The Swimming Pool (19 page)

‘Are you still called Mean Mel?' Molly asked the guest, when we were finally called to the table. She was considerably more engaged than she had been at any time in the preceding week, Cluedo included.

‘Not often,' Mel said, cracking a grin that exposed undersized teeth. And though I'd not given it a thought in thirty years, the sight now of one of the central incisors overlapping its neighbour was as familiar to me as my own eye colour. I felt a lurch inside me, not so much of remorse as loss. I blinked. Now that the adrenalin had drained, so had lucidity of thought, and I was finding it a strain to connect to this experience fully.

‘You're not mean, Nan!' Rio protested loyally. He was a sweet thing, really.

I wondered if Mel had taken him to the pond to swim and was about to ask when she winked at him, answering, ‘Depends who you listen to, love.'

At
this, my mother's antennae twitched. ‘Does he know about …?' As she allowed the question to fade delicately, I froze, petrified. Did
Mum
know, then? But the unspoken intelligence was new to me too, it emerged, for no sooner had Rio finished not eating and been allowed to slide from the table to play on his DS than Mel was confiding to us that in her twenties she'd served six months in an open prison.

‘Blackmail,' she said baldly, which made me gulp. ‘I'm not proud, but there we are.'

There we are
, she kept saying. Yes, I was inside, but there we are. Dean and me split up, but there we are. One of my daughters hasn't been to visit in nearly a year, but there we are. Nat and I were feral bullies one summer, but
there we are
.

She didn't say that, of course. She didn't mention our shared summer at all, in fact, keener to describe her daughter's travels in Thailand and a recent coup in obtaining studio audience tickets for the forthcoming series of
The X Factor
.

‘How long are you staying at your mum's?' I asked. I could feel a distinct tingle of unease, the beginnings of panic, and it wasn't hard to identify its source: I didn't want to leave Molly in Stoneborough if Mel was there. Blithe she may have become, but I didn't trust her.

‘Just till tonight. I have to work tomorrow. But Rio's staying another week. The whole block's got damp, it's a nightmare.'

The tingle subsided.

‘Maybe
Molly and Rio can play,' my mother suggested, and Molly looked aghast at the idea.

‘Molly doesn't really “play” any more,' I said.

‘They could go down to the shop together then,' Mum modified.

Molly pulled a noncommittal face, addressing Mel: ‘Mum told me how you used to steal cans of Coke from Mr Moron's and when you opened them they exploded all over your clothes because you'd been running.'

‘Another vintage anecdote,' Ed said, winking at Molly. ‘I assume that wasn't Mr Moron's real name?'

‘No, Morton. He's long gone,' said my mother.

I was staring at Mel by now, mesmerized by the planes of her face, the light and shade cast by her chewing muscles, the familiar and unfamiliar messages her eyes sent. ‘We were horrible to him, weren't we, Mel?'

‘I don't remember him.' She sighed. ‘We were so bored that summer. Like
every
summer. Nothing to do in Stoneborough. No offence, Mrs Waters.'

‘None taken,' my grandmother said. ‘It's precisely because there's nothing to do that we like it so much.'

As fear gave way to disbelief, I turned my frowning face from Mel to my grandmother and back again. What did she mean, nothing to do? Three decades I'd been haunted by that summer. It was impossible to accept her perfunctory dismissal of it.

Ed, at least, sensed the source of my disquiet. ‘I think “Nasty Nat” has rather sentimentalized her summer of delinquency,' he said, smiling at Mel. ‘Your reign of
terror over the neighbourhood boys?' Even the little he knew he had reassessed, I saw, likely thinking that Mel's prison sentence made our juvenile misdemeanours pale into insignificance.

‘I have
not
sentimentalized it,' I said, struggling to manage my distress.

Soon after, I engineered a moment alone with Mel when she was in the garden, smoking. We must have stood here together before, I supposed, possibly shared one of the cigarettes stolen from her parents and brother.

‘How's Nick?' I said. ‘Do you remember how he was supposed to be looking after us while your mum went to work, but he just got on the bus to Southampton every day to see that girl?'

Mel chuckled. ‘He's still the same lazy bastard.'

I held her eye, aware of the neediness that must be so evident in my own. ‘Do you think we look different now, Mel?'

She sniggered. ‘It would be a bit fucking weird if we didn't.'

But she understood, as her next comment showed: ‘Didn't you want to have a skin graft or whatever?'

The birthmark, she meant.

‘I don't mind it so much now,' I said. ‘It's faded a lot. Anyway, these things are a part of us, aren't they? I wouldn't want Molly to think you should have to fix your imperfections and be the same as everyone else.' I thought of Lara's smile, the surprise of the gaps between
her teeth, little breaches of her beauty. ‘But it wasn't very nice when we were her age, I admit. All the name-calling, remember?'

Mel drew on her cigarette. ‘Do you think your mum is going to open the Heroes? I told Rio she would.'

‘I don't know.' It wasn't only frustration I felt at this obtuseness – or evasion – it was also sorrow. Once she'd been my leader, but now she was left behind, and not just by me, I guessed. Lara's face flashed a second time: she was a different kind of leader, a saviour from ordinariness, from myself. What would Mel make of
her
? The thought made me glow with secret pride. How far I had come, how well things had turned out for me, if
she
was my friend now.

It was time to be direct, I decided. Who knew if I would see Mel again? I might never have another chance at exorcism. ‘You know, I always wondered what happened to that girl.'

‘What girl?' As she drew on the cigarette, deep grooves appeared around the edge of her upper lip. ‘Oh, the blonde cow. What did we call her again?'

‘Nessie.' And just like that, with those two syllables, my heart was a drum again, battered with steel-capped sticks by some hyperactive demon.

‘That's right!' Mel exclaimed, with delighted laughter, exactly as if she'd not given the subject a thought in years. I couldn't tell if she was acting; I couldn't read her at all.

‘Do you remember my gran thought it was short for Vanessa? She thought she must be one of our friends.
“Do you want to invite Nessie for tea?” she used to ask me.' My voice caught. ‘Maybe I should have done that. Maybe we would have been friends.'

Stubbing out the cigarette in a flowerbed, Mel whistled. ‘God, Nat, you really hold on to this shit, don't you?'

‘I suppose I do.' I was pleased that she lit a second cigarette, was prepared to talk on. ‘I still feel bad about it, Mel. She didn't do anything to hurt us – she didn't say a word to offend us. What we did, it was evil.'

‘Don't be mental, Nat. We were kids.'

We stared at each other.

‘The family left, didn't they?' I said. ‘Do you know where they went? Sometimes I feel like I should get in touch, try to explain.'

But she was utterly lacking in remorse. ‘Seriously, if that's the worst thing you've ever done, then you must have been living like a nun all these years.'

‘It's not just Nessie,' I said. ‘I felt awful for leaving you in the lurch. I've never been able to tell you that.'

Her lips parted, her surprise genuine, and I realized then that she'd not seen it as I had. She'd seen it only as the way she was used to people behaving towards her, the same way she expected them to behave towards her in the future. It was wretched and there was nothing I could do to make amends. I knew for certain I would not see her again.

No sooner had Mel and Rio left than Ed began making noises about traffic on the M3.

‘What
do you have planned while Molly's with us?' Mum asked, and all at once the week stretched ahead of me like a stroll through the Promised Land. Ed would be working, but I would be free.

‘Swimming at the new lido, a few drinks things,' I said.

‘Well, quite the
bon vivant
. You'll have to keep an eye on her, Ed.'

To my horror, I blushed.

We said goodbye to Molly. It was bittersweet to know that I was sadder about the separation than she was. It was another thread broken. But that was right and natural, I knew. The threads were the dissolving kind – you couldn't find the ends to fuse them again, you had to let them go.

Driving home, I was overcome with a relief so heavy it was almost a sense of reprieve, even reward. It was nothing to do with having left my beloved daughter, of course. It was to do with Mel, her casual dismissal of our wickedness, her absence of hard feelings towards me. She didn't care, it wasn't a big deal. If I took her lead as unquestioningly as I had at the time, I'd live the rest of my life guilt free.

I stared through the windscreen at the thickening red string of brake lights ahead as the motorway curved towards London. Soon the evening would fade and we'd be dazzled by headlights. I reached to touch Ed's hand, resting between us on the gearstick.

‘What?' he said, glancing across.

‘Oh,
you know, just seeing Mel, it made me think, there but for the grace of God …'

‘Come on,' he scoffed. ‘You shared a few japes when you were Molly's age, that's all. I don't know why you're so hung up on it. It couldn't be more obvious that you have nothing in common.'

‘It was a lot more than japes, Ed.'

‘What are you saying?' He inhaled sharply, for effect, I sensed. His mood was playful. ‘Not that you and Snout-nose –'

‘Don't call her that.'

He glanced again. ‘Did you two share some sort of an “awakening”?'

‘Don't get excited, nothing like that.' But I squirmed. ‘Do you think …?' I began.

‘What?'

‘Molls'll be all right, won't she? Without us.'

‘Of course she will. If last week's anything to go by, she won't set foot outside the house.'

‘I hope she gets
some
fresh air.'

I tried to picture Molly swaggering around with a Mel of her own, being urged to climb scaffolding and roam the woods like a savage. For all her pleas for freedom, would she like that level of permissiveness? After all, the lack of that freedom was probably what saved her from being mocked for her condition. Back then aquaphobia would have been mistaken for cowardice, a fault more despised than an unfortunate birthmark. She'd have been the one getting her swimsuit pulled off by Mean Mel and me.

Or
worse.

The thought made me shudder.

‘Listen,' Ed said, ‘I was thinking, about your pool party.'

‘Oh, yes?'

‘Since you're so keen on it, let's go. We can have a little birthday celebration there, can't we?'

I was overcome by delight. ‘What made you change your mind?'

‘I just want you to have what you want. It's
your
birthday, not mine. We'll make sure Gayle and Craig and Sarah are going too.'

‘We'll only go if Molls is happy with the idea,' I promised. ‘I would never leave her out.'

‘Of course not.'

I watched him watch the road, make his lane changes in precise and considered manoeuvres, keep the correct distance from the vehicles ahead; he could have been a driving instructor. We would have sex later, I recognized the aligning stars: the empty flat, the rapprochement of the holiday, the mood of the drive. And, in my case, the sense of release from a long dread, an ordeal sprung without warning and somehow survived.

Ed had been right about one thing: the summer of 1985, I'd sentimentalized it – or, more accurately, demonized it. I'd fixed it in my mind quite differently from how the other players had.

I'd not remembered it as a game at all.

She was Mel's and my
bête noire
, though I wasn't entirely sure how to pronounce that and, in any case, the truth was that we were hers – a beast with two heads.

She came from the new estate by the woods, where we hung out sometimes on the building site of half-complete houses and where the finished articles, like hers, seemed to us millionaires' ranches from American TV shows. In truth, that would have been enough to win our interest had she not been so pretty where we were plain, so popular where we were feared. She was also the best swimmer. The way she held herself in concentration before plunging into a dive, only to emerge seconds later with an expression of unselfconscious joy on her face, pieces of broken light spraying behind her: it both fascinated and infuriated me. The boys, usually chortling, called her the Nymph and competed over who would go out with her.

We called her Nessie, short for Loch Ness Monster.

The first time I remember seeing her at the pond she was with her mother and that in itself was something to be despised because this was a place for kids, not adults, everyone knew that.

‘She's got no other protection,' said Mel. Most of the kids had siblings, Mel and I each other, but Nessie's sister was away for the summer at some watersports camp. (They were evidently an aquatic clan.)

The
sole adult voice rang out repeatedly that afternoon: ‘Come out of the sun, darling'; ‘That was a better dive!'; ‘Careful out there in the middle. Your feet could get caught on roots.'

She was one of those neurotic mums who saw danger lurking everywhere, who made such a big deal about being Nessie's mother it was as if she thought she
was
Nessie. (When my own mother phoned from home, I refused to speak to her.)