them and the idea of them – without being asked for something or told she was unfair, that all the other kids had such and such, that really, if she could only lend him some pocket money, an advance … ?
Kitty had been right at breakfast: she probably did have more money than Zach. He was forever lending fivers to other people or spending on silly things.
Kitty’s bedroom was still a shrine to dolls, soft toys with huge eyes and Sylvanian creatures with complicated houses and endless teeny accessories that were forever getting lost.
‘Mum, I can’t find the cakes for the cake shop!’ was a constant refrain in the house and Tess had spent ages on her hands and knees with Kitty, looking under the furniture for minuscule slices of plastic cake, with her daughter’s lovely little face anxious at the thought of Mrs Squirrel not being able to run her cake shop.
This morning, Tess did a bit of sorting out in the Sylvanian village, then moved on to close the half-opened drawers and tie back the curtains before tidying the dressing table There was growing evidence of the emergence of Kitty’s tweenage years with silvery bracelets and girlish perfumes in glittery flacons clustered on the table. Moo, Kitty’s cuddly cow, loved to greyness, had a place of honour on her pink gingham heart cushion and it was Tess’s favourite job to make the bed and enthrone Moo on the cushion, ready for that night.
It didn’t matter that on the way to school Kitty could loudly sing along in the car to questionably explicit pop songs that made Tess wince: as soon as it was time for bed, Kitty morphed back into a nine-year-old who liked to snuggle under her pink-and-yellow-striped duvet, hold Moo close and wait for her bedtime story with the clear-eyed innocence of a child.
Once it was all tidy, Tess gave the room one last fond glance and moved on to Zach’s room. Zach’s domain was painted a lovely turquoise colour, but these days, none of the walls were visible because of posters of bands, footballers and Formula One drivers.
The rule was that Zach had to put clean sheets on his bed once a week and run the vacuum cleaner over the carpet. Since Tess had found the Great Cup Mould Experiments under the bed, he had to rinse out any mugs on a daily basis – and he was actually very good about doing it.
Seventeen-year-olds didn’t like their mothers tidying up their bedrooms. It was all part of the process of growing up. Like the part that said mothers had to let go. Tess knew that. Had known it from the first day Zach stopped holding her hand as they walked into the village school.
‘Ma – let go of my hand!’
He’d been seven and a bit at the time. Tall for his age, dark shaggy hair already ruffled despite being brushed into submission minutes earlier at home.
Tess had let go of his hand and smiled down at her dark-eyed son, even though she felt like crying. He was growing up. So fast.
‘Am I embarrassing you?’ she asked with the same smile that always shone through in her voice when she spoke to her son.
Because she adored him so much, she was determined that she would not be a clingy mother, not make him the vessel for all her hopes and dreams.
‘Yes!’ he’d replied, shrugging his schoolbag higher over his shoulder as a sign of his macho-ness.
Tess had watched him march into the classroom without giving her a second glance.
Ten years on, he still hugged her. Not every day, not the way he had as a small child. But he was an affectionate boy, and now that he towered over her, he’d lean down and give her a hug.
He called her ‘Ma’.
‘See ya, Ma,’ he’d say cheerily as he was about to leave the house for school.
He reminded her of his grandfather, her own beloved father. Zach had the same silver-grey eyes with lashes so black it looked as if he wore eyeliner. He had her father’s patrician features too, and his gentleness. For all that he played prop forward on the school rugby team, Zach Power was a gentle giant. All the girls in Avalon loved him. The ones he’d been to primary school with gazed at him with a combination of fondness and attraction. Tess could see that too: he also had the charisma of his father, the indefinable characteristic that would make women look at him always.
For the past two months he’d hauled the bins to the gate on Thursday night for the Friday-morning collection, trying to fill Kevin’s shoes. Every time he did it, Tess battled the twin emotions of pride and sadness.
Huge pride at him behaving like the man of the house, and sadness that it was necessary.
From the hallway below, Silkie yelped, eager for her next trip out – she knew her daily itinerary as well as Tess did.
Tess grabbed Zach’s laundry basket and went slowly downstairs. Silkie was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking forlorn.
‘I’ll put the washing on and we’ll go.’
Tess walked to work every day, come rain or shine. She and Silkie would set out from the house on Rathmore Terrace, through the garden Tess was always planning to spend many hours on but never did, and out the white wooden gate.
Instantly, Silkie would pull on the extendable lead, sticking her nose into the gatepost in case some passing dog had marked it.
‘Come on,’ Tess said most mornings. ‘No loitering.’
Every second house was home to one of Silkie’s friends, so there were delighted squeaks at the house of Horace, a Great Dane who lumbered over to greet her and then lumbered back to the porch to rest his giant bones; a bit of rough-housing with Rusty, a shiny black collie who loved games and had to be told not to follow them; a few tender doggy kisses with Bernie and Ben, twin cockapoos who could rip any neighbourhood dustbin apart in minutes and caused chaos when they were in their owners’ holiday home.
By the time she and Tess had come to the end of their street and turned down the hill on to the lane that led to Main, Silkie would be panting with happy dogginess.
Their next stop was St Ethelred’s, the oldest Presbyterian church in the country, where tour buses paused for tourists to take pictures of the twelfth-century building, the moss-flecked tombs and small crooked headstones. The graveyard was watched over by three towering oaks that were at least, according to the local tree man, two hundred years old. At this hour of the morning, the great wooden door under the arched porch was locked. The rector would be along at ten to open up, with Mrs Farquarhar-White following him in to bustle around and polish things.
On warm, sunny mornings, Tess would take the time to stroll into the grounds with Silkie, drinking in the serenity that inhabited this sacred space. Today, however, a breeze that felt as if it had come straight from Siberia ruffled Tess’s short fair hair as she stood at the church gate, so instead of going in she waited for Silkie to snuffle amongst the dog roses for any rabbits who’d dared to visit, then the two of them set off down the lane again.
Cars passed her by, some of the drivers waving or smiling hello, others too caught up in their morning routine to do anything.
Tess was happiest when the tourist season began to wind down and locals got their town back. With the school holiday over, the caravan parks had mostly emptied out and Avalon was beginning to fall back into the relaxed and gentle routine that would continue through autumn and into winter.
Not that she objected to the summer
