The Saturday Place (eBook)

PROLOGUE

I stand in front of a wide-open landscape with endless miles of golden sand. The landscape is dotted with only a few people ahead of us, or perhaps it feels that way because Holkham beach is so vast and unspoilt. The sun is out. It’s a warm July day. Jamie reaches for my hand, looks at me as if to say, ‘I told you it was beautiful.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ I confirm for him, as we walk towards the sea, carrying our swimming towels. The tide is out, the sea tempting us from a distance, like a gift waiting to be unwrapped. That’s if I’m brave enough. I told Jamie I’d be just as happy paddling and watching him swim.

‘They liked me, didn’t they?’ Jamie and I have been dating for six months and this weekend we travelled to his family home in Norfolk, where I met his parents for the first time.

‘They thought you were all right.’ He gives me a sideways glance.

I hit his arm playfully, before placing my hand back into his.

‘Holly, they loved you. Mind you, I knew they would.’

I smile with him, because deep down I know it went well too. Jamie’s mum exuded warmth from the moment I met her, saying how much she’d heard about me, and not to call her Mrs Roberts. ‘Please, it’s Pam,’ she’d insisted, leading me into their kitchen which smelt of freshly baked bread and coffee. After lunch she showed me around their home and garden, pointing out her new vegetable plot, telling me with great eagerness that we could pick some runner beans for supper. Jamie’s father was more reserved, but kind. I sensed he felt protective. Jamie married young, aged 23. They were childhood sweethearts, but after four years, without any warning, she packed her bags and left him for another man. I imagined his parents picked up the pieces of his broken heart. Like Jamie, his dad is a creative soul. Before retiring, he was a senior director at an insurance firm, a job he endured, but now he spends his time doing what he loves, writing, and has just had his first novel published. ‘Goes to show, it’s never too late,’ he’d said to us over dinner.

‘It’s about all our friends,’ Pam whispered, as if they were sitting round the table with us. ‘They’ll probably never speak to us again.’

Jamie teased me in bed the other night, saying I didn’t need to read Dad’s book before the weekend, he wasn’t going to quiz me on the characters. But that’s me. Always like to be prepared. ‘And please don’t read the sex scene.’ Jamie had shuddered.

‘You could learn a few tips from him,’ I said, before Jamie grabbed the book from my hand and tossed it on to the floor, both of us laughing as he said, ‘It’s too weird to think Dad wrote that, and even weirder if you read it.’

While we’ve been together only for six months, I know this man is my future. I sensed it the first time we met in Milla’s kitchen. Camilla, known to close family and friends as Milla, is one of my oldest school friends, and she’d commissioned Jamie to redesign her kitchen. He’d been recommended to her by one of her doctor friends, whom I will forever be indebted to.

I have a sudden vivid memory of the day we met. It was a Saturday morning. On Friday night, Milla and I had stayed out late, drinking and dancing, something we often did when her husband was away. Milla loved to let her hair down after being in hospital all week; I loved to let my hair down after enduring my boss, Clarissa Pope. I crashed over at hers, only to be rudely awoken the following morning by Milla rushing into my bedroom, saying ‘Fuck! Kitchen man! Hot! Get up!’

Ten minutes later I joined Milla and Jamie downstairs. They were sitting at the kitchen table, looking at samples of wood laid out on the floor. It was far too early to care about wood samples, I thought, until I saw his face. It was a face that made me wish I’d at least brushed my teeth. He had the most natural smile that reached his eyes. He had a manner that put people at ease. ‘Holly, this is Jamie,’ Milla said. I can still remember exactly what he was wearing: a loose-fitting pale pink shirt, sleeves rolled up, dark jeans and I noticed a worn leather braided bracelet around his tanned wrist. When he stood up to shake my hand, I liked how tall he was, at least six-foot. Already I was imagining we’d make a good fit, my hand in his.

As I glance at him now, I think it’s too good to be true, and that any moment I’ll wake up and discover it’s all been a dream. Yet I don’t wake up. Here I am. I squeeze Jamie’s hand to make sure he’s real.

It became even clearer that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him a month ago, after he survived a weekend with my parents. I was wary about him meeting Mum. I didn’t want our relationship to end overnight. Don’t get me wrong, I love Mum, but she fusses and frets about everything and subtlety has never been a strong point. The moment I hinted I may have met someone special she was planning her wedding outfit. She rolled the red carpet out for Jamie’s visit; anyone would have thought he was royalty. Everything had to be perfect. The house was immaculately tidy and she’d bought enough food to feed an army. I understand why she went to such lengths, despite Dad and me telling her she needs to relax, play it cool, but that’s like asking her not to breathe. I’m her only child so she pins all her hopes and dreams on me. She is itching to make baby booties and cardies for her grandkids. I’d warned Jamie that she can be ‘a bit much’, followed by a promise I wouldn’t turn into her, but, as always, he took it in his stride. When I saw him indulging her with yet another old family photograph album, an image of me, naked in the paddling pool, making both Mum and Dad laugh by saying I hadn’t changed at all – that’s when I knew that one day, we’d have our own family photograph album.

‘It’s quiet here, peaceful,’ I reflect.

‘I never tire of this view. When I die, I want my ashes scattered here.’

‘Stop it,’ I say, alarmed by his matter-of-factness.

‘I mean it. When I go.’

‘Don’t you dare.’

‘I want to rest here.’

‘Jamie, stop being so morbid,’ I say, not wanting to focus on his death when we have our whole life ahead of us, a life we’ve barely begun.

He turns to me, totally unfazed. ‘Promise me, Holly.’

I realise he’s being deadly serious. ‘If I promise, can we change the subject?’

‘I don’t know why we fear death.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s the one and only certainty we have in life.’

‘I know, but you’re thirty-one.’

‘If we talked about it, it wouldn’t be as frightening. This is my home, Holly, the beach I grew up on, so all I’m saying is when I eventually go, I want my ashes scattered in the sea.’

I nod, realising I need to grow up. ‘OK. I promise.’ I can’t help adding, ‘But please don’t go any time soon. I’m kind of enjoying having you around.’

‘Don’t worry. I have no intention of going anywhere just yet.’

We walk past a couple flying a kite, fairly unsuccessfully since there is no breeze to speak of. It’s Sunday afternoon and a few families are having picnics, an elderly couple are walking their two dogs, and yet no one has to share a patch of their sand. The sand here seems as infinite as the blue sky above. We watch a toddler, still in nappies, on her hands and knees playing in the sludgy brown mud. Before reaching the sea, there are pools of water to paddle in, but this child wants to do more than get her feet wet. She’s on a mission to get her pretty smocked dress dirty and thankfully her mother doesn’t seem anything like my own, positively encouraging her to have fun. I mean, what are washing machines for?

Whenever I see parents playing with their children, I long to be a mum. This feeling, this need in me, is strong. Milla doesn’t get it. She can’t think of anything worse than nappies and broken sleep. Yet, for me, the longing is visceral, and it’s only grown stronger since meeting Jamie. I crave a child that is a part of both of us. Both Jamie and I are only children, and while that has had its advantages, we’ve also missed being part of a larger family. Jamie once told me he fantasised about having a younger brother or sister, someone he could boss around. He also knows how I longed for a sister, and that it’s my fantasy to have a little girl.

‘One day, we’ll come here, with our baby girl,’ Jamie says, as if reading my mind. ‘Even if that means we have to have forty boys before we have our girl, so be it.’

‘I’d rather we have one girl, straight off, not forty boys.’

He smiles back at me, sheepish. ‘So would I. So would our bank manager. So would the environment. But you get my drift.’

‘I get your drift. We could have a boy too,’ I suggest, ‘a younger brother.’

‘Yeah. I can see them now, in the back of the car, squabbling and driving us mad.’

‘They’ll keep...