Beside The Sea

By Emma K Robling

At 35 years old, a suddenly separated Isobel Munro finds herself back living with her parents....no husband, no home and no idea what to do next.
During enforced leave from her cake decorating day job at one of the most prestigious cake boutiques in London, Izzy takes up residence on the sofa, devours the contents of the fridge and numbs her pain with day-time tv.

After some gentle parental persuasion, Izzy packs her bags, her badly broken heart, Baxter the slightly unhinged family dog and heads to the beautiful village of West Bay on the Dorset coast to stay with her wily Nan and her seemingly endless supply of Pinot Grigio.
With mad Aunt Marion and beautiful cousin Ellie also on hand to provide moral support, Isobel starts to rebuild her shattered life, face her past and discover a few home truths.

But Isobel knows an extended seaside holiday doesn't pay the bills and when her soon to be ex-husband comes calling and offers her everything she's ever wanted on a silver platter it could be the life and career she's always dreamt of.....but at what cost?

Betrayal, bravery and best friends.....all will be revealed Beside The Sea.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emma K Robling
• Release date: Jul 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370684052

Emma K Robling

Emma K Robling is a first time novelist with the release of her first book 'Beside The Sea' published in July 2017. Already knee deep in her second novel and dreaming of a third, Emma is aiming to travel around the UK and write stories set against the backdrop of the country's most beautiful coast and countryside locations. The Lake District and the Highlands of Scotland are high on her destination wish list! She shares her home in Surrey with her husband and two beloved dogs.

Book preview

Chapter One

Lying completely still, I watched the first fingers of another Sunday sunrise rudely poke their way through the gap in the curtains of my childhood bedroom. Bright, unwelcome intruders, causing me to squint. My eyes pinched and stung, red raw from uncontrollable crying.

Waking up at Mum and Dad’s house: I knew it could mean only one thing.

It really had happened.

It was all true.

With my insides plunging to new sickening depths, I lay motionless in the tiny single bed and glanced around the room where I had spent my childhood. Time had definitely frozen in this room. The faded floral wallpaper was still adorned with my posters, school merits and college certificates. It was like a time-line of my life. As I had grown up, the posters on the walls had changed from horses and ponies to pop stars and then, in my teenage years, all the latest Hollywood heart-throbs. Managing a weak smile, I remembered how being a teenager had been one of the most wild, wonderful and crazy times of my life. My days were spent at school as an average-grade pupil and all my evenings were spent with my best friend Christie. In fact, so many of my childhood memories involved Christie, it was hard to remember a day without her.

* * * * *

I had just turned six, when Christie and her Mum had moved into the house next door but one from us. Vividly I remember how nervous I had felt clinging onto Mum’s hand as we went round to introduce ourselves and welcome them to our quiet cul-de-sac. The doorbell rang as I peeked out nervously from behind Mum’s legs, silently praying that whoever had moved in would be far too busy unpacking to meet the neighbours. After what seemed like a lifetime of waiting, but was probably no more than a minute, the door opened and a tall, slim lady with a kind smile answered and introduced herself as Frances. As the adults chatted politely, I stared resolutely down at my blue sandals, gently attempting to slip my hand from Mum’s grasp and make a bid for freedom, when suddenly all conversation was drowned out by the sound of feet thundering down the hallway towards us. ‘Who is it Mummy?’ shrieked a little girl, pushing her way passed Frances and coming to an abrupt and somewhat stunned halt as she saw me. Her amber-coloured eyes, as wide as saucers, locked with mine. I gasped, partly from surprise, but more at her beautiful long shiny blonde hair in neat bunches and tied with pretty red gingham ribbons. Her pale skin with its sprinkling of tiny golden freckles across her cheeks. She reminded me of a beautiful doll.

Frances crouched down. ‘Now Christie, this is Isobel and her Mummy, Belinda. They live in the house next door but one. You’ll be in the same class as Isobel at your new school.’

Narrowing her eyes, Christie considered me, weighing me up, waiting for me to say something. Tongue-tied, even unable to make any basic sounds, I just stared. Eventually, Christie broke the silence. ‘Do you have a My Little Pony?’ she enquired, with more than just a hint of suspicion as she pointed at the leaping purple pony adorning my T-shirt. Thinking of my bedroom crammed full of the little rainbow-coloured plastic ponies with their long glossy manes and tails that I religiously brushed daily, I nodded shyly. Her face lit up and, breaking into a huge toothy grin, she shrieked, ‘Brilliant!’ Then, reaching out and grabbing my hand, Christie pulled me not just into her house, but into her life.

Christie was an only child, just like me. So, we made a decision to become the sister that each of us had always wanted. We were always together, whether it was in school or after 4 o’clock at home, playing out on our roller skates or bikes until it got dark. When I was old enough, I got a paper-round. Christie would come with me and, in turn, I would give her half my wages. Despite being polar opposites in looks, we were truly a pair; often dressed in similar outfits, you never saw us apart. We were typical teenagers, always wanting what we couldn’t have. I would whine in envy at Christie’s long honey-gold hair and amber eyes; meanwhile, she would pray for my height, my blue eyes and what she called my button nose. When we had reached an age deemed appropriate by consent of both Mums, we were allowed into the town centre on our own where we spent our hard-earned paper-round wages on the latest boy band CDs and make-up. During this time, Christie, in my eyes and those of most of the boys at secondary school, was becoming more beautiful while I was just becoming taller, lankier and more awkward than ever before. I never really knew where to put myself. Christie was the one that all the boys seemed to chase after. We dated older boys; most were wildly unsuitable, causing much consternation with my parents. We plastered our faces in make-up to make us look old enough to buy alcohol and regularly visited the local off-licence for cheap bottles of cider. Some nights I would stay with Christie. During the week, her Mum worked the odd night shift in a local care home so we were mostly left to our own devices.

I’d tell my Mum that I was going to Christie’s to do a homework project, but invariably we’d end up watching movies, ordering pizza and eating ice cream late into the night.

* * * * *

Christie – my beloved friend and ‘sister’ who I had shared the important steps of growing up with. School, college, exams, jobs, relationships and marriage. Christie, who last night in a moment of drunken misery at her own birthday party in a trendy London bar told me she had blown her career prospects and was pregnant with Matthew’s baby. My mind had whirled as I stood rooted to the spot, staring blankly at my best friend. Seconds went by until the penny dropped with what was probably the loudest clanging sound in history. Not pregnant by some random one night stand, not an ex she had slept with in a moment of stupidity... but Matthew...my Matthew...my husband Matthew.

* * * * *

‘Isobel, time to get up!’ Mum shouted from the bottom of the stairs in her usual authoritative tone.

Jolting my conscious back to the here and now, I knew what was coming next: the sound of galloping paws as Mum’s dog Baxter honed in on the fact I had come home. The hairy spaniel alarm clock with a wet nose, bad breath and a tail that never stopped wagging. ‘Oh god,’ I muttered, burying my head back under the duvet in a futile attempt to pretend that I wasn’t there. If there was one thing I couldn’t cope with today, it was the exuberance and unbridled joy that Baxter seemed to possess. After hearing my bedroom door being pushed slowly open, there was a moment of silence as Baxter’s radar ears scanned the room for the sound of any sign of life. Holding my breath, I waited, and for a second I thought he might wander back downstairs. Unfortunately, he was not so easily fooled and seconds later I exhaled as I felt him nose his way underneath the bedclothes at the foot of the bed. The game was up. With the scrambling style of a ninja through the gloom of my duvet den, Baxter and I came face-to-face. He greeted me with his customary little lick on the nose and then looked conspiratorially at me as if to say ‘so who are we hiding from?’

‘Go away, you mad mutt,’ I said unkindly to him, then instantly regretted it. It wasn’t his fault my best friend and my husband felt the need to sleep with one another. He was a lovely dog really. Mad, but lovely.

The next set of footsteps on the stairs were my Mum’s. Mentally, I strapped on my hard hat. Mum and I had a slightly strained relationship to say the very least. We weren’t the mother and daughter who met up for coffee and shopped together. Nor were we the mother and daughter who rang each other just for a good natter; we didn’t even text one another just to keep in touch. But I always rang home on a Sunday to check in with my parents, although lately it had felt more of an obligation than a pleasure. Strained silences seemed to make up the majority of our phone calls recently. It hadn’t always been that way; we used to be close. But by the time I became a teenager, we seemed to be constantly locking horns over anything and everything. One day I’d hoped we’d move on from that and, while things improved as I’d grown up, it had never gone back to the way it once was. I always felt that somewhere along the way we’d lost our special bond. Nowadays, we were just awkward around one another. Mum had never really warmed to Matt either, which didn’t help, and I readied myself for a bombardment of the ‘I told you so’ hand grenades that were about to be thrown into my bunker. ‘Don’t think that you can hide under that duvet. You’ve got to come out and face the world at some point,’ Mum said brusquely as she entered the room.

‘I know,’ I sighed, slowly pulling the duvet down to reveal my dehydrated and dishevelled self plus an equally scruffy but delighted looking spaniel. ‘But does it have to be anytime this year?’

I squinted crossly at the bright sunny morning. How dare the day be so cheery and happy? Didn’t it know what I was going through? Surely black clouds and torrential rain would be more fitting for today. Mum smiled gently and put a mug of steaming coffee on my bedside table and, for a brief moment, I thought she was going to sit on the bed and hug me. Why I thought this, I had absolutely no idea. After all, it would go against pretty much everything I’d known about her ‘no-nonsense’ approach to motherhood so far. But, despite being 35 years old, when your world has come crashing down around your ears, you still need a hug from your Mum and to hear the words ‘don’t worry darling, it’s going to be alright.’ Mum stood awkwardly, ringing her hands for a few seconds and I held my breath wondering which way this was going to go: ice queen or marshmallow Mum? ‘Matthew’s been ringing us on the home phone. Best get things sorted out.’ So, ice queen then. In all the time I’d been married, she’d never called him ‘Matt’; far too informal. Mind you, at that moment I had plenty of names for him – many of which would give my Mother a coronary. It was clear that the mug of coffee was about as far as she was going down the road to something like empathy or sympathy.

The facts were really very simple: The man I love and my very best friend. An affair. A baby on the way. What more was there to say? I should have been crying/ranting/hurling furniture, but I didn’t have it in me. I had cried all night after I had fled from the party. Mum and Dad had been horrified when I turned up on their doorstep by taxi after midnight, completely hysterical. Eventually, I had calmed down and, between gulping sobs, I had told them my news. My poor tear ducts had all but dried out now, and as for furniture tossing, I just didn’t have the energy. It felt as if a steam roller had flattened me into the ground. Yes, I felt anger and fury. But it was the total and utter betrayal that left me feeling sick to my stomach. A thousand questions filled my head. Was it a one night stand? How long had it been going on? Had I missed any signs of an affair? You’d see it on TV thousands of times, the excuses of the ‘extra-long meeting at the office’ or the ‘golfing weekends with the boys’. I had scoffed at these seemingly brainless women; how could they not have seen the signs? But now it was me. ME. Now I was the wife that everyone would be pointing at, speaking about in hushed tones, exclaiming to one another ‘wasn’t it obvious?’ and asking, ‘poor thing, how could she have not known?’

I hadn’t seen Christie for several months when I arrived at the bar the previous evening. We had long since left the cul-de-sac and busy lives had taken us to the opposite sides of London. We would text a couple of times a week and met up for a drink and a catch up when we could. Of course, Matt saw Christie every day. Both of them worked as solicitors at the same huge central London firm.

* * * * *

Matt and I had met six years ago when Christie made me her ‘plus one’ at the firm’s Christmas party. I will never forget that night: standing awkwardly by the buffet, feeling out of place surrounded by sharp-suited city high-flyers, all drinking and laughing loudly. Christie was desperate to make full partner at work, so as soon as the firm’s senior team arrived to enjoy the merriment, I had dispatched her to hobnob with them. Casually I scanned the room, smiling and swaying to Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody’, trying to look relaxed and confident. In reality, I hated parties like this. Intellectually, I felt totally out of my depth, and as I stood on my own, swaying to the festive music, I must have looked like a complete muppet. That’s when I caught sight of Matt. Dark suit and dark eyes that seemed to be studying me intently. Something about his lopsided smile and ruffled hair made my stomach flip-flop. Quickly, I looked away and stared anywhere but in his direction. I’d sworn off men after a recent disastrous period of internet dating. Only the previous week, one of my selected ‘matches’ I had met for coffee had insisted I paid half for his Danish pastry after he had offered me a bite of it. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.

Glancing up once more, I discreetly looked back towards the same group to find the delicious smile with the Adonis body was still staring at me. He casually finished his drink, excused himself from the group he was with and walked towards me. Outwardly, I hoped I was portraying a look of sophisticated, cool indifference; inwardly every fibre of my being was screaming with blind panic, making me stare at my feet and feel like an awkward teenager again. I was bound to open my mouth and say something embarrassing or inane. ‘Hello,’ he said as he came to a stop in front of me. Then, tilting his head slightly to one side, he added, ‘I see you’ve been guarding the buffet table most of the evening. If you leave it, is there a chance it may be stolen?’ Giggling, I looked at my feet again. The handsome suited stranger held out his hand. ‘I’m Matt.’

For the rest of the night we talked, we laughed and we sparked off each other brilliantly. The very next week, we met for drinks, which led to dinner. Dinners soon turned into days out, which progressed into long weekends away. Within a year, we had rented a flat together, and the year after that we were married. I had a sneaking suspicion that Mum and Dad thought I had rushed into it, but I was so happy I didn’t want to question it or jinx it. There I was, Mrs Isobel Watson, wife of a highly respected, London solicitor on his way to a full senior partnership. Being a ‘Mrs’ made me feel I was somehow more socially acceptable; I had made it, I was a grown up! Someone wanted me, I was validated. Now I just felt empty, as though I’d somehow lost my identity. If I wasn’t Mrs Watson then who was I?

* * * *

Mum had left me to my caffeine fix, so I hauled my exhausted self into a comfortable slouch position and took a gulp of the hot, life-restoring liquid. My mobile phone lay ominously face down next to me with the sound turned off. Turning it over would mean connecting with the outside world, with the real world, and dealing with what was happening in it. I couldn’t help it though. I picked it up and turned it over to reveal a screen full of notifications of missed calls, voicemail messages and texts. All from Matt.

As I stared at the screen, as if I had somehow willed it to, the phone sprang into life, making me launch the scalding hot coffee over my hand and across the duvet. ‘Bollocks,’ I yelped, returning the mug to my bedside table and briefly examining the red burning welt developing on my hand. Still demanding my attention, the phone continued to vibrate noisily, and as I retrieved it from the folds of my bedding, I was greeted by a photo I had taken of Matt on our last holiday together in Thailand. His dazzling white smile filled the screen as the word ‘hubby’ flashed at me. I felt physically sick and my hand shook as I swiped my finger across the screen to answer it.

‘Izzy...Izzy, are you there?’ I was so anxious to hear his voice yet terrified at what he had to say.

‘Yes,’ I eventually replied, trying to sound in control when quite clearly, I felt anything but.

It was gut wrenching just hearing his voice. Through our married life, Matt had replaced Christie as the person I told everything to. But that’s what your husband was supposed to be, right? Your best friend. Whatever had happened during the day, it was Matt I shared all my news with. But now it seemed that the one person whose arms I desperately wanted to run into and to have soothe my despair and pain was the one who had caused it.

‘Are you alright, Izzy? I’ve been trying to get hold of you,’ he said, somewhat testily.

‘My phone was on silent and I slept through your calls. Matt, what’s going on? Last night I was at the bar and...and...’ There was no way I could verbalise what Christie had blurted out. It was too raw, too painful. ‘Is it true?’ I held my breath waiting for denial, for laughing, for outrage. But it didn’t come.

Eventually, I heard Matt sigh. ‘Izzy, look...we never meant it to be this way, never wanted to hurt you,’ he said. Matt had worked late the previous evening but had promised to look in on Christie’s party on his way home. So, when a drunken Christie dropped her ‘baby bomb’, Matt was nowhere to be seen. How convenient!

Then, KABOOM! The word ‘we’ hit me like knockout punch. He said ‘we’, meaning it wasn’t a stupid drunken mistake or a one off. ‘We’ meant it was planned, ‘we’ meant ‘the two of us’. ‘We’ meant Matt and Christie.

The floodgates opened as a thousand questions swamped my mind. How did this happen? How long has it been going on? Does he still love me? Why Christie? Realistically though, I didn’t really want to hear any of the answers. Realistically I couldn’t even ask them. The only question that came out, in a strangled tearful whisper, was ‘Is this because I couldn’t have a baby?’

* * * * *

Soon after we were married, we tried for a family. Years of being on the pill meant that it would probably take some time for my body to readjust and I told myself to be patient. Months went by though, and I started to worry. Two years later there was still nothing. The world suddenly seemed full of mothers and babies. Had it always been this way and I just hadn’t noticed, or was it just because I couldn’t fall pregnant and the world was enjoying mocking me? Walking to work had become a minefield of proud dads pushing newborns in prams, pregnant earth-mother types cradling swelling baby bumps and little girls in pretty dresses holding the hands of doting parents. And every month, when my period arrived, I felt a failure, defective, unable to fulfil the most basic of Mother Nature’s tasks. We kept trying, and I felt I had become quite adept at putting on a brave face when reporting to Matt it had been yet another barren month. Following a barrage of tests at the local hospital, it was revealed that, for me, motherhood just wasn’t meant to be.

* * * * *

‘No, yes...I don’t know Izzy, it just all got too much y’know?’ He sounded frustrated, angry, tired.

What could I say? I knew the last few months things had been tense between us, but this? ‘What now?’ I asked, terrified of his answer. My voice was barely more audible than a squeak.

‘I...I think it would be good to spend some time figuring out what we both want. Perhaps get some space from one another,’Matt replied.

My heart silently cried out: ‘But I know what I want, I don’t want space, I want the Clyde to my Bonnie, the Romeo to my Juliet, the Mr to this Mrs.’ Of course, none of this came out. ‘Ok,’ I stammered. And with that I pressed the button on the screen that would finish the call. A big red button with the word END on it. Never had it seemed more appropriate.

Still in my slouched position, I sat motionless. I have no idea how long I sat like that, phone in hand, staring at the faded floral curtains in a trance-like state. Even Baxter, who would do anything for human company, got bored and deserted me.

Around lunch time – not that I had any precise idea of time, but the smell of Sunday roast with all the trimmings was emanating from the kitchen – my Dad arrived. ‘Hey Lamb-chop,’ he said, smiling affectionately as he popped his head around my bedroom door.

Even though he was more like a brother than my dad when I was growing up, he was still my dad, making him prone to panic when having to deal with any female relationship drama/crying/awkward conversations. There was the time years ago when Mum’s younger sister, my Aunt Marion, arrived unannounced in floods of tears declaring her marriage to Uncle Geoff over, having caught him in an unfortunate position with the secretary of the local cricket club. The cricket club secretary was called Steven and it confirmed many of the lingering suspicions I’d had about Uncle Geoff over the years. The upshot of it was, Dad moved into his garden shed slash ‘man cave’ and slept on his old, brown, almost threadbare reclining leather armchair covered by a duvet for three nights until the worst of the tornado of female hysteria had safely passed.

‘Hey,’ I replied.

‘Coming down for some lunch?’ he queried, sticking to a safe topic that hopefully wouldn’t see me dissolve into tears.

I considered it. Perhaps I could lose some weight in my grief, maybe go on hunger strike? I imagined Matt seeing my emaciated, stick-like figure, scooping me up, horrified at his stupidity, and devotedly nursing me back to health, spoon feeding me Ben & Jerry’s ice cream on a daily basis. My stomach, the traitor to my plans, had other ideas though and growled hungrily at the smell of Mum’s roast lamb, potatoes and parsnips.

‘Yeah,’ I replied listlessly, after all, how bad could it be?

* * * * *

It was bad. Really bad. Sunday lunch with a flying visit from Aunt Marion, or as Dad now secretly called her, ‘man-hater Marion’. You could hardly blame her though. After all, it wasn’t just Aunt Marion who had seen Uncle Geoff’s exploits. Thanks to a camera with a selfie stick attached, Steven had managed to take some great action shots. These were uploaded onto a popular gay porn website and, just to keep in with the cricketing theme, the pictures were helpfully captioned with phrases such as ‘’owzat’ and ‘great middle wicket’. The shame of it had resulted in Aunt Marion fleeing the village with my little cousin Ellie and relocating 200 miles away on the Dorset coast. On hearing my news, Aunt Marion proceeded to run down every male on the planet, declaring them all ‘cheats’ and ‘bloody wasters’. Dad kept schtum and I wondered if it was possible to drown myself in the excessive amount of gravy Mum had poured on my plate without anyone noticing.

The rest of the day passed in a slow, painful, agonising nothingness that I had become familiar with in my days before marriage after the collapse of yet another disastrous relationship. But this was worse. Much worse. The usual Sunday night television offering of Countryfile washed over me. Mum placed a mug of tea and crumpets with syrup in front of me. I sat staring vacantly at the screen and chewed on a crumpet, like one of the docile cows I was watching being milked. Mum and Dad told me to stay as long as I wanted. Handy