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

Above them now the afternoon sun disappeared behind a stripe of cloud in the otherwise blue sky. Stella could hear the drone of bees in the lavender and a tractor thundering down the lane as she wondered what it was that had kicked off such reminiscence of her childhood. A time she tried to give very little thought. She could blame it on the heat of the car combined with the scent of sweets for the journey and the faint whiff of stale sick, but she knew it was simply the strangeness that her dad wasn’t there. His absence, the element of wrongness, forcing Stella to pause.

It made her uncomfortable. The last thing she needed was the distraction of unwanted memories. ‘Rosie!’ she said, a little too snappily.

Rosie looked up from the iPad screen, almost surprised to see that they had arrived. ‘Granny!’ she yelped, unclicking her belt and launching herself across the seat into a giant hug with Moira. For a second, Stella envied Rosie’s ability to take everything at face value, to throw herself carefree into people’s arms and assume they would hug her back. She watched them trot together towards the house, Rosie’s hand in Moira’s as she said, ‘My Barbie has jeans like those, Granny.’

Stella stifled a laugh as she watched Moira blush again. The outfit fascinated her. Her mother’s black and white striped blouse was definitely still Marks & Spencer but it looked like she might have ventured out of Per Una and into the Autograph section. There was a ruffle around the collar and the silk hung heavy and expensive. This was no sale-rail purchase. And her hair, still red but now somehow even redder. Sparkling. Stella tried to inspect it as she followed her back into the house. The sun picked out various shades of copper highlight – it was no Nice’n Easy, head over the bath dye-job. It was hard to imagine her mother handing over what she’d deem ludicrous money for a cut and colour. Yes, Stella had seen her mother be lavish but only at times Moira considered appropriate – a swanky new dress for her annual summer party, a sapphire ring for her big birthday. Things that, if she were ever stopped in the street and questioned about, her mother would feel she could justify. Hair, clothes, and make-up would usually fall into the spendthrift category. The price of a lipstick in a department store elicited a disapproving click of Moira’s tongue.

And it wasn’t because she didn’t have the money. In Stella’s opinion her mother notched up things to disapprove of in order to give herself something to do.

It was only when Stella stepped inside the front door that she realised the makeover extended beyond her mother’s wardrobe. Gazing incredulously at the newly knocked-through ground floor, she began to wonder if it was more a case of what hadn’t changed. ‘Wow!’ she said, taking in all the space from where she stood – the point which had previously been the door of the kitchen. ‘I knew you were having this done, but I don’t think I realised it would be quite like this.’ In front of her was the living room with its wooden ceiling beams now exposed and a flash log burner in place of the open fire. The walls which had once been magenta and Harrods green had been given the Farrow & Ball treatment, licked with Elephant’s Breath. Light flooded in from the wall of windows that lined the old dining room, no longer obscured by heavy velvet drapes but a flutter of white muslin and a wraparound sea view.

Moira frowned. ‘But I sent you pictures?’

Stella nodded. ‘Yeah, I know.’ Had she even looked at them? Messages from her mother were so easy to ignore.

Stella looked down at the floor. The cream ‘no red wine in here, please!’ carpets had gone to reveal beautifully varnished floorboards overlaid with a huge sisal rug. And next to her the old pine kitchen cupboards had been given a Shaker-style makeover alongside some slightly garish marble surfaces. It was all achingly on- Country-Living -trend. Certainly the image of her father sitting silently in his seat staring at the snooker on the muted TV felt a touch outmoded.

‘Sonny!’ Rosie squealed, letting go of Granny’s hand to hurl herself at her brother who was standing in the centre of the living room, head down on his phone, the baggy cuffs of his hoody yanked out of shape. He took the hit like one of those wobbly toys that refuses to keel over. As Rosie wrapped her arms tight around him, Sonny managed to pat her on the head with the one hand that wasn’t on his phone.

Stella paused in the hallway. She blew out a breath, wanting to rip the damn phone out of his hands. Hug your sister, she wanted to shout. Sonny caught her eye and Stella raised a brow at him, he made a face. It was like they lived on repeat. Always the same. He looked away from her, put his phone in his pocket, and made a show of giving Rosie a little, not particularly enthusiastic, hug.

She thought about her last Potty-Mouth column, when she’d written,

The problem is with motherhood that sometimes you don’t want to be selfless. Sometimes you want to tell your son that you actually just don’t like him very much. Then immediately after the thought appears it’s countered by an annoying inner voice that says, this is your fault. It is you that created this behaviour. You who has failed him by not giving him the right tools, you should have nipped it in the bud. At this point sanity must prevail to remind you that he’s a teenager and that, yes, it really is his fault! Sanity can be found in many forms. And that’s why God invented white wine as well as ovulation.

Stella watched little Rosie, undeterred by Sonny’s unwillingness to show affection, drag him by the floppy cuff as she spotted a black and white Border collie’s head poking up over the side of the great grey sofa. ‘Frank Sinatra!’ she cried.

Stella couldn’t help but smile. She wondered if Rosie even knew there was a namesake. The pictures her mum had sent of this new dog Stella had opened and looked at, more out of disbelief, because Stella couldn’t imagine ever being allowed a pet growing up – she remembered having to watch TV sitting on an old throw as a kid so as not to ruin the sofa, the bare cushions saved for guests only. Everything was always for show, even behind closed doors her mother would never just flop on the couch after dinner, seemingly always on guard in case someone popped by. Never off duty for a second.

It always felt to Stella like her mother had invented this all-consuming lady of the manor persona, spinning off from her dad’s sporting notoriety – nine-time Olympic gold medal winner and nominated for Sports Personality of the Year – to make up for his never being home. As if by raising him up on a plinth it was OK to excuse him anything. Her mother was always on edge waiting for when he eventually did come home, constantly polishing and tidying like a manic bee buzzing about the place, forever straightening corners, always so very uptight. And it was all wasted on him anyway because he only had eyes for the day’s swim times – reams and reams of paper that caused even more mess.

Now Stella watched as the dog licked Sonny’s face and Rosie giggled, feeling a tiny twinge of jealousy at such relaxed freedom existing in this living room.

She went over and sat on the arm of the sofa, giving the dog a little pat on the back, all the time watching Sonny, almost reabsorbing him after their time apart, remembering his stubby little nose and how his eyes could twinkle on the rare occasions that he laughed. She didn’t dislike him. She loved him. She would, as one of the annoying NCT dads had once said, ‘take a bullet for him’. She just found herself constantly exhausted by him. Angry when he did something that she knew he knew better than to do. Frustrated by him for wasting his potential on the cliché of his phone and PlayStation. Disappointed when he did exactly the annoying thing she expected him to do. And he always seemed to know how to infuriate her further, like an angry mosquito bite. For half a minute there would be calm and then there it was again: itch, itch, itch.