The House We Called Home: The magical, laugh out loud summer holiday read from the bestselling Jenny Oliver. Jenny Oliver
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She stood at the cliff edge looking out at the rolling summer surf. The house towering behind her, solid grey stone and slate, bursting pink rhododendrons, white garden furniture that needed a paint. The image, like closing your eyes after glancing at the sun, almost indelible on her retina, beams of light dancing in the dark.
Out ahead, mountains of cloud hovered on the horizon, a windsurfer made painful progress in the non-existent breeze while paddleboarders cruised on water that glistened like a million jumping fish.
Moira balled up her fists. Tight so she could feel her nails in her palms. If she could she would have rattled them like a child throwing a tantrum. If she could she would have screwed her eyes shut and stamped her foot and shouted down at the bloody picture-perfect view, ‘Graham Whitethorn, you goddamn pain in the arse.’
But she couldn’t. Because from inside the hoody of the teenage boy standing beside her she could just glimpse big worried eyes, and see the wipe of snot on his frayed baggy cuffs.
So, instead she took a deep invigorating breath of salty sea air, pushed her hair from her face, and said, ‘Come on then, Sonny. Let’s make some breakfast and call your mother. Tell her what silly old Grandpa’s done.’
They turned back towards the house. The beautiful house. The image on her retina fitting the outline exactly.
‘What do you mean he’s gone missing?’ Stella frowned into her phone, then almost without thinking pointed out of the car window and said to her seven-year-old, ‘Look, Rosie – Stonehenge.’
‘Missing…?’ Jack, her husband, mouthed from the driver’s seat.
Stella made a face, unsure.
Behind her, little Rosie had no interest in Stonehenge, deeply imbedded in YouTube on the iPad, happily powering through their 4G data with her gem-studded headphones on. Usually Stella would have clicked her fingers to get Rosie’s attention and pointed out of the window again to make sure she didn’t miss the view, but the phone call from her mother trumped any tourist attraction. ‘I don’t understand, Mum,’ Stella said. ‘How can Dad be missing? Where is he?’
Jack was frowning. Traffic was backing up from the roundabout up ahead.
‘Well darling, that’s what we don’t know,’ said her mother, her voice tinny over the phone.
Stella felt strangely out of control. Thoughts popped into her head that she wouldn’t have expected.
She and her father did not get along well. They barely talked. Hadn’t for years. Past anger had morphed into silence, and silence into habit – the threads tethered firmly in place, calcifying solid with stubbornness and СКАЧАТЬ