The Swimming Pool (10 page)

‘Apparently, at this time of year you can swim in the pond in the woods,' she said. ‘All the kids do, Gran says.'

Automatically I touched my right eyebrow. I didn't like swimming, at least not with other children. The water would slick back my long fringe and expose my horrible birthmark.

‘Will it be safe to swim in that pond?' my father queried, and I knew he wasn't really concerned but was just looking to find fault in any idea that happened to be my mother's.

‘Oh, for God's sake, go with her and be a lifeguard, if you're that worried,' Mum snapped, and I watched the fury flare and catch as he searched for the last word.

‘On your head be it,' he said.

I met Mel on my second day in the village. It was raining and I was bored and angry; I thought I might throw one of my grandparents' heavy glass photo frames through a window just to make something happen. When
I watched television I had the hot, combustible feeling that it – or I – might explode into a thousand pieces.

‘There's a nice girl about your age in the house on the corner,' Gran said. ‘Cheryl's youngest. Why don't you go and introduce yourself?'

Mel was a year older than me. She was stout and defensive-looking, with very shiny dark-red hair and a left incisor that had grown over the next tooth along. Her most marked feature, however, was the central one, her nose: upturned and flattened, it was as if she'd been slammed face first into a door. It made me think of Boxer dogs, but I soon learned the local kids preferred an even crueller likeness – to a pig.

‘What's that red smudge on your face?' she asked me.

‘A birthmark.'

‘It's really big.'

‘Thanks for the newsflash. So, what's there to do around here?'

‘Nothing,' Mel said. ‘It's fucking boring.'

The thrill I felt at the swearword was the first pleasurable sensation I'd experienced in days.

‘We normally go to the pond, but it's been raining.'

‘I heard about the pond,' I said. ‘You're allowed to swim in it, are you?'

She scoffed. ‘Who cares if you're
allowed
? We'll go tomorrow, see who's there. I'll call on you in the morning.'

Not a proposal, but a plan.

Not a friend, but a partner in crime.

Exhaustion drags at my eyelids, seals them shut, and at once an unsettling psychedelia of images begins to flicker: black figures silhouetted on night-grey brick; stricken faces caught in the neon-green glow of an emergency exit sign; blue light from the ambulances swirling in the street. Paramedics in fluorescent jackets questioning weeping parents; a police officer with a humid sheen of sweat on his face, standing with Liam and Matt, making notes, looking our way.

How am I going to explain the missing minutes?

My eyes snap open, all my reflexes suspended until Molly is found to be where she should be, in her bed, sound asleep. Her breathing is audible, as if she's consciously controlling its rhythm, as if she's not disposing of last night's events so much as reliving them. How many hundreds of times – thousands – have I seen her sleeping face? But only this time do I feel I know her dreams. I wish I could divert from her to me all the terror of the fall, leave her with only the sweet relief of rescue.

I
cross the room and sit on the side of her bed, taking her hand and laying it on mine, a touch without pressure. Her cheeks bear stains of mascara and I have the urge to wipe them clean, restore her innocence, but I resist. I don't want to wake her. Her rest has never been more precious.

My arms ache from more than tiredness and I know there must be marks under my sleeves.

Back in my seat, I spare a glance for Ed, wary of more insinuations about misdeeds, and am brought up short. I have rarely seen him look so ill, as if he was the one pulled from the water. His skin gleams grey, as it does after he's eaten shellfish.

We're bruised and broken, all three of us.

‘Go to bed if you like,' I tell him, and whatever he thinks of me, whatever he suspects, the tenderness in my voice is not manufactured. ‘I'll stay up. One of us should keep our strength for tomorrow.' Strength for the fallout, for word from the hospital. ‘I'll phone for news in the morning,' I add, but when I look at him again his eyes have hardened. ‘What?'

‘You know what.' His voice is cold. ‘As far as I'm concerned, I don't care if I never see that couple again.'

Couple, not family: is he conscious of the distinction? ‘Oh, Ed. Whatever you think of the Channings, they don't deserve this. No one does.'

He accepts this – not to do so would be to have no soul.

‘But I think you're right,' I say. ‘We should stop seeing them. All of us, all of them. Nothing matters now except Molly.'

Ed
frowns, suspecting a bluff, even an outright untruth. It is clear that he no longer trusts my word – when did that happen? Was it when I stopped caring about his?

‘Easier said than done,' he says. ‘Is it even going to be our call? How do we know what happened to Georgia won't turn them crazy?'

He doesn't know the half of it, but the half is enough to bring emotion to his voice as he adds, ‘If she … if she doesn't make it, who is Lara going to blame then, Nat?'

And the honest answer is, I don't know. I can't speak for Lara Channing. I've seen her more than anyone else these last weeks: we've become very close very quickly.

And yet I haven't got a clue who she is.

Though right about the street, I'd been wrong about the house. I'd assumed the Channings were in one of the detached Edwardian villas that formed Elm Hill's millionaires' row, but in fact they were in one of the only pair of thirties houses on the southern side of the park. Not suburban semis, you understand, but the curved white kind you see in Agatha Christie films, with a glamorous top-floor sun terrace from which one guest might send another to his death.
Evil on The Rise
, perhaps. I said this to Ed as we lingered by the gate, adding that I hoped it would not be one of our family who got murdered today.

‘If it is, let it be me,' he said glumly, for the expedition combined two behaviours of which he was most deeply suspicious: spontaneity, which he associated with exposure to the risk of humiliation, and social climbing, which he thought best confined to TV sitcom. It hadn't helped that I'd Googled ‘La Madrague' before we left and found it was the same name as Brigitte Bardot's house in Saint-Tropez.

‘Who does she think she is?' he said.

‘She
thinks she's your new client,' I replied.

‘A
madrague
is a trap, isn't it? For catching tuna.'

‘Very sinister,' I said, but mildly because, like Gayle, he had every right to expect me to mock such pretensions as readily as he did. That was what people like us did about people like them.

The truth was, however, that I appeared to be breaking rank; I appeared to be prepared to make an exception. As we stood in front of the stainless-steel nameplate on the pristine white wall directly opposite the steps to the lido, I struggled to recall a time in recent years when I'd felt more exhilarated. Whatever this lunch invitation was – and I was quite certain it was enviable, it was exclusive, it was an opportunity to embrace my declared summer's mission to ‘live' – it was not the usual way we spent our Sundays.

‘Come on,' I said to Ed and Molly, and I stepped on to the footpath of grey pebbles that ran alongside flowerbeds filled with the stiff, hardy shrubs of a windswept coastline. In the drive there was an old Jag and a new Mini Cooper, both parked askew as if by the drunk or distracted, all the more breathtaking for the presence a couple of feet away of one of those sculptures of implausibly self-balancing stones. As we knocked at the door, eyes screwed to the violent collision of midday sun with pure white walls, wild laughter rained down on us from the terrace.

Then the door opened and Miles Channing stood before us. He was clothed in black linen, the colour
contriving – or accentuating – a blank, depthless quality in his dark eyes. ‘Hello?' His voice was polite but uninviting, his mind obviously on some other interrupted activity.

I smiled at him, noting at closer quarters the brand of corporate ex-pat surface glamour I'd seen at a distance in my classroom. Though he had not yet smiled, I knew that when he did it would be to reveal artificially brightened American teeth. ‘Miles, isn't it? Hello again, I'm not sure if you remember me? Natalie Steele.'

‘Oh, yes.' He regarded me a little bleakly, not acknowledging the other two at all. In any case, I knew that both would be looking away, appalled by our host's making no attempt to conceal the fact that he had no idea who we were.

Counter-intuitively I felt emboldened, keen to show I had the necessary social aplomb to meet this challenge. ‘Georgia invited us for lunch … But perhaps we got the wrong day? It wouldn't be the first time we'd got muddled up.' It
would
, I sensed Ed thinking; it was unheard of. ‘Should we make a graceful retreat and never speak of it again?' I added wryly.

‘Nat,' Ed began, but he had no need to go on because suddenly there was Lara at Miles's shoulder, dressed in something silky and midnight blue, admonishing her husband while welcoming us with open arms. ‘Miles, it's the Steeles! What
are
you doing barring them entry like this? You're making them feel like Jehovah's Witnesses – or, worse, those people who sell boxes of organic chard.'

I
laughed. Even Ed managed a smile. Molly downgraded her position from shamed-to-the-point-of-suicidal to standard mortified. Miles stepped aside, apologizing in smooth, neutral tones. ‘Please, come in. I was just on my way to get more wine …'

As he withdrew down a ground-floor corridor, Lara embraced us in turn and directed us to a circular staircase to her left. ‘Sorry about Miles,' she said unapologetically, ‘but he's not quite in the land of the living yet. Heavy night last night, but nothing the hair of a pack of wolves won't solve. Right, we're on the terrace, as you can probably hear. Follow me!'

Such was the immediate dazzle of shiny surfaces, I could not at first register anything but her bare feet as I tailed them up the stairs, the faint grey dusting on her smooth soles. By the first-floor landing, however, I had recovered sufficiently to admire the enclosed spiral of polished wood, the wrought-iron banisters and marble treads; the glimpses through half-open bedroom doors of gleaming walnut headboards and grass-deep rugs, of pale paintings with sinuous, unknowable subjects. At the top we reached a spectacular set of double doors with a design depicting Diana hunting, and these Lara shouldered apart to lead the way into a vast room.

Entering, we Steeles halted, as if caught in searchlights: the sun streamed in from both flanks, causing us to shield our eyes. Adjusting, I saw that we were in an extraordinarily beautiful sitting room, the colour scheme black, white and petrol blue. Of the details, my eyes
picked out a central conical light fitting, a large lacquered coffee table heaped with books, a pair of fan-shaped velvet-covered armchairs, a fireplace of chrome or nickel or something else shiny. A perfect balance of materials that reflected and fabrics that absorbed. Beyond, the open-plan kitchen was a showroom of soot-black appliances, marble worktops and sparkling glassware.

‘Lara, this is wonderful!' I exclaimed, and such were the acoustics of the enormous room that my voice filled it, crashing crudely back at me.

‘Don't shout, Mum,' Molly hissed, and Lara eased her pain by putting an arm around her waist to guide her deeper into the space.

Now that she was standing still, I could see that the blue garment she was wearing was a silk kaftan, with silver embroidery at the neck and cuffs: it looked like something from a rooftop party in Marrakech in the sixties.

‘So what do you think, Molly?' she asked, both hands on Molly's waist as if she were about to spin her.

‘It's cool how the living room is up here at the top,' Molly said shyly.

‘I'm so glad you like it.' Lara beamed. ‘You know, some people say they couldn't possibly live in an upside-down house.'

Only people who have no idea how it feels not to have
any
house, I thought, but barely critically because I already knew that to mix successfully with the Channings was to overlook their carelessness of their own privilege. I already
knew that I was going to be able to make this compromise. Ed, who had yet to speak, I was not so sure of.

As Lara called for drinks – I imagined a half-naked manservant appearing through a hidden door – I became aware of music, a voice I didn't recognize: an old recording of a woman singing of love and grief, the kind of music that made you abandon all earthly protest and surrender to the melancholy of the human condition. (Hard to believe I hadn't had any alcohol yet.) Then, at a sudden shout of laughter from the terrace, I felt nerves: I'd expected just our two families. This was something more.

‘It's not remotely formal,' Lara said, guessing my thoughts. ‘Just a little Sunday gathering of the godless.'

‘Mum! How do you know they're not perfectly godly and just came from church?' Georgia stepped forward from the kitchen to greet us, a jug of something pink in her hand. She was dressed in denim cut-offs and a cheesecloth blouse similar to one my mother had worn in the seventies and therefore, presumably, prized vintage. Her hair was pinned from her face, her skin flawless, a fabric fresh from the bolt. I knew Molly would be raising a hand to the crop of spots on her chin, regretting perhaps her decision to wear a sundress, though to my eye she had never looked prettier.

‘Oh, bugger, you're not happy-clappies?' Lara said. ‘Have I offended you?' She spoke in the tone of one who can no longer remember a time when she was not forgiven her trespasses.

‘It's
all right, we're not churchgoers,' Ed said, with the slightly wary formality that told me he, for one, had not forgotten the professional relationship between our hosts and us.

‘Pleased to hear it,' Miles said, appearing beside us with armfuls of wine bottles. They must have a cellar, I thought. His mien was quite altered now, relaxed and personable and ready to entertain – or, at least, be entertained. I had a sense that those unguarded moments at the door were exceptional, a glimpse we might never be given again.

‘We're having Negronis,' Lara said, and she reached for two cocktail glasses, positioning them for her daughter to pour from the jug. ‘Interested?'

Ed and I were not cocktail aficionados. This one tasted like pure gin, its effect instant and burning. Pink lemonade was produced for Molly. The same glasses were in use for the children's drinks as the adults' and I couldn't help noticing how easy it might be for one to be mistaken for the other.

‘Right, come and meet the gang …' Lara ushered us towards the open terrace doors. ‘Angie and Stephen are here. Ange is dying to see you again, Natalie.'

Given that we'd met only once and for five minutes, this was an extravagant claim and I thought momentarily of Gayle's remark about overfamiliarity.

Though the sitting room was larger than the entire square footage of our flat, a full-width swathe of the top floor had been sacrificed to the sun terrace. Broad
enough to seat a dozen people, it was an exotically dressed room in its own right, with a sofa, a hanging chair and several other lounging options. The floor was scattered with kilims and there were potted bays, hydrangeas and tropical plants I couldn't name. Neither could I tell if the entrancing scent of vanilla and freesias was coming from the greenery or from one of the guests.

Angie drew the eye first, prone as she was on a steel spider's web of a sun lounger and dressed in blood-orange Capri pants and a revealing silk vest. Those unsettling pale eyes were safely hidden by sunglasses and my attention was drawn instead to her slightly downturned smile, which lent her the sardonic air of an Austen wit. Her limbs, however, were pure twenty-first century: sharp and slender and conspicuously exercised to the point of looking as if the fluids had been drained from them.

Her husband, Stephen, was one of those heavy-set men with a bashed-up face whose youth had likely been misspent on the rugby field. He was gung-ho in his handling of their two teenage children, one of whom, Josh, I recognized as the boy from Georgia's lido group; he eyed me with polite blankness, clearly not remembering me. The girl, a classmate of Georgia's, was named Eve and had a fitting self-consciousness. As quick to colour as she was to please, she was in Georgia's thrall, I saw; acolyte rather than deputy. To my delight, the group accepted Molly willingly and immediately disappeared.

The
other guests were a gay couple in their late thirties, Douglas and Andrew, owners of the adjoining house, who sat hip to hip on the hanging chair. One had eyes the vivid green of a budgerigar and a jutting bony nose, the other smoother, more forgettable features.

‘Come and check out the view, Natalie,' Stephen said, seeing me hover. ‘Don't look so scared – I'm not going to push you off.'

‘I should hope not.' Remembering my melodramatic thoughts on arrival, I joined him at the railing and exclaimed in pleasure. In all my years in the area I had never had the privilege of such a view: the low-slung structure of the lido in the foreground – we were not quite high enough to see the water, but close enough to hear the squeals – and, beyond, the green mounds and folds of the park, then the brick-brown parallel lines of the nineteenth-century homes off the high street, predictably dubbed The Toast-rack. Hidden from sight at the outer edge, on the site of the former municipal dump, was Rushbrook Primary, the employer that had brought Ed and me to the area years ago. It had never seemed so remote from me as it did now. Feeling a surge of elation, I lowered myself on to a pouffe patterned with the face of Frida Kahlo.

‘This is amazing,' I said, to the neighbours in the hanging chair. ‘You must have the same terrace next door.'

‘Same size, but Lara's is nicer,' Douglas said, adding, ‘Bitch.'

‘Don't
listen to a word those two say,' Lara said sweetly. ‘We only invite them to these things because we feel we have to. It's either that or risk having them call the police to complain of a disturbance.'