The Swimming Pool (17 page)

Only when satisfied that every last strand of his spaghetti was submerged did Ed turn to face me. ‘What on earth took you so long? We're going on holiday in the morning, or have you forgotten?'

‘Of course I haven't. Sorry, the time just flew. Thank you for packing for us. And for cooking – I feel like I haven't done it for ages.'

‘You haven't.'

I resisted the urge to pour myself a glass of wine. ‘Shall I grate the Parmesan?'

‘Already done.'

The table was laid too, water poured. Seeing no way in which I could help, I took a seat. ‘I'm really looking forward to getting away.'

‘So am I.' There was a sullen pull of breath. I saw I'd underestimated his mood and what it would take to improve it. ‘To be honest, I think it might do you good to have a break from your new crowd.'

‘Do me good?' I echoed. ‘And what d'you mean,
my
crowd? They're yours as much as mine.'

‘I would dispute that,' he said, tone grim. ‘For me, they're clients first and foremost.'

I would dispute that, first and foremost: pompous, Ed-in-a-mood phrases.
First and foremost
, we were teachers, role models in a society full of drug-users and big personalities.
First and foremost
, we were topping up our pension. That initial affection soured somewhat: how had I not
noticed before what a killjoy he could be? Was it because – oh, goodness – was it because I had been one too?

A feeling of disobedience overcame me, an urge to shock him as if he were parent and not partner. ‘D'you know what Angie just told me? The Channings sleep with other people. Miles and Lara, that is. I obviously don't mean Georgia.'

Having been about to extract a string of spaghetti with a pair of tongs, Ed's arm halted. Steam flew up, enveloping his fist, but he did not flinch.

‘So watch out, “Alain”. You know how much she likes you, eh?' It was naughty to tease but, really, he needed to lighten up.

But when he turned, his expression was as righteous as I'd ever seen it. ‘You're not suggesting what I think you're suggesting?' In his fist the lid was poised like a cymbal and I imagined him crashing it against his own head – or mine. ‘This isn't the Bloomsbury Set, whatever Lara likes to think. Quite apart from the fact that there's something totally fucked up about that mother-daughter relationship, I'm not interested in being unfaithful to you. I'm sorry if that disappoints you.'

There was a catch in his voice that both squeezed my heart and, faintly, despicably, stirred disenchantment in me. Couldn't he at least
imagine
illicit impulses, have a little fun joking about them, even if he – neither of us – had any intention of acting on them?

‘I wasn't saying
that
,' I said. ‘I was just gossiping, that's all. And hang on a minute, there's nothing fucked up
about Lara and Georgia. They have a fantastic relationship.'

‘You really think so?'

‘Why wouldn't I? Or do you mean what you said about her being tough on grades?'

‘I'm not talking about grades. Open your eyes, Nat. The only time they spend together is when Georgia is acting as a maid for her. Serving drinks, babysitting her brother –'

‘Helping your daughter with her crippling phobia,' I interrupted. ‘She's doing that because Lara asked her to, I bet she is. You know how they stick to their peer groups at that age – someone like Georgia Channing isn't going to befriend someone like Molly for no reason.'

Ed was silent.

‘We of all people know how dangerous it is to presume we know what's going on in someone else's family,' I continued. ‘Georgia strikes me as a very self-possessed individual and nobody's fool. If she wasn't, then we wouldn't have let her take Molly to the pool today, would we? Come on, you said it yourself – don't you remember?'

‘Said what?'

‘That she's the real deal. She's special.'

Ed turned off the heat, put on oven gloves to drain the pasta over the sink. ‘Can we drop the subject, please, and get on with the hundred things we need to do before tomorrow? Call Molls, will you? This is almost ready.'

As his voice was engulfed by the sudden roar of the extractor fan, I stuck my head around the open door,
only to find Molly just feet away in the hallway. She'd showered and was in pyjamas, her hair dripping on to a towel twisted around her neck, and it no longer felt a pipe dream to imagine her damp from a swim, not a shower. I hoped she had not been there long enough to overhear our discussion.

‘Dinner's ready,' I told her.

‘I ate something at Georgia's,' she said.

‘Then eat something here as well.' I stepped towards her, spoke in a conspiratorial tone: ‘Blame me, not Dad. I shouldn't have kept us out so late.'

The younger Molly would have fallen into line, wanted to please her father, but this new version just rolled her eyes. ‘I can't help it if I'm not hungry,' she said flatly, before walking, straight-backed and undaunted, into the kitchen. ‘I'll tell him myself.'

Accident at Elm Hill Lido

A local girl is in critical condition at Trinity Hospital following an accident last night at a party at the newly opened Elm Hill Lido. A second girl and a boy were treated at the scene. It is believed that one of the girls, a non-swimmer, fell accidentally and that her friends got into difficulties rescuing her.

‘A non-swimmer,' I say, showing the first online report to Ed. ‘That's all she is to the rest of the world.' How we've planned and coaxed and agonized over the years in a bid to remove that ‘non' from her label, to return her to the state of innocence lost that day in the paddling pool. ‘When you think about it, it's amazing that we survived over a decade without something like this happening.'

Ed nods.

As Molly sleeps on, her physical, if not her emotional, strength silently reassembling, I read the comments below the report:

Angel78:
Just walked past the lido a minute ago and the police are there.

R_robinson: I hope it doesn't get closed down so soon after it opened!

Angel78: I just pray those kids are OK. What a terrible thing to happen. Where were the parents when all of this was going on?

My fingers are moving across the keyboard independent of rational thought and, focusing, I find I'm looking at visitor times for the critical-care ward at Trinity. At once I know what I must do.

‘If you think you're OK on your own for half an hour,' I tell Ed, ‘I might head up to the hospital and check on Georgia. Visiting hours start at eight.'

‘You've got to be joking,' he objects, and I avoid searching his face for anything but the broadest response. ‘You can't leave Molls now!'

‘Just for half an hour. She didn't fall asleep until after midnight. I'll be back before she wakes up.'

Inevitably, suspicion returns: ‘Where are you
really
going? Are you seriously leaving your daughter who almost died just for the chance to see
him
?'

‘That's not it, Ed. Don't go barking up the wrong tree again.'

But the barking is already in full voice: ‘You
were
with him, weren't you? In the changing hut. I know you were.'

‘I was with Lara. I'm sure she would confirm that.' But I flush and he sees my guilt.

‘I
had a feeling, you know,' he says. ‘Right from the beginning. You and him.'

That stuns me into silence.

‘The way he looked at you. And me, in a way. Like he was relishing the challenge of it.'

I shake my head, feel the soreness on the side of my face. ‘You're wasting your time thinking like this. Please, just trust me.'

He watches, silently hostile, as I kiss Molly's hot cheek, adjust the sheet a little, thank God again that she's here and not in the place I'm about to go to. She coughs again and I wait for her to resettle before I leave the room.

Locating my jacket in the hallway, I hear Ed muttering to himself and when I return to the bedroom door, his face is filled with an anguish close to heartbreak. ‘What, Ed?'

At the sound of my voice, he starts, fails to hide his agitation. ‘I was just thinking, thinking I can't believe I cancelled Paris for last night.'

‘Paris?' I stand there arrested, bewildered. ‘What do you mean?'

‘I had a weekend in Paris planned for your birthday. I hoped it might help …' The thought, the hope, disintegrates on his lips and his tone hardens. ‘But you were so keen on this bloody pool party I cancelled it.'

‘I wish I'd known.'

‘Would you have come?'

‘Of course I would.'

And
as I leave, I think how there are times when life unfolds tidily in precisely the sequence of events you'd like and expect, the right words said to the right person at the right moment.

And then there are times when it unravels in a way you know is wrong and was never meant to be. A way that has the power to destroy everything.

Given Molly's recent advances, the arrival of our holiday appeared to represent unfortunate timing. It was also the first and, it would transpire, only week of the summer in which it rained: daily, hourly, by the second, a relentless pulse that maddened the blood. Ironic, then, that Ed and I had, as we always did, selected a location a safe distance from water: from our small stone cottage in a hamlet accessed by a muddy lane, there could be no accidental stumbling upon coast, lake or waterpark.

Instead we caught up on reading and TV and plundered the chest of board games provided by the owners. Somehow Molly's childhood had passed without a game of Cluedo and it was this that proved her favourite.

‘I'm not sure about this new board,' said Ed, of the latest-edition visuals.

‘What's new about it?' Molly asked.

‘The original one had a billiard room, not a spa, and you went to the cellar to make your accusation, not to a swimming pool. Why would you make an accusation in a swimming pool?'

‘Why would you make one in a cellar?' I said.

‘It's
a question of self-preservation,' Ed said. ‘If you're in a pool, you're barely clothed, a hopeless condition for fleeing in the event of conflict.'

‘Well, in a cellar, you could be trapped. That's no good for fleeing either.'

‘You're not arguing, are you?' Molly said, and Ed and I looked at each other with consternation.

‘Of course not,' I said. ‘Just having fun.'

‘I'll see if I can track down the original board and you'll see what we mean,' Ed told her.

‘Mum and Gran might have one in Stoneborough,' I said. ‘They're not known for updating their entertainment offering.'

‘I'm not even kidding,' Molly said.

Her question notwithstanding, the mood was far easier that week than I'd expected, or deserved, frankly, given the tensions that had preceded the trip. I was ashamed of taunting Ed with the Channings' alleged open marriage – what had I been thinking? It had served no purpose whatsoever – and grateful that he had been able to set it aside, if not forgive me wholesale. Neither of us wanted to ruin this holiday for Molly.

Though she had been the keenest of all of us to bring Inky, predictably she now refused to come on the rain-splashed dog walks. Last summer we would have overruled her and insisted she join in, but now we said fine, we respected her wishes.

‘It
seems
like she's being lazy,' Ed said, as we trudged through cool, wet woods, the morning sky as dim as
twilight. The ground was so sodden it tried to glue us to it, our wellingtons making obscene sucking sounds each time our feet pulled them up. ‘But actually it's a really big thing to be left alone in an unfamiliar place at this age. It's good for her psychologically.'

‘If she was our third or fourth child we wouldn't even be having this conversation,' I agreed, suspecting that we were having it anyway because, historically, discussion of Molly had united us like nothing else. Of course I was mindful of the ongoing need to stop obsessing (I couldn't shake that stage-mother comment of Lara's), but building bridges with Ed superseded that. ‘She's craving independence,' I added. ‘Look at the lido situation – amazing! When we get back to London, should we organize swimming lessons, d'you think?'

‘No,' Ed said. ‘She'd say if she wanted that. Also, don't you think the fact that we
haven't
tried to organize anything has been a part of what's worked? Like that business of the tour.'

On the drive down, news of a further leap had been announced. Full of bright ideas, as those with a guilty conscience often are, I had proposed once more a behind-the-scenes tour of the lido with Liam, only for Molly to respond that she had already arranged it for her return and that Georgia would be accompanying her. This she reported with an offhandedness that indicated pride, and I guessed it had been Georgia's enthusiasm for the scheme that had prompted the approach – not to Liam, but to Matt – in the first place.

‘So
what are these secret plans for my birthday you told Sarah about?' I asked Ed now.

‘Be patient,' he said, and it was a relief to hear the old twinkle of affection in his tone.

Encouraged, I said, ‘It's just that I like the sound of this pool party.'

‘What pool party?'

‘You know, the one at the lido, the night of my birthday. Lara's involved – it's a nineteen-sixties Riviera theme.'

Ed pulled a face, as if he knew what bacchanalian depravities
that
would involve.

‘Only if you fancy it,' I said hastily. ‘But she wants to give us tickets as a gift. Molly too. It's very generous of her.'

He conceded this. ‘Would Molls want to go to something like that?'

‘It's not a swimming party. The pool itself will be closed. I think it could be fun.'

‘We'll decide nearer the time,' Ed said, which was code for no. ‘I thought maybe we could do something active, like walk the South Downs Way.'

Given his earlier secrecy, this was certainly a red herring, but the truth would not be so different, not so different from
this
, a fern-scented waterlogged English forest that was not without its charms. I was aware of the conflict more than once that week: the cosy appeal of the familiar versus the hunger I'd felt for change – revolution, even – when talking days ago to Angie.

Ed
brought us to a halt on the edge of a mud bath where several paths crossed. Rocks and vegetation were disappearing under rainfall. ‘Where on earth are we?' he said, frowning.

‘On the sea bed?' Waiting at his side as he pulled a map from his anorak pocket, I was speared without warning by nostalgia for a different wood, a drier day, the dusty tangle of branches and the smell of pond water drying on burned skin. We'd be going to Stoneborough at the end of the week, my first visit of the year and one of sufficiently few for me to be able to recall each individually. Was that why I'd been so besieged by thoughts of the place recently? Or was it the swimming? That and the sweet exhilaration of making new friends had combined this summer to stir sensory memories of
that
one and it seemed I could regulate neither their frequency nor their effect.

Behind the drone of the downpour, I suddenly fancied I could hear those jazz piano chords Lara liked so much, those plaintive strings. Then, from across the years, another kind of music, sung by young voices in a twang not quite comic enough to stop it sounding sinister.

‘Are we lost?' I asked Ed and my tone was almost hopeful.

‘I think we might be.' He looked through the trees at the swollen clouds, just in time for a large drip to break like an egg on his upturned face.

As
if to illustrate my point about Georgia Channing being special, Ed revealed that she was the only student with whom he had agreed to stay in contact during his week away. A brief session on FaceTime had been arranged in lieu of their regular Wednesday slot.

As they were finishing, Lara appeared on screen beside her daughter. She was in a primrose-coloured sweater, that imperfect smile brightening the visuals like a change in settings.

‘Hi, guys! Don't you dare tell me about your amazing weather because it's
abysmal
in London.'

‘Same here,' I said, over Molly's shoulder. Clearly she'd forgotten we were less than a hundred miles away, still in England.

‘I've just been swimming and I was
literally
the only one in the pool.'

‘You still went in, even in the rain?'

‘Yes, but it was in my top ten worst swims,
really
grisly. The sky was so low, I was practically breathing in cloud. I'm surprised I didn't choke to death.'

I imagined the sensation of swimming through the rain, the thousands of drops drumming the surface of the water like hammerheads on soft metal, and for a moment I wished I'd been there to brave the assault with her. ‘It'll clear soon, Lara. The forecast is better for next week.'

‘I bloody hope so or I'm going to have to raid the Pharm good and proper.'

‘Oh, Mum, don't be so outrageous,' Georgia said good-naturedly.

‘You
know
I need the sun, darling.'

‘Yes, it's a very reptilian trait.'

Lara feigned giving her a shove. ‘I prefer to think of myself as a tropical plant.'

‘Deadly nightshade?' Georgia said and, after a blurred bobbing of heads, the screen cleared and I saw mother and daughter were hugging and laughing together. I laid a hand on Molly's shoulder and felt a stiffening of muscle under the soft fabric of her fleece. As soon as the call ended, she disappeared to her room.

‘Not so fucked-up after all, eh?' I said to Ed, but not provocatively because it was nice to be friends again.

He shrugged. ‘What's the farm? Some posh spa, I suppose?'

I told him I didn't know, even though I did and it was perfectly harmless – the Pharm was Lara's nickname for her medicine cabinet. But given Ed's earlier suspicions of cocaine abuse it seemed inadvisable to fan the flames.

When Molly reappeared, her hair was in a high ponytail, long strands at the front falling into her face. It didn't take Cluedo wizardry for me to figure out when and where I'd seen the style: Georgia, the FaceTime call from La Madrague, maths textbooks on her knees.

Later in the week, in an immaculately chosen private moment that doubtless rankled with her as much as any ill-chosen public one, I sought Molly out in her bedroom. She was in front of the mirror, her expression both self-critical and reflective, her lips slicked with a
luscious pink no one but her parents would see. I paused in the doorway, not wanting to break her spell. No sense in pointing out that she – and all girls her age – looked a hundred times better bare-faced, that they didn't know how beautiful they were.

‘Bored?' I asked, and when her eyes flicked towards me, that candid, receptive gaze so characteristic of her was replaced almost at once with an opaqueness that excluded me. For all I could tell, she was thinking profound and conflicting thoughts or she was thinking nothing at all.

‘Aren't you?' she said, shrugging.

It was as if every day she came up with a new way to avoid giving information (in fact, answering a question by asking one of your own was pure Ed). I responded conversationally, invoking the only piece of advice all parents and teachers seemed to agree on: keep the lines of communication open. ‘Not so much bored as soggy. I didn't think we'd need our wellies and raincoats inside.' This was a reference to the many leaks that had made themselves known in the upstairs rooms.

Still the rain lashed, the windows squares of smudged grey beyond which the world had been liquidized.

‘Molls?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm so pleased things are starting to happen – you know, with the hypnotherapy and the trips with Georgia to the lido.'

No reply.

‘We
understand you want to do it alone, or not with Dad and me involved, but I just wanted to say that you can always talk to me, you know that, right? Not just the pool stuff, anything. Even if it's embarrassing or awkward or something you think might make me angry, I'll always listen. I'll always be on your side.'

‘I know.' Another quick glance, another good intention annihilated by teenage distaste.

‘Okay.' I wasn't sure whether she was only saying what I wanted to hear. While it helped to draw on my own feelings and behaviour at the same age, there was no family precedent for how I should respond; I had never been given such overt reassurance by my own mother. If I had, might I have behaved less deplorably? Was I even now, in some dysfunctional way, blaming her?

‘Mum, can I have the laptop next week, when I stay at Grandma's?'

‘Sure,' I agreed. ‘Let me just check I have everything I might need before you take it.' Not that I intended doing anything work-related; there'd been moments these last few weeks, whole days, when I'd forgotten teaching altogether.

Downstairs, transferring a couple of documents from hard drive to memory stick, I had a quick glance at Molly's desktop. Though I told myself it was a routine parental check, I knew full well that my eyes were alert for anything phobia-related – all right, not ‘anything': one thing in particular.

A
journal. Bryony had told me about it when I'd phoned for advice the previous week: in their very first session, she'd recommended Molly keep one to record her feelings about the new pool, in particular about the occasion she'd gone there with me. Of course there'd since been expeditions involving Georgia too – in fact, so much had happened since Molly had last seen Bryony that I wondered how they would fit the hypnotherapy itself into their next half-hour appointment.

At first I'd assumed the journal would, if it existed at all, be the traditional kind, handwritten entries in a notebook, but Ed had reminded me that this age group wouldn't dust down an ink pen if their lives depended on it. ‘Not that it matters either way,' he'd added. ‘A diary is private, end of story. None of our business.'