In the Summertime (11 page)

‘Is that it?’ he asked, pulling the croc back against him. ‘Isn’t my heroism worth a snog?’

‘
What?
’ Silva’s quick brain thought two things: first that she should tell him she was actually only, like, thirteen but second that she couldn’t wait to tell Willow. How impressed would
she
be? At some point this holiday, she’d have to get a photo.

‘Only joking,’ he said, which disappointed her. ‘Here’s
your pet. You need a lead for him, like we have for the boards.’

‘Yeah. Like, right.’ Leads? As for dogs? Then she noticed his surfboard lying on the sand just ahead of her, with a curly blue cable like old-fashioned telephone wire. ‘What do you tie it to?’ she asked, and wondered, as he cracked up laughing, what she’d said that was so funny.

Eventually he stopped laughing. ‘Only my ankle,’ he said. ‘But respect for having a great imagination. What’s your name? Or is it really Kitty?’

‘Silva.’

‘Right. Silver. Like gold.’

‘No. Silva as in trees and stuff. Wood. Latin.’ She shrugged, ‘Y’know, like
parents
.’ They were walking up the beach now and Silva hoped Bo wasn’t watching. She’d never hear the end of it.

‘I’m Jules,’ the boy said.

‘Like diamonds?’

‘Oh, you’re a sharp one, aren’t you? My kind of girl.’ He laughed, reached out and tugged the end of her wet hair, then ran off back to the sea. She stood and watched for a while as he plunged into the water on his board and started paddling strongly out across the shallows to join the others waiting for the perfect break.
My kind of girl
. Nice.

‘Oh, she’s going to be so sore,’ Miranda said as she
watched Silva hurtle down the beach. ‘I should have checked her properly, not just asked. I should have known she was only telling a half-truth.’

‘She’ll be fourteen in a week or so,’ Clare reminded her. ‘She can take a bit of responsibility for herself.’

‘But sunburn’s so dangerous. And this cool breeze disguises the sun’s strength. I’m never this careless when we’re abroad. You forget the UK can be just as bad.’

‘She’ll be all right in a day or so. It’ll go brown and she’ll look very pretty. You can’t do anything about it now apart from slap on the after-sun so there’s no point fussing.’ Clare put her hand up to shade her eyes as she looked out at the sea. ‘Sorry. That sounded a bit bossy.’

‘It’s fine. And, Mum, while it’s just you and me here … When do you want to do the thing with … you know the thing …’

‘Jack’s ashes.’ Clare frowned. ‘You can say it, you know.’

‘Right.’ Miranda took a deep breath. ‘OK, so tell me what you’ve got in mind.’

‘I’ve got nothing in my mind at all, to be honest. I thought that when I got here it would be obvious what we’d do. I thought we’d just hire a boat and go out at sunset and scatter him on the calm evening water and it would all be easy.’

Miranda waited for her to go on but Clare seemed to have run out of steam. ‘Well … isn’t it easy? We could rent a little boat, couldn’t we, and just do exactly that?’

‘Well, no. It’s not that simple. The boatyard have rules now. You have to have a powerboat licence, otherwise you have to get someone who’s qualified to take you out. The lifeboat people will take you out and do it if you give them a donation, but I don’t want to do that, not with a stranger. It would be … you know,
wrong
. Intrusive.’ Clare sniffed and reached into her bag for tissues. ‘We’ll have to think of something else. But it won’t be what he asked for.’

‘How about off the beach?’

‘Oh Lord no, definitely not off the beach! It has to be out in the middle of the estuary, in proper deep water. I don’t want him floating about on the shoreline with the seaweed and stuff. When the tide goes out and leaves hunks of fishing twine and plastic bottles and rubbish, I don’t want to be imagining he’s stuck there among it all.’ Clare laughed at the idea of it. ‘He’d hate that. We’ll have to ask around, find someone who’s got a boat big enough for us all. The place is full of them – it shouldn’t be hard.’ She looked at Miranda, still a bit blurry-eyed, and Miranda had a flashback to the little private funeral she and Jessica had conducted one warm evening on their favourite beach. Two clam shells had been taped together with very little inside to show for a tiny life. Harriet and Amy had thought it a great game, like when they’d buried their pet hamster at home. Andrew had tagged along and wondered what they were doing. They’d told him – and the little girls – it was a
baby bird. He probably wouldn’t remember anything about it now but Miranda would never forget.

‘I’ll ask around,’ she promised her mother. ‘It’ll be fine.’

When Miranda got back from the beach, Harriet was stretched out topless on a lounger by the pool looking like a movie star waiting to be photographed. She had what looked like a glass of Pimm’s on the table beside her and was keeping her face in the shade of the huge cream canvas umbrella. She’d been swimming and drops of water sparkled like crystals on her perfect skin.

‘You look incredibly glam,’ Miranda told her, plonking herself on the next lounger. Miranda, by contrast, was hot and sweaty from trudging up the steep lane and felt worn out and suddenly a lot older than her years.

‘I don’t feel glam. My hair is minging and my period is due.’ She prodded her perfectly flat golden stomach. ‘Look at this: I’m disgusting and bloated.’

Miranda laughed. ‘Oh, will you listen to yourself. Mum once told me – when I was about your age and grumbling about stretch marks from the babies – that
one day I’d look back and really wish I looked that good again. Just look in the mirror, Harrie, and smile at yourself, for heaven’s sake. You are gorgeous.’

‘Christ, have you been at the hippy crystals again? Those two years in Totnes really rubbed off on you, didn’t they? Totnes – where shoplifters are warned that thieving will give them bad karma and it’s the law that every window has to have a dreamcatcher.’

‘So you loved it, then. Obviously,’ Miranda said, kicking off her flip-flops and going to sit on the pool steps. She dangled her feet in the cool water, glad to rinse off the sticky salt from the beach, which was making her ankles itch.

‘It was all right, actually,’ Harriet conceded. ‘I suppose pretty much anywhere’s OK if you feel, you know,
OK
. And anyway, me and Amy were still too small to notice where we were really.’ She sat up and took off her sunglasses. ‘I got the food,’ she said, ‘Lots of it. I couldn’t carry it all, just the papers, the salad, and the chicken, which is marinating right now. It’s all in the fridge.’

‘Brilliant. Thanks for that.’ Miranda flung her dress across to a lounger and jumped into the pool. ‘Oh – this is heaven!’ she said, turning on her back and letting her hair get properly wet. ‘What was it you didn’t get?’

‘Prawns. The man is bringing them later.’

‘Man?’

‘The girl in the shop didn’t have enough prawns so she said the man would bring them.’ Harriet stood up
and yawned. ‘They’ll be here, she promised. Before six, she said. I didn’t like her and I wanted to get out of the shop quickly with the papers.’

‘Why’s that?’ Miranda was only half concentrating. It definitely wouldn’t be Steve with the prawns. No. It would be some kid that Cheryl sent along, just dropping off the box. It wouldn’t be Steve. After all, pretty much exactly half the population of the entire village fitted the description of ‘the man’.

‘She recognized me, Manda. I could tell. She looked at me in a funny way. You get to sense these things. And I had to give her my name and where I was staying for the address for the delivery. So I gave her your name, but she looked at me like,
yeah right
.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it doesn’t matter.’

‘Are you? Suppose she tells the press? The village could be swarming with paps by the morning.’ Harriet ran her fingers through her long streaky hair and picked up her bikini top, putting it back on and staring at the shrubbery as if she expected to catch sunlight flashing on a camera lens. From the way she was holding in the absolutely not-bloated stomach and sticking out her front, Miranda could tell that on the sly Harriet might not object to the attention that much, especially if a press photo showed her from a tasty angle.

‘So is there any more footballer gossip?’ she asked, rolling over and over in the gorgeously clear water.

Harriet pouted and picked up her bag. ‘Not a thing. Anyone would think it wasn’t important.’

Miranda looked at her. ‘But … it isn’t really, is it?’ Oh Lord, she thought, did that sound callous? But surely Harriet realized she was well rid of Pablo. Unfaithful and a habitual coke-head? Could that really be something anyone would want?

‘Oh, you have no idea!’ Harriet flounced up the first few steps to the terrace, then turned back, ‘You do realize I have nowhere to live now? And not only that …’ She stopped abruptly. ‘I’m off for a shower. I’ll see you later.’

‘Not only what, Harriet?’ Miranda called after her. Harriet just kept on walking. No job, was Miranda’s best (and also worst) guess. If only she would just
tell
.

So. Eliot Lynch was coming to what used to be his own house for supper. It all felt a bit time-warpish and unreal. Clare sat on the bed and looked at herself in the long mirror that hung inside the wardrobe door. Jess had said he remembered them all well. But she wondered if, in his head over the years, they’d become just the collective Miller family, one amalgam, like a lot of separate ice-cream scoops that had been half melted and then refrozen into one barely distinguishable block, or would he really remember her most of all? Twice he’d kissed her, with passion and enthusiasm – the first time against a gnarly old oak tree when they
were all out on a chilly Easter walk – and thrilled her madly. Strangely, at the time she’d felt no guilt and she didn’t feel any now in retrospect, even though she was picking at her conscience as if it were an old scab to see if it was at all active. Nothing. In fact she’d been feeling numb about everything, and accepted that was the way it was to be from Jack’s death onwards. And yet now here she was wondering if she maybe would feel something again one day. That was new – the idea of seeing Eliot again brought her the closest to some kind of excitement she’d felt for ages. A few weeks ago she didn’t even feel curious about the possibility of any kind of emotion. There was no future in her head at all. She could see nothing but the day-to-day plod of pointless living without her life partner alongside her. For the first time it occurred to her that Eliot might simply have been a serial snogger and spent all his grown-up life taking chances for minor grapplings with unlikely, off-limits women. Most likely he considered it merely a generous gesture, the handing out of the odd near-innocent frisson to those he thought might be in need of it. Not a good thought, and she banished it from her head. No one likes to think they’re nothing special, even if the special is only for a moment. But either way, she was looking forward to seeing him. It would be … fun.

She stood up and looked at her reflection, checking out what Eliot would see that evening. She’d been plumpish, mother-shaped and soft-bodied twenty years
ago, fighting the hopeless war on cellulite with pointless creams and body brushes. Grief had made her thinner now and sharper-edged, and her clothes hung off her. When was a woman ever happy with the way she looked? It would be interesting to see what twenty years had made of Eliot, who must be pretty ancient by now. Some men flab out and become mostly stomach. Eliot had been well on the way to that, though he’d been surprisingly lively and agile at the same time, leaping on and off boats, sailing more than competently with Milo and Jess. Other men, though, lose volume and muscle and become stunted and bony. Was it also progress that she hoped this hadn’t happened to him? Who knew? She reached into the bottom of the wardrobe and stroked the urn of ashes, whispered a brief ‘hello, darling’ to Jack and then closed the door on them. Time to put on her black linen trousers, a strappy little vest top and her favourite drapy long cream cardigan and go down and help Miranda with the supper. It really wasn’t fair to leave it all to her.

When Miranda walked into the kitchen it looked – yet again – as if it had been ransacked by someone desperately searching for a massively valuable truffle. What was it with this family? It wasn’t as if they’d been raised with a fleet of slaves in attendance. It was almost like having Dan on the premises again. Perhaps there was something about her that made those who lived
with her think it was perfectly all right to be complete slobs. Helpful as it was that Harriet had managed to put together a tasty marinade for the chicken from white wine, oil, lemon and garlic, with thyme from the plants on the terrace, it was hard to see how she’d managed to muck up so many dishes, spoons and surfaces to make something that was essentially quite simple. Why was there sugar all over the worktop? What had she used that for? Why were there so many used tea bags in the sink when the pull-out bin was right alongside? A puddle of olive oil shimmered on the table with the pepper grinder fallen over and lying on its side in it. Squeezed-out lemon halves were in a heap by the sink and pips bobbed about on the murky waters of the washing up bowl. She almost shuddered at the thought of what it must be like in Harriet’s flat. Or Harriet’s
ex
-flat. Did she leave trails of grated cheese between the fridge and the table there too, as she had here? Maybe the footballer had kept staff to do the cooking and clearing up. Toby the cat was doing his best to help with the floor, licking up the spilled cheese eagerly and battling Miranda’s attempts to shoosh him out of the way. She just hoped he wouldn’t go upstairs now and be sick on one of the beds.

Time was getting on. Where were the prawns? Had Cheryl forgotten, or even ‘forgotten’? She wanted to go up and have a quick shower and get changed but she seemed to be the only one around and couldn’t risk
missing the delivery in case ‘the man’ took them away again. She could hear water from Harriet’s shower running down the drain outside so there was obviously no chance of getting her down to help with the mess, and the huge clock on the wall showed it was already close to six. People would be arriving before she knew it. Miranda clipped her damp hair roughly up on her head and set about making the place look less embarrassingly disgraceful. She didn’t want Eliot and Jess to think she wasn’t taking care of what used to be their house, even though they’d sold it years before and probably wouldn’t even notice.