In backing off, though, I step into the water, unexpectedly, and it is freezing. I jump out of it and squeal in a way I haven’t squealed since I was nine. I drop the phone again in the kerfuffle, but this time I catch it before it hits the water, like a fast-reflexed sporting genius. And that’s when Hugh gets to his feet, walks over to me and holds out his hand like he’s about to confiscate his phone from me, but instead he confiscates me, from the ocean. He picks me up, crochet blanket and all, and carries me about ten metres up the beach and puts me down on the sand. In the naughty corner.
‘I want to tell Uncle Hugh!’ Charlie announces in my ear, and I reel in horror. In the temporary departure I’ve had from reality, caused by the bombshell reveal that I apparently have a thing for the man, I totally forgot that Charlie thinks of him as his uncle. Because that’s what Daddy called him, when Daddy was confused and thought Hugh was his brother, and not my potential future leading man in more ways than one, or Charlie’s potential stepdad. I can’t even begin to think how the inevitable future psychologist will start to unpack these tangled circumstances for Charlie, or indeed the fact that I’ve cast Hugh as stepfather of my child already.
Thankfully Mum gets on and asks why I’m not answering my own phone. ‘I tried you five times!’ she tells me. ‘And gave up and called Hugh and how fortunate that you appear to be right next to him. At six o’clock in the morning, Katherine.’
‘Mum! We’re on the beach, watching the sunrise. For fu— goodness’ sake!’
Hugh’s still standing in front of me in the sand. Watching me squirm through this phone call. Trying not to smile.
‘Is it normal for a five-year-old to lose a tooth?’ I ask her nervously.
‘Perfectly normal, Katherine. You were precocious as a child. Lost your first teeth at fifty-eight months.’
Fifty-eight months? Why can’t she speak like a normal person?
‘Anyway, Charlie’s run off now. I don’t want to interrupt your sunrise. I’ll call you later. Love to Hugh! Bye!’
She ends the call and I hand his phone back, exhausted and nervous. It’s just the two of us on the beach now, and the giant admission I carelessly implied, which I’m wondering if I can somehow retract. I’m not remotely confident, now that I replay it in my mind for the eight hundredth time, that it wasn’t all one-sided . . .
‘God,’ I had said.
‘Thought so,’ he had replied.
Not ‘I hear you’. Not ‘Ditto’. Not ‘Me too, Kate, for the longest time . . .’
Just ‘Thought so’, which I’m now translating to mean ‘Your unfortunate and inappropriate infatuation couldn’t be more obvious or unrequited.’
I hope he realises what he’s dealing with here: a widow’s heart. It’s just like a normal heart, but made of a million shattered fragments, patched together in a mosaic. Reclaimed glass. Transparent. Easily broken.
In fact, just looking at his face and listening to the silence where some sort of declaration should be, I’m worried that process is already in progress. A quick mental inventory reveals that I am unable to take on any new heartbreak at the moment. Whatever this is needs to be nipped in the bud. Stat. Cam had warned me this moment might come. He predicted I’d want to run from it, that it would fill me with guilt. And he was right. In fact, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Run.
I start limbering up in front of Hugh, forgetting I fled down onto the beach straight from bed and am in my pyjamas still. And bare feet. No sports bra. No bra at all for that matter, and this is ill advised for exercise post-breastfeeding. I guess on the upside, nothing is leaking this time . . .
His eyes remain resolutely focused on my face, anyhow. Eyebrows raised. ‘Exactly what are you doing?’
It’s an excellent question, for sure.
‘I want to run.’
‘In your pyjamas?’
‘Is it so hard to believe that I might want to run on the beach?’
He’s trying hard not to smile. ‘Yes.’
I hate running. Hate it hard. He knows that. I extend my pre-exercise repertoire to include dynamic stretches I’ve previously only encountered on Instagram reels, scrolling in bed. He frowns.
And then it happens. I can almost hear the words tumbling out of my mouth before my brain has thought them up and run a sanity check. ‘Mum seems to think there’s something going on between us.’ I serve this revelation with a side of nervous laughter and something approximating a lunge. ‘Have you said something to give her that idea?’
He laughs at the mere suggestion. ‘Did you learn this particular aerobics technique when you were abducted by aliens, Kate?’
I glare at him.
‘Is it an obscure mating call?’
‘Hardly!’
‘Because I’ve got to tell you, it’s low-key beguiling.’
I hit his arm playfully. ‘Will you shut up, Hugh? You’re making me nervous.’
‘Payback,’ he says under his breath.
‘What did you say?’ I ask, just to check.
‘I’m going for a shower. Then coffee. Then we’ve got brunch with my mate Jonesy from uni and then you’ve got the writers thing.’ He looks me up and down critically. ‘Don’t try your weird dancing there. It’s not that kind of festival.’
I make him nervous?
‘And when you’re talking to people, don’t shrink. I’ve read some of your stuff.’
‘None of my stuff has ever been published.’ I hope I never left my manuscript open on the work computer.
He’s backing away from me towards the house. ‘Relax! I’ve read everything you’ve written at work,’ he calls. ‘You can string a sentence together, Kate, and your talent is wasted on our annual report.’
I make Hugh Lancaster nervous. How have I never noticed that before?
I won’t shrink at the festival. Why would he say that? Do I do that? Maybe I’ve been so preoccupied with surviving, and bringing Charlie through his dad’s death, I’ve forgotten about my own abilities. I feel like I’ve spent the last four years on the back foot, constantly in response mode, never ahead of the game.
I don’t want to do this any more. How long is it reasonable to drag out your recovery from grief until you’re expected to get your act together again?
Or maybe that’s where I’m going wrong. You don’t recover from it. There is no ‘healed’ moment. You just absorb it into your new life, somehow, and go from there.
31
The drive into Byron from New Brighton feels too quiet. I tell Hugh he can choose the music this time, but he says he doesn’t mind what we listen to, so I play the soundtrack to the Mamma Mia! sequel, with the windows down, and belt along to it.
So much green in this Irish-looking hinterland. Was that conversation about Ireland only yesterday? I feel like I finally had my volcanic moment, in the shower. Something has definitely shifted since that eruption.
Driving into the beach town itself, the traffic slows to a crawl past boutiques and cafes, antiques stores and eclectic gift shops brimming with wind chimes and rainbow dream-catchers. It’s a kaleidoscope of colour and style that seems to beat to the rhythm of the drumming circles at its hippy heart.
‘Did you enjoy that car karaoke?’ I ask Hugh as he pulls into a car park near the beach.
‘It was right up there with the exercise display this morning,’ he replies.