Page 15 of Best Summer Ever

She sounded relieved and my aching shoulders relaxed a little as a result.

‘Let’s face it though, Mum,’ I smiled, ‘it couldn’t really have been any worse than when you came back at lunchtime, could it?’

I had worked tirelessly to sort out the mess I’d made and now my car was packed practically to the roof with stuff I no longer wanted. A lot of it had been taken out of my bedroom, but some of it was from the flat. Given his behaviour, it would have served Laurence right if I’d left all of that behind for him to sort out.

I might have been relieved that his infidelity had given me the opportunity to walk away from our relationship and not feel guilty about it, but I was still contradictorily smarting a little over the fact that he’d betrayed me and bedded someone else.

‘Probably not,’ Mum sighed, sitting tiredly in a chair at the table, while I poured her a cup of tea from the pot. ‘But what’s the rest of the cottage like?’

I shook my head, pretending to be affronted.

‘As clean as a whistle,’ I reeled off. ‘Neat as a pin, with not a thing out of place now.’

‘How have you managed that?’ she chuckled.

‘By applying myself,’ I told her, rolling my shoulders and stretching my stiff neck from side to side.

‘Wonders will never cease.’ She smiled wryly.

‘I’ve had the biggest clear-out in my bedroom and that’s made space for everything I came back with and wanted to keep. I’ve got half a dozen bags of folded clothes for the charity shop in my car and a massive pile of paper and magazines for recycling. Unless Dad would rather burn it all.’

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worked so hard to sort out a mess I’d made, but it had been a cathartic process and I felt loads lighter for having done it. Or I would when I’d offloaded everything I didn’t want to the charity shop, the office wardrobe in particular. Workwear had never really been my bag, but I was sure someone would benefit from the smart suits and shoes that pinched.

‘Unless Dad would rather burn what?’ asked the man himself as he arrived at the door and used the step to lever off his boots.

‘I’ve got loads of paper to get rid of,’ I explained.

‘Best recycle it,’ he said.

I wondered how much more I could cram into the bin ahead of the next collection. It weighed a ton already and the lid only just closed.

‘I really am sorry about earlier,’ I apologised. ‘I honestly didn’t realise how late it was or how much I’d spread myself about.’

‘No harm done, I suppose,’ Mum said kindly.

‘You’re only saying that because it looks like she’s got on top of it.’ Dad grinned, crossing to the sink and lifting out the bowl so he could wash his hands.

‘How was Algy today?’ I asked Mum, before she could agree with Dad’s astute observation.

‘Much brighter,’ she told me, sounding relieved. ‘He ate lunch with us, didn’t he, Robin?’

‘He did. He tucked it away, too.’

‘Definitely the most I’ve seen him eat in a while,’ Mum agreed.

‘So, you could say,’ I smiled, as I poured tea for Dad as well, ‘that it was a good thing that I missed your note and you had to eat lunch with Algy, because that encouraged him to have another meal.’

Dad shook his head at that.

‘I’m not sure I’d go that far,’ Mum said thoughtfully, ‘but I do now wonder if he’s feeling a bit isolated in the manor on his lonesome.’

‘But he’s lived alone for years,’ I pointed out, not liking that my cheeky comment had triggered that thought in Mum’s head. ‘And never been bothered about it before.’

‘But he hadn’t had a fall then,’ Dad said.

‘A tumble,’ I corrected. ‘Algy says a fall makes him sound decrepit.’

‘Perhaps it’s left him feeling a bit vulnerable,’ Dad surmised. ‘He certainly looked vulnerable when I found him lying on that path…’

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