The Summer Without You (22 page)

‘Wait!’ she said, looking down at the counter.

He turned, walked back slowly. No smile, and yet a smile just the same.

She met his eyes, resentment simmering in them. ‘Fine. It’s a deal.’

He held out a hand, but she just stared at it.

He lowered his head till his eyes caught hers. ‘Shake or no deal. I know from bitter experience just how sly you can be.’

‘Sly?’ Ro gasped with annoyance, before seeing the smirk on his face. He was actually teasing her.

Reluctantly, she shook his hand and he gripped hers hard, like she was a man – his size, his strength. ‘My name’s Ted, by the way. Edward Connor, but everyone calls me
Ted.’

‘Rowena Tipton,’ she muttered, furious to be forced into niceties with this man, of all men.

He didn’t say anything about having called her Miss Marmalade and she wondered whether he had already known it wasn’t her actual name. She bit her lip as it occurred to her: if he
was Long Story to her, was she Miss Marmalade to him?

‘So what next?’ he asked, pushing his hands into his jeans pockets.

She cleared her throat. ‘You need to send your photos and films over to me on an external hard drive,’ she mumbled resentfully.

‘Anything else?’

Ro looked down, beginning to jot notes in her notebook. ‘No, that’s it until we do the photo shoot. Unless you have any specific instructions for material you want to be included or
an angle you want me to take.’

He was silent for a minute. ‘No, nothing. I just want proof with my own eyes that it was all actually real.’

Huh? She looked up to ask him what he meant, but he had already turned and was halfway out the door.

The water felt silken over her skin, air bubbles rushing past her ears as her fingers touched the wall and she turned without breaking cover. One more length. Every fibre of
her body was straining for fresh oxygen now, one more breath on which to power, but she kept on kicking, fighting the urge that felt so natural and right, and going with the defiance that kept
streaking through her like a wilful child: why should she breathe? Why should she stop? She could decide what she did and when.

The wall was there suddenly, her hand flat against it, and she burst through the water like a torpedo, gulping down air, her heart on a sprint her lungs couldn’t keep up with. She
collapsed her arms onto the side of the pool, resting her cheek on her arms, eyes closed as she let her body recover from the sudden, fierce punishment she had meted out against it. It was fair to
say yesterday’s meeting still rankled.

‘I thought I was going to have to go in there and fish you out.’ Florence smiled from her position at the table. A deep tray of what looked like soil was in front of her as she
balled the seed mix into small ‘bombs’ and put them in brown-paper bags.

Ro raked her hair back from her face and waded over to the steps. ‘I don’t know what came over me. I just . . .’ She shook her head, her breath still coming hard. ‘I
don’t know, I just wanted to really go for it. God, I haven’t done that for years.’ She blew out through her cheeks. ‘Wow. Exhausting.’

‘Come and have your smoothie.’

Ro climbed out of the water with wobbly legs and wrapped a striped towel round her. She picked up the glass with ghoulishly green contents, managing not to grimace this time, and took a sip.
‘Mmm, that’s surprisingly good.’

‘It sets you up for the day like nothing else I know.’

Ro collapsed down on a curvy wicker chair opposite Florence. ‘I’ll help you with some of those as soon as my hands are dry,’ she said, holding up her wet palms. One touch of
the brown powder and it would turn into a gloopy mess. ‘So, this is how you spend every morning, is it?’ Ro asked, looking past the bottom of the garden to the dunes and the ocean
beyond. It glittered like a sequin belt, thrown out over the horizon, and she could make out the red and blue sails of some windsurfers, jibing into the wind.

‘Pretty much. There’s something about the wind off the ocean . . .’ Florence closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the gentle breeze that pushed her silver hair away from her
face.

‘I feel like I’m in a film.’ Ro looked slowly around the mature garden, which had clearly been developed over decades, with meadows in the furthest stretch of lawn leading down
nicely to the dunes on the outer boundary, and wildflower arrangements in the artfully dishevelled beds.

Ro watched a man walking along the shoreline, a dog no doubt bounding somewhere ahead of him. His hands were raised against the sun as he looked up at the big houses with the bigger views, and
she could imagine a lot of people stared up here, at Grey Mists, wondering what it was like to sit where she was sitting.

She turned back to Florence. ‘So, I think I cracked it. The campaign, I mean.’

‘I can’t wait to see it. You’re just a marvel to have done it so quickly.’ Florence leaned over and patted Ro’s hand. ‘And thank heavens I got you when I did.
You’re going to be inundated when Lauren and Paul’s pictures come out – they’ve been telling everyone, you know. And they’re so excited about the idea of the movie and
how you’re going to add to it every year. Nan was saying the other photographer never even offered them anything like that. Did you get to talk to everyone you needed?’

‘Yes, Nan was on the case. We set up in the library and interviewed people individually in there. There were some good stories and insights. I’m pretty excited with what we’ve
got.’ Hump had been a trouper with the footage he’d shot.

Florence leaned over and patted Ro’s hand with her dusty one. ‘What you did was very kind, stepping in like that when you no doubt had other plans yourself. It won’t be
forgotten, you know.’

Ro blushed, pleased to have done Florence proud.

‘So, this big idea – let me see it.’ Florence put on her half-moon reading glasses, which hung from a silk cord round her neck, and rubbed her hands together in keen
anticipation as Ro reached down for the board-backed envelope she’d stolen from Hump’s desk. Biting her lip anxiously, she pulled out the sheet of paper she’d spent all of
yesterday working on after Ted had left.

‘Now, this is just a suggestion, an example. I don’t expect you to go for it completely as is. I’m not an ad guru. I just wanted to clarify the angle I’m coming
from.’

She took a deep breath and let Florence examine the poster; she had tweaked the colourings of the photo, printing it in sepia so that the sunset was amplified and the golden and bronze tones of
the sand and ocean were deepened against the black silhouettes of the children, the dune grasses in the background picked out against the clear sky. ‘Legacy,’ was rendered across the
top of the image in fine gold lettering and below it, ‘Protect the dunes.’

‘I thought that by bringing the children to the forefront of the image, it reinforces the idea that what we do now affects future generations. That we’re doing this for them, not
ourselves, not some philanthropic ideal – our kids. So that they can enjoy what we do.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s the emotional link you need, in my view.’

Ro waited apprehensively as she watched Florence’s eyes roll over the poster, the silence pregnant with expectation. Eventually, Florence looked at Ro over her glasses. ‘You know, I
had a feeling about you the day we met. I really did.’ Florence smacked her hand to her chest, squinting as she looked at it more closely. ‘And, oh my goodness! Aren’t they just
the most adorable children?’ she asked, pointing to Ella and Finn, delight dancing in her voice.

‘It was pure chance. They just happened to be playing there when I was out with my camera. Sometimes you get lucky like that.’

Florence sat back in her chair, nodding intently at the poster, unable to take her eyes off it. ‘I just love it. I can’t wait to present it to the committee. We have a meeting
tonight. I’ll take it with me then.’ She smiled at Ro. ‘It’s just perfect. I’m not going to change a thing.’

‘Really? Oh phew! I’m so glad you like it,’ Ro laughed, mock-wiping sweat from her forehead and looking back down the garden again. She saw a man walking on the boardwalk that
led over the dunes to Florence’s garden from the beach. Ro watched him. It appeared to be the same man she’d seen just moments ago walking along the shore. He didn’t seem to be
looking for his dog, and from the surety of his stride, he didn’t appear to be lost either. He was holding something in his hand, something he raised to his face. A camera? Ro squinted. No.
Binoculars.

She glanced at Florence, who was still examining the poster, one hand on the arm of her glasses as though adjusting them like a microscope. Ro watched the man. He was definitely staring up at
the house, gradually turning his view across the garden to the pool house and pool terrace where she and Florence were sitting.

She saw the man freeze and knew the two of them were in his sights. She stood up – as suddenly angry as she was uneasy. The man didn’t hesitate; he turned round and marched quickly
back down the boardwalk to the beach again.

‘What’s wrong, dear?’ Florence asked, looking up at her.

Ro stalled. The man was almost out of sight already, not even a footprint in the sand to indicate he’d been there. ‘Uh . . . cramp. I always get it if I don’t stretch
out.’ She made a play of massaging her thigh, her eyes flicking back to the end of the garden repeatedly. But there was no sign of him. He had gone.

Ro sat back down, unsure whether to say anything. She didn’t want to alarm the older woman. She lived here alone, after all. But then again – she lived here alone. ‘Florence,
that boardwalk. Is it private, or can just anyone use it? Is there a path that leads off from the beach to the lane down there?’

‘Oh no. It only comes into our backyard. It used to happen occasionally. As you can see, our drive runs parallel to the dunes, along the bottom of next door’s yard, before it comes
up the side of the lawns and sweeps round to the front of the house. Well, a few times we’d get people who thought they could access the beach by walking along our drive and cutting across
the boardwalk. That’s why we put the electric gate in, and there’s now a chain and a trespass notice at the bottom of the boardwalk steps, which has done the trick. Why? Was somebody
trying their luck?’ She frowned and turned in her chair, looking down towards the empty boardwalk.

Ro knew she had to say something. ‘Well, someone did just come up, but they turned round again as soon as they saw us sitting here.’ She bit her lip. ‘I think they had
binoculars.’

Florence shook her head sternly, her lips pursed. ‘Some people are so damned
nosy
. It can be like living in a fishbowl sometimes. Everyone assumes the people in these houses must be
billionaires or celebrities. We had one summer where that singer Jennifer . . .’ She waggled her finger distractedly, trying to recall the name.

‘Jennifer Lopez?’ Ro suggested.

‘That’s her! Well, she took a house further up the lane and some enterprising Tom, Dick or Harry with a beach permit arranged drive-bys in his beach buggy. Every morning we had
people with cameras looking in on us eating our breakfast.’

Ro bit her lip, hoping to goodness it hadn’t been Hump. It certainly had his stamp of entrepreneurialism all over it. No doubt he would have tried to seduce J Lo too.

‘They never think we might just be ordinary people who happened to live here long before this crazy real-estate bubble started—’ Florence stopped, as though catching herself.
‘Tch, listen to me ranting on like a crazy woman and not stopping to count my blessings.’

‘I think you’re entitled to be angry if people are invading your privacy,’ Ro said, the words catching slightly as she remembered Ted Connor’s same accusation against
her. But what she had done hadn’t been the same, had it?

‘Well, sometimes I do wonder whether I wouldn’t be better moving to somewhere smaller anyway. It is a little ridiculous for me to be rattling around such a big house.’ Her eyes
gazed up at the building. ‘But there are just so many precious memories locked up with this place. I worry that I might lose them if I left. Bill and I shared so many happy years here. I can
look out into the backyard and almost see my girls playing leapfrog on the lawns.’ Her eyes misted up as she retreated into the past, before quickly pulling herself back to the present with a
bright smile that didn’t quite touch the sadness in her eyes. ‘And of course, now I get to see my grandchildren playing the same games as their mothers. It’s like a second chance
to live it all again.’ She placed a flat hand against the poster. ‘This house is
my
legacy.’