The Summer Without You (7 page)

Hump grinned as she jumped back in horror and tried to restore composure by thrusting out her hand like a toy soldier.

‘You Brits, so
formal
.’ He laughed, folding her back into a bear hug.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled against his chest.

‘And apologetic.’

‘Sorry.’

He laughed again, thinking she was joking. ‘Are your bags in the trunk?’

‘Mmm-hmm,’ she nodded, as he opened the boot and pulled out her giant, battered canvas holdall. He peered back round the car at her. ‘That’s
it
?’

‘I travel light.’

‘Yeah, but . . . you’re gonna be living here for four months. There’s hobos with more on their backs than this.’

Ro smiled. ‘Did my stuff arrive?’ She had sent her photographic and computer equipment ahead by air freight several weeks earlier.

‘It’s all in the studio, ready for you to unpack.’

‘Oh God, I’m so excited – I can’t wait to see it,’ Ro said, biting her fingers.

‘Well, you don’t have to. I was just going to stop by the unit before you got here. I’ve got to drop off the ads.’ He pulled a poster from the box on the chair and
unrolled it. Hayley, the maid of honour, pouted back at her, looking sexy and vibrant and enticing in her glamorously dishevelled get-up with the provocative sign ‘Get Humped this
summer’ round her neck. ‘Remember her?’

Ro laughed in astonishment, a hand clapped over her mouth as she took in, at the bottom, what appeared to be a timetable of shuttle runs from Main Street to the beaches. He’d been doing
ads for his business?

‘We could do the tour when we get back.’

‘Totally . . . You did get her permission, right?’

‘Yeah. And her number,’ he winked. A phone inside the house rang. ‘Listen, I gotta take that call – I’ve been waiting the past half-hour for it. Why don’t you
check out the beach and I’ll come pick you up in ten minutes?’

Ro looked down the street towards the band of bright sky. ‘That way?’

Hump was already barging through the door, racing for the phone. ‘That’s it. Left fork, first right onto Old Beach Lane,’ he called. ‘Three-minute walk.’

Ro started walking, waking her body up again. It felt good to stretch after so many hours sitting cramped on the plane and then hunched, rictus-like with tension, as she negotiated the traffic.
A couple of girls cycled past her in the opposite direction, wearing swirled, brightly coloured minidresses and chatting away in high-pitched voices, cars driving past at a leisurely pace, everyone
relaxed from a day at the beach.

To her right was a panoramic golfing green, and at its fringe, a sprawling building that Ro could tell was grand from the roof alone. As she passed the car park, she clocked a line-up of
top-of-the-range Range Rovers, Mercedes SLs, Jaguars and Aston Martins.

The beach car park just beyond it had cars with a lower spec – SUVs, a couple of saloons and vans. A group of bare-chested teenage boys in baggies were laughing with some girls in cut-off
jeans and bikini tops sitting on the tailgate of a Chevy, low music pulsing from the dash. Ro walked past them towards the wooden railings that delineated the beach, pulling off her Converses
without bothering to undo the laces, her eyes fixed on the huge heave of the ocean, which broke and smashed upon the shore, the wind picking sand off the set-back dunes and combing it up into the
sky, while bending the bleached grasses almost flat to the ground. Either side, left and right, stretched miles of unending blond beach chopped up with footprints, distant dog-walkers and joggers
silhouetted by the low sun that cast angled rays across the water, making it gleam like cut glass.

The light was incredible, strong and blinding, and her hand instinctively reached for the camera hanging round her neck. It was always there, like a favourite necklace, ready to point and click
– not just to capture the moment but make it real. For Ro, ever since her parents had given her a camera for her eleventh birthday – the last one before they died – life was only
real through the lens: she only felt a moment in the fraction after the ‘click’; she only remembered it when she saw it on film – even her last image of Matt before he’d
disappeared through airport security had to be confirmed on the display screen before she could actually believe and process that he’d gone.

She walked down to the shore, camera poised at her eye as she framed the landscape, making sense of it in neat circles, adjusting the focus by single degrees as it pinned on the plovers that
wheeled in the sky, the dot-dot-dash of the wind over the water. The zoom lens found a dog chasing a frisbee into the surf, and as she tracked its leap through the air, droplets from its coat
shining like crystal in the blue sky, she picked up on something else beyond: two young children standing by the shore, throwing something into the water.

They looked like ebony cameos from her vantage point, but Ro could see one was a girl from her dress billowing behind her in the wind. Their chins were tucked down, their hair lifted off the
backs of their necks as they watched something floating in the water in front of them.

Ro started clicking automatically, loving the way their silhouettes were picked out in such high definition against the sparkling water behind, tiny ambassadors of childhood with their duck
curls and plump limbs. The shutter came down repeatedly like a fluttering eyelid – black, image, black, image – the children oblivious to her presence or the way the camera tracked
their movements.

But Ro was as lost as they were; she didn’t see the man racing towards her, his fists clenched, the sand kicked up in plumes behind him, and when, in the next moment, everything went
black, Ro jumped back in alarm.

The man had clamped his hand across the camera lens and was staring at her with a trembling, pinched fury.

‘Who the
hell
,’ he said quietly and ominously slowly, ‘do you think you are?’

Ro stared back at him, open-mouthed and too shocked to reply. Who was he? Where had he come from?

‘Why are you photographing my children?’

She blinked at him.

‘You think it’s OK to intrude with your goddam camera? A
pretty
scene, is it?’

Ro literally couldn’t find her voice. The anger in his eyes was terrifying. He looked wild and barely restrained, his dark brown hair blown forward like a nimbus around his face, which was
angular and planed, his blue-shock eyes red-rimmed and unblinking.

‘Give me the camera.’ His hand was still on the lens and his grip tightened round it, no longer merely obscuring the view but trying to pull the camera away from her.

That was enough to bring back her voice. ‘What? No!’

‘You are not keeping those images. Give me the camera.’

‘I bloody well won’t!’ Ro cried, trying to step back, but with the strap still round her neck and a full-grown man attached to the camera lens, she was stuck. Her neck bent
forward from the jolt and she winced. The man released the camera at once and she stepped back, out of reach immediately, rubbing her neck with her free hand to make a point.

‘This is a £3,000 piece of equipment. Over my dead body am I handing it over to some bully boy like you,’ she said fiercely, adrenalin beginning to surge through her now.

‘Bu-
bully
boy?’ the man demanded incredulously. ‘You take photographs of my kids without consent and I’m the bully boy?’

‘I couldn’t see your damned kids. They were just silhouetted. They could have been cardboard cut-outs for all I could see. And what’s so bloody special about your kids, anyway,
that people need to sign some kind of consent form to photograph them on a public beach?’

He stared at her contemptuously, as though he didn’t believe she could possibly understand. ‘Is it digital?’ His forefinger pointed to the camera.

‘What?’ Ro brought both hands to it. ‘Of course it is.’

‘Delete the images. I want to see you do it. Right now. In front of me.’

‘Or what?’

‘Or I’ll destroy the photographs another way.’ His eyes flickered to the thundering surf behind them. Ro got the point quickly.

‘That would be criminal damage!’ she shouted, taking another step away from him, her knuckles white as she grasped the camera strap in a death grip.

‘And
this
is an invasion of privacy,’ the man shouted back. ‘Do it now!’ He took a step towards her.

‘All right! All right!’ Ro cried, holding up her hand. ‘Jeez! I’ll delete the bloody pictures.’

‘All of them.’

‘Yes, fine. God! All of them.’

‘Now.’ He took another step closer, but his voice was fractionally calmer again, his body language marginally less threatening.

She stared at him for a moment, then looked down to do as he asked, but the sun was so bright she couldn’t see the images playing on the screen. She turned her back to the sun and bent her
head down, brushing her hair forward to shade the screen. She started, disturbed as the man came and stood right by her, actually moving her hair on one side so that he could see the screen
too.

‘I said I’d do it,’ Ro snapped, but unable to turn her head without her face being centimetres from his.

‘And I’m just making sure you do,’ he said, his voice a low growl over her shoulder.

He smelt of limes and salt, this stranger, his hair tickling her neck as they stood side by side, and she rubbed her neck ostentatiously, tutting and showing her revulsion at his proximity.

She scrolled back through the images, which were clearly visible now in the shade the two of them were creating. Her heart almost broke as she saw her own work – the photographs were
beautiful: the children standing in profile, truly anonymous, as she’d said, perfectly backlit by the early evening sun, their snub noses and rounded tummies, even their long lashes picked
out against the glittering bleached water behind them, the dunes rising like mountains in the distance. Ro felt her breath hitch – there was a poignancy to them that was almost tangible.
Ambassadors of childhood they certainly were. Little did this fool know he’d ordinarily have to pay £2,500 for the privilege of getting her to photograph his beloved children.

‘Delete them,’ the man said beside her ear.

There were eighteen images and she reluctantly pressed ‘delete’ as she scrolled back through each one. It was such a waste. Even in this light she could tell these photographs were
some of her best work – that happy collision of finding the perfect subjects in perfect shooting conditions. But he wasn’t a photographer; he had no idea how difficult it was to marry
those two things together, she thought resentfully as each one disappeared into the ether, and all because he was some overprotective parent who didn’t know any better.

She came to the last image, her finger hovering above the button. The children were holding hands in this picture, the little girl’s dress caught like a sail by the wind. It was the best
one of the bunch: she didn’t want to delete it. It was almost unbearably beautiful, and a flash of defiance streaked through her as her finger hovered in mid-air. Could he make her delete it?
What legal right did he have to control what she photographed on a public beach? Would he
really
throw her camera in the water if she refused? She hesitated, quickly assessing her chances
against him. He was only a bit older than her – maybe mid-thirties – tall at over six feet, but of slim build, certainly lighter than Matt anyway, and she was used to wrestling him
(well, after a fashion). And that was if he caught her. He wouldn’t be expecting her to run, and if she could get a head start, he couldn’t very well chase her down the beach and
abandon his kids . . .

‘Do it,’ he said more forcefully, as though reading her mind.

‘No!’ Ro snapped, her temper quicker than she was – but not quicker than him. In a flash he had grabbed her, scooping her off her feet and cradling her in his arms as he headed
furiously towards the water.

‘Stop it! Put me down!’ she screamed, shocked and kicking her legs uselessly as he began to wade in, splashing them both. ‘You’re a bloody maniac! You can’t do
this!’

‘I was very clear,’ he said through gritted teeth as he stepped in deeper, moving towards the waves breaking forcefully just a few metres away.

Ro threw her arms round his neck, holding on to him like grim death. ‘All right! OK!’ she shrieked, forced to turn her body into his to protect the camera still hanging round her
neck from the water frothing around them.

He stopped walking. ‘Do it,’ he said, his unfamiliar voice reverberating in her ear.

She pulled away, disgusted to be so close to him, to be held by him like this. ‘I said I would, didn’t I?’ she said furiously, her cheeks red with anger and humiliation.

‘You said it before too. I don’t trust you. Do it now before I drop you on your ass right here.’ He was thigh-deep in the water, his navy linen shorts well and truly soaked. If
he dropped her here, the camera would be a write-off. His face was just inches from hers, and she could see from the look in his eyes that this was no bluff: he absolutely would do it. With a
furious huff, she let go of his neck and opened up the screen again.

‘There!’ she said, as the bin icon popped up on the screen, tears stinging her eyes. She’d never felt such rage before – to have a total stranger accost her on the beach
like this and threaten to destroy her camera, throw her in the water . . .

‘Thank you.’ His voice had changed again. He sounded calm, almost polite, and as though it was normal to wade into the ocean with unwitting passers-by.

He turned and walked them both back out of the water, setting her down on the sand gently as though he’d just rescued her. Several people had stopped to watch, and the children had come
over and were standing in front of them now.

Ro was trembling and not just from the chill of the water. What the hell had just happened? Was this assault?

‘What you doing, Daddy?’ the little girl asked. She looked to be maybe three, four? Blonde bobbed hair, wide blue eyes and wearing a navy and white striped pinafore dress that looked
more expensive than anything Ro was wearing – or owned.