The Summer Without You (31 page)

BOOK: The Summer Without You
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‘No,’ the older woman said, waving Ro’s concern away and turning back into the house – but not before Ro saw her lower lip was trembling.

Ro followed her silently into the house, taken aback and wondering whether turning up unannounced like this had been a bad idea after all. It had been one thing defying Hump with her spontaneous
outing, quite another turning up here completely unexpectedly.

Florence walked over to the kettle and filled it up at the sink, her back to Ro, who was settling herself on her usual stool by the island. ‘You must think me very thoughtless not to have
been to see you yet,’ Florence said, her voice sounding strained. ‘You were the one injured and I’ve been . . . I’ve been so selfish not coming to see you.’

‘Oh, please don’t worry about that,’ Ro said dismissively, keeping her voice bouncy and bright, though she was frowning at the sight of the wilted sweet williams sitting in
pots on the windowsill. ‘You would never have been able to get past Hump, anyway. He’s been like a jailer, not a doctor.’ She waited for a chuckle from Florence, but none came.
Her concern deepened.

Florence turned, but stayed by the worktop, as though reluctant to get too close. ‘Are you in pain?’

‘Not so much. I’m down to painkillers every eight hours instead of every four, so getting through it.’ She tried to make Florence meet her eyes. ‘How about you? You had a
shock too. Are you OK?’

‘Me? Oh, I’m . . .’ There was a long silence. ‘I’m . . . I’m fi—’ The words wouldn’t come, Florence’s shoulders inching up to her
ears.

‘Oh, Florence, I’m so sorry.’ Of course she wasn’t fine: a retired widow, living in this enormous house on her own, after witnessing a trauma like that? Ro wanted to kick
herself for not having come over before now. She jumped off the stool and rushed over, but Florence drew sharply back.

‘No, you have nothing to apologize for. It is I who should be apologizing. It’s all my fault – I know it is.’

‘What? Florence, don’t be crazy!’ Ro argued. ‘It could have happened to anyone. How could you possibly know that some lunatic was going to walk in and chuck coffee over a
pair of complete strangers?’ She shivered and quickly tried to turn it into a careless shrug, even though every step she’d taken in town earlier had been with her ears pricked and her
feet ready to run. ‘It was bad luck, that’s all, and it certainly wasn’t
your
fault. I’m just glad it hit me and not you.’

She watched as Florence took a teabag from the caddy and held it in her hand, seemingly unsure of where to put it. After a moment, she replaced it in the tin and closed the cupboard, her hands
shaking.

Ro watched her confusion before taking Florence by the shoulders and steering her over to the table. ‘Come on, you sit there and I’ll bring the tea over.’

Florence did as she was told, sitting wringing her hands as she looked down the garden.

Ro brewed the tea quickly, glancing continuously at Florence before carrying it over and sitting down opposite.

They sat in silence for a moment, Ro watching her new friend, who was usually so indomitable, so
sure
. It was painfully clear Florence was still traumatized from the attack. Trembling,
not eating, not sleeping . . . She clearly wasn’t coping.

‘Florence, I’m worried about you. Have you had anyone looking after you?’

Florence looked down at her tea. ‘Ted’s been round every day.’

‘Oh.’ Ro swallowed, taken aback by the news. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might have checked up on Florence after the attack – that he had thought to do what she
hadn’t.

And then irrationally, unexpectedly, she felt a sharp jab to her pride that he hadn’t felt the impetus to check up on her too. She hadn’t seen him since Tuesday, when he’d put
her to bed, and she felt embarrassed now to think she’d been such a baby – having a tantrum on the floor, asking him to stay.

‘Well, g-good. He was exceptionally kind in the immediate aftermath. Thank heavens he was there. The paramedics said my burns would have been a lot worse if he hadn’t acted so
quickly.’ The memory of him ripping her T-shirt away from her, so easily, came back to her. She tried to keep a smile on her face. ‘Is there anyone who can come and stay with you for a
bit?’

Florence shook her head silently.

‘But what about your family?’

Florence fell still, her body rigid suddenly, every muscle in her face straining to hold back the tears. ‘It’s all too much . . .’ Florence whispered in a voice so frail it
sounded like it had been snapped in two, her hands rubbing over one another in a frantic, agitated fashion.

‘What is? What’s too much?’ Ro asked gently, but growing more alarmed by the moment. Had Ted Connor seen this behaviour, or had she hidden it from him?

But in the next instant, Florence shook her head again, inhaling sharply, growing taller, returning somehow to herself. ‘Nothing. It’s just a bad day. That’s all.’

Ro watched her look back out to the garden again, watching the wildly see-sawing emotions raging in her friend as she strove for dignity. ‘Florence, look – these feelings are
completely normal. There’s nothing to feel ashamed about. I had them too. Hump said I was in shock for the first two days. I just couldn’t sleep properly, kept bursting into tears for
no reason. But you know what helped? Having someone around looking out for me. You’re here on your own, Florence. This is a big house . . .’

‘Yes,’ Florence said sharply. ‘And that’s precisely how they want me to feel, like it’s too much for me.’

Now Ro was confused. What was too much for her? And who was ‘they’?

‘Do you mean the guy in the cafe?’

Florence pinned Ro with a look that made shivers run down her spine. ‘No. I mean the people
behind
him. The people who set him up to it.’

Ro sat back as they looked at one another, Florence’s gaze unwavering.

Paranoia? Ro tried to list in her head all the classic symptoms of PTSD. She was no doctor, but Hump would know, he could tell her. She had to get him over here. ‘Florence, I think you
should see someone, a doctor I mean, even if it’s just to talk.’ She spoke slowly, aware that a patronizing tone was colouring her voice. ‘I think you’re under enormous
strain.’

‘You don’t believe me. You think I’m delusional,’ Florence replied, a thin vein of anger in her words. ‘I’m not some dotty old woman, Ro.’

‘Of course you’re not. I’ve never for one moment thought so.’

‘But I can see you don’t believe me.’

Ro was quiet for a moment. ‘I believe that you believe it, but I think your feelings are stress-related from the attack. I really do think you should see someone; they could help you make
sense of all these emotions. It’s only natural to feel overwhelmed or anxious after something like this.’

‘No.’ Florence’s voice was firm. ‘They’ll just call me depressed or confused or demented, when I’m not any of those things.’ She tapped the table with
her finger. ‘I know what’s really going on here; I just can’t prove it.’

‘Prove it?’

‘I’ve tried, believe me. But they’re untraceable.’

Ro tried to keep the frown from clouding her face. ‘
Who
is?’

Florence didn’t reply; she just stared back down to the bottom of the garden, watching the dune grasses flattening in the wind, the muscles in her face quivering like plucked strings. Ro
watched the conspiracy theories crossing over her face and wondered whether Florence was aware of her own words. She certainly seemed lucid enough, but . . . she’s ‘
hardly the
steadiest boat in the harbour

.
The words, forgotten till now, floated through her mind.

Ro swallowed discreetly as something else came to her too – that day in the cafe, seconds before the attack, Florence had been talking about the missing money. ‘
I was . . . not
myself.
’ Those fantastical theories about the missing money and how it was secretly all about her.

Did Florence have a history of mental disturbances?

Ro decided to take another tack. ‘At the very least you should stay with someone for a while. Why don’t you come to ours? You’d be more than welcome. Hump would love nothing
more than confining us both to the house.’ But even as she said the words, she knew Florence wouldn’t want to stay in a house full of thirty-somethings, with Bobbi’s organic face
creams pretty much the only edible things in the fridge.

Florence shook her head with a firm look.

‘Or call a friend, then.’

‘I don’t want to endanger anyone.’

Good God. Ro forced herself not to react. ‘Your friends and family would want to help you through this, Florence.’

‘I will never leave here.’

‘And you don’t have to. I’m just talking about you getting a change of scene, some fresh company for a few days, that’s all. A little space can bring perspective.’
Ro covered Florence’s hands with hers and she saw the suspicion, the doubt in the older woman’s eyes. ‘Do you have any plans for Fourth of July this weekend?’

Florence didn’t answer for a long time. ‘I’m supposed to be spending it with the family,’ she said finally.

‘Here?’

‘No. We take it in turns to host. I did it last year.’

‘So where will you be, then?’ Ro was anxious to know of Florence’s movements. She couldn’t shift her uneasiness about the frailty of Florence’s mental state. She
had definitely lost weight, and judging from the depths of the shadows around her eyes, she wasn’t sleeping either. She couldn’t be left alone.

‘At my daughter Casey’s. She lives on Dunemere Lane.’

‘OK. Good. Well, that’s something.’ Being a quarter of a mile away wasn’t quite the break Ro had intended, but at least she’d be with her family. ‘Do you want
me to take you over there? I could ask Hump to drive us.’

Florence looked back at her for a moment, her expression different again. Some strength had come back to her gaze but something else too that Ro couldn’t quite read. After another moment,
she shook her head. ‘Casey said she’d come by for me after Little League at six. I’ll wait for her.’

‘Why don’t I—’

‘I’ll be fine.
Really
,’ she insisted, noting Ro’s sceptical expression. ‘I’m tougher than I look. I don’t scare easily.’

Ro let herself out, fifteen minutes later, having persuaded Florence to drink her tea and eat half of a ham sandwich, but doubt still chased after her like a following wind. How could it not?
Florence was paranoid, unsteady on her feet and suffering erratic mood swings – strong one minute, crumbling the next – and she resolved to look in on Florence on her way to the studio
on Monday. Hump would be able to advise her on the best approach. She cycled home, knowing he and Bobbi would be waiting for her so they could kick-start the weekend’s festivities, but as the
setting sun shone gold on her face, she couldn’t help but feel cold on the hot summer’s evening.

Chapter Nineteen

‘I cannot believe you went ahead and signed me up for this just because you want to network and make new contacts. I mean, who does that? Your ambition has an almost
psychotic element to it,’ Ro muttered, tugging at her form-fitting tennis dress again as she stared into the mirror disconsolately. The skirt barely grazed her bottom; the V-neck plunged like
a waterfall, although it had been something of a revelation to detect actual muscle tone beneath the performance fabrics. All the cycle rides, yoga and sporadic kayaks with Hump were clearly having
more than just a therapeutic effect on her. ‘And why is it that I wouldn’t wear a dress like this in a million years, not under any other circumstances, and yet because it’s white
and I’m accessorizing it with a tennis racquet, it’s deemed OK?’ She bit her lip anxiously. ‘Be honest. Do I look like a porn star?’

There was no reply.

She turned back to Bobbi, who was sitting cross-legged on the bed, her long thighs flopped out easily as she frowned at some plans on the bed. ‘Mmm.’

‘You aren’t listening to me.’

‘Mmmmmm.’

‘I need your honest advice, Bobbi.’

‘Mmm.’

Ro humphed, planting her hands on her hips. ‘You know you look fat in those shorts?’

‘Mmm . . .
What?

Ro grabbed one of her sweatbands – which she had honestly thought Bobbi had bought as a joke – and pinged it at Bobbi’s head. ‘Yeah! Now you’re
listening!’

‘Sorry, I was—’

‘Working. I know! But you’re the one who got me into this mess. The very least you can do is listen to me whine about it.’

‘You’re right.’ Bobbi sighed, carefully folding the plans away, her eyes still scanning the drawings. ‘I just want so badly to land this deal, but I can’t think how
to make the house work on the lot. The client wants to get five beds in, but . . .’ She blew out through her cheeks, squeezing her eyes shut and pushing her fingers to her temples. ‘New
local law, which came into effect in April, means there has to be a 125-foot buffer between the building and the crest of the dune, right? But that pretty much squeezes the house into the top
corner of the lot, which – would you believe it? – is triangular! And naturally the height of the roof can’t exceed thirty-two feet onto the road, and that’s not taking into
account the two-foot flood zone
underneath
that we need to incorporate within that. I simply can’t get that many rooms in the cubic area when I’m squeezed front, back, above and
below!’

Ro pulled a face, hopelessly lost. ‘It sounds complicated,’ she offered weakly.

‘It is,’ Bobbi sighed, pushing away the plans and looking up at Ro properly for the first time. Her eyes popped. ‘Holy crap!’

‘I know! That’s what I was trying to tell you!’ Ro wailed, all her worst fears instantly confirmed.

‘No, no, no! You look great. You just . . . Wow, there really are no straight lines on you, are there?’ she chuckled.

‘That’s it. I’m not going.’ Ro stomped her foot as Hump hollered up to them both through the floorboards.

‘You are too . . . Here, I’ve got a cardigan you can put on as a cover-up.’

‘So then you agree I need to be covered up?’ Ro panicked, as a silky ecru cardigan sailed through the air and landed on her head.

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