was getting it right—if the guides were good, the equipment safe, the staff knowledgeable.
This hands-on personal touch, a rigid policy of road-testing absolutely everything, was why what had started as a simple website offering good advice and cheap deals for backpackers had mushroomed into an award-winning travel corporation. They were in the business of offering once-in-a-lifetime trips, whether that be cheap flights and even cheaper hostels for the backpackers, or exclusive individually tailored trips with five-star elegance for a more discerning clientele.
He could see his mother kneeling on the lawn, planting petunias. His parents’ garden was beautiful, no doubt about that. But it was too…tame. And too small. No chance of running into snakes on the bowling green lawn or piranhas in the fish pond, more’s the pity.
‘It’ll be fine. Take Sara with you,’ he told Callum. His PA was so efficient it would almost be as if he were there in person. ‘She knows the deal inside out. I’ll call you in a week and give you an update.’
He said his goodbyes and left the cordless phone on the kitchen counter. Mum would nag him about that in a minute.
It seemed odd being back in this house, even sleeping in his old bedroom rather than in his own house on the other side of town. Nothing had changed here. Oh, there were different kitchen cabinets and a new three-piece suite, but the atmosphere, the essence of the place was the same. Comforting and stifling all at the same time.
Of course, Mum was delighted to have him here. She hardly let him out of her sight. But maybe that was to be expected. Nowadays he only really made it home for big celebrations, like dad’s sixtieth—had that really been six months ago?—and Christmas dinner. Well, most Christmas dinners. Last December he’d been left stranded in Nepal after a trek through the Himalayan foothills, his flight cancelled.
It was good to see his parents again, but he’d rather it had been under different circumstances. Six weeks ago, he’d got a frantic call from his mother letting him know that his father was undergoing emergency heart surgery. He’d flown straight home. It had been touch and go for a few days, but Dad was pulling through.
He didn’t want to think about the ten-hour flight home. It had been the first time in years that he hadn’t enjoyed the rush of take-off. All he’d been able to think about was how little he’d seen his parents in the last few months and how awful it would be if…
He shook his head and stepped through the open back door and walked towards his mother, leaving that thought behind in the bright and cheery kitchen. His feet were itchy. He wanted to be here for his father but, at the same time, now that Dad was on the mend he was starting to feel like a spare part.
Mum was now standing on the lawn, hands on hips, surveying her handiwork.
‘They look nice, Mum.’
She turned and looked at him, her face screwed up against the bright sunshine. ‘Not very exotic, I know, but I like them. It makes the place feel like home.’
Josh smiled back at her and his gaze drifted down the garden. It was a good-sized plot for a semi-detached house of this size, stretching back more than a hundred feet. A big garden, in London suburb terms. It looked lighter, somehow. The bottom of the garden had always seemed so shady in his childhood memories.
And then he realised something was missing.
‘Mum? What happened to the old apple tree?’
She wiped her hands on the front of her old gardening jeans and walked over to stand by his side. ‘We had some heavy winds this spring. Eighty mile an hour gusts at times.’ She shrugged. ‘Woke up the next morning to find most of the apple tree in next door’s garden.’
He instantly set off walking towards where the apple tree had once been. Only a stump was left. Suddenly he felt angry. That tree had been a huge part of his childhood. He and Ryan, the boy next door and his best friend, had spent more time in its branches during the summer months than they had with their feet on the earth. If he’d known the last time he’d been here that it would be the last time he’d see it, he would have…dunno…said a prayer or something.
He didn’t like graveyards. They were way too permanent. And he hadn’t been to visit the small marble headstone in St Mark’s churchyard, not even on the day of Ryan’s funeral. Instead, he’d come here to the apple tree. He’d climbed up into the highest branches and sat silently with his legs swinging. If only…
If only he’d realised that summer, when he’d been thirteen and Ryan had been fourteen, that it would be their last one together. He would have made sure they finished the tree-house they’d been planning to build in those old branches, not just left it as a few planks nailed in strategic places.
A cold, dark feeling swirled inside his stomach. It threatened to bubble up and overwhelm him. Suddenly his legs were moving and he was striding back towards the house.
His mother, as she always was in his thoughts of her when he was half a world away, was putting the kettle on for a cup of tea. Once back inside the kitchen, he shut the back door, even though the gentle breeze and the warm, buzzing sound of the bees in the lavender below the window would have been pleasant.
‘You still miss him, don’t you?’
He shrugged with just one shoulder, then looked at his feet. Mum would scold him for not using the doormat on his way in. He went back and rectified the situation. When he looked up, she was giving him one of those don’t-think-you-can-fool-me looks.
What good would it do to tell her that, on one level, he still expected Ryan to barge in through the back door and charm his mother into giving him a slice of her famous Victoria sponge? He looked out of the window into the Chambers’s garden next door.
‘I haven’t seen Fern since I’ve been back.’
His mother reached into a cupboard and pulled out the teapot. ‘Her mother says she’s very busy at work.’
He nodded. That was Fern. Dedicated, hard-working, loyal to a fault. ‘I hope she’s not overdoing it.’
His mother laughed. ‘You’re as bad as Jim and Helen! The poor girl gets nagged and smothered at every turn. No wonder she moved out.’
Ah, but Mum didn’t know about the promise. The day of Ryan’s funeral, hidden up in the old apple tree, he’d adopted the girl next door as his honorary little sister and vowed to watch out for her. Oh, he’d teased and tormented her just as Ryan would have done, but he’d protected her too. To his own cost sometimes.
Mum reached for the tea caddy. ‘Don’t think much of her flatmate, though. A bit of a wild thing.’
His features hardened. Fern had a flatmate? Male or female?
‘Is…is she seeing anyone?’
His mother shook her head. ‘Not that I know of. There was someone serious last year. I was sure they were on the verge of settling down but then he upped and disappeared.’
‘Am I allowed to find him, then punch him?’
Billowing steam poured from the kettle, matching his mood nicely. A shrill whistle announced it was at boiling point and he automatically turned the gas off. The kitchen was silent again.
‘She’s not nine any more, you know,’
