the wide blue sea, out where time kept moving and she could breathe like a normal person again.

CHAPTER 8

Rory was heartbroken.

It had taken less than an hour for the tweet and linking article to go viral.

Executive producer, Bruce Haslen, had arrived in his Range Rover, where they sat, rain hammering the windscreen.

‘I know you didn’t mean it, mate. But it wasn’t one of your brightest ideas.’ Bruce tapped the cream leather steering wheel.

Rory felt utterly sick. His whole career was being shredded before his eyes. People were questioning all his past work, sending him #VileRory hate messages, mocking up pictures of his face on a Christmas dinner goose. People were tweeting and retweeting faster than he could refresh Bruce’s iPad. All this was happening and he didn’t even have his own smartphone.

‘Can’t I just send out some kind of apology? Draft something with PR?’ Rory said, and even to his ears it sounded lame.

Bruce sat back and exhaled, staring up to where the rain battered the sunroof, then turned to look Rory’s way. ‘Too late for that, I’m afraid. They’re already placarding. One lot have made a human wall of protection around the nest.’

Rory put his head back against the plush leather and shut his eyes. ‘Well at least something’s happening, I suppose.’

Bruce gave a half-hearted attempt at a laugh. The rain thrashed around them in the darkness.

‘I’m sorry, mate,’ said Bruce.

‘Not your fault,’ Rory said. ‘Bloody Petra though – who tells their Daily Mail boyfriend about something like this? Why didn’t I know she was shacked up with a journo?’

‘New romance, evidently.’ Bruce shrugged.

Claire ran out of the house with a brolly and tapped on the window. ‘Are you all OK?’ she asked. ‘Anyone want a cup of tea? Glass of wine?’

Rory shook his head. ‘No, I’m just coming back in.’ He barely looked at Claire as he opened the door, part of him still annoyed with her for throwing his phone down the toilet, which, given the escalation of events, he knew wasn’t healthy or fair but he couldn’t help it.

Bruce started the engine. ‘We’ll reconvene in a week and see where we’re at. I think you’re off the swans for good, but I’m sure you’ll be fine for the jellyfish.’

Rory couldn’t see how he’d be fine for the upcoming Jellyfish Apocalypse documentary. People remembered. They’d say that he’d somehow warmed up the ocean and bred them himself to create the epidemic.

Once inside he disappeared to the bedroom and sat refreshing his Twitter feed on his laptop. The Eskimo-snow documentary-maker had refrained from commenting on Rory directly, but when tweeting about his exciting new project – which it transpired was a voyage across the Pacific Ocean in search of Plastic Island – he added the hashtag #honestwork, which made Rory cover his face with his hands and shout with frustration.

‘You should go to sleep,’ he heard Claire say as she came into the bedroom.

He ignored her. Refreshed the app again. His Twitter feed couldn’t even register the number of retweets and comments about him there were so many. He also had Ava’s Instagram feed open in another window and he stared at a picture of their grandmother’s house. ‘I can’t believe she went anyway, even though we agreed she wouldn’t. How could she?’

‘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

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.

Flora smiled. ‘But it’s OK. How are you doing? Missing Val? She was bloody annoying half the time but it’s not the same without her.’

‘I know.’ Ava nodded. The sherries arrived, the waiter setting them down on little paper coasters, half an eye on the beach, studiously ignoring them. ‘Thanks,’ Ava said. He didn’t reply. Flora rolled her eyes as if there was nothing she could do about him. Ava smiled into her sherry, then waited until they were alone again to say, ‘It’s harder than I thought, being in the house. There are just so many memories.’

Flora took a sip of her drink. ‘And she had a lot of crap.’

Ava, who had been expecting sympathetic words of advice, snorted into her drink. Flora laughed, as if she’d taken herself by surprise.

‘She does have a lot of crap,’ Ava agreed, liberated. She didn’t mention her mother’s room; like stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia, it was her precious secret to keep.

Flora smiled. ‘Just go in, ruthless, and chuck it away. I think it’s the only way. Val wouldn’t want you poring over her stuff. She knew it was tat, half of it. I was with her at the boot sales when she bought it. Bag it up, bin it and enjoy the sunshine. That’s what she’d have said. Don’t you do this kind of thing for a living?’

Ava thought about her job. She tried to compare Val’s house, with all its knick-knacks, to the palatial New York townhouses and cliff-top ancestral piles in the Scottish Highlands where she would pitch up for valuations and contents auctions. Places where she was handed plastic shoe covers at the door and white gloves to wear when inspecting the art or browsing the library. While she did think about who had sat in the pair of French Louis XIII armchairs she was bidding ten grand on, or who had lit the £20,000 Italian Baroque candelabras, their lives were more often than not secondary to the wealth. What they left behind was more valuable than their memory. Whereas with Val, every item was a manifestation of her self. Every chipped vase and tacky flea market print seemed to carry her voice. ‘There’s no more room in my house. But I like it. You like it? Not fancy enough for your lot of course. I’m going to have it. Where I’ll put it? But I’m going to have it.’

And then there were her mother’s things. Ava could price a regency giltwood mirror or mid-century Murano chandelier with her eyes shut, but that little room was beyond value.

Flora took another sip of her sherry, flumped her wet hair with her hand and, glancing around said, ‘I’ll tell you who does have some interesting stuff, have you met Tom yet? Bought the vineyard on the hill. He’s poured some money into that house. It was practically derelict when he bought it. You wouldn’t recognise it now.’

Ava shook her head. ‘I’ve never met him,’ she said, but she’d heard all about Tom-On-The-Hill as well. Retired actor. Kept Val up with all the drilling and banging during the renovation, but made up for it with a bottle of expensive brandy when she climbed the steps to complain. They’d smoked cigars on his terrace together apparently, and Ava had always wondered if they were having an affair.

‘He’s over there by the bar,’ Flora said, nodding towards the people drinking inside. ‘Tom!’ she shouted. ‘Come over here, darling.’

Ava sat up in surprise when the guy at the bar turned at the sound of his name.

Oh my God! She tried to act completely natural.

‘He was very famous once,’ Flora said in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘But I’d never seen anything he’d been in.’

Ava couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

This was Tom-On-The-Hill.

Walking towards her was not the eighty-year-old retired actor that Ava had imagined having brandy with her grandmother on his terrace, the two of them perhaps holding hands.

Tom-On-The-Hill was none other than Thomas King. Probably the biggest television star of Ava’s teenage years. The fresh-faced, chocolate-box heart-throb who had shot to fame on Love-Struck High. She could remember the recording of the final episode being passed around their school like gold dust. Everyone impatiently waiting their turn, and secretly praying that their VCR wouldn’t be the one to chew up the tape. She and Louise had queued to see him at the National Television Awards, but Louise had started hyperventilating when he’d walked past and had to be taken off by the St John’s Ambulance crew for a cup of tea and a Hobnob.

Now as he stood in front of her, all faded shorts and crisp white shirt, his hand held out for her to shake, looking pretty damn perfect and far too pleased with himself, Ava could barely get the words together to say, ‘Nice to meet you, I’m Ava’. She didn’t want to shake his hand, her palm suddenly a little clammy from the proximity to fame, his rough and cool in comparison.

‘Tom,’ he said.

And Ava filled the silence by saying, ‘Thomas King,’ as if he might need reminding of his own name, and immediately regretted it.

‘I am indeed.’

Flora put her hand on Tom’s arm and said, ‘Val was Ava’s grandmother. She’s here to pack up the house.’

Ava nodded, mute. Wishing she’d been able to play it cooler. Her brain chastising her for even admitting that she knew who he was. How cool would it have been to have had no idea who he was, or at least manage to carry out a pretence as such.

Tom was talking, saying how sorry he was about Val and that he’d been away for the funeral. ‘It’s all done so quickly in Spain,’ he said, and Ava nodded, shamefully distracted from his respectful sympathy, trying to work out whether he was wearing tortoiseshell glasses and had grown his hair a bit long to try and hide the heart-throb jaw and eyes.

He seemed to be able to sense her distraction and paused, his mouth twitching into a smile. His whole demeanour switched to predatory with just a roll of his shoulders and a lean against one of the awning pillars. ‘So how long are you staying?’ he asked.

Flora cut in, saying, ‘I should go.’ A couple of tourists were inspecting the menu on one of the far tables. She stood up, but as she did she leant forwards and added in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘The problem is I’ve started to hope they don’t sit down at all. I want them to just leave me alone.’

Tom raised a brow. ‘Not a good thing for a café owner.’

‘I know! It’s no win,’ Flora said, hoisting her sarong up where it had slipped down over her boobs and making her way through the network of chairs to chat up her potential customers with a lacklustre smile.

Ava wasn’t sure whether to answer Tom’s question or if too much time had now passed. She hated that she was agonising over such trivia, so readily trying to impress him.

‘May I?’ he asked, pointing to the seat Flora had vacated.

‘Yeah, sure.’

‘So,’ he said, reclining, hands in his pockets, all cool and relaxed like he owned the place, his beer bottle half-drunk on the table in front of him. ‘How are you enjoying it?’

‘Good thanks,’ Ava said quickly.

He nodded.

She started to say more – pleasantries about her trip into town – but realised his attention had been diverted by a woman in a skin-tight red dress and glossy brown hair heading into Nino’s.

‘Sorry, what was that?’ he asked, glancing back.

Ava shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

The silence gnawed.

Tom looked out towards the beach. Ava looked too, at the long shadows of the palm tree leaves on the sand, at the dangerously lilting fig tree and the potted orange trees, their perfume intensifying with the evening.

Unable to bear the silence any longer, she said, ‘So, Love-Struck High . . .’, not really sure where she was going with the comment.

Tom took a swig of beer. ‘You were a fan?’ he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, smug half-grin on his face.

‘I watched it,’ she said, a little dismissive. ‘If I was home and it was on.’ Given his expression she was hardly going to admit to the Love-Struck High parties at Louise’s house, where they watched their favourite episodes back to back, his face emblazoned on Louise’s spare bed duvet set. Or the countless school trip games of Shag, Marry or Dump that had seen the whole minibus shacked up with Thomas King.

The two other guys at the bar finished their drinks and stood up. One of them shouted over to Tom that they were leaving.

He waved a hand in acknowledgement, downed the rest of his beer and said, ‘Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Ava.’

Ava nodded. ‘You too.’ Although she wasn’t quite sure that she meant it.

He stood up, then paused, hands resting on the back of his chair. ‘You staying at the house?’ he asked, nodding towards her grandmother’s place across the little square.

‘Yes.’

He shuddered slightly. ‘Spooky.’

Ava glanced over at the dark windows of the house that seemed to loom in the twilight. ‘I’m trying not to think about it too much,’ she said, once again feeling the tendrils of fear that had been itching all afternoon at the prospect of going to bed alone in the house.

‘Not worried it might be haunted?’ he asked, almost as if deliberately trying to wind her up. His friends had headed out of the bar and were starting to walk towards the path leading up to the car park.

‘It’s not haunted.’

He backed away, seeming to contemplate something for a second, then shrugging one shoulder said, ‘Well, if it all gets a bit too scary you’re welcome to come and stay at my place.’ He gestured back towards his own house on the hill. ‘Anytime,’ he added, with a slight narrowing of his eyes. A flash of blue. His gaze steady. The hint of a smile.

And she finally understood what he’d been driving at. She almost laughed. Thomas King was living up to exactly what the papers always said about him.

‘No, you’re alright,’ she said, her tone incredulous but amused. ‘I’m a big girl, I’ll be fine. But thanks for the offer,’ she added, finishing her drink.

Tom laughed. ‘Well, if you change your mind . . .’ he said, hands outstretched before turning to join his mates.

‘I think I’ll be OK,’ Ava replied, but he was out of earshot.

She got up to leave, shaking her head with disbelief, laughing to herself as she walked away past the orange trees and the fig. The tension of going back inside popped, her attention diverted from the possibility of ghosts, from the blast of memory waiting in the little room, from the sadness of the scrap of soap.

Lying on the living room sofa, all the lights blazing, she spent the next hour Googling Thomas King and WhatsApping Louise.

Louise is typing . . . Not surprised he owns a vineyard – he was a pretty terrible actor. Did you know he has a daughter? At college in Barcelona apparently.

Ava is typing . . . COLLEGE! How old is she?

Louise is typing . . . 16. It was while he was still doing Love-Struck High. God I loved that show. Do you remember crying when his girlfriend died on the beach? It was so sad. I’d forgotten how OBSESSED with him I was! If you sleep with him my teenage self might stab you through the heart.

Ava laughed out loud. Having been afraid that she would be lying in the dark in hopeless panic, she suddenly found the familiar links to her childhood – the Google images of Love-Struck, her mother’s possessions, her grandmother’s knick-knacks – strangely comforting, coupled with the gentle lull of the waves, the scent of warm dust and juniper and the heat pressing down like a blanket as she curled up around her phone.

CHAPTER 10

‘You’ll be alright on your own?’ Rory said, putting the last bag in the car and closing the boot. It had stopped raining and the sun was somewhere behind the fog of early morning cloud, making the air smell like a greenhouse, warm and muggy like wet grass.

Claire nodded. ‘I’ll be alright. You’re sure you’ll be alright?’ she asked, her hands on Max’s shoulders, stroking the tips of his too-long hair, her son just on the cusp of an age that he would allow it.

They had decided at three a.m. that Rory would go to Spain for a couple of weeks, or however long it would take for all this to die down. And given that Max was due to break up in just over a week he would go too. It didn’t seem healthy for him to weather the Twitter storm alone at school. And it felt like a good bonding opportunity.

Claire would stay for the time being. She had her interview coming up and Home Style magazine, where she was currently deputy editor, was so busy this time of year that taking a last-minute holiday would crucify her chances.

They also both seemed to know instinctively that this was something Rory needed to do alone. That somehow being together wasn’t delivering their most successful selves at the moment.

Max picked up his battered old school rucksack.

‘Hang on,’ said Claire, taking the bag from him.

Max looked confused as she rested his hand luggage on the wall and unzipped it. As she pulled out his laptop, his little face fell. ‘What?’ he said with a whine. ‘No way.’

‘You’re going to go on a digital detox,’ she said.

Max kicked the wall. ‘I don’t want to go on a digital detox. I like digital. What am I going to do without my laptop? What am I going to do on the plane?’

Claire ruffled his hair as he sulked. ‘Get your dad to buy you a book at the airport.’

‘I don’t want a book. I want my laptop.’

Claire shook her head.

‘This is so unfair,’ Max said. ‘This is so unfair.’ He turned to look at his dad, but the deathly paleness of Rory’s face and the aura of holding-it-together-hopelessness meant Max didn’t repeat his protest for the third time.

Rory opened the passenger door. ‘Come on, mate. In the car.’

Max tried Claire one last time. ‘Please let me take it, Mum?’

‘No.’

Rory had an inkling the laptop ban was as much for his benefit as Max’s. To stop the obsessive Twitter refreshing. Rory himself had reverted to an old Nokia that could do nothing more whizzy than send and receive black and white texts of 160 characters.

Max stuck his bottom lip out.

Rory saw Claire hold back a smile as she bent down to hug him. Reluctant at first, he rolled himself round into her arms and Rory heard her whisper in his ear something along the lines of, ‘Be good, look after your father, and I love you,’ as she gave him a huge, bone-crushing hug. Then she stood up, face to face with Rory.

‘Take care of yourself,’ Claire said, pushing her hair back behind her ears, then clearly not knowing what to do with her hands, folding her arms across her chest.

It started to rain slightly. Just the odd tap-tap on the pavement.

Rory nodded.

‘Be nice to your sister,’ Claire said.

Rory nodded again.

‘Have you told her you’re coming?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Rory!’

‘I will.’

Claire rolled her eyes.

The rain tap-tapped heavier.

Rory stepped forwards. ‘We’d better kiss so I don’t leave on an eye-roll,’ he said.

She smiled.

He bent down, a bit nervous, and kissed her on the corner of her mouth. Claire reached up and held his face, kissed him square on the lips, quickly. Then she put her arms around his neck and hugged him.

Rory could smell the Chanel and Max’s shampoo because she’d run out of her flash stuff. He thought he might cry again. Hold it together, you pussy, he told himself.

‘Have fun,’ Claire said brightly as she stood back.

‘I’d have more fun with my laptop,’ said Max, cheeky this time.

Claire swiped his hair.

‘I love you,’ she said as they both went round to their respective sides of the car, and Rory wondered how much of it was for him.

CHAPTER 11

The café was almost unrecognisable in the morning. Ava had woken early, the air humming with oppressive heat and the sound of car horns, street sweeping and bells ringing. From the window she could see the café tables full of people, hear the scraping of chairs, see the hands waving in greeting. A completely opposite atmosphere to the previous evening.

Showered and dressed in denim shorts and a white T-shirt, she tried to do her make-up and sort out the kink in her hair, but the gradual pooling of heat in the room got the better of her and she left the house, rubbing the line in her cheek from the pillow and trying to ruffle up her hair. As she went to shut the front door she caught a last glimpse of her indent on the living room sofa cushions where she’d slept, and remembered waking at three o’clock in the pitch-dark morning. She had felt exactly as Tom had suggested she might. Spooked and afraid, absence filling the space with the same intensity as the heat. She had felt the same unease as she had at her grandmother’s funeral. That of having a life not quite lived right. But lying there she found herself perplexed as to what one did with a second chance. She was still Ava, just Ava in Spain. The problem was that she had taken herself with her on her adventure. Afraid still of her aloneness. Afraid of everyone pairing off and moving on. Afraid that her closest next of kin was Rory. Who was right this minute ringing, presumably to have a go at her for coming back to Spain. She looked at his name flashing on her phone screen and made the instant decision to silence the call. Remembering that she’d had the courage to defy him by coming out here, and the unfamiliar frisson of power that decision had given her, was enough to make her shut the door on the view of her night and go and find out why Café Estrella was suddenly doing such a roaring trade.

The air outside was still as glass. Electric fans whirred on the bar, ineffectual against the mirage of heat. Ava took a table in the shade of the ripped awning. The café was less packed than she’d thought when looking down from the window, but there were definitely more bums on seats. All of them pensioners’ bums, dressed in polyester trousers, drip-dry powder-blue skirts and opaque tights, brown tweed slacks and polished black lace-up shoes. She recognised faces from the funeral. There was knitting. There was chatter. The sound of newspaper pages turning. The scents of warm bread, cigar smoke and strong coffee merged with the salty sea air. Everyone, it seemed, over the age of seventy-five descended on Café Estrella for breakfast.

As she was staring intrigued at the colourful array of customers, a figure plonked itself down in the seat opposite.

‘Hello.’ Thomas King pulled off his sunglasses.

‘Er, hello,’ Ava said, surprised at his arrival.

He looked terrible.

She surreptitiously ran her hand through her hair all the same, still under the spell of wanting to impress simply because he’d been famous.

‘I had the worst night’s sleep I’ve had in years,’ he said, reaching forwards to toy with the menu, tapping the laminated corner on the table. ‘You kept me awake.’

Ava almost snorted. ‘Me?’

‘Yes.’ He tried to catch the waiter’s eye. ‘God I need a coffee. You need a coffee?’ He turned back to Ava who said, ‘Yes,’ still unsure what he was doing at her table. Tom signalled to the waiter then sat back, rubbing his neck as he thought about what to say. ‘I think that maybe yesterday I wasn’t quite as supportive as I could have been.’

She raised a brow.

Tom shook his head. ‘And I don’t think Val would have been impressed.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘She’d have killed me. I felt pretty bad. All night. That’s what kept me up. I think she was haunting me,’ he said, his expression giving the sense of a smile just lurking below the surface. ‘So. Well . . .’ He held his arms wide. ‘Sorry.’

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