Secrets of the Tides Read Free Page A

are you?’ she asked, as she wrestled with the overflowing bin bag.
    ‘Uh-huh.’
    ‘Well hurry up,’ she said, finally freeing the bag from its holder and tying it off. ‘I need to get the dishwasher on.’
    Dora nodded and raised a token spoonful of cereal to her lips. Satisfied, Helen left the room and went to find Cassie. She’d assumed she was upstairs packing but when she finally came upon her, she found her eldest daughter sprawled across her bed, half dressed and reading a paperback while she sucked lazily on the ends of her hair. It was the final straw.
    ‘I thought I told you we had to be on the road by ten?’ Helen yelled. ‘We’re going to get stuck in traffic.’ She looked around at Cassie’s messy room in exasperation. ‘And didn’t I ask you to tidy this up last night? You haven’t even started to pack!’
    ‘Relax, Mum. It’ll take me five minutes. I really don’t know what the big deal is. It’s just a week at Grandma and Granddad’s. You and Dad are acting like we’re going on some polar expedition!’
    Sarcasm, that was new. Helen saw Cassie’s eyes flick back to the book in her hands and had to resist the urge to fly across the room and hurl it out of the bedroom window. Instead she took a deep breath and counted to three. At eleven years old Cassie was a bright girl and she already knew how to push her buttons.
    ‘Well, I’m not going to ask you again,’ Helen warned as she left the room. It was a weak parting shot, but she couldn’t think of anything better to threaten her with; they couldn’t exactly leave her behind, attractive as the thought was.
    She closed the door on Cassie and retreated down the corridor to her own bedroom. A battered old suitcase lay open on the bed. She still needed to decide whether to pack a dress or another pair of trousers. Trousers would be more practical, but she knew her mother-in-law expected them all to make an effort on Easter Sunday. Helen eyed a green silk dress hanging in the wardrobe, then a pair of black cords, before caving in and placing the dress on top of the growing pile of clothes. She could at least attempt to keep the peace with Daphne this year.
    ‘That’s nice, have I seen it before?’ Richard asked, entering the room and glancing at the dress now lying on top of the open suitcase.
    Helen rolled her eyes. ‘Only about a million times.’
    ‘Oh . . . well it’s lovely. Are we nearly ready to go?’
    Helen bristled. She wasn’t the one who had been on the phone all morning. ‘The girls are still dawdling,’ she said, struggling with the zipper on the suitcase until Richard came across and leaned heavily on it for her, ‘but we should be on the road in half an hour or so.’ It was optimistic, but secretly she didn’t mind the delay. She really wasn’t in any great hurry to get down to Dorset and start the week of polite chitchat, country walks and sedate cups of tea with Richard’s parents. She knew it was a Tide family tradition, everyone together at the big house for Easter, and she knew how much Richard loved taking her and the girls to his childhood home, but she longed to spend the holidays quietly at home, just once; a bit of shopping, some reading, pottering around the kitchen, maybe even some gardening. Still, there was no point dreaming; it would never happen. When it came to family traditions, Daphne Tide always got her way.
    ‘Mum’s very excited about our visit,’ said Richard, as if reading her mind. ‘Apparently she’s been baking all week. And Dad’s thinking about taking the girls sailing.’
    ‘Lovely,’ said Helen, forcing herself to return her husband’s smile. She would go along with it, as she always did, for the rest of them. It was only a week at Clifftops, after all.
    Forty-five minutes later, after a final sweep of the house, a reshuffling of the boot and a last minute panic over Dora’s missing swimming costume, the Tide family locked up their north London terrace and clambered into