lightly freckled face erupts into a wide-awake smile. ‘What are you asking that for?’
‘Because I told you, it’s the middle of the night—’
‘No, about the doors.’ He rakes a hand through his dishevelled brown curls.
‘Oh. Er … to build up tension, I suppose, so it’s a surprise …’
‘But it’s a cuckoo, innit? That’s what’s behind the doors.’
Kerry blinks at her son. She is chilly now, despite the cashmere sweater, and goosebumps have sprung up on her bare legs.
‘You’re right,’ she says flatly. ‘It’s a cuckoo. It really couldn’t be anything else.’
Freddie grins triumphantly and starts swinging on the door. ‘Ha, I knew it was. Now can I phone Dad?’
Chapter Five
Nadine’s flat might only be forty-odd miles from Rob’s new house by the sea, but the way he feels now, he might as well have landed on a different planet. The huge living room is girlie in the extreme, its sofa and chairs strewn with fluffy throws and an abundance of embroidered cushions. There are fairy lights, glowing red lamps and a multi-coloured chandelier. The effect, he muses as Nadine dispenses drinks (aided by a rather worse-for-wear Frank), is a little nauseating.
‘So d’you like my place?’ Nadine asks, curling up beside him on the vast purple velvet sofa.
‘It’s really, um, stylish,’ he tells her, enunciating carefully in the hope of appearing sober.
‘Thanks.’ She smiles prettily. ‘It’s a bit of a mish-mash but I like it.’
‘Yeah, but it’s not yours, is it?’ Eddy teases from his cross-legged position on the pink shag-pile rug. ‘It’s Daddy’s.’
Nadine rolls her eyes good naturedly. ‘Yep, but I’m here for the time being, darling. You don’t think I could live here on an editorial assistant’s salary, do you?’
‘Thank God for Daddy,’ Eddy guffaws, stretching the joke a little thin in Rob’s opinion. He glances down at the gnarled oak table on which the remains of his birthday cake look a little ravaged on a plain white plate, wondering why he’s suddenly feeling protective of Nadine. Her slight haughtiness in the office is, he suspects now, a desire to seem properly grown-up when she’s barely emerged from her teens.
‘So you’re off to your new place tomorrow?’ Ava asks Rob, rearranging her bony limbs on a giant floor cushion.
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘after I’ve shown a couple of people round the house.’
She smiles, her teeth Tipp-Ex white against the blood red of her lipstick. ‘I don’t know if I could ever do that.’
‘Show people around a flat, you mean?’
‘No, silly! Leave London.’ Ava winces.
‘Well,’ Rob says, ‘it just seemed like the right time.’ He can’t explain about the education issue now, and how several friends have faked addresses and religions in order to get their children into decent schools. Mentioning that in front of all of these young things would make him sound about five hundred years old.
‘What’ll you do with yourself down there, Rob?’ Nadine’s voice cuts into his thoughts.
‘Er, just get on with life, I suppose. Get fit, start running, go for long walks on the beach …’ Agh, why is he saying that? Eddy will have him shovelled off to Rambler’s Monthly.
‘I love the sea,’ Nadine says wistfully, ‘but I can’t imagine living away from all the shops and bars.’
Typical, he thinks without bitterness. Just the kind of thing a privileged girl with nothing to think about but chandeliers and cushions would say. Rob, whose father is Italian and his mother a straight-talking Yorkshire woman, is at least aware that life happens north of Watford – or south of Croydon, come to that.
‘Well, I’ve been here for twenty years,’ he explains patiently. ‘The noise, the traffic – I’ve had my fill, to be honest.’
Now he’s sounding like Granddad again. Nadine nods, and at some point the others seem to drift away to different parts of the room, leaving just the two of them sitting very close on the sofa. She isn’t his type at all – too girlie and far too young with her silver cowrie shell necklace which was probably acquired on some gap year jaunt, or maybe Daddy bought that for her too. In fact the thought of having a ‘type’ hasn’t crossed Rob’s mind since he met Kerry. But now, having drunk more than in recent memory, he can’t help but notice how mesmerising her blue eyes are, framed by a sweep of dark lashes, and how her dainty nose is incredibly cute. For some reason, despite knowing the others for far longer, she has chosen to sit next to him. It no longer seems to matter that, while he was getting to grips with disposable nappies and jars of sludge-coloured baby food, Nadine was still in high school. Exquisite is the word that springs to mind now. This girl is exquisite, like a jewel.
‘I hope you don’t mind me saying,’ she murmurs, shuffling even closer with her feet tucked under her neat little bottom, ‘but you seem like your heart’s not really in this seaside thing, Rob.’
‘Er …’ A wave of dizziness engulfs him as he blows out air. ‘Yeah, it’s freaking me out a bit. The practical side, the train and stuff – that’ll be okay …’ Hell, he is slurring now. Is he even making sense?
‘But …?’ She smiles sympathetically.
Rob blinks at her. ‘God, I don’t know, Nadine. It’s half two in the morning …’ She nods, encouraging him to go on. ‘Am I ready to move? I don’t know. It started off as a vague idea, something we might do when we were properly grown-up’ – he laughs self-consciously, feeling a little sick – ‘then wham, it’s happened, Kerry and the kids are there already and there’s this awful pressure to sell the London house …’ No, stop it, that came out all wrong. What about that lovely day on the beach with the kite? It had felt completely right then …
Nadine is studying his face. ‘Does Kerry know you’re having doubts, Rob?’
‘It’s too late to stop it now. We’ve taken the kids out of their London school and enrolled them in Shorling. And anyway, she’s convinced we can make it work. It’ll just take time, she reckons …’ He takes a big gulp from his glass, grateful that the others have wandered through to the kitchen in search of something to eat.
‘You poor darling.’ Nadine places a delicate hand on his knee. ‘So you feel trapped …’
‘Well, um, kind of …’ Rob looks down at her hand, feeling no less startled than he would if a rare butterfly landed there. He can hardly swat it away, but nor does he feel entirely comfortable with her leaving it there for much longer. Anyway, why is he grumbling about the move? Is it the vodka, or a pathetic desire to say what he thinks he should say to a girl who can barely have turned twenty? Her hand is showing no sign of removing itself from his knee, and he wonders what the others will think as they come back into the room, armed with a lump of Cheddar and some
