Over You (21 page)

‘Oh, Josie,’ he said. He sounded sympathetic, to her surprise. ‘How horrible for you.’

‘Yes.’ Her eyes stung. ‘It just keeps on being horrible, that’s the problem.’ Her voice shook. ‘Sam’s wetting the bed, he’s gone all anxious. And Toby’s whacking everything in sight, like he’s mad with the whole world . . .’ She bit her lip. ‘Anyway. That’s why I’m going. Nell’s coming with us. I won’t be gone for long. I just need to get away. You know.’

‘Yes.’ His voice was gentler now. ‘Sure. Well . . . Have a nice time.’

She swallowed. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you when I get back. Maybe we could arrange proper times for you to see the boys. They really . . . They really miss you.’ She sighed unhappily as her gaze wandered back to the Cornwall photo. Oh God. It was awful, just the
thought
of Pete and her arranging visiting times, shuttling their sons back and forth between them like ping-pong balls. It broke her heart.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘OK, then.’ He hesitated again. ‘I am sorry, you know. About all of this. I . . .’

‘OK,’ she said briskly. She had to get him off the phone before she started blubbing. She didn’t want him to hear that. Keep it together just for another minute. Nearly there.

‘I’ll speak to you soon then,’ he said in a formal voice, as if she were one of his clients.

‘Bye,’ she said, and put the phone down. Then she slumped on the sofa and groaned.

‘Oh, love,’ Nell said, hearing her and hurrying through, a small red robot in her hand. ‘Oh, sweetheart, was he horrible?’

Josie shook her head. ‘No,’ she sniffed. ‘He was actually quite nice. It was just so . . .’ She shrugged. ‘It was so bloody formal. Civil. Like we barely knew each other.’

Nell sat next to her on the sofa and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s really hard speaking to an ex, and you’re doing so well,’ she said. ‘Look at me, I’ve not even dared phone Gareth, I’m so crap and pathetic. But you . . . You’ve spoken to him and you kept it together. So you did really well. Yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ Josie said wearily. ‘And at least we can go now without him accusing me of abducting the children or anything . . .’ She stopped in horror. ‘Oh God,’ she said, pressing the dial button on the phone again and punching in Pete’s number. ‘I just had an awful thought.’

‘What?’ Nell asked, but the receptionist was already trilling in Josie’s ear.

‘Peter Winter, please,’ Josie gabbled. ‘It’s Leia again.’

Ring-ring, ring-ring.

‘What’s with all this Leia shit anyway?’ Pete asked a second later. He was sounding less civil and formal now, and slightly more grumpy.

‘Pete – while we’re away, I need you to promise me something,’ Josie said. Her voice was trembling. So much for keeping it together.

‘What’s that?’ he asked. There was a wary note to his question, as if his Hysterical Woman radar had just been triggered.
Danger! Danger! Proceed with caution! Hysterical Woman is likely to blow!

‘I’m begging you, I’m seriously begging you, if I ever meant anything to you at all,’ she began, ‘then . . .’

‘Oh, Josie!’ he said, sounding exasperated. ‘What is it? Spit it out.’

‘Please, Pete, please don’t bring her to our house. Please, not in our house, our bed. I can’t bear the thought of—’

‘All right, all right!’ he said. ‘I wasn’t going to anyway, but . . .’ He lowered his voice. ‘Look, I don’t want to talk about this at work, OK?’

‘It’s not
my
fault we’re having to have this conversation!’ Josie cried, stung. ‘It’s not like I’m the one who—’

Nell gave her a warning nudge and she bit the words back as she heard the boys tramping down the stairs. ‘I’d better go. Bye,’ she said, hanging up.

Toby came into the room wearing his Buzz Lightyear costume and brandishing a pirate sword. He gave the sofa a few fierce smacks with it, then held it up in the air. ‘I’m ready for our holiday!’ he announced, then looked over at Josie with interest. ‘Who were you shouting at, Mum?’ he asked.

Josie forced a smile on her face, unclenching her hands from their fists. ‘Just the . . . postman,’ she said lamely, saying the first thing that popped into her head.

Toby’s eyes were round and interested. ‘Why?’

‘It’s a secret,’ Nell said quickly. ‘Right! Will you help me put your things in the car, Tobes? Because then we’re going to hit the road, Jack!’

‘He’s not Jack!’ Sam said indignantly.

‘It’s a song, you silly banana,’ Nell said. ‘Didn’t your mum ever teach you that one? It goes like this . . .’

Josie rubbed her eyes as Nell hustled the boys out, singing loudly, then blew her nose. Suddenly, she really, really didn’t want to hit the road, or go anywhere. She wanted to stay in her own four walls, camp indoors with takeaway food and CBeebies for the boys, willing Pete to have second thoughts about Sabine, and come home.

Devon seemed a bad idea now. A crazy idea, the sort of thing she’d have done back in her twenties when ‘responsibility’ was a dirty word.

She stood up slowly. There was still time to change her mind. She could take the boys for a day-trip somewhere instead. They didn’t have to go far . . .

She watched through the window as Nell supervised them packing their stuff into the boot. They were all laughing about something or other. Then Sam and Toby put their buckets on their heads like helmets and started knocking on each other’s heads, chortling as if they were in danger of peeing their pants.

A faint smile twitched at the corners of Josie’s mouth. She loved hearing them laugh like that. Things had been so tense at home lately, there hadn’t been much laughing. They probably needed a change of scenery, too, just as much as she did.

Oh, what the hell. Devon would be fine. And they could always come home if something went wrong. The main thing was that the boys were happy. That was all she cared about.

Right, where was that list? It was time to get the show on the road . . .

‘And off we go!’ Nell said, turning to smile back at Toby and Sam. ‘Ready for our holiday, boys?’

‘Yeah!’ they chorused.

Josie, in the passenger’s seat, gave a small smile as Nell turned the ignition key and started up the engine. She was so bone-weary that she’d put Nell on the insurance to share the driving. Making the call had seemed an effort, but her mind had been in a perpetual fog lately, and even driving to Tesco seemed perilous. She didn’t feel anywhere near sharp enough to get them all safely down to Devon in one piece.

She gazed out of the window as Nell reversed carefully out of the driveway and into the road.

‘Blimey,’ Nell commented as she went into second gear, ‘this is a bit smoother than Gareth’s old jalopy. Ooh, power steering too. Excellent.’

‘Make the most of it, I’ll probably have to sell it once I’m homeless and destitute,’ Josie replied. She was trying to be jokey but the words came out sounding mournful.

Nell glanced back to where the boys were plugged into a double Walkman and singing tunelessly to ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’. ‘You could always live in it,’ she suggested. ‘Nice and cosy, put a few curtains up, get a pot plant on the dashboard . . .’

Josie grimaced. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I can’t even joke about it, I’m so scared.’

‘Well, don’t think about it then,’ Nell said. ‘Look, we’re leaving Heartbreak Hotel behind, right? Next stop, Hope.’

Nell drove for a couple of hours while Josie dozed, her head wedged uncomfortably between the window and the headrest. The boys were now listening to a
Horrid Henry
tape on the main car stereo system, and Miranda Richardson’s bolshy Henry voice floated in and out of Josie’s dreams. The boys’ guffaws broke her slumber and she wiped her mouth blearily. ‘Pete, did you—?’

She blinked as she turned to the driver. It wasn’t Pete. Of course it wasn’t Pete.

Nell patted her hand. ‘All right, Sleeping Beauty? I’m getting peckish. Fancy stopping somewhere for lunch?’

‘Lunch!’

‘Yeah!’

Sam and Toby had pounced upon the question before Josie could answer. ‘Mmm, yeah,’ she said, trying to shake the sleep from her brain. She’d really thought she was with Pete again. Just for a second. ‘Lunch. Right. What were you thinking? Service station, or . . . ?’

Nell was indicating to come off the motorway. ‘Nah. Let’s do some exploring,’ she said, turning on to the slip-road. ‘Lower Hensall,’ she said, reading the sign. ‘Never heard of it. But maybe it’s got a nice pub.’

‘Pub!’ squealed Sam. ‘Are we going to the pub?’

Nell winked at Josie. ‘Just like his father,’ she joked.

‘Let’s hope not,’ Josie replied, then wished she hadn’t. She was sounding so bitter. ‘Let’s hope he’s even nicer than his father, if that’s possible,’ she said loudly, for Sam’s benefit. Stop moaning, she ordered herself. This is supposed to be a jolly, remember?

‘Left or right?’ Nell said, coming to a crossroads.

‘Right,’ Josie said.

‘Left,’ Sam chimed in.

‘Light,’ Toby giggled. ‘Reft.’

‘And I vote left, so the lefts have it,’ Nell said, turning into a single-track lane with high beech hedges. She drove another a mile or so, uphill all the way, then the hedges became lower and they could see they were on the peak of a hill, with green meadows sloping down either side of them, dotted with fat white sheep. There was a village, complete with squat stone church, and purple hills and woodland in the far distance. A tractor droned somewhere in the background.

‘Nice,’ Nell said approvingly. ‘Fingers crossed there’s a stonking pub down here. It’s a perfect day for lunch outside.’

Josie leaned forward as they entered the village. This was actually happening, she thought in surprise. They had actually escaped the house and were here, in the middle of nowhere, with the sun shining. It was a good start.

‘Hallelujah and God bless Lower Hensall,’ Nell whooped as she slowed the car and parked it outside a sprawling cream-coloured building. ‘Thatched roof and everything. Oh, look – and a food sign. This is the life, boys. This is the life!’

Nell’s enthusiasm was infectious. Josie let Sam and Toby out of the back and they raced straight to the pub door, bouncing around like a couple of Tiggers under the old wooden porch. She slipped an arm through Nell’s as they followed. ‘This is a new one for me, you know,’ she confessed. ‘Doing something like this without Pete. I keep looking around for him, expecting him to be here too.’

Nell gave her a sidelong look. ‘And how do you feel when you remember he’s not here?’ she asked.

Josie thought for a moment. ‘All right,’ she pronounced. ‘Kind of all right. It helps when I think of him in his suit, sitting in his office,’ she added, ‘when we’re off on an adventure.’

‘Too right,’ Nell said, pushing open the door. It was dim and cool inside, with solid oak beams across the ceiling. Through an open back door, Josie could see a strip of long lawned garden.

‘Hello, poppet,’ the woman behind the bar said, catching sight of Toby. She looked to be in her fifties, small and neat-looking with shingled coppery hair and a slathering of orange foundation. ‘Oh, two poppets!’ she added as she saw Sam. ‘Double trouble, eh?’

The twin poppets charged outside and Josie followed while Nell ordered drinks. There were ten or so wooden picnic tables spread out on the grass, each with a white parasol stuck through the centre. A pair of elderly women giggled conspiratorially at one another over a glass of wine, and a couple held hands across one of the tables, but otherwise the garden was theirs.

Josie slipped her feet out of her sandals and walked across the grass after the boys, letting the cool blades tickle her toes.

Toby and Sam were right at the far end of the garden, squatting to peer at something in the grass.

‘A frog, Mum!’ Sam called as she came over. His eyes were shining as if he’d just seen Father Christmas. ‘A real frog, Mum!’

‘Wow,’ Josie breathed, trying to sound suitably impressed. ‘Not a real one!’ She crouched down with them to watch the small young frog scramble away from Toby’s grubby poking finger, loving the way her sons were both so utterly absorbed in this single moment. Toby had grass stains on his shorts already, and Sam had a bramble scratch on one leg – how on earth had he managed that? – but for ten seconds or so, nothing else mattered to them in the world except this one creature.

A couple of birds were calling to one another in the woodland behind the pub garden, and Josie suddenly felt a rush of relief that they were there, barefoot in the grass in a sunny pub garden, gazing at a frog together, instead of on the playgroup run, or anywhere else. If only Pete could have been there too . . .

No. Don’t let that spoil things.

‘So!’ Nell’s voice broke the spell. Josie looked up to see her striding towards them with a tray of drinks and some menus. ‘What does everyone fancy to eat, then?’

Somehow or other, the minutes turned into hours and time slid by in a haze of frog-bothering and chip-scoffing. Nell lay on the grass with her shades on, catching forty winks, while Josie watched the boys trying their hardest to climb up a twisted old apple tree. It was so peaceful sitting in the sunny garden, in no hurry to get back in the car.

‘What’s the rush?’ Nell had said lazily before she fell asleep. ‘Devon will still be there tomorrow. We’ll move on when the boys have had enough. These things are always better left unplanned, if you ask me.’