I sit where only the tips of the waves can reach, slapping my palms at the foamy water. The sand is gritty between my toes, the ties of my sun bonnet tight under my chin. Big hands scoop me high. My father’s face is close, leathered and smiling, his blue eyes sharp against his tan. When he throws me I laugh, safe in the knowledge that I shall be caught. My mother sits reading in a deckchair, her slender white freckled limbs neatly circled by the protective shadow of a large wooden parasol. She wears a blue sarong and matching headscarf, from which one wild curl of auburn hair has broken free to bounce across her forehead. As I shriek she peers over the black ridge of her sunglasses and smiles, her lacquered eyelashes blinking in the glare.
Charlotte unlocked the door and pushed, with some difficulty, against the pile of morning post lodged on the mat. As she did so her neighbour emerged from his own front door wearing his faded tartan dressing-gown and the backless leather slippers that exposed the yellow crusts of his heels.
‘Happy Valentine’s, my dear,’ he barked, bending down to swap the empty milk bottle in his hands for the full one parked next to his recycling box. He straightened and clutched his back with a grimace.
‘Thanks, Mr Beasley, same to you.’
‘Young Sam well, is he?’
‘Oh, yes, thanks . . . I’ve just taken him to school.’ Charlotte, now riffling through the mail, cast a doubtful glance at the Volkswagen, which sat like a large frosted tea-cake next to the for-sale sign stapled to her gate-post. Late as usual for her twelve-year-old’s school run, she had hurled the contents of the kettle at the front and rear windscreens, only to have to chisel most of the ice off with her fingernails as the water instantly froze. Sam had watched her stony-eyed from the front seat, resting his chin on the top of his rucksack. The car had refused to start on the first three attempts, then performed its new clunking noise the one that hadn’t yet lasted quite long enough to warrant further investigation, as they approached the roundabout.
‘I expect you’ll have a few cards in there.’ Mr Beasley nodded towards her hands, showing off his yellowing teeth as he grinned.
‘I doubt it.’Charlotte smiled. Her neighbour meant well, she knew. In the ten months since Martin’s departure, each week had been peppered with similar efforts at communication. But it was a raw morning to be lingering on the doorstep and, of course, there weren’t any cards. There hadn’t been a home-made offering of gluey glittered hearts from Sam that year either, which was entirely understandable and healthy, given her son’s advanced age, but it had caused her a moment’s lament all the same.
‘Sold the house yet?’Mr Beasley rasped, just as she was edging inside.
‘No – but there’s someone coming to look this morning. Any minute now, in fact . . .’ Charlotte glanced pointedly at her watch.
‘Been a while, hasn’t it?’
‘A few months, yes.’
‘And you’ve not found anywhere to go yet, have you?’
‘No, Mr Beasley, I haven’t.’
‘I’ve forgotten, what was it you were looking for?’
‘I –’Charlotte broke off, distracted by the envelope uppermost in her hand, brown, with a court stamp. ‘Something smaller, a little cheaper, a lot nearer the park,’ she muttered, delivering a summary of the brief she had given Tim Croft the estate agent eight months before. Under her anorak her heart was pumping fast – relief, joy, a million things. It was the decree nisi – it had to be. She felt as if she had been pushing at a huge heavy door that had at last given way – no more hideous haggling over numbers, what she spent at the hairdresser or in department stores; no more miserable sessions with her pocket calculator and a pile of bills. It was all over at last. She was free.
Mr Beasley was sucking in his cheeks and shaking his lugubrious unshaven old face at the dank February sky. ‘The park . . . Oh, they’re pricy, those are, even the poky ones.’
‘Really? Well, I’m hopeful, very hopeful.’ Rejoicing now, because of the brown envelope, Charlotte clasped the pile of post to her chest and escaped inside. There was still a palpable quietness about the place without Martin, almost as if her refusal to mourn the demise of their unhappy union meant some spirit of the house was doing it for her. In her wilder moments Charlotte even wondered if this was why it was proving so hard to sell. At other, saner, times it seemed grossly unfair that while Martin and his adulterous love, Cindy, could spread their wings in their new spacious riverside house in Rotherhithe, she was left trying to sell a property that seemed, no matter how many vases of fresh flowers she arranged around it, to exude something akin to an atmosphere of bereavement. She took her time with the brown envelope – made herself a cup of coffee, found a biscuit, relished the moment. And once the document was in her hand she made herself read it, every word, skimming none of the jargon or smallprint, forcing herself to recall the sourness of the final months and the sly anonymous note that had finally provided the nudge – the courage – to put an end to the misery for good. Your husband is seeing someone else, from a well-wisher. Even at the time Charlotte had felt a sort of sick triumph – all the years of disintegrating affection, the needling suspicion, Martin’s denials – and there at last, in ten words, was the verification, permission to give up, as official as the stamped document cradled in her hands.