The Summer Without You (42 page)

Hump burst out laughing, hugging her into him fondly. ‘You’re a riot!’

Greg’s eye was caught by someone over their shoulders – Erin probably – and he held up a hand to indicate he’d be right with them.

‘So what do we have to do?’ Hump asked, straightening up, remembering his manners.

‘Well, I give you one of these,’ Greg said, handing them each an envelope from the pile in his hand. ‘The clues are in there. You’re looking for a quarter-mill Harry
Winston diamond bracelet. It’s hidden somewhere in the gardens.’

‘Behave yourself!’ Ro burst out, making several people nearby turn round. A quarter of a million dollars’ worth of diamonds? Hidden in the shrubs?

Hump was more circumspect, for once. This wasn’t his first time at one of these events. ‘And what’s the buy-in?’

‘It’s twenty-five thousand dollars.’

‘Twenty-five grand?’ Ro echoed, shocked. She turned to whisper to Hump, ‘What, is that just to play?’

‘Each,’ Greg added.

Her jaw dropped. Hump handed back the envelope, but Greg pushed it towards him again. ‘No. Do it – it’s fun. No one’ll know . . . Just don’t win!’

‘Oh, I couldn’t wear that much money, anyway,’ Ro said earnestly.

Hump hugged her again. Greg rubbed her arm. She felt like a teddy bear.

‘I need to circulate and hand these out to the people who’ve signed up, but I’ll catch you later, OK?’ Greg winked, wandering off.

‘Sure thing,’ Hump nodded, eagerly opening the envelope and pulling out a glossy postcard showing a headless winged figure. ‘Oh great,’ he groaned. ‘Good start.
Should’ve known it’d all be about showing off their expensive educations.’

‘No, wait – I’ve seen that statue,’ Ro said excitedly. ‘In the flesh, or rather, in the marble. It’s in the Louvre.’

‘Really? But what is it?’

‘You’ve got me there. I was there on a school trip – I spent most of my time snogging French boys by the vending machines.’

Hump chuckled, hurriedly taking out his smartphone and Googling it on images.

‘Isn’t that cheating?’

‘Well, given that we’re technically not part of this game, I don’t think anyone will care, do you?’

‘Guess not . . .’ She peered over, resting her chin on his shoulder – one advantage of wearing heels. ‘What’s it say?’

‘Something to do with the Goddess of Victory . . . It’s supposed to commemorate some naval victory?’

‘Hmph. Means nothing to me,’ Ro mumbled. ‘Let’s walk. Maybe we’ll see something that makes sense of it.’

They began walking towards the main path to the left that led off the lawn. It seemed the most natural place to start.

‘Anything?’ Hump asked, as they shuffled along, not sure what to look for.

‘Gimme a chance. I am
dredging
my brain for archived useless knowledge.’ She went quiet as she remembered the clip of film where Marina was in labour and their joke about
dredging her pelvis. Four short years ago, and now she was out of sight and her husband had some dolly on his arm with God-only-knows-what plans up his sleeve. She shook her head like a spaniel,
throwing Ted Connor straight back out of her thoughts.

It felt good in the shade; the evening sun still had impressive warmth in it and Ro felt overheated in her dress, tiny as it was. They followed the narrow paths that meandered among old fruit
trees, passing other couples who were also walking slowly with cream envelopes and pink champagne in their hands. They kept their eyes on low-hanging branches and peering through longer flowers,
looking for a hint of gold, a wink of a diamond. They found themselves walking towards a sculpture of a globe worked from bronze bars like a cage, with an arrow shot through the middle of it.

‘Any idea?’ Ro frowned, staring up at it. ‘It doesn’t look very naval.’

‘No. But it’s nice to see the Great and Mighty can be as messy and disorganized as the rest of us,’ Hump grinned, pointing towards a stray white tennis shoe peeking out of the
far flowerbed.

Ro stared at it. ‘Hang on a sec . . .’ She didn’t think for one moment that that shoe was there accidentally. Ro had met enough Type-A brides to know Erin wouldn’t have
let anything as imperfect as a lost shoe mess with her manicured landscape. ‘Isn’t the Goddess of Victory in Greek . . . ? Isn’t it Nike?’

‘You know that?’ Hump’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Goddam, Ro, I think you really might be my dream woman.’

‘Well, I might be talking complete tosh. You’d better check. Is it a Nike trainer? I bet it isn’t. It’s probably Adidas or something.’

Hump retrieved it, looking back at her with an amazed and impressed smile. He held up the tennis shoe so she could see the black tick along the side. She jumped up and down on the spot
excitedly, but Hump’s eyes almost jumped out of his head at the sight of her and she quickly stopped again.

‘You want to do the honours?’ he asked, inviting her to reach inside.

Ro shrugged and put in her hand. As she’d suspected, it wasn’t sweaty or smelly. No doubt Erin’s feet were rose-scented and soft as cashmere cushions. She pulled out the small,
folded piece of blue writing paper that had been pushed into the toe.

‘Tada!’ she cried, her smile fading as she remembered how that had been Ella’s first word. For heaven’s sake, this was getting ridiculous! That family had taken lodgings
in her head.

She opened up the paper, staring at the cryptic clue.

‘Helpful, not,’ Ro muttered, pushing the clue back in the shoe and turning round in a circle. ‘Well, at the very least I would assume we continue down this path rather than
doubling back on ourselves.’ She pointed towards the shaded path that she suspected was leading them towards the ocean as Hump replaced the shoe in the flowerbed.

‘Come along, then,’ Hump said, taking her by the hand again and pulling her along. ‘Sounds like we need to look out for a key.’

They sauntered along slowly, enjoying the breeze that had picked up in strength a little. Ro closed her eyes and shook her head lightly, enjoyed the feeling of it against her bare neck now that
her hair was jaw-length and no longer clung like a scarf round her at all times.

‘How can you look if you’re walking along with your eyes closed?’ She opened them to find Hump grinning at her. ‘We’ve got a competition to win, remember.
You’re the brains in this outfit.’

‘Not in this outfit I’m not,’ she quipped, her eyes flicking down to her showgirl dress. ‘I feel like I dropped thirty IQ points between here and the shower.’

They laughed, Hump jerking her hand lightly and making her arm wiggle.

‘Besides, we promised not to win,’ she reminded him.

‘We’re not going to win the bracelet. We’re just going to take quiet satisfaction in knowing that we beat everyone else and found it first.’

‘Competitive much?’

Beyond the beds, on the other side of the crumbly wall, they heard a silky voice over a PA system, asking for everyone’s attention.

‘Sounds like Erin’s in da house. Think we should go back and listen?’ Hump asked, jerking his thumb towards the path they’d been walking down.

‘What, and lose our lead? You’ve got to be joking! Besides, what’s she really got to say that we need to listen to anyway? She’s only going to be thanking all her rich
mates for paying twenty-five grand each to play in the garden. I’d rather not if it’s all the same.’

‘Yeah.’

They carried on walking, feeling poor but clever at least.

‘Oh look, pretty,’ she said, pointing out an old, weathered dovecote set high against a crumbling brick wall that appeared to be mainly held up by pride and thick ivy. Two pure white
faces peered out of two of the round holes. ‘Why am I not surprised that they have doves when the rest of us have one-legged pigeons with fleas?’ Her eyes fell to a small door on the
bottom right that was padlocked shut. ‘Hang on, what did the clue say again?’ She repeated it in her head, her eyes closed. ‘“
So that I can go free
.” Think it
could be referring to that?’ she asked, pointing to the tiny locked door.

‘Doubt it. We’re looking for a key, and that’s got a combination lock.’

‘Hmmmmm.’ They looked around the bushes and ground near to where they stood, searching for the glint of a key – although to unlock what still wasn’t clear.

Ro repeated the clue out loud again:

‘What do you think it means by “
It’s emergency
”? It seems a little bit contrived,’ she mused.

‘Unlike the rest of it. Because Erin always talks in iambic pentameter.’

Ro laughed, nudging him in the ribs. ‘Oooh, get you!’ she teased.

‘What? We do study Shakespeare here, you know,’ he said, trying not to laugh.

A thought came to her. ‘What if . . . what if it’s not an actual key we need? I mean, hotels have cards as their keys now.’ She looked at the locked door. ‘What if the
combination code for that padlock is the key to opening it?’

‘So then . . . emergency . . .’ He walked suddenly towards the dovecote and turned the numbers on the lock to 911. The padlock unfastened.

‘Brilliant!’ Ro squealed, as they high-fived.

He opened the door.

‘Carefu—’ she cried, just as a dove flew out in a drum-beat of wings, trying to find loft in the air right in front of Hump’s face. ‘It did say something had to go
free,’ she laughed, watching Hump splutteringly bat feathers away from his face.

Tentatively, worried there may be more, he reached his arm inside the nook and pulled out a cream envelope.

‘Oh, that’s too easy,’ Ro puffed disappointedly. ‘Is it?’

‘Yeah. Child’s play? Where are we heading to?’ She pointed towards the peek of blue between the trees. ‘Bet you we find a bucket and spade or something on the
beach.’

‘
How
are you so good at this?’ he asked, replacing the envelope in the door and closing the padlock. (Although Erin could think twice if she thought he was going to recapture
the dove again.)

‘A childhood spent reading
The Times
crossword – sets you up for anything.’ She winked.

‘The
New York Times
one is harder,’ Hump replied, being controversial.

‘So isn’t,’ Ro grinned, hooking her arm through his as they carried on down the path towards the beach.

Sure enough, a spade was sitting on an upturned bucket, just beyond the grassline of the garden. Ro let Hump do the honours, preferring to look back up at the house from this viewpoint. It
seemed even bigger from a distance, the elegant, slow-moving guests like confetti petals on the lawn, Erin but a pretty dot on the concentric steps.

Hump came back, carrying a small paper US flag. ‘Good luck with this one,’ he said, reciting the clue aloud:

‘That’s it?’ Ro grimaced.

‘Other than telling us to take one of these flags.’ He pointed to a cluster of small paper US flags flapping at the top of a sandcastle.

‘So then that’s telling us we’ve got to find something in the garden that relates to stars and stripes?’

‘I guess so. Or “old glory”, or “star-spangled banner”.’

She looked around – there was no way Erin would risk hiding a $250,000 bracelet in the sand. It had to be back in the garden somewhere, and the garden was symmetrical; another path ran up
the opposite side of the lawn. ‘Well, then I suppose we head up this way.’

Applause swept down the lawn like a rushing tide, just missing them as they disappeared into the glades again, the tiny paper flag pinched between Hump’s fingers.

They walked in easy silence, their glasses empty in their hands, eyes peeled for a glimmer or a clue, and Ro realized she had forgotten to be self-conscious in her dress now – it actually
fit better than when she’d bought it, having dropped a few pounds somewhere over the weeks – and although she was the only woman there both with cleavage and a cleavage that was
natural, actually, that was OK. Hump had been right earlier when he’d said he would protect her. She did feel protected with him. She didn’t need to be perfect or tiny or fragrant
around him. He saw her at her worst – drunk, first thing in the morning, shocked, dunked in the sea – and still brought her coffee every morning and passed the pepperoni. In most social
situations, he was the odd one out, like her: always just slightly too loud or clumsy, like her; his heart too trusting, like hers. They fit together.

She looked across at him, watching as he absently spun the flag in his fingers and wondered who it was he was seeing. He had been deliberately coy with her, clearly as reluctant to share her
identity with Ro as he had been with Bobbi, and she felt a stab of jealousy that she wanted his confidence and didn’t yet have it.

They came to a break in the wall, where the path fed back to the lawn through a pudding-bowl yew.

Hump looked across at her. ‘Sorry, but I need to go to the washroom. Give me your glass and I’ll get us some fresh drinks on my way back. This is thirsty work.’

‘Why not? I think we’ve got a good enough lead on everyone to permit a quick diversion,’ she said, turning to walk with him.