Jenny Oliver - The Summerhouse by the Sea - The best selling perfect feel-good summer beach read!

‘It’s not actually a word,’ said Max, ‘it’s an acronym.’

‘There you go.’ Rory raised his hand as if that were the case in point. ‘I’ve been earning money so you know words like acronym. Please don’t put ketchup on that risotto.’

Max squirted red sauce all over the remaining rice. Rory drank his tea to stop himself from saying anything, his fingers itching to get back to his phone and the Eskimo-snow director’s Twitter announcement.

‘At least he’s eating it,’ Claire said, in an attempt to keep the peace, having another spoonful from the pan herself before taking it to the sink to wash up.

Rory stood up, surreptitiously swiping his phone into his pocket so he could go into the living room, check Twitter, and leave the pair of them to their tomato ketchup. But as he started to walk towards the door he paused, a thought suddenly occurring to him. ‘You don’t happen to know where Ava’s staying, do you?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, at your gran’s, I spoke to her earlier. She popped by the office actually to pick up the spare key for her flat – she’s rented it to an airbnb tenant while she’s away. That’s a good idea, isn’t it?’

‘She did what?’ Rory felt his jaw drop in disbelief.

Claire was filling the sink with hot water, distracted, not really listening. ‘Rented her flat to airbnb. I’d like to live in Spain for the summer, wouldn’t you? The beach, the sea, fresh figs, and little coffees and tapas. It’d be amazing. Imagine that rather than having to go upstairs to write a stupid, pointless presentation for a job interview I shouldn’t be having because they should be promoting me rather than interviewing me.’

Rory had completely forgotten about Claire’s impending job interview. ‘It’ll be fine. If it’s got your name on it, you’ll get it,’ he said. ‘Now tell me about Ava.’

Claire raised a brow at him. ‘I will get it, Rory, I would just like to be rewarded for the work I’ve done rather than humiliated by being pitted against people massively junior to me whose only qualifications seem to be their social media followings.’

If he wasn’t so furious at his sister’s blatant disregard, he would have reminded Claire that he’d told her a year ago to work on her social media presence, but Claire’s attention had drifted back to the idea of a summer in Spain. ‘Do you remember when we sat at Café Estrella till nearly sunrise drinking that orange Spanish drink? What was it called?’

‘Licor 43,’ Rory said quickly. ‘I said she couldn’t go.’

Claire was still daydreaming. ‘Shall we quit our jobs and go and live in Spain?’

‘No,’ Rory shook his head. ‘You’re not listening. I told her she couldn’t go.’

Claire made a face. ‘Why?’

‘Don’t look at me like that. Because we’ve got to sell the house. I can’t just sit on a chunk of inheritance while my sister fannies about doing flamenco or whatever it is she wants to do. And knowing her, she’ll go for a week, get bored and come back again. Look at what happened to poor Jonathon. I thought maybe the bash on the head might have made her see sense when he picked her up from the hospital.’

‘Oh God, Rory, you can’t force someone to be with someone they don’t want to be with. Just because you thought they were right for each other, doesn’t mean she had to.’ Claire rolled her eyes then turned away from him towards the sink and started washing up. ‘Can you dry?’

Rory hated drying up, he couldn’t see the point, but Claire was holding a tea towel out for him and it wasn’t worth an argument. ‘OK,’ he said, reaching for the cloth. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with Jonathon. He’s a perfectly decent bloke, she was just being too picky. Sometimes you just need to fix on a path through life and get on with it. It worked for us.’

He knew immediately that he’d said the wrong thing. Claire washed the dish she was holding very slowly. She started to say something then stopped herself.

Rory waited. He swallowed. He dried the saucepan, wishing he could suck the words back into his mouth.

Max, sensing something was about to kick off, picked his plate up from the table, squeezed between them to put it next to the sink, then disappeared with his laptop.

‘Look, I didn’t mean it quite like that. I just meant . . .’ Rory paused. What had he meant? To all intents and purposes, they had had to just plough on with a course in life. They had been twenty-one. Claire had been pregnant. Of course they were going to get married.

Claire was still focused on the now very clean dish.

‘Anyway,’ Rory ran a hand frustratedly through his hair, trying to divert the subject away from his faux pas, ‘we’ve got to sell Gran’s house. It’s the only answer. My life is stressful enough without knowing there’s a veritable goldmine sitting across the Channel that could pay off a whack of our mortgage. Have you seen that area? It’s not a sleepy little village any more. Even the bloody hipsters have moved in. I saw them with their beards and their trendy restaurants. You know a place is up and coming when there are lime green single-speed bikes chained to the lampposts.’

‘We have enough money, Rory.’

‘We could have more.’

‘Everyone could have more. We do OK.’

‘Claire, if you saw how much money goes out of my account every month to pay for all this, you’d be saying sell the Spanish place as well, believe me.’

She put the dish down on the draining board. ‘I know how much money goes out, Rory, because the same percentage goes out of mine. You don’t earn that much more than me.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Rory sighed, shaking his head, his tone implying he couldn’t say anything right. Then, after a pause, as they silently washed and dried, he started to feel a little hard done by. He knew he shouldn’t say anything else, but as the feeling grew he found himself unable not to, and added, ‘I think actually it’s fair to say that I do earn quite a lot more than you.’

Claire smacked a saucepan down on the counter and turned around. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes,’ he said. Then, a little less certain, ‘I think so.’

‘Oh my God. You are so frustrating. Why say it? Why do you always have to have the last word? Does it ever occur to you why you earn so much more? Because you got to trot off around the globe to build your career while I stayed here to bring up our child. I was basically your live-in babysitter, Rory. And I’m well aware that it was a choice that I made, but it would be nice if you could recognise it every now and then.’ Claire exhaled, rubbed her forehead, forgetting she had rubber gloves on, and then had to wipe the suds away with her sleeve. ‘I don’t earn as much as you, Rory, one because my industry doesn’t pay as much, but two because it took me twice as long to get where I am because I had a child to look after. Our child. And maybe, if you paid me the amount that childcare costs these days, I would have as much money as you.’

‘I don’t want to have an argument, Claire.’

‘That’s such an infuriating answer.’ She put her hands on the sides of the sink and looked up at the ceiling in exasperation. ‘Who wants to have an argument? If you don’t want an argument, why say it in the first place?’

Rory was starting to feel out of his depth. He wanted it to end, but the stubborn feeling that his point hadn’t yet been recognised made him soldier on. ‘Because the fact is, the majority of the money worries in this family fall on my shoulders.’

‘Oh my God!’ Claire’s cheeks had flushed red with annoyance.

Rory’s phone buzzed. He put his hand into his pocket.

‘Don’t you dare get your phone out.’