The rest of the boot he’d filled with booze and his camera equipment – including the big tripod he’d had to rummage in the loft to find. Daphne would have demanded a group shot. They’d be eleven, he’d realized. More than they’d ever been before. They’d been an uneasy eight in the last family photograph – the one she’d had framed and hung in the hallway. Him and Daphne. Alex and Laura, with a toddling Ethan, Nick and Carrie, and Scott. It had been taken at Nick’s wedding. It wasn’t a conventional posed picture – there was nothing formal or organized about the day Nick and Carrie had planned for themselves – but at some point the photographer must have gathered them together so casually they hadn’t even known he was doing it, and snapped them laughing at something, Charlie couldn’t remember what. The women were sitting on hay bales, clucking over Carrie in the middle, ethereally lovely in her lacy slip of a dress, and the men grouped behind them facing in different directions, beer glasses in hands, while Ethan was at the front, captured in a hip-thrusting, arm-waving dance move. It was a gloriously happy photograph. Even Alex and Scott looked relaxed.
And now Daphne, Alex and Carrie would be missing. Big people-shaped holes in the fabric of his family. But Bea, Delilah and Arthur might dance. Heather, Hayley and Meredith would add their American health and orthodontically enhanced smiles. Could he take a picture where they’d look as happy? Could he make it happy?
The M40 was as benevolent as the weather, and Charlie pulled in half an hour before he was due to meet the woman, Lucy Moore, he’d been speaking to on the phone for so long. There was a red Fiat parked on the gravel, and as he pulled in beside it, a young woman in a pretty flowery dress came out of the house, smiling broadly. She bounded over to the driver’s door and opened it for him. ‘You must be Mr Chamberlain.’
He nodded. ‘Please, call me Charlie. And you’re Lucy?’
She pumped his hand enthusiastically. ‘I am. Lovely to meet you. Welcome.’
Her enthusiasm was contagious. She quizzed him about his journey, almost took credit for the clement weather, and insisted on giving him the tour. And the house was as good as it had looked in the pictures. Charlie was relieved. The kitchen was enormous, dominated by a long scrubbed-pine table, with a racing green Aga at one end, and a separate oven and a hob. Lucy knew her stuff, and talked incessantly, pointing out the main fridge – ‘And that’s the drinks fridge. There’s a small chest freezer, too’ – a larder cupboard, ‘Nice and cool for cheese and things’, and a door that led to the utility room, although she insisted on calling it the flower and boot room, ‘because who comes on holiday to do washing?’ She was far more charming than irritating, though. Her obvious pride in the house and all its thoughtful extras was very appealing.
There was a chintzy living room, with nice squashy sofas, lots of books, magazines and board games, then a games room, with a pool table, table tennis, and a small card table with a chessboard. She explained it used to be the dining room, but ‘Who wants one of those, these days, hey?’ Besides, she added, there was a small kitchen and a dining area down by the pool – that was where the caterers would set up and serve his special birthday dinner.
Outside, a wide patio had loads of wicker seating, a couple of umbrellas and a fancy-looking barbecue. A path on one side led down to the large chalet-type building that housed the swimming-pool, behind bifold glass doors that pushed all the way back ‘so it feels like you’re actually swimming outside, on lovely days’, and the fence of the tennis court was visible down a path that ran along the other edge of the house. Lucy waved expansively at the rest of the garden. ‘There’s loads of places to explore or get lost …’
Upstairs, on the first floor, there were large, beautifully decorated bedrooms for him, Laura, and Heather and Scott, each having an en-suite with a roll-top bath, plus two other bedrooms, one set up for Nick’s three children, and one a double, with a shared bathroom. They all had large, dark pieces of furniture, but bright modern curtains, and soft furnishings.
The final two bedrooms were on the top floor, in the eaves of the house – two twin rooms sharing a bathroom.
Back down on the first-floor landing, tour evidently over, Lucy asked, ‘Are you deciding who goes where?’
‘God, no. I’ll let them duke it out among themselves, once they get here.’ Charlie laughed. He’d carried a bag up the stairs on his first trip up. He picked it up. ‘I’m bagsing this one, though.’ He headed for a bedroom.
He’d chosen the smallest of the three, of course. Heather and Scott were the only couple, and he wanted Laura to have a nice room. He’d be more than fine in the smallest.
‘Fantastic. Good for you.’ Lucy laughed her jolly laugh. ‘Right. Well, I’ll leave you to it. Hopefully the rest of the family won’t be far behind.’ And she was off, mentioning for the third or fourth time that she was just next door, and that he wasn’t to hesitate if he needed anything, anything at all. ‘Have the most glorious, wonderful time!’
Charlie was out in the garden, confirming what he had read about the utter safety of the swimming-pool – a code keypad, and one of those clever covers that you could apparently float a hippo on – when he heard cars. Stupidly, his heart beat faster. They were here.
They’d managed to arrive together – well, Laura and Nick had. He’d warned his sons, in the vaguest of terms, that Laura would be alone, so Nick didn’t express surprise at seeing Ethan in the front seat of her beaten-up Volvo and no Alex. As Charlie emerged through the hall that ran from front to back of the house, he saw Nick shaking Ethan’s hand, then relenting and ruffling his hair, although he had to reach up to do it. Laura had obviously taken Arthur out of his car seat, and she was holding him on her hip while bending over to kiss Bea and Delilah.
‘You’re here.’ He held open his arms expansively.
‘Granddad!’ The little girls charged at him, squealing. He managed to pick them both up, but only for long enough to squeeze them to him, and plant kisses on their gorgeous necks, before he set them down. Laura next. He registered that she looked tired. And thin. Arthur reached out, and clung to him, a human bridge between him and his daughter. Then Ethan, too old and too tall for squealing or clinging, but fond enough to submit to a manly hug. And Nick, his baby boy. The sight of him made Charlie want to cry old-man tears. His beautiful baby boy.
Scott and Heather weren’t far behind. ‘We’d have been on time, Dad, but there was this blasted conference call as well …’
‘Isn’t there always?’ Eye-roll. ‘We had to pull over on the M4.’ That was Heather, immaculate and warm …
It wasn’t quite true, although there had been a conference. Somewhere between home and the Cotswolds, Hayley had spotted a sign for Reading and the whole festival thing had reared its controversial head again. The teen who’d climbed into the car in a reasonable mood, scrolling on her phone and bobbing her head to the personal soundtrack in her ears, instantly changed.
‘When are you gonna agree to let me go? Really agree. Everyone else is making plans.’
‘You’ve got a ticket, haven’t you?’ There was indeed a ticket, purchased as an end-of-exams gift.