Autumn Dreams at Mermaids Point, page 14
‘True that.’ Andrew clicked his mug against Tom’s like he’d made a toast. ‘None of us is getting any younger.’ He took a sip, then grinned at Tom over the rim. ‘He’s set all the tongues about town wagging, shacking up with Barbara Mitchell the way he has. Sly old dog.’ Andrew said the last with great admiration.
‘If he’s found someone that makes him happy, then good on him.’
‘Quite right, too. Man wasn’t made to be alone. I’d be lost without my Sylvia.’
Tom didn’t like the stab of what felt too much like jealousy at the tenderness he heard in Andrew’s voice and he was sure that if he looked up, he’d see him gazing devotedly across the room at his wife. But he didn’t look up, keeping his eyes on the remains of his tea as he pushed down hard on the ugly feeling trying to creep through him. He couldn’t allow what had happened to him to taint his outlook.
A long silence hung between them before Andrew murmured, ‘Sorry, that was thoughtless of me.’
‘No, you’re fine.’ He looked up to meet Andrew’s concerned gaze, placed a hand on his arm and said again, ‘It’s fine, really. There’s no use dancing around my situation and I know you didn’t mean anything by it.’ He tapped his mug against Andrew’s. ‘Cheers to your Sylvia.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’ Andrew beamed, then took a long draught of his tea. ‘Right, let’s get this lot moving so we can toast her again with something a bit more refreshing.’
‘Now that sounds like a very good idea,’ Tom replied, relieved they’d negotiated their way around the awkwardness. He instinctively liked this man, and it would be good to make a few friends for himself – people who would take him as he chose to present himself, not look at him and see only what wasn’t there any more.
They split up – Sylvia and Laurie going upstairs to focus on unpacking the children’s bedrooms, while Tom stayed downstairs with the rest of the men to try to clear the boxes in the lounge and kitchen where Nerissa had stationed herself to put away things to her liking. Tom didn’t much care which cupboard the pans or crockery went in, and she could sort out any duplicates and decide what to keep and what could be sent to the thrift shop. The only thing he felt like he should hang onto was the dining service Anna’s parents had given them as a wedding present. They’d used it for all their family celebrations over the years, and he hoped Emily might like it when she was ready to set up her own home in the future. He surveyed the pile of boxes with a sigh – that’s if he ever managed to locate it in all the chaos.
‘What’s the plan, then?’ Andrew asked, hands on hips as he too surveyed the box mountain.
‘Pick one and empty it, I reckon,’ Alex offered. ‘They’ll all have to be opened at some point and I’ve got a fairly good idea where stuff belongs too, so between Tom and I we can answer any questions.’
‘Works for me,’ Tom agreed. ‘Why don’t you and Jake tackle the kitchen boxes, though? If all five of us try to work in here, we’ll be falling all over each other.’
They made good progress for the next forty minutes, though it soon became clear the movers had been somewhat liberal with their labelling of the contents of the boxes, and a steady pile of items that belonged elsewhere grew in the hallway.
‘These are all DVDs,’ Nick said, holding up a handful to show Tom. ‘I didn’t realise people still had them.’
‘Shove them to one side and I’ll look at them later. Most of them can probably go to the charity shop because we stream pretty much everything these days.’ He should’ve gone through them before they were packed, but they held a lot of memories – particularly the old Disney ones they’d watched first with Emily and later with Max. Tom had worried he’d get bogged down trying to decide what to keep and what to get rid of, so he’d decided to just bring them with him. He tried not to think what else he’d put off as he folded down the box of cushions he’d just emptied and added it to the stack propped against the back wall.
Before he knew it, the lounge looked more or less straight. Nick was sprawled in front of the TV and other electronics connecting everything up and making sure it all worked, and Tom was happy to leave him to it. With Andrew’s help he ferried the pile of empty boxes out through the back door to add to the ones Alex and Jake had cleared from the kitchen.
‘Working hard, I see.’ Tom nudged Alex as he passed where he was sitting at the table next to Jake, the pair of them unrepentant as they sipped beer from a couple of bottles.
‘Hey, if you were as efficient as us, you’d be able to relax too.’
Nerissa turned from where she was rinsing something under the tap and raised a brow. ‘Says the man who sat down not thirty seconds ago.’
Tom laughed. ‘We’re about done too. I’m not bothered about the stuff stacked in the surgery – it’s mostly things from my office and I can work my way through that myself. I’ll just nip upstairs and see how they’re getting on.’
‘I’ll fire up the barbecue then, shall I?’ Andrew asked. When Tom nodded, he laid a hand on Jake’s shoulder. ‘Want to give me a hand, son?’
‘Sure.’ Jake rose, picked up his beer and followed Andrew out towards the garden.
‘They get on well,’ Tom said to Nerissa.
She nodded. ‘Thick as thieves, those two – three if you count Nick.’
‘Count me in what?’ Nick appeared as though mention of his name had summoned him. ‘You’ve started on the beer without me?’ He clutched his chest and staggered back. ‘How could you?’
Laughing, Alex crossed to the fridge and opened it, displaying shelves packed with fresh meat, salads and lots of beer and wine. He retrieved a couple of bottles and popped the tops off before handing one to Nick and the other to Tom. ‘Now are you sure you aren’t having a drink, Nerissa?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll wait for the others to come down.’
‘I’m just going to see how they’re getting on,’ Tom said.
Nerissa tugged off the bright yellow rubber gloves she’d been using to protect her hands and hung them over the tap. ‘I’ll come with you, see if they need a hand with anything.’
They were about halfway up the stairs when the sound of raised voices reached them and a flustered-looking Laurie appeared on the landing. ‘Oh, there you are, I was just coming to find you.’
‘What’s going on?’ Tom took the last few steps two at a time, realising it was Emily he could hear. She sounded distressed.
‘I don’t know.’ Laurie shook her head. ‘Something about a blanket?’
Tom brushed past her, knowing instantly what was wrong as he rushed towards his daughter’s room.
Laurie followed on his heels. ‘We’ve emptied all the boxes, but there wasn’t a blanket in any of them.’
When he entered Emily’s room, Tom registered for a moment how pretty it looked. As well as unpacking everything, Laurie and Sylvia had strung some fairy lights over the bed and added a vase of pink roses to the dressing table. He noted these thoughtful additions in passing as he moved to where Sylvia was trying to calm Emily, who was red-faced and crying. ‘It’s all right,’ he said to the older woman, touching her arm. She looked visibly upset as she stepped back to give him room, and he wondered what Emily might have said to her. He’d deal with that later; first, he had to stop her working herself up into any more of a state. ‘Em?’ He reached for her arms to steady her, but she thrashed away.
‘Where is it?’ The last word reached a high, hysterical note.
‘Shh, it’s all right, calm down.’ Tom put his arms around her, letting her push against him for a few moments before she threw her arms around his waist and started crying for real.
‘It’s gone! What if it went in one of the recycling boxes? I need it, Daddy, you have to find it!’
‘Emily!’ He almost never raised his voice to her and it stopped her instantly in her tracks. When she tried to pull free, he let her step back, holding her shocked gaze. ‘Calm. Down. Okay?’
She paused, then nodded, her chest heaving in little gasps as she tried to catch her breath.
When he was sure she was calm enough to pay attention, he led her over to the side of her bed and sat down. ‘We checked every single one of the boxes before we took them to the recycling centre, remember?’ Both she and Max had been worried about accidentally getting rid of something they wanted to keep so he’d let them double-check everything before it went in the car. He waited until Emily nodded, then continued. ‘We’ve found all sorts of stuff jumbled up in the wrong boxes downstairs. I’m sure it’s been packed away with something else. Can you remember when you last had it?’
She shook her head, sinking down onto the bed next to him. ‘No, I don’t remember packing it.’ A panicked look crossed her eyes and Tom squeezed her hand quickly before she could get herself worked up again.
‘We’ll find it, okay?’ He turned to meet the concerned expressions of the women gathered by the door. ‘The blanket is the one Anna used when she nursed the kids.’
‘Ah.’ Nerissa nodded in understanding, while Sylvia approached them, pulling a folded tissue from her pocket.
‘Don’t fret, darling.’ She handed Emily the tissue before stroking a hand over her hair. ‘We’ll find it for you.’ She glanced at Tom over his daughter’s head. ‘We’ll be fine, you go on.’
Tom left the pair to it and followed Nerissa and Laurie out of the room to where a wide-eyed Max was waiting anxiously on the landing. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. We’ve misplaced Mummy’s blanket somewhere and Em’s a bit worried that we’ve lost it.’
Max frowned. ‘I haven’t got it. I just came to say the last of my boxes is done.’
‘Good lad. Do you want to show me your room?’ Though the matter of the blanket was pressing, he needed to make sure Max didn’t get lost in everything. He was such an easy-going kid it was easy to forget how difficult all the change must be for him too. Five minutes wouldn’t make much difference.
Max grinned and dashed down the hallway. ‘I can see the sea from my window, come and look!’
Tom let Max guide him around the room, hiding a smile as he pulled open the doors to his wardrobe like he was performing a magic trick to reveal the neatly hanging row of clothes. ‘And you’re going to keep it like this, right?’
Max gave him a sheepish grin. ‘I’ll try,’ he promised, though they both knew it was a lie. Max was chronically untidy – always had been. Half his baby pictures were of him covered from head to toe in whatever he was supposed to be eating. As he’d grown, the food had been replaced by mud, grass stains and blood from whatever latest scrape or fall he’d got himself into.
‘Come on, let’s find that blanket and then we can eat. Mr Morgan is doing a barbecue for us and we’re going to have a bit of a moving-in party in the garden.’
Max whooped. ‘Can I have a beer?’
Tom laughed. ‘No, but nice try.’
A quick check with the others confirmed none of them had seen a crocheted blanket when they’d been unpacking, and everyone abandoned what they were doing to take up the search. With most of the boxes unpacked, there weren’t many places left to look, and Tom did his best to quell his worry that perhaps the blanket had indeed made its way into one of the recycling boxes by mistake. While he and Andrew unstacked the boxes piled into the spare room in the surgery so they could be quickly opened and searched, Nerissa stayed in the main house to do a sweep of the rest of the rooms. They’d slit open about half the remaining cartons when she appeared in the corridor holding up a cream-coloured bundle. ‘Is this it?’
‘Oh, thank God!’ Tom abandoned the box he was checking and hurried over to her. ‘You bloody miracle worker. Where did you find it?’
‘It was folded up in the bottom of a box full of DVDs in the lounge.’
Those bloody DVDs. Tom heaved a sigh of relief. ‘Will you take it upstairs for me while we sort out this mess?’
She nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘Never mind the mess,’ Andrew said, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘Go and see to your girl and we’ll get these put away.’ He nodded encouragingly when Tom hesitated. ‘Go on. By the time you come down it’ll all be straight, and we can get on with what we should be doing – celebrating your arrival!’
16
‘I can’t possibly eat another thing,’ Nerissa said as she put her plate on the table next to her and settled back in one of the fold-out beach chairs her brother had brought with him – along with half the contents of both their fridge and freezer given the amazing spread he and Sylvia had laid on.
‘Those might be the best burgers I’ve ever eaten in my life.’ Linda cast a longing glance towards where Andrew still manned the barbecue, as he grilled yet another round of sausages, burgers and home-made chicken and vegetable kebabs.
‘Give it a few minutes and you might find room for another,’ Nerissa said with a grin.
‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly.’ Linda pressed a hand to her stomach as though she had something to hide, when in Nerissa’s opinion she was still a few pounds shy of being a healthy weight. Her skin had lost that awful grey pallor from when Jake had brought her to stay in the Point at least, and her hair shone with vibrant health. She cast another look at the barbecue. ‘Well maybe half a one.’
‘That’s the spirit.’
Nerissa surveyed the happy chaos of the garden. Nick, Jake and Alex had found a football from somewhere and were playing some kind of improvised game with Max and the dog which seemed to involve knocking each other over as much as trying to actually score a goal between the two cushions, which had been spaced apart at the far end of the garden. Plates and half-empty glasses were strewn across the grass, tucked under chairs and stacked on the table, where the remains of the salad accompaniments were congealing in the sun.
A large wasp buzzed past her ear and started hovering around the table, prompting her into action. The last thing she wanted to do was move, but if they didn’t clear up a bit, then they’d be inundated with, not just wasps, but all sorts of other insects attracted by the smell.
‘Oh, here, let me help.’ Linda rose a few seconds after her. ‘It was so nice of you to let me gate-crash the party, it’s the least I can do to help out.’
‘You’re not gate-crashing, Linda, you’re part of the family.’ Nerissa knew it would take time for the other woman to really believe that she was welcome within the ever-expanding family group.
‘Jake said the same thing when he phoned me.’ Linda’s voice was soft, her tone holding a hesitant longing.
‘He was the one who asked me about inviting you,’ Nerissa said, giving Linda a smile of thanks as she lifted a stack of dirty plates from the table. Knowing her son actively wanted her to be part of things lit Linda’s answering smile – as Nerissa had hoped it would.
‘That’s nice.’ She looked across at the raucous game, laughing when she saw Jake stiff-arm Alex so Max could duck between them and steal the ball, which he carried over the goal line with a cheer of triumph. ‘He’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him.’
Nerissa gathered as many glasses as she could between her fingers and led the way into the kitchen. She’d already removed everything from the table in anticipation of the clear-up operation. ‘Put the plates on there for now.’ She nodded towards it as she stacked the glasses on the worktop beside the sink. ‘Let’s get everything in first, and then we can sort it out from there.’
At that moment, Tom appeared in the doorway, a pile of serving bowls in his hands. ‘Where do you want these?’
‘On the table, please.’ Nerissa came over to join him. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’ She was supposed to be looking after things, and it was her family who’d turned up and made all the mess.
Ignoring her comment, Tom studied the half-empty dishes. ‘I reckon anything without mayonnaise looks fine, don’t you? Someone with more sense than me has already put the lids back on the olives and stuff from the deli, so I think most of it can go back in the fridge.’ When Nerissa turned for the door to fetch another load, he stopped her with a gentle hand on her arm. ‘Leave it. Linda and I can bring in the rest while you carry on in here.’
She hesitated. ‘Well. If you don’t mind?’
‘Of course I don’t.’ He gave her a frown. ‘We need to make time to sit down tomorrow and work out exactly what your duties are going to be. I’m very grateful to have your help, but I’m not expecting you to do everything. The kids have always had chores and that’s going to continue – and I’ll pitch in as well. I’m not Malcolm, expecting you to do everything for me.’
Nerissa didn’t get a chance to reply as the kitchen was suddenly full of willing helpers laden with various bits and pieces from the garden, and all her attention was on marshalling them into some sort of order. Mindful of what Tom had said about wanting the children to do their bit, she put Emily in charge of rinsing the plates and stacking the dishwasher, while Laurie sorted out some clean plates just in case anyone else wanted a last burger or kebab. Sylvia took over the task of salvaging what would do for another day and between her and Linda they soon had the table cleared and the food caddy full of the waste. Rather than wait for the dishwasher to run through its cycle, Nerissa washed the glasses by hand, while Tom dried them and set them back on the now-clean table ready for people to help themselves if they wanted another drink.
With perfect timing, the boys appeared at the door, sweaty and unkempt from their exertions. ‘Anything we can do?’ The cherubic grin on Nick’s face said he knew full well they’d waited until everything was finished.
Biting her lip so as not to smile, but goodness it was hard to resist when he was so cheeky and charming, Nerissa tugged off her rubber gloves before turning to face them properly. ‘I was just saying to Tom, we might as well get the rest of those boxes emptied while everyone is here. You three can make a start on those while we finish up in here.’ She tilted her head towards the door leading to the surgery and the room still stacked with the rest of Tom’s things.
