Page 39 of The Summer Swap

“And you couldn’t figure out what you needed, because all you were hearing was what they needed. So you came to the Cape.” Cecilia nodded. “Smart move.”

“Was it?” Lily slumped in the chair. “I wanted to prove to them that they didn’t need to worry, that I’m going to be fine, but the truth is I can barely afford to live on what I earn and I don’t see that changing. I’m not qualified to do anything although it turns out I’m great at clearing up after other people. My father wants me to try and go back to medicine. If they’ll have me.”

Cecilia was listening closely. “They do seem persistent. I assume you’re not contemplating returning to a life you knew was wrong for you?”

“No.” The thought of it made her stomach knot with panic. “But I hate the fact that I’m causing my parents so much anxiety and disappointment.”

Cecilia nodded and her smile was faint. “I remember when I came here—I would have been younger than you—my parents were horrified.”

“You dropped out of college, too?”

“No. I graduated, but then instead of finding a job I came to the Cape to paint. In those days we didn’t have so many instantly available forms of communication, although I swear I could feel their worry and disapproval floating in on the breeze every day.”

“But you didn’t change your mind.”

“No. Because the choice was between disappointing them and disappointing myself. I thought the first would be easier to live with.” She paused. “You can’t live your life for your parents, no matter how much you love them. You have to make your own choices. And a person should surely have control over how they live their own life.”

“You make it sound so reasonable.” And suddenly she felt a little less guilty. A little lighter. This was her life. She had a right to make her own decisions. And if she made mistakes, then they were her mistakes.

“You’ve swapped their dream for yours, your old life with a new life,” Cecilia said. “Now you need to make it work. Give yourself time. Experiment a little. Don’t make any decisions in a hurry. For what it’s worth, I think you’ve done the right thing, coming here.”

She thought so, too. This place had been nothing but good for her.

Because of Cecilia, Lily felt better than she had in a long time.

“Thank you for letting me stay,” she said. “It’s generous of you.”

She could stay in the cottage and there would be no more worrying that she might be found out. No more feeling uncomfortable that she was trespassing.

Finally, she could properly relax.

And as no one else in the Lapthorne family knew the cottage existed, there was no chance of them turning up. The probability of awkward encounters was zero.

9

Kristen

Kristen stood in her kitchen, staring at the potato salad.

She hated funerals. The concentration of grief was oppressive and the finality of it disturbed her. She was an optimist. She liked to tell herself that everything would be all right in the end, but a funeral was proof that things weren’t always all right in the end and that happy endings were randomly allocated and far from assured.

Today was Michael’s funeral. He was dead, and no amount of positive thinking or manifesting was going to bring him back.

She kept trying to remember him in happier times. On their wedding day, mortified because he’d left the ring in the pocket of his other suit. Hannah’s first birthday party. A Christmas they’d spent together where they’d been snowed in. But nothing deleted the image of Michael, broken, being dragged from a mangled wreck of a car. It was stuck in her head, a macabre video playing on a loop, and she hadn’t even been there.

Theo had been there, and Theo seemed as broken as Michael. He’d held it together on the night of the party but had then seemed to unravel. He hadn’t been to work since it happened, and Kristen had been too worried about him to leave his side. It had been over a week now and during the day all he did was wander aimlessly round the house and garden. Occasionally she’d woken in the night and found him staring at the ceiling.

She’d reached for his hand, trying to hold him back from the edge of the dark pit that was threatening to swallow him up.

She’d spent years wishing they could spend more time together and just when she’d given up and tried to find a cure for her loneliness elsewhere, she now had her husband with her day and night.

Except he wasn’t really “with” her. He was somewhere else. He was lost.

Remembering how she’d felt when her father had died, Kristen had given him the support she would have liked. She’d held him when the sadness overwhelmed him, she’d made him hot drinks and hot meals and encouraged him to go for walks and stay healthy. She’d listened when he wanted to talk but hadn’t pushed him when he preferred to stay silent.

Everything she did signaled the same thing. I’m here for you.

She tried to ignore the tiny part of her brain that kept reminding her that he hadn’t been there for her when her father had died (there had been other occasions in their marriage when he hadn’t been there for her, either, but the death of her father had been the hardest to handle), that he hadn’t once asked her what she’d needed.

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