Page 14 of Letting Go of Yesterday
There were hourly boat trips from the harbour between 10a.m. and 4p.m. in the school holidays, and they’d booked the last slot of the day, but it was still so warm that all ten of the children had to be slathered in sun cream, much to their disgust.
‘Mum, I can do it myself. You’re so embarrassing.’ Bella rolled her eyes so hard she was in danger of doing herself an injury.
‘I just want to make sure it’s on the back of your neck and your ears, they’re the worst places for getting burned.’ Rowan ignored her daughter’s heavy sigh and turned to Bella’s friend. ‘You’ll need some too, Tiffany. I promised your mum I’d make sure you were very well looked after. She trusted me to take you on a boat trip and keep you safe, so I don’t want to let her down.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Bellamy.’ Tiffany gave her a wide grin. ‘And I don’t mind how much sun cream I have to have put on. I don’t want to get skin cancer. My grandad had it and now the top of his ear is missing because the doctors had to cut it off. Gross!’
Bella widened her eyes and took the bottle of sun cream from her mother. ‘Okay, okay. I can put it on Tiff and she can put it on me. We’re not babies.’
‘No, you’re not.’ Rowan breathed out. Her daughter sounded more like a woman than a girl far too often just lately, and there was no denying that she was growing up. She’d seen the way Bella looked at Henry, Bex’s eldest son, who was twelve and just about to start in Year 8 at secondary school. Bella and Tiffany kept glancing none too subtly in his direction, before giggling and laughing. It probably wouldn’t be long before boys would be on her daughter’s radar in a far more significant way, and the thought terrified Rowan. It wasn’t just the idea of her daughter having a boyfriend eventually, it was the prospect that one day her little girl’s heart might get broken, just like hers had been, and she couldn’t bear the thought of that. Sometimes she worried about what she might be capable of if anyone hurt either of her children in that way.
‘Oh.’ Bella widened her eyes again, clearly shocked that her mother had acknowledged the fact she was growing up. ‘So does that mean we can sit over there, by ourselves?’
She gestured towards a bench on one side of the boat, only big enough to seat Bella and Tiffany. Everyone was wearing a life jacket, and they’d only be about ten feet away from where Rowan and the rest of their group were sitting, so they’d be perfectly safe. Even so, there had to be some ground rules. ‘Okay, but you need to stay sitting down. Don’t lean over the edge, or start doing anything silly like playfighting.’
‘We’re not at school today, so you don’t have to act like our teacher.’ Bella rolled her eyes again, but Rowan decided not to come down too hard on her in front of her new friend. It was a tough balance when she would be Tiffany’s headteacher in a few days’ time, not just her friend’s mum, but there’d been so much for Bella to adjust to recently and just this once she’d cut her a bit of slack.
‘Okay deal, I won’t act like a headteacher if you don’t act like schoolchildren.’
‘We’re just going to sit down and take selfies. Tiff’s got a really cool phone.’ Bella gave Rowan a pointed look. She knew mobile phones were off the cards until she started at Three Ports High School in a year’s time and had to get the bus there. Until then she had no need of a mobile, and the thought of the world that would open up for Bella terrified Rowan even more. Tiffany’s parents had made a different decision, but that wouldn’t change Rowan’s mind, no matter how much Bella might complain about how unfair it was.
‘As long as none of the pictures of you are posted online.’ Rowan knew she’d failed in her attempt not to embarrass her daughter, even before Bella’s cheeks coloured, but some things had to be said.
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Bellamy. I’m not allowed to have any social media accounts yet; you know what mums are like.’ Tiffany shrugged and Rowan had to suppress the urge to laugh. It wasn’t just her daughter who was ten going on thirty.
‘I do indeed. Just have fun and stay safe, that’s the only thing your mum and your headteacher wants.’ She dropped a wink and turned back towards where the rest of the group were sitting along two benches at the back of the boat. Anna and Toni’s children were younger than the others and still revelled in sitting close to their mothers, causing Rowan a mixture of envy and regret when she looked at them. Those early years with the kids had felt challenging in lots of ways, but they’d gone by so fast and she missed them now more than she’d ever have believed possible.
Bex’s three boys had arrived in the space of four years and she seemed to spend most of her time refereeing a never-ending wrestling match between the younger two, who were eight and nine. She’d already admitted to Rowan that she came into work for a rest. Her older son, Henry, was glued to something on his phone, occasionally glancing up and giving one of his brothers a sharp elbow in the ribs when their playfighting encroached on his personal space. Theo was only a year younger than Bex’s third son, but it might as well have been a decade, given the differences in their personalities. Theo was quiet and thoughtful, even more so since the break-up of his parents’ marriage, and it hurt Rowan’s heart to look at him now, sitting on his own away from the others. She would have liked to cuddle Theo, snuggling him into her side the way that Toni and Anna were doing with their children, but he wouldn’t appreciate that.
Theo desperately wanted to fit in, she could see it when she caught him watching other children. He was doing it now, taking in the rough play between Ollie and Tom. But he’d never take the initiative to get involved, or ask if he could join in with their ‘game’. He was too frightened of rejection and it made her want to wrap him up in cotton wool all the more, or step in on his behalf and ask if he could play, which would have made things ten times worse. Your mum being the headteacher was bad enough, she couldn’t become one of those mothers who interfered in other children’s games and insisted that her son be included. She had to step back and trust that Theo would find his place before too long, and try not to let her heart ache for him in the meantime. At least he’d have Leo when he started school next week. It would be lovely if they became good friends and easier because she already knew Nathan. Even as the thought entered her head she wondered if that really would make things easier, because she had a funny feeling Nathan had the potential to complicate everything.
‘Okay, sweetheart?’ Rowan sat down next to her son and he nodded slowly, as the boat chugged out of the confines of the harbour and past the rows of cottages and shops that flanked it on both sides. There wasn’t even a wisp of cloud to break up the endless blue of the sky, and the colour of the sea changed from turquoise to teal as the boat moved into deeper water.
‘Do you think we might really see some seals?’ Theo turned to look at her, his eyes shining with excitement.
‘The captain said there was a good chance, so we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed.’
‘Dad really likes sea animals; he’d love to see a seal.’ Theo’s eyes were still shining, but his mouth had turned at the corners, as if excitement had given way to sadness, and she wanted to hug him all the more.
‘He would, darling.’ She squeezed his hand, not caring if her son thought it was deeply uncool, but he didn’t snatch it away. ‘How about I give you my phone if we see any seals, then you can take lots of photos and send them to Dad later on?’
‘Okay.’ Theo gave her a watery smile and slowly withdrew his hand, shooting a sideways glance towards Ollie and Tom, who were too busy jostling one another to notice. Bex had just sent them to a bench further up the boat, on the opposite side of the wheelhouse from where Bella and Tiffany were sitting. They were close enough for her to be able to see them, as Ollie desperately tried to get Tom in a headlock, but there was no longer any risk of them catching one of the younger children in the crossfire. Henry was now wearing ear pods, still engrossed in his phone and oblivious to the whole world around him.
‘Tom and Ollie are exhausting. I barely get a word out of Henry these days, but I’m almost looking forward to when they’re more interested in their phones than anything else.’ Bex looked as if she was ready to have a lie down in a dark room. ‘I shouldn’t have had them so close together. I was talking to Irene Lark about it and she reckons it’s harder work than having real twins, because they’re at slightly different stages and need different things.’
‘Anna might have something to say on that subject.’ Toni grinned. Her own children were close in age too, but Anna was the only one to have experienced the challenge of raising twins.
‘It’s not a competition.’ Anna smiled. ‘But I think Irene might be right. Kit and Merryn have always entertained one another, in their own little way. Still, if the Lark boys are anything to go by, Ollie and Tom will be really close when they grow up.’
‘As long as one of them doesn’t turn to crime.’ Bex laughed, but then she shook her head, suddenly looking contrite. ‘God, that was horrible of me. Nathan’s lovely and I can’t believe he’d have done it for his own benefit. It might even have been a mistake, you hear about it all the time, don’t you? People who’ve made a genuine error being made an example of by the courts, while the real criminals go free. It probably wasn’t even investigated properly.’
‘Hark at Miss Marple over there!’ It was Toni’s turn to laugh. ‘Although you’re right that Nathan doesn’t seem the type to do something like that. Whatever the truth, he paid his debt, in both senses of the word.’
‘He did.’ Bex glanced at Henry to make sure he was still engrossed in his phone. ‘Irene told me that after he sold his house and paid off the fine, he insisted that the money that was left over be used to convert the house so that she had a self-contained annex, and the rest was accessible for Leo. Meanwhile, he’s trying to convert an old barn on a shoestring budget. Those don’t sound like the actions of a man who committed fraud for his own gain. I’d have loved to have a sibling who was as selfless as that, instead of one who puts herself first, last and everywhere.’
‘I thought we’d agreed never to mention Briony’s name.’ Toni raised her eyebrows, but Rowan couldn’t let the comment pass. When she’d asked Bex how her sister was, she’d got an evasive answer and, now she thought about it, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen any mention of Bex’s younger sister on any of her social media accounts.
‘Why aren’t we mentioning Briony’s name?’
