skin from where the morning sunshine streamed in through the kitchen window.
Jordan had already wolfed a cheese doorstep sandwich and two croissants. ‘Yeah.’ His expression was hidden, absorbed as he appeared to be in fraying the bottom of what he termed ‘shorts’, despite their ending halfway down his calves. Calves that seemed too hairy to belong to someone Leah still thought of as a boy.
Anxious that the kids might be beginning to pick up on Michele’s uncharacteristically evasive behaviour, Leah debated whether to suggest a visit to the water park in nearby Muntsheim. Even if Michele was supposedly feeling delicate it surely couldn’t be too taxing to read or snooze while the kids hurled themselves down the chutes?
Alister got in first with a simpler plan. ‘How about we hang out in the garden? Then Mum won’t have far to go when she feels well enough to join us, will she?’
A smile lit Natasha’s face. ‘I’ll tell her.’
‘Cool,’ agreed Jordan.
‘But you’ll do something more active than playing Minecraft, won’t you, Jordan?’ Alister said, employing his mild-but-inflexible voice.
Jordan sighed and climbed to his feet. ‘OK. I’ll get my supersoaker to shoot Nat with while she plays boules.’ He sent Alister a challenging look but Alister, who picked his battles wisely, merely smiled.
The kids gone, Leah began to clear the table, admiring the delicate pale blue and green of the crockery. ‘I’m perfectly happy to play boules or get into water fights but are you and Michele going to be able to do it without … an atmosphere?’ She managed to bite back the urge to call it ‘public displays of animosity’.
Alister watched her load the dishwasher. ‘I’m sorry. This is crappy for you. My suggestion we stay here today is an experiment.’
Leah abandoned her tower of crockery to give him a friendly hug. ‘I’m not going to ask about the nature of the experiment or what data you hope to collect. I’m just sorry it’s all gone wrong between you.’
His body seemed to sink in on itself as he sighed but whatever he opened his mouth to reply was lost in Michele’s entrance as she banged crossly in, throwing back over her shoulder, ‘No, stay up there, please, Natasha. I want to talk to Dad.’
‘I’ll leave.’ Leah turned for the door to the garden.
‘Appreciated,’ murmured Alister.
‘Why should you?’ Michele snapped simultaneously. ‘You’re involved in this Happy Families plan for today.’
Alister met her ire with coolly raised eyebrows. ‘Basing ourselves here will enable you to see something of your children without worrying about feeling queasy in the car or doing anything too active for your delicate condition. Does that cover whatever excuse you were about to trot out?’
Acutely uncomfortable as Michele and Alister glared icicles at each other, Leah resumed her escape. ‘I’ll get more loungers from the summerhouse.’
She closed the door on Alister’s low-voiced ‘Think what’s best for the children, Michele.’
Intent on keeping clear of the battleground, Leah dawdled as she set out the wooden sun loungers. Casting around the capacious summerhouse she located a paddling pool and a hose and dragged them out, too. The gîte and its neighbour were the only residences this far up the lane and there seemed to be nobody next door but the workman and his young assistant so she doubted it mattered if they had a water fight and it got a bit screamy.
She watched the clear water burble into the pool. Think what’s best for the children … If not for the kids, she’d reverse her car out of the garage and make a break for it instead of sticking around to share the death throes of Michele and Alister’s marriage.
But, as she was here, Leah could – probably – prevent spilled blood, and that definitely came under the heading of ‘best for the children’. Mentally polishing her halo she let herself into La Petite Annexe to change into her bikini. It didn’t cover as much as she would have liked, but she hadn’t had much time for holiday shopping and she was amongst family.
After slathering on factor 50 and grabbing her magazine, she reserved herself a lounger and settled down to try and Facetime Scott during his morning break. Scott had been her best friend since school and she usually saw him several times a week, sharing their love of all-things-car. She missed him. If anyone knew her deepest, darkest secrets, it was Scott.
‘Hey, you,’ he answered snippily as his image leaped to the screen, brown hair shining and spiked at the front. ‘Finally found time in your holiday schedule to remember the existence of your bestie?’
‘Don’t be grumpy. I’m feeling homesick and I wanted to hear your voice. As lovely as Alsace is, I’d rather be back in Bettsbrough enjoying the gardening leave I’d planned. Got to support Michele and family, though.’
‘Oh. OK.’ He looked mollified. ‘So what’s the place you’re staying like?’
Leah directed the phone screen towards La Petite Annexe so the camera would capture it for him. ‘This is my bolthole.’ Then she lined up on the gîte, panning around so he got the full impact of all three floors and the impressive timberwork on the outside. ‘And this is where the others are.’
‘FFS, it’s massive! Have you got a rugby team visiting or something?’
Leah laughed as she turned her phone so they could see each other again. ‘There aren’t quite enough spare rooms for that but it’s certainly not cramped.’ And she told him about the long drive over and the frost occasionally twinkling between Michele and Alister.
Leah’s spirits rose as, in return, he gave her a jokey rendition of his latest run-in with his boss, including his outrageous excuse that his work was suffering simply because ‘his bestie’ was in another country. Scott always made her feel better with his uniquely snarky affection and she sighed along with him when it was time for him to wind up the conversation with ‘Got to get back to work, I’m afraid. Get yourself home as soon as you can.’ He blew a kiss and disappeared.
Regretfully, Leah put away her phone as Natasha and Jordan burst into the garden, Jordan armed with a Rambo-sized water gun and Natasha with plastic bowls from the kitchen.
‘Girls against boys!’ Natasha yelled, frisbeeing a bowl in Leah’s direction.
With little choice but to join the fray, Leah snatched the bowl from the air and, taking outrageous advantage of Jordan’s exposed position at the pool as he filled his supersoaker, scooped up a healthy bowlful of glistening water and sloshed it down his bare back. ‘Girls against boys!’
‘Waaaaah, freezing!’ Jordan heaved harder on the plunger that loaded his weapon. ‘This means water war!’
‘Water war!’ Natasha, screaming like a chimpanzee, leaped into the middle of the paddling pool just as Alister emerged from the house. With no respect for his sombre expression she scooped a wave of water in his direction.
The arc of water hung in a shimmering rainbow in the air before sloshing over Alister’s head and chest. He flinched. Blinked. Then, resignedly, he dragged off his T-shirt, laid his bespattered spectacles away and calmly took up the garden hose. ‘OK, water war.’
‘You
