The Summer Season. Julia Williams

and clear.

      As Joel left, she gathered together a fork, trowel, rake, spade, some garden shears, and bin bags and put them all in a wheelbarrow. She let out a deep sigh of satisfaction. She was going to enjoy this.

      Lauren walked through her front door after the school run with the twins jabbering excitedly in her ear about their harvest festival, which was to take place the following week. Sam had fallen asleep in the buggy, so she left him in the tiny hallway that led into the kitchen. The girls were demanding to make cookies after lunch, which was often an afternoon treat for all of them. Lauren was on the point of agreeing, when she noticed her answer phone was flashing.

      ‘Just give me a minute, girls,’ she said, helping them off with their coats, which she hung up in the small understairs cupboard. ‘Why don’t you run upstairs and wash your hands while I get lunch ready?’

      The girls thundered up the stairs, and Lauren clicked on the answer message while she took a bag of flour and a packet of chocolate chips out of the larder.

      ‘Hey, babe.’ Oh God, Lauren sat down quickly on one of her pine kitchen chairs, feeling her knees turning to jelly. Troy. Again. Lauren had still not decided what to do about him. She hadn’t rung him back, nor had she discussed the situation with anyone else. Mum was out of the question, she’d have flipped her lid if she knew Troy was trying to get in touch again. Lauren didn’t feel she knew Kezzie well enough to confide in her. That left Eileen, who was a reliable source of comfort, or Joel. When Claire was still alive, Lauren wouldn’t have dreamt of confiding in Joel. He was her friend’s husband, with whom she got on well, but it was Claire who knew all her secrets.

      Lauren had met Claire out walking with Sam when he was a baby and the twins were two years old. The girls had been particularly lively that day, and Lauren had had another call from the CSA to say they hadn’t heard from Troy, and she’d been up to her neck in debt. Somehow, over a coffee in Keef’s Café, the whole story had come out. The two women had hit it off immediately. Claire was looking for someone to care for Sam when she went back to work, and somehow Lauren had come away agreeing to register as a childminder so she could look after him. Thereafter when she’d had a wobble about Troy or anything really, it was always Claire she’d turned to. Claire had been such a good friend to her, and Lauren felt a familiar gut-wrenching sense of loss, at the thought that she no longer had her friend for support. Claire had always been full of sound practical advice, and Lauren missed her wisdom. When she died, Lauren had on occasion found herself confiding in Joel, but it wasn’t the same, and she wasn’t sure if she should ask his advice on this.

      She listened again to Troy’s message. ‘Have you thought any more about it, babe? I need to know soon. Call me.’ She clicked the answer phone off. She couldn’t face this right now.

      Joel was so dog tired by the time he got home he’d completely forgotten Kezzie was there. For a moment, when he came in the kitchen and saw a half-drunk cup of tea on the drainer, and the kitchen door wide open, he’d had the sudden dizzying sensation that Claire was back, somehow returned to him. He’d had lots of those moments in the early months, but it had happened less often of late. He nearly called her name, but stopped himself in time, when a very dishevelled and rather muddy Kezzie appeared, divesting herself of her wellies as she went.

      ‘Mind if I leave these here?’ she said, putting them by the back door. ‘It seems a bit silly taking them back and forth each day.’

      ‘Yeah, no problem,’ said Joel, as he put Sam down and let him potter around the kitchen.

      ‘You look knackered, if you don’t mind me saying,’ said Kezzie. ‘Fancy a cuppa?’

      ‘That would be great,’ Joel yawned. ‘It’s been a long day. But first I need to get munchkin here into his bath.’

      ‘No rest for the wicked,’ said Kezzie.

      ‘None indeed,’ said Joel, with feeling. ‘Come on, Sammy boy, bathtime.’

      ‘Ba, Ba!’ Sam clapped his hands and giggled.

      When Joel had first bathed Sam alone, he’d hated it. He worried about the slipperiness of a wriggly baby in water; he was scared the water was too cold or too scalding. Some of Joel’s tension had seemed to affect Sam and bath times had been neurotic, miserable affairs.

      But one time, knowing he was going to be late from work, Lauren had offered to bath Sam for him. When Joel had come to pick him up, he had discovered Sam happily sitting in the bath blowing bubbles and pouring water over his head.

      Joel had immediately invested in a couple of plastic cups and bubble bath, and bath times had been a cinch ever since. It was the one point in the day he felt he could really relax with his son.

      He was sitting on the floor, singing stupid songs while Sam put bubbles on his nose, when Kezzie came up with a cup of tea.

      ‘That looks fun,’ she said.

      ‘Fun, fun,’ burbled Sam.

      ‘It is, actually,’ said Joel, ‘an unexpected but absurdly simple pleasure of fatherhood.’

      ‘Are you hungry?’ said Kezzie, ‘only you look half starved. Do you ever eat?’

      ‘I don’t often cook for myself,’ admitted Joel. ‘Lauren feeds Sam most days, and while I don’t mind cooking, there never seems much point for one.’

      ‘Thought so,’ said Kezzie. ‘You stay there. I’ll forage in your kitchen, and see if we can’t get you a square meal for once.’

      Half an hour later, with Sam happily ensconced in his cot, cuddling his favourite toy rabbit, Snuffles, Joel emerged downstairs to the smell of something delicious on the stove.

      Tears prickled his eyes. It was a long time since anyone had cooked for him. He came into the kitchen to find Kezzie stirring a bubbling pot.

      ‘I’ve rustled up some pasta,’ she said, ‘I hope that’s OK.’