The Summer Without You (6 page)

‘I’m in!’

The words were as much a surprise to her as the vehemence in them.

‘Great!’ Hump said, punching the air. ‘Wait here. I’ll get us some beers and we can celebrate.’

‘And you can tell those guys out there that they’re frolicking in foam for no good reason,’ Bobbi added.

‘What? And break up a perfectly good party?’ Hump grinned. ‘I may not want those guys living in my house, but your assessment of me wasn’t entirely wide of the
mark.’ He winked and disappeared down the hall.

Ro felt the butterflies take wing in her stomach. Oh God, what had she done? What had started as a desperate need to talk to someone, even to strangers, had become an agreement to
live
with them? A fizz of nerves surged up inside her as her mind began to process the news: she’d beaten off the sharp suits and champagne-bearing socialites to win a much-coveted summer share in
the Hamptons! She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. She wanted to tell Matt. She could already imagine his grin, the light in his eyes as he took in that she was doing this for him. She
wouldn’t just wait; she’d be part of the adventure too. She’d be showing him that she was also capable of change, that she wasn’t stuck in a rut or old before her time. This
was what he
wanted
her to do: live, explore, find adventure.

‘Well, I guess this means I’m going to get to try your famous jelly,’ Bobbi said.

Jelly? Ro realized she meant the marmalade and her fingers found the jar in her pocket. ‘I’ll bring a box over. I’m a regular Paddington Bear.’

‘A who?’

‘Oh.’ Ro pulled a face, embarrassed again. ‘He’s a character from my childhood. It’s an English thing – a bear who travels from deepest, darkest Peru and ends
up at Paddington Station with a note round his neck saying, “Please look after this bear.”’

‘“Please look after this bear”?’ Bobbi shook her head apologetically. ‘We had
Sesame Street
.’

‘Well, Paddington loves marmalade too,’ Ro added lamely. ‘That’s why I . . .’ Her voice trailed away. Why was she talking about Paddington Bear at a party in a
penthouse with a girl who looked like she sprinkled gold dust on her cornflakes?

They were quiet for a moment, the silence between them growing more awkward as they considered their new relationship: they’d gone from being strangers – hell, combatants – on
the street to housemates in twenty minutes.

‘But the similarities end there, right?’ Bobbi asked. ‘With the bear, I mean. No . . . excess body hair issues I should know about? ’Cause if we’re sharing a
bathroom . . .’

Ro laughed. ‘No, it’s all good,’ she grinned, as Hump burst back in, a beer bottle wedged between each finger.

But that wasn’t strictly true. There were distinct similarities between her and the famous bear – lots of them, in fact: she was on an adventure now too, relying on the kindness of
strangers and with a jar of marmalade in her pocket. And if she had had a tag round her neck, it would have read almost identically: ‘Please look after this girl.’

‘Right. Just stay right,’ Ro muttered between gritted teeth, gripping the wheel a little harder as she drove beneath another green road sign that she was, again,
past before she could understand. Oh God. Was 44E the junction or the road? she panicked, her eyes flicking down to the sheet of paper printed with map directions on the seat beside her, before the
sharp hoot of the car to her right told her she was drifting across the lanes again. Dammit. Navigation really wasn’t her thing. It had already taken her four circuits of JFK Airport before
she’d found her way out to the highway – she’d visited the DHL depot twice, much to the security guard’s chagrin – and she had no idea if she was heading towards
Manhattan, Montauk or, frankly, the moon.

So much for just hooking a right and keeping going till she drove into the Atlantic. It had looked so easy on the map – Long Island a long, skinny arm that shot out of America’s
mainland and straight into the Atlantic Ocean, Montauk sitting at the fingertips, East Hampton – where she was headed – more in the wrist.

But then, all of this had seemed easy before she had actually had to go and do it. It had been one thing sharing her news when she’d flown home in early April, revelling in the shocked
expressions and envious eyes as she’d casually dropped the bombshell that she –
she
, who needed moral support getting in a round at the Pig & Whistle – was moving to
America for the summer. She hadn’t been left behind after all, see? Brenda, her cleaner, had agreed to ‘adopt’ Shady in her absence – it had been depressing to realize that
the humble goldfish was pretty much her only responsibility tying her there – so that she could have her own adventure too. She’d delighted in recounting how she’d
‘won’ a coveted bedroom in Hump’s house from the bathroom, boasting about Bobbi’s sharp ambition and slim ankles, showing off the photos of the white-sand beaches and the
sunny forecasts that she brought up on the internet. It had been so good being the one with the surprise for once, when she’d spent years listening to everyone else’s of secret weekends
away, long-awaited pregnancy joys, big promotions, intricate marriage proposals . . . And it had restored a little of her pride. She’d seen the way everyone had looked pityingly at her as
news got out about Matt’s tour of Asia – alone – for six months. They hadn’t heard her when she’d reassured them that they weren’t actually breaking up; they
were simply pausing, taking a breather. They’d just nodded politely when she’d said Matt had told her he was going to spend the entire trip dreaming up an original and romantic marriage
proposal for his return. They hadn’t known that she had repeated his words with a beatific calm she didn’t feel: ‘It’s not the end. He just wants us to have a new
beginning.’

So yes, she had enjoyed talking about this ‘adventure’. It had given her a glamour and an edge that had caught her friends unawares. But now, wedged between two monster trucks on an
expressway in rush hour and unable to remember the laws about overtaking, she wasn’t feeling so confident. The New York suburbs had given way to dense woodland that bracketed the highway,
occasional dead raccoons in the road reminding her that it wasn’t just the cars and accents that were different over here. Even the roadkill had an American flavour.

After a while, a sign for ‘27E Montauk’ directed her to take the right-hand slip road and she relaxed her grip on the wheel, grateful for this karmic mercy. She knew the 27 Highway
ran like a bone down the length of Long Island’s skinny arm, and that she only had to drive in a straight line now, right into East Hampton’s high street – or rather, Main
Street.

Still, Hump had promised to keep his phone near him, in case she got lost. He was already at the house. It was the end of May; the summer season officially started this weekend and Greg –
a lawyer friend of Hump’s brother who was in the fourth bedroom – and Bobbi would be over tomorrow. Ro was looking forward to seeing her again: as the only other person she vaguely knew
in the whole of America, Ro felt an artificial closeness to the architect – like a gosling imprinting on a panther – that paid no heed to the bolts of terror that flashed through her
every time she read Bobbi’s tweets: ‘Five a.m. kettlebells. #hellyeah’; ‘To M.I.T. 4 talk on Spatial Strategies of Resistance #bringit’.

Ro was looking forward to seeing Hump again too. They had communicated with increasing frequency via Facebook for the past six weeks, their messages becoming more relaxed by the day as their
updates and photo posts educated them remotely about each other’s lives. For instance, Ro already knew Hump could surf (a little bit – the photos mainly showed him wiping out), that he
changed girls like he changed underpants (every three days), and he considered the lime that came with his vodka to be one of his five a day. He knew that she, on the other hand, was partial to
‘box-set weekends’, drank only wine in pubs and bought fish food in bulk (Brenda wasn’t going to have to spend a penny on Shady, even if she didn’t come back for a year).
Greg was technically their Facebook friend too, but his page didn’t even have a photo of him, and he hadn’t posted anything at all in the six weeks since they’d paid their
deposits.

‘It’s all going to be great. Just great,’ Ro whispered to herself as she drove through Southampton and then Bridgehampton, where preppy-looking men and nautical-chic women were
clustered round cafe tables, sipping soy lattes and reading the local papers as the Manhattan commuters looked on enviously in their scramble to join them.

The road had become narrower now, having segued from a dual carriageway to a single-lane road a while back, and was flanked on either side with standalone units housing antiques and contemporary
furniture shops; long, low, painted wooden deli huts with the shutters pushed up and fresh fruits and vegetables arranged on trays; enormous, grand redbrick schools with pretty white windows, flags
in flagpoles and yellow buses parked out the front. The houses she could glimpse through the trees were set back from the road, clapboarded and rustic, with no fences or walls to delineate their
garden boundaries, and she didn’t see any cats, but plenty of deer.

The road came to a T-junction and Ro followed the traffic round to the left. She knew she was close now. She had just passed the sign for East Hampton Tennis Club and there was a marked shift in
tone as she rounded the corner – everything tightened suddenly, raised its game.

A sweeping, daffodil-fringed green (only the leaves left now) with a pond and a windmill on it sat to her right, a ribbon of bucolic, wainscoted and cedar-shingled houses streaming down a
straight and widened road that was shaded by giant horse chestnut trees. Ro put her foot on the brake, gliding more slowly down the street with an almost reverential wonder. Everything was so neat
and pretty – the colour palette like a watercolour painting, all misty greys and heathery greens, gardens bracketed with the famous white picket fences as stationary swing seats hung on
covered porches and carved shutters were pressed flush to the walls.

Her eyes grew even wider as the homes gave way to shops and she counted Tiffany & Co., Ralph Lauren (not one store but three!), Juicy Couture, Tory Burch . . . Her eyes wandered to the
people milling around – most of them looking like they were heading to a yoga class or a tennis match – and all shrunken to 30 per cent thinner than the average population.

She stopped at another set of lights and hurriedly reread the directions. Hump had said to take the next right turn after the cinema, which she could see out of her passenger side window. Then
it was next right onto Egypt Lane and his house was a quarter of a mile on the left, just by the green.

The trees grew in girth and height as she moved a block away from the town centre, their canopies interlacing like fingers above her, tunnelling the road, and she could tell from the dazzling
glare at the end that the ocean lay directly ahead of her. Ro pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head, her chin almost resting on the wheel as the car idled slowly past houses that were
rapidly swelling in size and stature.

She’d never seen anything like it – set back from the wide streets, with no pavement but a wide cycle lane, every single house sat amid a large, manicured plot. Some had barn-style
hipped roofs, others multiple pretty dormers; some had covered verandas that ran round the perimeter of the house, others stepped porches, loggias and balconies. They all had pools. They all had
Mexican gardeners riding on sit-on mowers or adjusting sprinkler systems. And every, but every estate was pristine and immaculate. There were no wild brambles winding round the picket fences, no
flaking paint at the windows or missing shingle tiles, no cars that hadn’t been hand-polished – heck, no cars, it seemed, that were more than two years old. How was it possible for an
entire community to share the same sense of aesthetic perfection? Did they have neighbourhood meetings where they chose their house colours from a coordinating palette so that none clashed? Maybe
it was somebody’s job to make sure that newcomers to the area kept to the scheme. This wasn’t a simple case of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Out here, even the Joneses were
keeping up – with the Spielbergs and Martins and Parkers, if Hump was to be believed.

She saw the triangular green Hump had told her to watch out for, passed it and indicated left as she spotted the red water hydrant. Ten metres on, she pulled into the drive signposted,
‘Sea Spray,’ and switched off the ignition with a muffled shriek. She had done it! She was alive!

She peered through the windscreen at Sea Spray Cottage – her home for the summer. The house was far smaller than those she’d passed further up the street – it was indeed only a
cottage with three dormers upstairs, a small porch with steps – and there was almost no garden at the front, just a short patch of lawn behind a low, undulating hedge. Why had there been such
a clamour for a room in this house? There had been at least a hundred people at the party that night, but this cottage was nothing compared to its neighbours (even though she personally preferred
old-world charm to grandeur). Clad in cedar shingle that had weathered to a dove grey, plain shutters flanked the downstairs windows, and it had a wisteria growing along the porch roof that was in
full flower.

Ro stepped out of the hire car and leaned against the door. She could hear the sound of the Atlantic pounding the beach in the distance.

‘Hey! I didn’t expect you so soon,’ Hump said, coming round the porch. He was wearing board shorts and carrying a box in his arms. He dropped it on the Adirondack chair beside
him and vaulted over the wooden railings, landing lightly in front of her, his arms out wide.

Ro wasn’t sure whether to hug him or shake his hand. She knew him better online than in the flesh, and right now, shirtless, there was a lot of flesh to deal with. She decided to err on
the side of caution, opting for the handshake – only she caught her own foot as she stepped towards him, and ended up in the next instant with her cheek pressed flat against his warm
(seemingly waxed) chest.