The Swimming Pool (24 page)

‘Don't ask me to do any algebra,' I said. ‘My brain isn't working yet.' Neither was my voice, which was
painfully rough, as if damaged from smoking crack. I hadn't yet decided how much I was going to divulge about the previous night, so I asked after Craig and Gayle. ‘I'm sorry I wasn't there. I did swing by the Vineyard at about midnight, but you'd left.'

In truth, the walk in the dark had been more intimidating than I'd expected, and when I'd found the Vineyard closing, I'd been glad to continue straight home.

‘They were fine,' Ed said. ‘Disappointed to miss you, though. They've invited us for dinner on Wednesday, so it would be great if you could make yourself available.'

‘Of course I will.'

‘You look terrible, by the way. Hangover, I assume?'

I gave a weak smile. ‘Were you on the peppermint tea yourself, then?'

‘It's not a competition,' Ed said mildly. ‘We're all old enough these days to feel the extra glass.'

‘Speak for yourself,' I said, though my throbbing head told me he'd made a good point.

‘So how was the rest of the night with the Borgias? Did you have an orgy with any courtesans or spike any drinks with arsenic?'

Though I knew full well humour was his way of showing forgiveness, my hangover made me defensive. ‘It was great, actually. We went swimming.'

Clear skies clouded. ‘You did
what
? Where?'

‘We broke into the lido and we swam in the dark.'

I
hadn't intended confessing, but it was worth it – almost – to see his disbelief, his astonishment at what I might be capable of. ‘No you didn't,' he said.

‘We did. It was completely wild.'

In retrospect, I see that this was the tipping point, the conversation during which I tipped from seeking his approval of my new friendship to toying with his disapproval of it; to keeping details secret, details like what had been insinuated – was it too bold to say proposed? – in those final few minutes with the Channings.

‘It was just a bit of fun,' I said, shrugging.

‘It was just a bit of breaking and entering.' Outrage coursed from him in almost visible waves.

‘Not really. Lara's practically one of the staff there. She knew the alarm code.'

‘I bet she did, but I don't suppose she was authorized to use it. Imagine if Health and Safety …' He tailed off, hearing himself, changing direction. ‘I can't believe you'd do that when you were all so drunk. You of all people know how dangerous it is to go in the water under the influence. It's a suicide mission.'

‘We were fine, Ed, no one died. You're always telling me I need to stop obsessing about safety.'

‘I didn't mean you should go to the other extreme! Where were their kids while all of this was going on? Please tell me you didn't take them with you on this crime spree?'

Crime spree, suicide mission, it was all so puritanical, and I remembered now the illicit thought about not spending the rest of my life with a man who always said
no. The instinct I'd had about it being the most important evening of my life, maybe that had been true. I pressed my lips together, not trusting the words that might escape, the truths.

Lara and Miles want me.
Me
.

‘Georgia is one of my students, Nat,' Ed said.

‘Well, you can rest easy because she wasn't there. The kids stayed at the house with Angie's au pair. They were all asleep by the time we left.' I tried to recall if I had actually seen Milena, but it was a moot point: Josh, Georgia and Eve were all of a reasonable age to be left in charge of younger children. ‘Don't look like that. They're all perfectly responsible parents.'

‘They're perfectly responsible
children
, I'll grant you that.'

‘Come on, Ed, not this again.' I might have been remaking myself as a rebel without a cause, but he was a conformist with too many causes to count and that, surely, was worse.

In tighter control of himself now, Ed looked at me with a teacherly tolerance so exaggerated it left me in no doubt of his true intolerance. ‘I don't have time for this debate. I've got Georgia arriving any minute now.'

‘Then you'll see for yourself she's quite unharmed. I'm going back to bed,' I said, as if in agreement.

And it seemed to me that there was the faintest trace of admiration in the way he looked at me as I left the room, a woman he no longer recognized. A woman who no longer quite recognized herself.

I walk back to the lift with the dazed eyes and unsteady gait of a victim emerging from an explosion. The floor beneath my feet feels uneven, the walls warped. Mrs Channing asks that I leave. Lara wants me to go. Did I really expect anything different?

Then, like a supernatural phenomenon, her voice reaches my ear.

‘Natalie! What the hell are you doing here?'

I have heard it like this only once before, severe and accusing, and grievous though it is, I feel hope stir. She has changed her mind and come out to see me.
She doesn't hate me
.

I turn to find her six feet from me. Everything in her face is strained and tightened; those smiles, so freely given, so sure of their effect, no longer have any place here. The magnificent green dress is wilted, the sculpted hair in near collapse. ‘Lara, I didn't mean –'

She interrupts: ‘It's not Molly, is it? Tell me she's not here as well!'

‘No, no, she's at home with Ed, she's fine. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you, I just wanted …' I'm stammering. What
do
I “just want”?
She
is who I want to see,
but
he
is who I need to see. ‘I just wanted to find out how Georgia is.'

Her face sags, nude lips tremble. ‘She's alive, she's, oh, I don't know. They've told us that because she was unconscious when she arrived, she's less likely to …' Her voice falls away, broken.

I know better than anyone how the sentence ends. ‘That's just a statistic,' I say. I wish I could comfort her physically, but we're as estranged as two people at touching distance can be and I keep my arms pressed to my sides. ‘There are always exceptions, the lucky ones. She'll be one of those.'

In response, she leans against the wall, her face now in profile to me.

‘Are there enough staff on duty?' I ask. ‘It's so quiet downstairs, I was worried there might not be.'

She nods, a desolate, exhausted dip of the head that stays low, as if her hair is too heavy for her. ‘They've been great. The consultant came straight in. Donglas rang him and he just got up in the middle of the night and came. Thank God he wasn't away for the bank holiday.'

It doesn't surprise me that strings have been pulled for her, but it seems to surprise her. She is, understandably, not herself.

‘Lara, we're so sorry. I mean, if Georgia was in the water to help Molly in some way …'

She turns, interrupts me, smothering a touch of belligerence: ‘“In some way”? I can't think of any other reason she was in there, can you?'

I
can't. However I've skirted it these last hours, I cannot deny it now: Molly is the reason Georgia is here. There was an incident involving a non-swimmer in the water in the dark; she could only have been a liability, lashing in all directions, wild enough to pull stronger swimmers under. I think of the burden of her soaking dress. I imagine the weight of her fear.

‘Well, we're grateful.' It's inadequate, insulting. It would have been better to say nothing at all. It would have been better not to come.

‘I have to go back in,' Lara says, and she takes a step backwards.

‘Of course. Please give Georgia our love when she's strong enough to get messages.'

She is silent but there is assent in her silence, an acknowledgement of optimism.

I'm already walking away when I sense rather than hear footsteps behind me. Turning, I get quite a fright to see her so close to me, her eyes livid with feeling.

‘Natalie?'

‘Yes?' And there is a moment of preternatural clarity when I not only hear what she says before she says it, but also have my answer ready. Oh, Lara. When darkness fell, I didn't see it for what it was. In my blindness, you continued to glitter; in my ears, your murmurs still seduced.

‘I thought you might have understood?' she says, and though she makes it sound like a question, she doesn't wait for a reply.

The deep end was as restless as the ocean, water leaping at me from all sides. The wind, low and swirling and full of the threat of September, made my ears ache.

Dipping sleekly under the lane divider into the free area, Lara gestured for my attention. ‘Let's take a break,' she called. ‘We need to chat.'

‘Thank God. I can hardly move,' I gasped, my lungs pumping and straining. She'd already begun swimming when I'd arrived and this was our first chance for conversation. ‘I blame Friday,' I added, low-voiced and conspiratorial. ‘Isn't it surreal to think we were right here in the middle of the night?'

I'd done my very best to resist obsession since then, not to overthink what had been intended by a taxi not ordered and Miles's footsteps on the stairs as he came to ‘explain'; or by a hand grasping mine under water and lips that lingered on the corner of my mouth. I'd reminded myself over and over that this was Lara and such overtures might be everything or nothing. Nothing, I'd judged, when I'd received her breezy text proposing a swim this morning.

I
followed her up the ladder to where she was settling herself at the water's edge, calves dangling into the pool. Her golden skin shone, her hair dripped down her face and neck, over her collarbone. I could feel her breath, laughably untroubled considering the dozens of lengths she'd just completed, lapping me several times.

‘No Angie today?' I asked. ‘I thought she'd be keen to get back in the groove after Italy.'

‘Actually, I asked her not to come,' Lara said. ‘I wanted you to myself.'

Such was my vanity, I actually tipped back my head to the sun as if anointed.

Lara, however, grew uncharacteristically solemn. ‘I promised Miles I wouldn't say anything …' As two women approached and began setting up camp a few feet from us, she lowered her voice; this in itself was odd, for normally Lara didn't care who heard her views. She expected people to listen in, to pay attention. ‘But I didn't want to keep secrets from you.'

‘Oh.' I could feel the creeping sensation of shyness – as well as the beginnings of alarm. Having not allowed myself to obsess, I had also not properly considered what on earth I would do if nothing turned out to be everything. If I had to ask myself, Who am I really and what do I want? ‘About Friday, you mean? I hope I didn't offend you by rushing off like that, I wasn't –'

‘No,' she broke in, frowning. Again, it was unusual of her to be so impatient. ‘It's not that. This is about Georgia.'

This
was the second time Lara had admitted to being troubled and the second she'd cited Georgia as the cause. I began to shiver as the wind chilled my damp skin. ‘What's wrong? Problems with Matt? He is a little older, but you've presumably discussed the implications with her.'

This warranted no more than a brief, querying look. ‘Occasionally I check her social media,' Lara said. ‘Email and texts, as well.'

‘Really?' She was the last person I would have expected to confess this: liberal and permissive, she was often seen laughing at Choo's Twitter account, managed by Eve, or jokingly requesting Georgia share photos of Matt and his colleagues in their lifeguards' uniforms. She would have been astonished to see us sit Molly down, as we had done not so long ago, for a family viewing of the latest police child-protection video. (As for what she would make of my having tried to open my daughter's journal, perhaps she'd be more sympathetic than I might have guessed.)

Seeing my surprise, she added, ‘I don't mean I read all the messages and posts, I'm not a glutton for punishment.' There was a chuckle here, but even that was abbreviated, almost curt. ‘I just scroll through the contacts and followers, see who she's been chatting with. Just in case.'

‘I think that's very wise,' I said earnestly. It would be pleasing to be able to report this conscientious parenting to Ed. ‘Ed and I try to keep up to date with Molly's
passwords. Our view is that if there's something worth hiding, then there's something worth finding.'

Of course the truth was that if there was something worth hiding then these half-child half-adult creatures would stop at nothing to hide it, and if we thought we had the faintest chance of outwitting them we were fooling ourselves. Their skills at subterfuge were superior, their self-absorption more complete.

‘Anyway,' Lara said, ‘yesterday I noticed something that worried me.'

‘Oh, Lara.' I reached to pat her arm in sympathy. ‘Tell me. Maybe I can help?'

She held my eye – she was rare in not letting her gaze drift upwards to the birthmark – and then, very gently, she brushed my hand from her arm and placed her own hand where mine had been. There was something in the gesture that turned me cold. ‘I noticed she had an awful lot of messages from Ed,' she said finally.

I blinked, once, twice. ‘From Ed? Well, of course. They're presumably about scheduling their sessions. Or links to revision sites and so on.'

There was just the barest trace of pain in her eyes, too obscure to name, before she looked down. ‘Maybe, yes. I just thought there were an awful lot. Some were from when you were away, which struck me as inappropriate.'

Never before had I heard Lara use this word as a negative. As far as she was concerned, inappropriate was a hoot, a cue for applause.

‘I
know there was a FaceTime session,' I said, battling my confusion. ‘I was in the room when he took the call from her. You and I spoke afterwards, remember? You'd been here, swimming in the rain.'

‘I don't mean that. These were emails, a whole string of them. Georgia doesn't normally bother with email. She does Instagram and WhatsApp, all that stuff. This felt secret. The email address was different from the one he uses when he sends me an update or an invoice.'

‘Secret?' I faltered, my chest tightening. If she was suggesting what I thought she was suggesting, then I had to shut this down directly. It went without saying that I trusted Ed implicitly and knew him to be beyond reproach, in thought as well as action, but I couldn't vouch for Georgia and the vagaries of the teenage psyche. Who knew what nonsense she and her friends had been exchanging on the subject of her ‘old but hot' maths tutor? In my experience, the most attractive girls were the very ones interested in the challenge of gaining adult attention, their peers having proved all too easy to win. If I'd had to guess, I'd have said that, buoyed by her success with the older Matt, Georgia had perhaps made some regrettable comment about Ed that Lara had stumbled upon, prompting this investigation. Yes, it was a predictable enough suspicion (and one I might have anticipated had I not been so focused on Molly and, I admit, myself).

Most crucially, if Craig's experience had taught me anything it was that parents –
people
– had only to hear
the word ‘smoke' and they were already warming their hands on the fire. God, teenage girls were a liability; it was a miracle society survived them.

‘Let's start at the beginning.' I spoke with the firm-not-forceful tones of a teacher that, in the past six weeks, I'd almost forgotten I possessed. ‘Ed always communicates by email or phone with his students. Texts are too easily missed and there's often detailed information to give, or attachments. I have no idea how many accounts he uses, but I do know he's highly organized and I wouldn't be surprised if he runs his admin from one account and pupil liaison from another. You say the correspondence felt “secret”: in terms of the content, did you actually read the emails?'

‘No,' she admitted.

‘Well, you should – if only for peace of mind. Come on, let's go back now and read them together and you'll see there's nothing whatsoever for you to be worried about. It's not an invasion of privacy if it's correspondence with a teacher. I'm sure Ed wouldn't mind us looking. All teachers know communication with pupils needs to be transparent.'

Lara sighed, as much the sigh of a thwarted child as an anxious parent. This sort of confrontation didn't come naturally to her, I guessed. ‘She's out with Eve, she'll have her phone with her.'

‘If it's email then you can access it on her laptop or whatever device she uses. Do you know the password?'

‘There's no point. She'll have deleted them by now.'

‘Why
would she have done that?' I knew from Ed's and Craig's stories of confiscated phones that young people (all of us for that matter) were less efficient in deleting sent emails than received ones, and lengthy exchanges could be revisited easily. ‘Lara, have you talked to Georgia about this?'

‘Not yet. I was hoping … I was hoping I wouldn't have to.'

Again she exhaled heavily, tiring of this, and I saw that I was going to have to press her to be explicit. ‘Are you asking
me
to raise this with Ed? If so, I honestly think he might take offence. He's absolutely scrupulous about teacher–pupil boundaries. He doesn't even approve of our socializing, to be honest.'

I didn't add that Lara had personally blurred the relationship to a level that could surely be construed as more troubling than anything Georgia might have done.
I bet the girls love him
: that had been one of the first things she'd said to me. She was, after all, a woman who was blithely lustful of her daughter's eighteen-year-old boyfriend.

‘Forget it,' Lara said, abruptly, decisively. ‘I shouldn't have said anything. As you say, I'm sure it's completely innocent.'

‘Of course it's innocent. Seriously, if I thought for a moment Ed had crossed the line with a pupil, any pupil, believe me, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I would be at home spitting blood.'

Saying this, I was struck by what was fundamentally unnatural about this conversation:
she
was not spitting
blood. Yes,
I
knew this was nonsense, scarcely worth my rousing any but routine defences on Ed's behalf, but if she really believed there had been any impropriety between Georgia and a teacher in his forties, shouldn't she be on his doorstep demanding answers? Wouldn't Miles be at her side, ready to punch his lights out?

Inexplicably, through some rogue neurotic impulse, an image of Stephen sprang to mind.

‘Look, I ought to get back,' I said. Cold now, I was also feeling the beginnings of nausea, not because of any doubt I had about my husband, but for the dawning knowledge that my friendship with Lara was now at risk. ‘Molly will be home in a few hours and I don't want to be out when she arrives.'

As I struggled to my feet, I felt her fingers lock around my ankle. Then, when I pitched slightly, her other hand rested briefly on my calf to steady me. Her eyes were fierce with pleading. ‘Listen, you won't say anything to Ed, will you? Don't give this another thought, I'm just being paranoid, stressed out about the party next weekend.'

I couldn't see what possible connection there might be.

‘This doesn't change a thing between us,' she continued. ‘See you tomorrow as usual? We'll have lunch here, shall we?'

‘I'm not sure what my movements will be,' I said truthfully. ‘It depends what Molly wants to do.'

At this, Lara became more animated still, as if I'd hit upon some inspired solution to save the day. She released
my ankle and sprang to her feet. ‘Bring her with you – I'd love to see her again. Let's see if we can't get her in the water this time!'

She was almost wild; I didn't recognize her.

‘Text me, Natalie, promise?'

As I moved away, I saw people watching with interest, including the two women stretched out near by. They didn't know me but, like most, they either knew who Lara was or were naturally attracted to her. They wondered who had inspired such entreaties; it was not the dynamic they would have expected, the beauty begging the disfigured. And, to my shame, I enjoyed that confounding of preconceptions.

Given the food for thought I carried away with me, I enjoyed it more than I should have, just as I did the memory of her fingers on my ankle.

Arriving home, I was calmed both by the gleaming cleanliness of the place (part in atonement for Friday's antics and part in preparation for Molly's return, I'd spent the previous afternoon deep-cleaning) and by immediate evidence of the professionalism I'd just been defending in my husband. For sitting in his office cell, producing invoices, was a man who gave sixty or seventy hours a week to his job in term time and who was applying the same dedication to his tutoring. All these weeks that I'd been indulging myself, he had not once complained that he was working when he could have been relaxing: he was utterly
committed to the new venture. It was inconceivable that he would jeopardize it with even the smallest ambiguity.

I showered, then joined him in the living room, where he'd adjourned with his laptop. I was determined to do as Lara had insisted and keep the matter to myself. The problem was – and it's hard to admit it even now – I continued to be agitated, not by the threat to Ed's reputation so much as the one to my relationship with Lara. We might have parted with her publicly begging me to agree that nothing had changed between us, but the very fact that Lara Channing was begging meant something was seriously amiss.