‘Dan? Quick call, as I know you’ll be having dinner and I need to go down and order something soon. I can’t find my Pandora bracelet. Can you have a look for me?’
‘Hi, Maria. Sorry, love, I’m not at home at the moment.’
I registered sounds of a busy pub in the background. ‘Where are you?’
‘Crown and Sceptre, with a couple of lads from the office. Drowning my sorrows and all that, ha ha. I’ll look for your bracelet when I get home and will text you. Where’s it likely to be?’
I thought hard. ‘Top drawer in my bedside cabinet, probably. Or the next drawer down. Sorry to be the cause of your sorrows.’ I felt that all-too-familiar band of guilt tightening across my chest. But he didn’t sound as hurt as he’d been during our last phone call. Just businesslike, as though he wanted to get me off the phone as soon as possible. Well, he was on a night out.
‘OK. I’ll have a look. Two Peronis and a Stella please, thanks, mate.’
‘You what?’
‘Sorry, Maria, it’s my round. Just ordering. Cheers, mate, no, that’s the lot. Here’s a twenty. Maria, I’ve got to go, love you. Still waiting for an answer . . .’
‘I know. I love you too.’
‘And that’s why we should marry. What’s to stop us?’ He blew a kiss down the phone and hung up.
*
I’d had Aoife’s Irish stew on the day I arrived and it was so delicious I decided to have it again. My favourite table by the window was free so I sat there, nodding and smiling at the family who occupied a larger table in the corner. I hadn’t seen them before and something about them suggested they were tourists. The parents looked to be around forty, with a frazzled-but-happy-to-be-on-holiday air about them. There was a girl in her mid-teens, with plaited blonde hair, a slightly sullen expression and a surgically attached phone, a boy of about thirteen with gelled black hair wearing an assortment of leather wristbands and another boy of perhaps five with a sweet freckled face and a grubby stuffed elephant toy under one arm. Their food arrived before mine, while I was flicking through the photos I’d taken so far on my phone.
‘Come on, Sammy. You asked for chicken nuggets and now you’ve eaten none of them,’ the mother was saying, in an exasperated tone. Her accent was from the south of England, which confirmed my suspicions they were holidaymakers.
‘I have. I’ve eaten two.’ Sammy had seated his elephant beside his plate and, as he spoke, it fell over, trunk first, onto his plate. The older boy laughed and looked expectantly at his parents for their reaction to this tragedy.
‘What have we said about keeping Nellie off the table at mealtimes?’ the mum said, snatching the offending toy and placing it on the bench seat between her and Sammy.
‘That thing’s disgusting,’ said the teenage girl, wrinkling her nose. ‘I wouldn’t eat his dinner now that smelly toy’s been in it.’
‘That’s enough, Kaz,’ said the father, glaring at her.
But the damage was done. Little Sammy pouted and pushed away his plate decisively. I tried hard not to smirk but even I as a non-parent could see that he would eat no more of his dinner on principle. Perhaps if they bought him cake or ice cream as dessert he’d be tempted, but that was it for the chicken nuggets, chips and beans.
The mother rolled her eyes. ‘For goodness sake, Kaz, now see what you’ve done. Sam, there’ll be no dessert for you and when we go back to the caravan you’ll go straight to bed, no playing, if you don’t eat at least half of what’s on your plate. Come on, it’s what you asked for. It’s perfectly all right. Nellie didn’t make it dirty.’
Sammy picked up his toy and inspected its trunk. ‘Nellie’s dirty though.’ He showed it to his mother. There were beans all over it.
‘Give it here, I’ll lick them off,’ the older boy said, trying to snatch the toy, but Sammy hugged it tightly to him, neatly transferring the beans to the front of his t-shirt.
The mum caught me watching, and gave a wry smile. ‘Kids, eh? Who’d have ’em?’
I chuckled politely in return. Who indeed? I thought. It always looked like a nightmare to me. All parents seemed to have moments like this when they snapped at their kids and wondered why on earth they’d ever had any. Surely if you had a child you should love it unconditionally, no matter how infuriating it was? You shouldn’t be saying to complete strangers, ‘Who’d have ’em?’ especially not in front of them. My mother had done that to me all my life. She’d told me many times she’d never wanted children. She wouldn’t even let me call her ‘Mum’ – I always had to call her by her first name, Jackie. She’d reluctantly attended parents’ evenings at my schools, and spent ages telling my teachers how she’d never intended to have a child and how life would have been so much easier without me. ‘Surely though,’ my Art teacher had said during one of Jackie’s worst anti-Maria rants, ‘now that you’ve got her you’re proud of what she’s achieving?’ Jackie had shaken her head. ‘No, not really. Just daubs of paint, isn’t it, and when she does it at home she makes a mess of her homework desk.’ My teacher had looked at me with sympathy and I’d had to turn my head away before I started blubbing. It was always like that.
I didn’t think this mum was as bad. She was just having a moment, making a joke. No one could be as bad a parent as Jackie. Thankfully, Dad had been a great parent, making up for Jackie as best he could.
‘Why doesn’t she love me?’ I’d asked him a hundred times.
‘She does, in her way, sweetie. She just finds it hard to show it,’ he’d always replied.
My own dinner arrived as I was pondering this, and I ate it in silence, occasionally tuning in to the banter and bickering at the next table. Eventually, Aoife, who was wearing a My Chemical Romance t-shirt today along with heavy black eyeliner, came to clear my plate, and, as she did so, she spoke to the family.
‘Really sorry, but the musicians will be here soon and they always take this table. Would you mind moving for me?’
‘Not at all,’ said the father. ‘Come on, Sammy, bring Nellie. Nathan, Kaz, come on, we need to find another table.’
The pub had filled up while I’d been eating and, as I glanced around, I realised the only spare seats were at my own table. I’d been kind of hoping Declan would come in and join me, but it looked like I’d have the company of this family.
‘Is it OK if we sit here?’ the mother asked.
‘Yes, that’s fine, I’m on my own,’ I replied, and they sat down gratefully, dragging one stool over from their previous table for little Sammy to sit on.
‘Hi. I’m Sharon, this is my husband Dave, Kaz, Nathan and Sam,’ the mum said, smiling, indicating her family. She had an open, likeable face and I warmed to her instantly.
‘Good to meet you. I’m Maria,’ I replied. ‘Are you on holiday here?’
‘Yes, camping just outside town,’ Sharon said. ‘Well, in a static caravan, so hardly camping but enough to manage with three kids.’
‘Where’s the campsite?’ I asked, just for something to say, really. Sammy was making his elephant walk around the table. I snatched up my glass of J2O before it got knocked over by Nellie’s bum.
‘You go out of town on Church Street for about a mile then turn right,’ answered Dave. ‘It’s a good site – in the grounds of an old ruined country house. The laundry and campers’ toilets and showers are built into the old stable block. The house itself is still there but in ruins, thankfully fenced off or the kids would be roaming wild in there