The Beach House (33 page)

“Don’t worry.” Daff’s tone is light, careful not to convey how she really feels. “I know you’re going through a lot. You don’t owe me an explanation at all. It’s fine.” She busies herself filling the kettle with water, so Michael can’t see her eyes, how she really feels.

“Please, Daff.” He walks up behind her and lays a gentle hand on her shoulder, and when she turns he puts his arms around her and hugs her. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and when they pull apart he looks at her with a raised eyebrow.

“A walk?”

“Okay.” She smiles. “But let me find Jess.”

“She’s fine,” he says. “She’s with my mom. They’re working in the garden.”

“What?” Daff is stunned. “Jess? Working? That’s not my daughter. My daughter sleeps until noon and doesn’t work or help out unless there’s a bribe attached.”

“Well, perhaps aliens came down and swapped her during the night, but she’s out there. Look.” Michael brings Daff to the window and she looks out in amazement to see, in the distance, Nan chatting away to Jess and showing her how to stake the now-flopping cucumbers, Nan stepping back as Jess bangs the stake in and clips the wire, looking to Nan for approval.

“Oh my God,” Daff says. “I think your mother may be a witch.”

“There are those in town who’ve been saying that for years.”

“No, but seriously, my daughter’s a teenager. She hates everything and everyone, but she actually looks—I can’t believe I’m going to say this—but she actually looks like she’s enjoying herself.”

“She probably is.” Michael grins. “Remember when we were kids and we got to do chores or help out, or have jobs like waiting tables or working at gas stations? Remember the sense of achievement we got? Nowadays all the kids seem to work as interns for friends of their parents, and it’s not real work, not like the work we did. She feels useful. It’s probably a great feeling, and a new one for her.”

Daff tears her eyes away from Jess to look at Michael in amazement. “Thank you,” she says. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. She feels
useful.
We don’t give her anything to do; it would never occur to me to have her do gardening like I used to do. I always hated it and I thought I was doing her a favor, not having her do it and paying the landscapers to handle it, but you’re right.” Daff sighs. “That’s probably what all the stealing was about. She needs something else in her life. She needs to feel useful.”

“She certainly doesn’t look unhappy now.” They both look over to see Jess smiling shyly as Nan claps her hands in delight. “I’d say she looks pretty great.”

“Thank you.” Daff’s eyes fill with tears. “She is. And thank you for seeing that, and for saying it.” She blinks away the tears and sighs. “That’s enough about me. I wanted to find out how you are. I’ve been so worried about you.”

“It’s all a bit of a nightmare.” Michael frowns. “Jordana, the woman who turned up, is, well, you know who she is. And it seems she’s . . .” He swallows.

“Pregnant,” Daff says softly.

“Yes. How did you know?”

“I didn’t. It seemed an obvious thing she would come all this way to tell you.”

“It never occurred to me. And now I don’t know what to do.”

“Will you go back to her, do you think? Try again?”

Michael sighs and shakes his head, and Daff can’t help but feel relief. “I can’t,” he says. “It would be entirely the wrong thing to do. I’m too old to live a lie.”

“Oh Michael,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know. So am I.”

“It’s definitely yours?” Daff thinks of the high heels, the brassy hair, the big diamonds. She wonders if Michael has truly been her only conquest of late.

“I think so. I’m pretty sure. I’ve known Jordana a long time and I don’t think she’s a liar. Although,” he snorts in mock laughter, “I would also have said she wasn’t the type to have an affair.”

“That’s what I would have said about you.” Daff smiles wryly.

“Me too. It was a case of bad judgment. I’m still not quite sure what came over me.”

“I have to say—” Daff is careful—“she’s not quite who I would see you with.”

Michael starts to laugh. “Who
would
you see me with?” Someone like me, she thinks. But doesn’t say it.

“I don’t know.” She shrugs, embarrassed. “Someone more down to earth, I think. Someone more natural.”

“A single mother, perhaps?” Michael grins, and Daff blushes and moves to the sink to wash up, stay busy.

“Then there’s the small matter of my father turning up when he is supposed to be a bundle of bones at the bottom of the ocean.”

“Ah yes.” Daff turns to look at him. “I was wondering when you were going to mention that.”

“It didn’t seem important.” He shrugs, and they both laugh.

“I’m waiting for the next bomb to fall,” he continues. “It feels as if everything in my life is not what I thought it was, everything has changed, and nothing will ever be the same. If everything I thought I believed, everything I trusted, was wrong, how can I ever trust again?”

Michael pauses, but Daff senses he has more to say and doesn’t interrupt.

“Remember 9/11?” he says. “After the planes hit the towers we heard the news about the Pentagon, then the plane in Pennsylvania? ” Daff nods. “We were all waiting for the next thing, waiting for the world to come to an end. That’s how this feels. It feels as if my world has come to an end. Everything that was safe and secure and real for me is not. How do I trust?” He looks pleadingly at Daff. “How can I trust in anyone again?”

You can trust me.
The words are on the tip of Daff’s tongue, but she doesn’t say them, just stands there gazing at him as he sighs and runs his fingers through his hair.
You are a beautiful man.

She wants to say: you will find your way through this, you will find a way forward because you are all good. You are goodness and kindness and perhaps the best man I have ever met. You can trust me because I trust you. Because even though I barely know you I would place my life in your hands. I know you would look after it.

“Can we go?”

“What?” Daff shakes her head, breaking her reverie. “Go where?”

“For that walk.”

She laughs. “Yes, I’ll just get my shoes.”

They walk for hours. Along the pretty roads of Sconset, alongside the beach, neither of them with any time constraints, they are happy to just walk and talk, lapsing into occasional companionable silence.

“How do you feel about being a father?” Daff asks as they reach a pretty cove.

“I don’t know.” Michael winces at the thought. “I love kids, but they’ve always been other people’s kids. I’ve never felt ready for my own.”

“I’m not sure any of us are ever ready for kids.” She laughs. “They always seem to take you by surprise. You’ll be a great father, ” she adds. “If you choose to be involved.”

“Of course I’ll be involved. Oh God. That’s the next thing. Talking to Jordana and telling her just how involved I plan to be. I’m not going to just walk away from my child. I’d never do that.”

“I know,” Daff says.

“Shall we stop for a bit?” Michael points to another little cove ahead, smaller, hidden in the dunes.

“Sure.”

Suddenly it’s awkward. The two of them are sitting on the sand, knowing what’s coming, not knowing how to get there, unsure whether this is the right thing, or whether this is just another huge complication in an altogether-too-complicated life.

There doesn’t seem to be a choice anymore for either of them, and as Michael leans over to kiss Daff, he realizes that she is the only safe place for him right now. How could he possibly walk away from the only thing in his life that is good?

“Now I know why they always say sex on the beach is overrated.” Daff furiously shakes the sand out of her hair.

“Oh thanks!” Michael says.

“I didn’t mean
that.
” She laughs, pulling on her shorts and allowing herself to be wrapped in his arms and kissed. “Not that,” she murmurs, looking at him and smiling, unable to believe this has happened with someone so wonderful. “That was lovely.”

“Was that your first time since your husband?”

“Ex-husband.” Daff smiles shyly. “Yes.”

“Was it okay?” he asks nervously.

“Okay? It was better than okay. It was marvelous! Like riding a bike,” she says, laughing. “Only better.”

Truly it was marvelous. Better than marvelous. Blissful.

Who would ever love me, Daff remembers thinking during those early days when she and Richard first separated. My breasts are saggy from childbirth, I have stretch marks on my stomach, legs I forget to shave for months at a time. The last person to fall in love with me did so when I was young, firm, gorgeous. When I was bathing-suit-ready every morning of my life, just by the sheer act of falling out of bed. Who would love me now?

She had thought that when she did come to have sex with anyone again, it would be awkward as hell, would have to be done with the lights out.

Yet there they were, on the beach, and it didn’t feel awkward, it felt like the most natural thing she had ever done. And she didn’t feel ashamed of her lines, or her veins, or her sag. She felt beautiful.

Lying in his arms afterward, as they continued to chat softly, the thought occurred to her that this is intimacy. This isn’t what she and Richard had. Ever. They never lay in one another’s arms after the fact, but rolled over after a perfunctory kiss goodnight and went to sleep. Or, in the beginning, rolled over to get out of bed and get dressed. This feels like something she has been waiting for her entire life.

This feels utterly new and utterly familiar at the same time. It feels right . . . like coming home.

“I’ll take the girls to the beach.” Daniel holds his hands out for Lizzie and Stella as Bee nods gratefully, sinking down on the chair next to Michael, both of them smiling at each other before looking out to sea, letting the silence envelop them for a few minutes before Bee starts to speak.

“I always wanted a brother when I was growing up,” she murmurs. “I had a best friend at school, Sophie, who had three older brothers. Going to her house was so exciting. There was constant noise and activity and friends over, whereas my house always felt like a museum.”

“You should have been here.” Michael laughs. “I’m an only child too . . . or at least I thought I was . . . until now. But this house was always filled with people. I used to long for a little peace and quiet.”

“This is just so weird.” Bee shakes her head. “I can’t believe that my dad had this whole other life before us, that he abandoned you all. It seems so out of character.”

“I barely remember him,” Michael says. “I mean, I know all the stories and I remember snapshots, but I was six when he . . . left. It becomes harder and harder to distinguish memory from the stories you hear or the photographs you see.”

“You look like him,” Bee says, turning and gazing at Michael. “It wouldn’t have occurred to me before, but I wasn’t looking for it. Now, of course, I can see how much you look like he must have done when he was younger.”

“So what did he tell you about his old life? I still don’t understand how he could have just turned up out of nowhere with no friends, no family, and have no one question it.”

“Because I think we accept people at face value. My mom always said he fit into the community, and they all thought he’d been through a bad divorce with no children, was making a fresh start somewhere else. I guess, as well, in those days people weren’t as open, didn’t feel entitled to know everything about a person, and of course how could you have found out, back then?”

“What was he like?”

“As a father or as a man?”

“Both.” Michael looks at her.

“He was a wonderful father,” she says. “I don’t want to hurt you, I can’t even imagine the pain of growing up without a father, but maybe he was trying to do for me what he couldn’t do for you, because he was always there for me. He was fun. He’d take me places and always talk to me. Talk and talk and talk. He would explain everything, so going out with him, especially when I was little, was such an adventure.” She sighs. “I used to feel so proud.”

Michael lays his head on his arms to listen.

“When I went away to school, Dad was always the one I wanted to talk to. He always seemed to have such wisdom. We disagreed on a lot of things, though. He and Mom are both religious and I don’t really do anything. But he would always pause and think things through before giving me advice. His advice was almost always good.”

“How old were you when he divorced your mom?”

“It was more like she divorced him. I was eighteen. She always used to say she was tired of the secrets. I never understood what she was talking about, although now of course,” she says with a snort, “it all makes perfect sense. He was closed with her, at least that’s what she always said, but I never felt it. Never felt him be anything other than warm and loving and open with me. What about you?” She turns her head to look at Michael. “What do you remember?”

“Not much. I remember loving being with him. When he was here, all I wanted to do was help him do whatever he was doing. I remember hero worshipping him, even though a lot of the time he wasn’t around. When he was, he seemed to be lost in thought, concentrating on something else. I remember him being irritated a lot of the time.”

“Irritated? My dad? Wow.” Bee shakes her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him lose his temper.”

“I didn’t know this until I was much older, but he left us in horrible debt. Mom had to sell off all the houses on this property and our home in New York. This was just a summer house but we had to move here because it was the only place we had left. He used to gamble. He gambled away everything, plus—” he laughs mirthlessly—“a ton of stuff we didn’t have. For months after he . . . disappeared, people would turn up at the front door demanding money.”