The House We Called Home: The magical, laugh out loud summer holiday read from the bestselling Jenny Oliver

‘I am not having an abortion.’ Her phone had rung as she’d spat out the words. ‘Oh, hi Mum!’

Then her already trembling bottom lip had gone into full-blown wobble as her mother told her about her dad going missing. Meanwhile Gus was pacing the tiny, hot hallway, rolling his hands as if hurrying her to wrap the conversation up so they could get back to more important matters.

‘I have to go,’ she said to Gus as soon as she’d hung up.

‘Oh no you don’t. We have things to discuss.’

‘Well I have to go home.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘It’s in Cornwall.’

‘I won’t come with you.’

‘Good.’ Amy had stormed out of the dark poky little flat onto the high street, taking in deep breaths of warm sunshine air and traffic fumes. She made her mind up she would never ever see Gus again. Good riddance. She’d block him on any dating app or social media if he tried to contact her.

‘Wait!’

She paused. Turned. Deflated at the sight of Gus jogging lankily towards her in his stupid bright green shorts and old Levi’s T-shirt. ‘What?’ she snapped.

‘I’m coming with you.’

‘No.’

‘Yes!’ he said. She now noticed the bag slung over his shoulder. He narrowed his eyes. ‘You can’t just turn up, tell me you’re pregnant and then leave.’

‘I can.’

‘And what if you decide not to come back. I know nothing about where you live. How would I find you?’

Amy shook out her hair, stood with her hands on her hips. ‘I will come back,’ she said, haughty expression on her face, internally glossing over the fact that permanently avoiding Gus had been her very intention.

‘I don’t trust you.’

‘That’s not very nice.’

Gus laughed, incredulous. ‘You gave me a fake number the night we went out.’

Amy paused. ‘You rang me?’ she asked, unable to help feeling a little smug.

‘No,’ Gus scoffed. ‘I just know how many digits are in a phone number. You don’t, clearly.’

Amy swung round, incensed, and started to stomp away. To her annoyance he followed her a few paces behind all the way. No matter how many times she stopped and tried to plead with him to go home. He sat opposite her on the tube. Made himself at home at her kitchen table as she packed. Walked beside her in the smoggy heat to get the Hammersmith and City line to Paddington. ‘Please go away,’ she said as the train pulled in. ‘Please?’

‘No chance.’

‘You don’t even want the baby.’

‘No, I don’t want the baby. But I don’t want you to have said baby and me not know.’

Amy screwed her eyes tight. ‘You’re muddling me.’

‘Well, let’s stop talking then.’

Now, as she sat round the dining room table, Amy took a covert glance at Gus and immediately had to look away with displeasure. He ruined being back here. The sight of him brought her previous life into stark relief: the parallel path when she would have run into the house shouting that she was pregnant at the top of her voice, grinning gorgeous husband by her side holding their clasped hands aloft in triumph. A path long gone.

She had to swallow down a rise of sadness. Close her eyes for a second and think of a really complicated times table – her grief counsellor’s tip that had done wonders for her maths. When she opened them she was looking down at her T-shirt, at the three little monkey emojis – eyes, ears and lips covered – and knew how they felt.

Moira had got the laptop out and was waiting for it to crank to life. Gus next to her was wide-eyed at how old and slow it was. When finally the NatWest page loaded, Moira clearly didn’t have a clue what to do.

‘Here, do you want me to do it?’ Gus asked, unable to stop himself. Pained by the slowness, he angled the laptop towards himself.

‘Oh Gus, darling, yes please,’ Moira said, relieved.

Amy winced. She didn’t want Gus to speak. If he was going to be here she wanted him to sit mute. She watched as he keyed in the passwords. Under the table Stella bashed Amy’s leg again, clearly trying to get her attention as Gus and Moira were distracted with the website. But Amy stayed resolutely looking away.

Out of the window the sun had spread pink and orange across the horizon, a bonfire of light that made the room glow amber.

Oh, why wasn’t her dad here? Amy wanted him sitting on that seat on the sofa so she could curl up next to him, her feet tucked under the furthest cushion, his arm around her as they drank tea and he watched the snooker while she put her headphones on and caught up with all her favourite YouTubers. She had prayed he might be back home by the time she and Gus arrived. And that perhaps he would stand at his full six foot two height – her vision of him more from when they were kids, strapping, scary, and heroic rather than in his old Edinburgh Woollen Mill cardigan and slippers – beckon Gus to one side, pull out his chequebook and say, ‘Come on then, how much will it take for you to disappear?’

Her fantasy was interrupted by a loud gasp from Moira.

Amy glanced across.

Her mother was peering close to the screen where Gus was pointing at a withdrawal.

‘A thousand pounds?’ Moira said, outraged. ‘What the bloody hell does he need a thousand pounds for?’

Gus cleared his throat, clearly a little unsure about whether it was a rhetorical question or whether she was in fact looking to him for an answer. ‘It’s … er … most likely so he doesn’t have to take any more out, the bank would be able to tell you where he was if he did.’

‘Oh.’ Moira sat back in her chair, only slightly mollified. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ She crossed her arms and legs, and added sourly, ‘I didn’t know Graham was so forward-thinking.’

‘Mum!’ Amy’s voice was a little harsher than she’d intended, but she felt like her mother was being far too cold about the whole thing. ‘Why are you not more worried about all this? He’s missing. Dad’s missing!’ she said, looking accusingly round the table. She had envisaged a lot more drama, more police popping round, more notices taped to lampposts and front page head shots in the local paper.

‘Yes, with a thousand pounds of our money!’ Moira said. ‘I am worried, Amy,’ she added, more because it was what was expected of her than with real emotion, ‘but he’s a grown man with enough money to get by and a phone if he needs any help.’ Then Moira paused, as if she’d had a brainwave. ‘His phone. He was on his phone a lot more, wasn’t he Sonny? You taught him all that fancy stuff with that Instabook.’

‘Instagram,’ mumbled Sonny.

They all turned to where Sonny was slumped at the end of the table on his phone.

‘He speaks!’ said Amy.

Sonny glanced up and when he caught Amy’s eye she winked at him. He blushed and half-smiled beneath his mop of hair.

Amy thought Sonny was great. He styled himself like a little grungy One Direction, which made him even more sulkily adorable. He wound Stella round the bend. She remembered last Christmas Eve, the house pre-open-plan all garlanded and twinkling. The huge tree by the fireplace tied with red bows and gold baubles, the fire crackling. The heavy curtains blocking out the drizzle that should have been snow. The waves thundering on the beach. Amy had sat helping Stella wrap all the kids’ Christmas presents, both of them a bit pissed on the Aldi Prosecco their mother had rushed out to buy in bulk after it got voted Top Tipple in the Daily Mail: ‘I’ve never been in an Aldi before. It’s quite something.’

Earlier Sonny had got a bollocking for pressing Rosie to explain why she thought some of her friends at school got more Christmas presents than her – especially the ones she didn’t like. Was it because Santa preferred them to her?

‘He’s just such a pain,’ Stella had said as she curled ribbon with scissors. ‘I’m like, “She’s six years younger than you! Stop being so mean to her!”’

‘I think you said stuff like that to me when we were younger,’ said Amy.

‘I did not,’ Stella gasped with affront.

‘You did. You told me that Jackie down the road had seen her dad scoffing the mince pie and sherry for Santa, and signing the card she’d left out.’

Stella snorted into her Prosecco glass.

Amy raised her brows. ‘Yeah? Remember? You’re basically just the same as him.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Stella. ‘God, I would never have got away with half the stuff he does. Dad would have throttled me.’

Amy had been unable to disagree. If the analogy was right then Amy was the equivalent of little Rosie. Dancing through life unencumbered. Her only discontent coming from the fact she had been almost invisible to their father for the first fourteen years of her life. But that had been more than made up for by being completely doted on by her mother. And her dad had been pretty terrifying so being overlooked had often felt like a blessing. But then Stella had left – her dad erasing practically all trace of her – and Amy had got them both. Her dad subdued, like a tranquillised lion, a soft cushion for his youngest daughter to curl up into.

Now, as Amy looked across at sullen little Sonny, she felt a bit sorry for him – all eyes on him as they wanted to find out more about Grandpa’s sudden interest in Instagram.

‘I thought he hated his phone?’ Stella said.

Sonny shrugged. Then when he realised that wasn’t going to be enough he said, ‘He really liked Instagram.’

‘Why didn’t you say this before?’ Stella asked.

‘You didn’t ask.’ Sonny glared at her.

‘Instagram?’ Amy leant forward, deflecting from the motherson bickering. She smiled, this being the first positive thing she’d heard about her dad since he’d disappeared. ‘Did he post anything ever?’

Sonny shook his head. ‘No, never. He followed everyone, though.’

Around the table phones came out.

‘Even me?’ Rosie piped up.

Sonny nodded. ‘He’s Neptune013.’

‘I wondered who that was,’ said Jack, who had about fifteen Instagram followers and barely ever posted anything. ‘I thought it was someone who’d followed me by mistake.’

Everyone was scrolling through their list of followers, Amy was quietly satisfied that hers was taking the longest. ‘Here he is,’ she said finally and clicked on the avatar picture of waves on the shore. ‘No followers.’ She looked up. ‘That’s really sad.’

‘I’ve just followed him,’ said Rosie.

‘Me too,’ said Jack.

‘Yep,’ said Stella.

Amy nodded. Pressed Follow.

‘And so have I,’ said Gus, his voice taking Amy by surprise that he was even still at the table. She wanted to tell him to immediately Unfollow. That he had no right to be Following. But she didn’t say anything, just had a really quick skim of her Timeline before putting her phone back down on the table.

Sonny looked quite pleased. ‘He’ll like that.’

Amy glanced across at him. ‘You think?’

‘Maybe,’ Sonny said, a little more noncommittal since revealing a smidge of enthusiasm. He was about to go back to his phone when he mumbled, ‘You could put the fishing lake down as well. On the list.’

‘Fishing?’ said Stella.

Moira shook her head. ‘He hasn’t been fishing in years.’

‘We went.’ Sonny shrugged a shoulder. ‘Last week,’ he added, before flicking his fringe in front of his eyes and burying himself back in his screen.

Amy realised that both she and Stella were watching Sonny. Both of them seeing a relationship that had developed that they didn’t know about. Amy wondered what Stella felt about that: Sonny and their dad.

‘Good, right,’ said Jack, scribbling Instagram down on his pad. ‘OK, so what else did Graham’s day look like?’

Everyone turned to look at the sofa.

Jack tried again. ‘Where did he go when he went out?’ This was not how things worked at his office, Amy thought. At Christmas she remembered him saying that they’d introduced five-minute stand-up meetings at his firm. She’d thought that sounded dreadful, the best thing about a meeting, in her opinion, was the catch-up chat at the beginning and the free croissants.

Stella said, ‘He drinks at the Coach and Horses, doesn’t he, Mum?’

Everyone turned to look at Moira who was cradling her wine glass while looking uncomfortable with all the attention. ‘Yes, I think—Yes.’ She nodded, more committed this time, ‘Yes, on a Friday.’ She said, definite.

Amy wondered what had happened in the months since she’d left. Her mother didn’t seem sure at all what their father had been up to. And what were those jeans she was wearing?

‘OK, what else?’ Jack asked.

Moira seemed to visibly wrack her brain, before saying, ‘He sometimes chatted to the cashier at Londis, I can never remember what her name is.’ Her expression showed she was clutching at straws and to save embarrassment quickly changed the subject by saying, ‘Would anyone like anything else to drink? I might put some crisps out, if anyone’s feeling peckish.’

Amy tugged at her emoji vest, embarrassed for her dad’s life. Embarrassed that this was what Gus was hearing about him. She wanted to go and get the photo albums from the bookshelf or drag him into the upstairs loo where all the trophies were kept and say, look this was him, this was him in his heyday. He was a champion. A star. People used to stop him for autographs.

Gus seemed quite oblivious to any awkwardness, or was doing a good job of hiding it, and said, ‘I wouldn’t say no to another beer.’

‘Oh yeah, me too,’ said Jack.

‘Lovely.’ Moira jumped up to go and get some more bottles from the fridge.

Amy watched Gus, unable to quite accept that this guy sitting calmly drinking Budweiser was going to be related to them all for the rest of his life. She wondered how she would have behaved were the situation reversed. She couldn’t even imagine it. She simply wouldn’t have gone. If his family wanted to meet the baby they’d have to come and meet it. She didn’t even want Gus involved, let alone the rest of the— She paused. What was Gus’s surname? He must have told her. She tried to think. No idea.

Jack wrote Londis as the next item on his pad.

Amy cringed again at the mention of it. Suddenly wished for that parallel life again. The one where she was happy about the baby with her husband, Bobby, sitting next to her. His arm round her shoulders – he would have given her a squeeze at the Londis comment. Bobby would have known that she thought it denigrated her father and said something to counter it, something good like, ‘Lucky Graham’s so friendly. I’ve never chatted to the cashier at Londis.’ Even though everyone would know that was a lie because Bobby chatted to everyone because everyone wanted to chat to Bobby because he was so golden and glowing that people couldn’t help flocking to him. The number of people who used to stop them when they were walking around to ask if they knew Bobby from somewhere, if they’d seen him on the TV, which of course they hadn’t. He just looked like a celebrity. Amy would always get a little flutter of pride.

She closed her eyes and tried her times tables again but just got muddled. She felt a wave of nausea creep over her; whether from the memory of Bobby or a side effect of the pregnancy she didn’t know.

Her mother was pouring Kettle Chips into a bowl. Amy reached over for a handful.

‘Since when did you eat carbs?’ Stella asked, surprised.

Amy didn’t eat carbs, she infamously hadn’t touched them since a modelling stint in her teens. But since the pregnancy anything went to quell the sickness.

‘Well, you know me,’ Amy said. ‘Can’t stick at anything!’ She’d said it to try and sound funny, deflect attention by taking the piss out of herself, but it obviously came out less carefree than she’d imagined because Stella was really watching her now. Gus too, come to think of it.

The nausea rose.

Her mother glanced across at her, expression concerned. ‘OK?’ she asked.

Amy nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said, quick and slightly too sharp.

Then she felt the sympathy of everyone round the table. Like they all knew what she was thinking. Like they were all suddenly thinking about Bobby. Everyone except Gus, who was completely oblivious to the network of undercurrents, unknowingly dangling, like it was Mission Impossible, above a hundred infra-red beams that could set off any number of deep-rooted family alarms. He was just frowning like he’d missed something and had no idea what.

But they didn’t know what she was thinking. Because while she was thinking about Bobby, she wasn’t thinking of him in a, ‘Oh God, he’s dead,’ way, the blank all-consuming way she had two years ago. The way she had when she’d wandered around this house in her pyjamas unaware what day it was, knowing only that time was slower than it had ever been before. But instead she was thinking of him in a, ‘Oh God, why can’t he be alive,’ way because if he were this would all be so much easier. So different. She doubted her father would be even missing if Bobby were still here. And if he was, well, Bobby would at least whisper that everything was going to be all right. He’d make sure of it.

‘I’ve just got to go to the loo,’ Amy said, pushing her chair back and walking quickly to the stairs, trying not to hurry too much so as not to draw more attention to herself but desperate to get out of the room and up the stairs where she sat in the bathroom, the loo seat down, head in her hands, trying to think of nothing. Trying to be mindful. To let the thoughts swish past – Bobby laughing, big white grin as he jogged with his surfboard, her sitting in the sand with her arms wrapped round her knees, wind whipping her hair. Sometimes she wished she’d gone shopping instead of sitting on the beach to watch him surf because it could get very boring at times, but then he’d catch the best wave there was and people strolling on the sand would pause and watch and point and Amy would get high on a rush of pride. She saw them eating popcorn snuggled on the sofa in their little cottage. Laughing down the Coach and Horses. Their wedding barefoot on the beach. The noise of the lost ambulance, like a distant fly buzzing against the window, unable to find the dirt road of the obscure beach where the best surf hit on the high spring tide. Her dad trying to swim closer but the rip current yanking Bobby’s body away, limp like seaweed on the surface of the water. The waves gobbling him up. The watch on the shelf in the bathroom when she got home.

Amy sat up. Pressed her fingers into her eyes. ‘You’re OK,’ she said. Then she said it again and stood up only to be brought back down by another rush of nausea. This time she sat with her hands on her stomach, waiting for it to pass. Knowing there was a baby in there. Knowing it but feeling like she was watching it from afar. That it was someone else’s baby. A kangaroo’s baby in a nature documentary or that woman’s in the pamphlets who was just a faceless cross section.

CHAPTER 7

It was ten o’clock, and Stella was in her room with Jack. Amy had sloped off much earlier, almost the same time as Rosie. Gus had made polite chat for a bit after dinner before offering to walk the dog for Moira, who’d seemed a little reluctant to hand over the duty but accepted when Gus got close to pleading for the task, clearly the more desperate of the two to escape. Sonny had played computer games while Jack and Moira washed up and Stella did some work. Then Gus had come back and everyone had called it a night.

It was hot and sticky in Stella’s bedroom – the stone walls unable to stave off the humidity. They didn’t usually visit in the summer – too many tourists, too much traffic – popping down at Christmas or occasionally Easter instead and so it felt odd to be here in the heat. With the window open Stella could smell the sea, reminding her of when as a kid – a big swim the next day, Trials or Nationals – she’d lie on top of the bed, buzzing with nerves, eyes wide open as the heat pressed down, inhaling the calm familiarity of the salty air. But other than the occasional memory there was nothing in this room that would mark it out as ever being hers. The bright yellow walls had been neatly papered over in cream patterned with green parrots. Her mismatched furniture was long gone, now a French vintage wardrobe and chest of drawers sat next to a huge white bed with scatter cushions the same lime tones as the parrots that soared over the walls. It was like a hotel.

She sometimes wondered where her stuff had gone. To charity if her dad had had anything to do with it. She’d never given him the satisfaction of asking though. The first time she’d been back to visit after she’d left she’d just pretended it meant nothing that all her belongings had gone – all her trophies and medals disappeared while all his still lined the shelf in the bathroom, mocking her every time she went to the loo.

Stella sat at the dressing table. Jack was lying on top of the bed in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt, reading the news on his phone, the duvet had been pushed into a heap on the floor.

‘I think it’s hotter here than at home,’ he said, not looking up from his screen.

Stella nodded. She was inspecting her skin in the mirror. Lifting up one side of her eye. Peering at the lines around her mouth. There wasn’t a chance in hell of Rosie comparing her to Zoella. It made her think she shouldn’t have been quite so disparaging of Amy when she’d looked at teenage Stella all brown from her sea swimming and said, ‘You’ll pay for that.’ At the time Amy’s fledgling modelling aspirations meant she was drinking a litre of water a day, eating mainly cucumber and celery, and constantly applying Factor 50. Stella had scoffed that Amy’s career wouldn’t last longer than the Just Seventeen photo-story she’d been scouted for and was right. Amy stuck at nothing. Except the application of Factor 50. When she’d turned up today – hair all newly bobbed in choppy layers – Stella had, for the first time, found herself jealous of Amy’s youth. Or maybe it was her freedom.

She sighed.

Jack put his phone down and looked at her over his new reading glasses, a move that she hated because it made him look so old. ‘Why are you sighing?’

‘Do you think my skin looks old?’ Stella asked.

Jack inspected her reflection. ‘No older than mine.’

Stella frowned. ‘That was not the answer I’d been hoping for.’

‘Why – do you think I look old?’

Stella paused for a second too long. ‘No.’

Jack laughed. ‘Damned by slow praise!’ Then he sat up and went to sit on the edge of the bed nearest to Stella and stared at himself in the mirror. ‘Christ, I do look a bit tired around the edges.’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever imagined us getting old,’ she said.

‘How have you imagined us?’ Jack looked perplexed.

‘I don’t know. I suppose, whenever we’ve talked about holidays just the two of us when the kids have grown up, I think I’ve always thought of us young, like in those photos of us on the train in Rome. You know? I’ve never thought that we’ll be old.’

‘I’ll have no hair.’

‘I’ll be all wrinkly,’ she said, lifting her eyelid up with one finger then letting it drop again. ‘That’s the problem with parenthood. Half of it is spent waiting it out till it’s done and you can go back to the people you were before, but you don’t realise that the older your kids get the older you’re getting. Those before people have gone.’

Jack glanced at her in the mirror. ‘That sounds very much like the start of a column.’

Stella thwacked him on the leg. ‘I’m serious.’

They were conversing via the mirror still.

‘As am I, that’s the kind of thing you write about, isn’t it? When you’re not bashing Sonny.’

‘Thanks for that, Jack.’

He laughed. ‘I’m joking,’ he said. ‘But you need to talk to him. The longer you leave it the harder it will be.’

Stella nodded.

They stared for a moment, side by side in the reflection. The heat of the room making their skin glisten.

Jack was the first to look away. ‘You look as young and vital as the day I met you.’

She sighed a laugh. ‘That’s just a blatant lie.’

Jack went back to sitting up against the headboard scrolling through his phone.