The girls, for their part, were in beach heaven, spending the days digging dams and rivers, and burying each other; splashing in and out of the waves, and slurping dribbling ice creams from soggy cones. My rapport with my daughters was magical, and there was even a moment when Ant slipped into the mood.
He and I had gone swimming with the girls on our backs and we’d swum all the way out to a buoy. Ant joked that he’d felt an octopus touch his leg, and this set the girls squealing and squirming deliciously.
‘You’re strangling me!’ I gasped back at Sarah, whose tiny arms were clasped around my neck.
‘This one’s deafening me,’ Ant replied, smiling broadly at me.
And for a moment, I understood how a ‘normal’ relationship might feel: the comfortable friendship, the confidence that this moment might continue; the knowledge that it wouldn’t inevitably morph into something dark and disagreeable. How nice that must feel, I remember thinking.
Surrounded by fluorescent buoys and sparkly waves, we swam, side by side, in the sunshine, and then headed back to the shore, where we followed the girls to our towels.
‘Your hair looks like shite now,’ Ant said unexpectedly. And boom! Our magic moment was over.
‘Don’t worry,’ I replied with fake joviality, ‘it’s washable. I’ll sort it when we get back.’
‘Women!’ Ant said dismissively.
As I tried to work out whether I was being berated for being too careless or too vain, or perhaps both simultaneously, Ant threw himself on his towel, reached for his phone, and started jabbing quite aggressively at the screen.
As Beach Cottage was a rare and much-in-demand property, Ant rebooked almost as soon as we got home. It had been the most successful holiday we’d ever had, after all.
I looked forward to the repeat trip for the whole year. As I raked autumn leaves or lit fires to get through the dark January days, as the first buds sprouted on the trees, I thought almost daily about Blackpool Sands. Whenever Ant was particularly antsy, which was often, or when Marge came to stay and started haranguing me, I’d slip into a reverie and daydream about that beach and our upcoming trip back to paradise. I even imagined we might move there one day.
It wasn’t until the third week of July – just a week before our departure – that Ant revealed that there was to be one significant change this year: he’d invited his mother to join us. That was the first thing to go wrong.
The second was the weather. It started to rain mere seconds after Marge climbed aboard, stealing my comfortable seat up front. ‘Oh, don’t say it’s bloody rainin’!’ she said, as Ant programmed the GPS with the address in Devon. ‘I tell you, I’ve got my own personal rain cloud following me around.’
‘Is that true, Mummy?’ Lucy asked me.
‘If Marge says it is, then it must be,’ I told her as I hunted for the middle seat belt, which seemed to have got lost somewhere beneath Sarah’s child seat. Contradicting Marge was rarely worth the trouble, I’d discovered, even when she was being facetious.
‘It’s Gran to the girls,’ Marge corrected me. ‘And of course it ain’t true. Fillin’ ’er ’ead with nonsense like that! Honestly!’
Reflected in the rear-view mirror, I caught Ant’s eye, and realised that he’d seen me pulling a face. He shook his head in a way that implied we were both equally responsible for the tone of the conversation, and I wondered, as ever, how he could be so blind to his mother’s rudeness.
As we pulled away, he asked her how she’d been, and so began a fresh litany of complaint. As she started banging on about her headaches, I closed my eyes and prayed for sleep.
It rained all the way down to Devon, and due to an accident on the A303 the journey took seven hours, not six, meaning that despite having set off earlier, it was dark again by the time we arrived. As we’d eaten sandwiches during the drive, we carried the girls in and tucked them straight into their beds. What with the excitement of being back in the holiday house, they weren’t going to get to sleep for a while, but as Ant had declared it was past their bedtime – and he was not in a mood to be argued with – I just warned them not to make too much noise and closed the door to avoid complaints.
‘It’s damp in ’ere,’ Marge said, when I got back to the lounge.
‘It’s only because of the rain,’ I offered, feeling as if I’d be lacking loyalty if I failed to defend Beach Cottage.
‘No! You don’t say!’ Marge said acidly.
‘So what do you think, Mum?’ Ant asked, zipping around the room switching on lights, the better to show off our comfortable lounge.
‘’s all right,’ Marge replied, looking around, her nose almost, but not quite, scrunched up. ‘I expected it to be bigger if I’m honest, especially the way that one’s been banging on about it all year. But it’s fine. For a holiday let, yes, it’s fine.’
‘It’s the beach that’s amazing,’ I said, doing my best to cling to the positives.
‘Yeah, the beach is really nice,’ Ant agreed. ‘You’ll see in the morning, Mum.’
‘If it ever stops raining, I will,’ Marge said. ‘If we can even get down there to see it.’
But it hadn’t stopped raining by morning. Even before I got up, I could hear it pitter-pattering in the pauses between Ant’s thundering snores.
Hoping to make the most of some quiet time in the empty house, and perhaps even walk down to the beach despite the rain, I slipped from beneath the covers and pulled a dressing gown on before creeping through to the kitchen.
Marge was already up, peering disconsolately into the empty refrigerator. ‘There’s nothing for breakfast,’ she said. ‘There’s not even enough milk for tea.’
‘Oh, we’ve got stuff in the
