‘Your cabin or mine?’ Martha asked as Hugh released her from the kiss.
Martha wrapped the amethyst necklace Tom Marchant had given her in tissue paper and slid it into an envelope. She had no need of it any more but it might be just the thing someone else might love and cherish. On the outside of the envelope she wrote her message:
Dear next occupant,
I’ve had the most interesting and wonderful fortnight at 23 The Strand. Life-changing even. I hope you have a wonderful time too. I leave you this gift, which I hope you’ll enjoy wearing or will give to someone you think would like it. It might be fun if you could leave some little thing as a welcome gift for the next occupant but that’s by no means obligatory.
Best wishes
Martha
P.S. Formerly known as Serena Ross
MID TO LATE MAY
Cally
‘Do you think, Jack,’ Cally asked her husband, ‘it’s the Serena Ross who’s left this?’
‘Who?’
Jack was busy unpacking their sons’ bags, sliding the T-shirts and shorts, and the pants, socks and jumpers, Cally had laundered ready for their two-week stay by the sea, onto the shelves in the wardrobe of their double room. The boys would have to sleep on the small pull-out sofa in the sitting room. He didn’t look up.
‘Serena Ross. She’s an actress. She was all over the papers recently. Pulled out of a film or something. Tom Marchant’s in it. Breaking Ice, the film’s called. He’s still in it but she’s not, so it said in one of the Sunday papers. There seems to have been some sort of affair between them. He’s married.’
‘So far so normal for the film world I’d say. Cynic that I am.’ Jack laughed. ‘Anyway, left what?’
‘This necklace.’ Standing in the open doorway of the bedroom, watching Jack, Cally uncurled her fingers to reveal a lozenge-shaped amethyst about three centimetres long and half as wide, on a gold chain so fine Cally thought she might be able to get it through the eye of a needle. Cally didn’t wear jewellery much, except her engagement ring if she and Jack were going out, which wasn’t often these days. Her hands were for ever in water, or cleaning up something after the boys, or gardening, and rings got filthy or slid off and she lost them. And when she was hairdressing she only wore her wedding band because anything with a raised stone might scratch a client. But she liked this necklace. ‘Amethyst. It’s my birthstone. There’s a note to say it’s a gift. I can keep it if I want to and leave a welcome gift for the next occupant, also if I want to. Not obligatory.’
‘Just as well,’ Jack said. ‘We can’t run to leaving expensive jewellery for people we don’t know.’
‘No, I know we can’t. But we might leave something when the holiday’s over.’
‘Over?’ Jack said, looking up sharply at Cally. ‘We’ve only just got here! I’m sorry it’s not the Maldives or somewhere five-star, but I thought, well, you know, a holiday might be just what we need.’
Cally thought Jack sounded petulant – he certainly looked it, slapping down the boys’ socks and pants on a shelf – as though he was irritated she wasn’t showing enough gratitude for the holiday he’d booked as a surprise. Cally struggled to think of something to say. Why didn’t you at least show me the details of 23 The Strand before booking? was uppermost in her mind, but to say that would put a chill between them, although with the boys around they wouldn’t argue about it. There had been far too much ‘chill’ between them lately. A combination of things – pressure of work for Jack, bouts of flu the boys had been laid really low with, too much time off work at the salon for Cally, which had put her job in jeopardy. And also… no, Cally wasn’t even going to think about that.
‘It’s a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be,’ Cally said, trying to diffuse the atmosphere. ‘Thankfully!’ she added, laughing. ‘I mean, when we came along the promenade I thought you’d booked us into one of those beach huts.’
Near the information office where Cally and Jack had picked up the key, the boys squealing with delight and sliding about on the tiled floor while they waited, impatiently, to be seen, was a double row of beach huts, each no bigger than their garden shed at home, all with brightly coloured doors. One row faced the sea, and the other the green. A few were open with people sitting outside on deckchairs, sipping mugs of tea or reading.
‘As if!’ Jack said. ‘Those get taken down in the winter and you’re not allowed to sleep overnight in them. I did check before we came, Cally. Besides, you couldn’t swing the proverbial cat in one of those!’
‘Of course you did,’ Cally said, aware she kept saying the wrong thing or, if not the wrong thing, something that irritated Jack, demeaning – in his eyes at least – his kind gesture in booking the holiday. She reached down to ruffle four-year-old Noah’s hair. He was being quiet and pensive for once, as though he was puzzled about where he was, and why.
‘Can we have a cat?’ Noah asked. ‘A tiger? Or a lion?’
Cally laughed. Noah was for ever asking for a pet – a dog, a cat, a hamster, a parrot. So far Cally and Jack had resisted all entreaties, even though it was good for children to learn about love and loss when the pets died. Died? Why were words like that cropping up all the time now? Was it the same as when a friend got a new make of car, and suddenly you started seeing those cars everywhere – same model, same colour?
‘Can we?’ Noah persisted. ‘You said swing a cat, Daddy! I can swing a cat.’
Cally wagged a finger playfully at Jack and shook her head. The trouble was, Noah was all ears. She’d have to be careful what she said in front of him from now on. They both would, once she found the courage to tell Jack about the lump. She so didn’t want it to be real, the tiny, granite-chipping lump she’d found in her left breast, just below the nipple. She so didn’t want the information she’d seen on the internet when she’d Googled lumps/breasts to be one hundred per cent correct. There had to be a margin for hope. She hoped telling him here would be easier. She’d been on the verge of telling him at home but the moment was snatched from her. The boys had been in bed fast asleep, and Jack had done the supper dishes while Cally had a shower and changed into her night things. Then Jack had come in with a mug of cocoa for her and that was when Noah had woken up screaming. They’d both rushed upstairs. That he’d woken with a nightmare had been Cally’s first thought, but when they got there they could see he was running a temperature. He didn’t go limp in Jack’s arms when he picked him up, but remained rigid, holding his hands to his head. And then he’d been monumentally sick. Cally had checked for a rash but in the low light of the bedroom she couldn’t be sure if it was a rash she was seeing or the pressure of the fabric of Noah’s pyjamas on his skin. So she’d called her mother on her mobile to come and sit with Riley, while Jack used the landline to ring for an ambulance. In the early hours of the morning, with Noah’s temperature back down and in his own bed again, Cally realised that, for the time she’d been dealing with what could have been a serious emergency, she’d completely forgotten about her own health worries. And now, she wanted to deal with it in her own time, in her own way. It was her lump after all.
‘Please, Daddy?’ Noah persisted, dragging Cally’s mind back to the present. ‘You said. I’ll help look after it.’
Cally thought, after the rush to hospital, that she would willingly give him anything he asked for. Jack too. But that was a subject Cally and Jack didn’t agree on one hundred per cent; that a pet would be good for the boys. Cally thought it was a natural way to teach them responsibility, and gentleness, instead of the rough and tumble that was their normal life, but Jack didn’t agree. He saw pets as tying, and she had