WARNING TO READERS - This is a long, rambling, multi-part story and VERY British. The individual chapters will make more sense if read in sequence.
Chapter 14 Saturday with Lulu
In the morning it was pouring with rain again and so I put Emma's bicycle into the rear of the Land Rover and drove her into work. She didn't ask where I had been the night before although when I arrived home at around two thirty I saw the curtains of her bedroom window twitching as I pulled into the drive and her bedroom light was visible under the door as I went to my room.
After Dad left, Mum had tried to treat both of us as responsible adults and had been very insistent that we should all be open and honest with each other but that it was also important that we respected each other's privacy, that if we trusted each other there was no need for questions. It had become a family rule that we never questioned each other about who we saw or what we did and we all tried hard to abide by it, even Emma.
I was going to be a busy week for me. Maggie would be driving the twins over to France the next week and would be staying for several days and there was a lot that I needed to go over with her before she went. On Thursday, Maggie, Emma and I closeted ourselves in the office and worked through the payroll procedures, PAYE Tax Tables, National Insurance deductions and the calculations for the various hourly rates and overtime for the staff. Emma picked it all up instantly and Maggie was a good teacher so by the end of the day I felt confident that we could handle the paydays in her absence.
Saturday was my day off. I had intended coming into work anyway but Maggie had insisted that I take the day out, as I would not really get much time off whilst she was away. Emma and Mum had both gone to work and I was at a bit of a loose end as the weather was over cast and drizzling with rain which made working in the garden a non-runner and so I decided to spend the morning cramming for my Cities and Guilds final exam which was at Easter and only a few weeks away.
About ten o' clock I heard a car pull into the drive and looked out of the dining room window and saw Maggie's VW Polo parked outside. I went through to the hall and opened the front door and found Lauren standing on the door step.
"Hi, Lulu," I greeted her, "Are you on your own?" I looked over her shoulder expecting to see Lucinda sitting in the car but there was nobody else. I closed the door behind her and she followed me through to the dining room where I had my books and notes laid out on the table.
"Yes, I'm alone," she replied, "Mummy is working and I have just dropped Lucinda off at the hairdressers. I've got the car for the day and so I am going to drive down to Barton-on-Sea to visit a girl friend from school before we go to France."
"So.... What are you doing here?"
She stepped up close to me and put her hands on my shoulders, "You are coming with me!" she announced cheerfully. She must have seen the surprise on my face, "Oh, please come, Jimbo! Please! Please! Please!" She pleaded, bobbing up and down, like a little girl asking for a treat, "It will be fun, and besides I have never driven that far on my own before."
Barton-on-Sea is a small coastal resort on the south coast just east of Christchurch and about 50 or so miles drive from Salisbury. Mum and Maggie used to take all of us down to the beaches around there when we were kids but I had not been there for years.
"OK!" I agreed, "Why not?"
"Put your wellies in the car. "Lauren added, "You should bring a waterproof coat as well, we may want to walk along the cliffs, we can spend the whole day down there and you can buy me dinner on the way home!"
Lauren followed me through to the back lobby to collect my boots and waited whilst I rummaged in the back of the coats cupboard and eventually came up with an old yellow oilskin sailing coat that I had been Dad's when he and Mum used to sail and I now used for working out in wet weather. I quickly scribbled a note for Mum just saying that I would not be in for an evening meal, then locked up, stowed my kit in the boot of the car and got into the passenger seat.
We drove through Salisbury and then picked up the A338 south. I found a cassette of classical excerpts in the glove compartment which met Laurens's approval and switched it on. Lauren turned out to be a steady and careful driver and far more confident than she had led me to believe and in just over an hour and a half despite the Saturday traffic, we were driving along Marine Drive with the village of Barton-on-Sea to our left and the sea visible over the cliffs to our right.
"Let's take a walk on the cliffs!" Lauren suggested and pulled into a small car park on the cliff top. The rain had stopped, the wind was strong but quite warm and it was turning into a bright and sunny afternoon and so we changed into our boots but left our coats in the car and walked down to the sandy slip road leading to the foreshore. We were both wearing stonewashed jeans; Lauren had on a thick, chunky, marl grey polo neck sweater, and I was in a padded cotton check working shirt over a t-shirt, it really was very mild for January and we were not at all cold.
Lauren insinuated herself under my arm and put her arm around my waist so that we were strolling with our hips brushing against each other and my hand hanging loosely over her shoulder, more like a couple than cousins. We stopped at the cliff edge and stood watching several small sailing dinghies bobbing on the sea and laughed at the cloud of seagulls that were swarming around a small fishing boat coming into shore.
"It was very unfair of you, you know!" she suddenly said, digging me fiercely in the ribs with her finger.
"What was?" I asked tentatively. I was sure that I knew what she was referring to and had been carefully avoiding the subject for the past couple of hours.