Summer at 23 the Strand: A gorgeously feel-good holiday read!. Linda Mitchelmore

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      ‘Give or take a second,’ Jack quipped. ‘The kettle’s on. Or shall we celebrate your return with a pre-lunch glass of wine? Seeing as we’re on holiday?’

      ‘Wine. Please,’ Cally said. On impulse she kissed Jack on the lips, just a swift kiss, the way she kissed the boys, but it conveyed how much she loved him, or she hoped it did. ‘I’ll just get out of these sodden things.’

      The shower was warm rather than hot, and hardly a power shower, but it helped revive Cally. She roughly rinsed her hair too. Towelled herself dry as best she could in the cramped space.

      ‘Jack! Could you pass me my dressing gown?’ she yelled, opening the door of the bathroom a tad. ‘I’ll dress in our bedroom.’

      Jack was back in seconds, just as the towel Cally had wrapped around her still slightly damp body slid to the floor.

      ‘Pity the boys are here,’ Jack said. ‘I could ravage you.’

      He reached out a hand and the ends of his fingers caught Cally’s left breast. She flinched. Wrapped both arms around herself protectively.

      ‘Cally?’ Jack said, fear in his eyes. ‘What’s wrong? Is there someone else?’

      ‘Of course not.’

      ‘I’m not sure I believe that.’

      ‘You must.’

      ‘Must I? You’ve never recoiled from me before…’

      ‘I know. I’m sorry. It’s me. I’ve got something I need to tell you and I don’t know how to do it. Or when. But right now I’m freezing.’ She held out her hands for the fleecy dressing gown with roses on it that she’d got in a charity shop – it was rather less than fashionable but it was warm and strangely comforting. And she needed comforting now. ‘And I will tell you but I don’t want it to be in front of the boys. Soon, I’ll tell you soon. Jack, I love you. Perhaps more now than when I married you. There is no other man for me and there never will be. Can you hang on to that?’

      ‘Strange compliment,’ Jack said, but he gave Cally the lopsided grin she so loved, the one that gave her butterflies in her tummy – the one that told her Jack loved her just as much as she did him. ‘But I’ll take it.’

      Cally and Jack took the boys on a boat trip that afternoon.

      ‘I can hardly believe it’s the same month, never mind the same day,’ Cally said. ‘It’s so warm now compared to this morning.’ Just a few short hours ago she’d been trying to settle her demons, getting herself soaking wet in the progress, and now here they were, almost back to how they’d been – her and Jack – before she’d found the lump.

      ‘We’re opportunists, that’s what we are,’ Jack said. He leaned towards Cally and kissed her cheek. ‘Got the boat almost to ourselves as well.’

      ‘Well, it is early in the season. Still May. There’ll be more people around next month, I expect.’

      ‘Are there whales?’ Noah asked. ‘The man said.’

      ‘He did, didn’t he?’ Cally said.

      The man who’d sold them the tickets at the kiosk had said they were a bit late coming out to see the dolphins because they liked to feed in the mornings off Berry Head. Then he’d said a whale had been spotted in the bay the previous summer. A few lucky holidaymakers had seen it from his very own boat and had photos to prove it. Gosh, how exciting that would be, to see a whale. They’d come back.

       Gosh, the first positive thought about the future since I’ve been here.

      ‘Can I see? Can I have a whale for a pet? I’ll help look after it. It could live in the bath.’ Noah was pink-cheeked with excitement at the thought.

      ‘I want to see a whale,’ Riley said. He slid from the seat and was at the rail in a nanosecond before Jack reacted and leapt up to grab him. ‘A big whale.’

      ‘Maybe a goldfish,’ Jack said, scooping his youngest son into his arms and carrying him back to the wooden bench where Cally and Noah sat.

      ‘Two goldfish,’ Noah said. ‘One for Riley and one for me.’

      ‘Two it is then,’ Jack said.

      And there it was – Jack’s first sign of acceptance that, perhaps, his boys needed pets in their lives.

      ‘We’ll go to the pet shop as soon as we get home and buy a big tank and some weed for them to hide in,’ Cally said.

       Goodness, the second positive thought in such a short space of time.

      ‘We’re going to look for whales!’ Noah announced. ‘Come on, Riley!’

      He grabbed his little brother’s hand and they went over to scramble up onto a large, varnished, wooden box in the middle of the boat. They were safe there, sitting with their legs dangling, feet from the deck, but clinging on to one another.

      ‘Do you miss the computer?’ Jack asked suddenly.

      ‘Why?’ Cally asked, sharply, her little bubble of happiness deflating a little. How quickly moods, and thoughts, could change.

      ‘Well, you’re on it a lot at home and you haven’t got access here.’

      ‘I’m not on it a lot,’ Cally said, knowing just how defensive she was sounding. ‘Just half an hour or so while you read to the boys and settle them for the night. Facebook mostly, seeing what old school friends are up to.’

      ‘Not everyone is as they seem on chat sites or Facebook,’ Jack said, immediately planting a seed of doubt in Cally’s mind that maybe Tony, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, might fit into that category, although Cally was fairly certain he didn’t. ‘And any information you might Google is only as accurate as however knowledgeable the person who put it there is.’

      ‘I didn’t know that,’ Cally said.

      ‘Well, you do now. I’ve looked up things about engineering when I’ve been at work and on more than a few occasions the info has been utter tosh.’

      ‘Oh,’ Cally said. How naïve of her to have accepted everything she might have looked at as being one hundred per cent the truth – if what Jack was saying was true.

      ‘And emails,’ Jack carried on. ‘I’ve noticed you get more of those than you used to.’

      Cally and Jack used the same computer at home but it was a golden rule that neither tried to access the other’s emails. Cally knew Jack’s password in case there was ever an emergency and she needed to be able to contact his bosses, and he knew hers, but that’s all it was, a safety net. Wasn’t it?

      ‘Have you been spying on me?’ Part of her hoped he had and that he had seen her browsing history and would ask why she was looking at cancer sites, and then it would open the conversation she knew they must have.

      ‘I’ve not used your password to look, no. I’d never stoop that low. I like to think we’ve got a better, СКАЧАТЬ