The Swimming Pool (25 page)

‘Are you all right?' Ed asked.

‘Fine.' And in that single syllable I knew I was going to allow Iona's runaway train to derail. I could feel my hands slipping from the wheel, my feet rolling from under me. ‘How is it going with Georgia since we've been back from holiday?'

In spite of the abruptness of the question, he answered willingly. ‘It's going perfectly well. We had a good session yesterday.' Then, at my silence: ‘What?'

‘Nothing,' I said.

‘Nat, just spit it out.'

‘Just, well, you don't think …?'

He looked up properly, fingers motionless on the keyboard. ‘I don't “just, well” think what, exactly?'

‘That maybe she might be getting a little too fond of you? Developing a bit of a crush.'

Ed
stared at me, irritated. ‘What on earth makes you think that? We get on well, of course we do, but I find that that's slightly more constructive than encouraging students to hate me. Better for business, too.'

I consciously relaxed, meaning my body language to show how casual my remarks were, how expectant I was that he should dismiss them out of hand. ‘I don't mean you would ever do anything, of course you wouldn't. I just mean her. Maybe she's not the innocent we think she is.'

Faint colour stained Ed's cheeks. ‘Whether or not she's “innocent”, whatever that means, is not my concern, is it? I teach her maths, not morals. End of story.'

But his tone was anything but terminal. Sensing the magnitude of my mistake, I blundered instead towards generalization. ‘I'm just saying, with girls of that age, the ones who come on their own, maybe we should make sure I'm here at the same time? Just to be on the safe side? You can't be too careful – we know that from poor Craig's ordeal.'

Ed set aside the laptop. ‘Why would you bring that up? Craig was the victim of a malicious campaign.' As the words formed, there it was, the sudden flush of comprehension that seemed to make his eyes change colour.
Now
he exploded. ‘This has come from
her
, hasn't it? You've just seen her at the pool and she put this idea into your head? Interfering witch.'

‘Ed!' Instantly I was ambushed by an instinct to defend Lara from his accusations, not him from
hers – what was the matter with me? Even as I engaged in it I recognized my behaviour as both disloyal and self-sabotaging. ‘Ed, don't get this out of proportion. All she said was she'd noticed Georgia had had a lot of emails from you, including when we were on holiday. She wondered if that was the normal amount between a tutor and his pupil and I said it was. Don't worry, she hadn't actually read them.'

He flushed deeper still, enraged. ‘You say that like there was something to read! And you're prepared to cover it up like some complicit political wife. Like
she
no doubt would for Miles.'

My head pounded. ‘No, I don't. If I thought that, then don't you think I'd be confronting you myself? Obviously, I knew it was nonsense.'

‘So you agreed to have a quiet word with me, did you? Aren't you insulted on my behalf? Doesn't it make you wary of this woman?' He laughed, bitter, scornful. ‘No, of course it doesn't, not when you're a desperate acolyte.'

As I gaped, he startled me by picking up his phone and flinging it on to the sofa seat next to mine. It bounced against my leg and I put out a hand to stop it falling to the floor. ‘I haven't deleted any emails or texts for weeks. Read any you like. Go on! All the sent ones are still there too. Feel free to show the police.'

To my horror, he reached next for his laptop. ‘If you throw that at me as well,' I said, ‘I swear I'll leave and not come back.'

‘Where
will you go?' he demanded. ‘To the Channings'? Do you
really
think they'd have you? The wife of a sex pest?'

By now, the scene had gathered a combative heat that was unprecedented between us and no less distressing because I had commanded it myself from perfect tranquillity and order. ‘Calm down,' I said. ‘Of course I'm not going to read your private messages.'

‘Not private. Professional.' His tone was as black as his expression.

‘Yes.' I laid the phone on the coffee table, face down, as if that were an illustration of my honour.

‘Do you want to know what I think?' Ed said.

‘You've already told me, haven't you?'

‘I think she's fucking toxic, your great mate Lara. I think she's pathologically jealous of Georgia and is trying to damage a perfectly healthy and productive teacher–pupil relationship. She's using you to help her.'

‘She's not.' Oddly, it was this, more than anything, that cut the deepest: that I should be being used, not loved for myself. ‘She had a brief concern and she aired it discreetly. If you must know, she begged me not to mention it to you.'

‘I bet she did. She's stirring trouble for her own entertainment. This is probably what she does for a hobby while Miles plays golf.'

‘He doesn't play golf.'

‘Was she pissed? At the pool?'

‘Of course she wasn't. It's the middle of the day.'

‘So
what? They probably start on the booze the minute they wake up.'

We're too drunk. We're always too drunk.

I suppressed an involuntary impulse of dread or lust or something equally violent. ‘This is a mistake, yes, we can agree on that, but don't forget all the lovely things she's done for us. Think how she's helped Molly.'

He made a contemptuous sound. ‘It's Georgia who's helped Molly, and before you say it again, I don't believe for a moment that Lara ordered her to. All
she
did was recommend a therapist and anyone could have done that.'

‘It was more than that,' I protested. ‘She even rang Bryony in advance.'

Ed's exasperation flared once more. ‘That's how she operates, don't you see? She does favours, puts herself at the centre of things. Like the lido. The way you describe her, she's like some mobster running her front-of-house from there, controlling guest lists, keeping everyone quiet with cocktails, leading midnight break-ins.'

I burst into laughter. ‘What are you talking about? That's not remotely how I describe her! And she spent two years on the restoration campaign, which is hardly a quick favour. It must have been pretty tedious and was probably unpaid as well.'

‘She doesn't need the money. She just fancied having a pool across the road from her house and had nothing better to do with her time. It's all power play.'

‘It's good works, Ed, and friendship.'

‘A
funny kind of friendship. But maybe that's what you prefer, these days. Over the people who genuinely care about you.'

He meant Gayle, of course. This conversation was an out-and-out disaster. Only a physical withdrawal was going to stem this flow of hateful comments and I got to my feet to leave the room. ‘Look, please don't blame Lara, blame me. It wasn't even an allegation. I should never have said anything.'

‘The point is, I would
expect
you to say something,' Ed said. ‘You're my wife. At least, I
thought
you were.'

‘
What?
'

‘Mum?'

We both started at the sound of our daughter's voice, the sight of her moving from hallway to open living-room doorway, her face appalled.

‘Molls, you're early! I didn't hear you come in.' I hurried to hug her, but her arms remained by her sides.

‘Because you were shouting,' she said coolly. And she looked first at her father and then at me, as if to say we had deliberately ruined her homecoming.

Behind her, my mother appeared. ‘You do know that everyone on this floor can hear you going at it hammer and tongs? Honestly, Nat, you'll have people complaining you're lowering the tone.'

With Herculean effort, I ignored this remark.

‘Hello,' Ed said blandly. ‘Come and sit down. Tell us all about your week away, Molls.'

‘Nothing to tell,' Molly said. ‘I'm going to my room.'

‘Don't
be so rude,' Ed began, but I stopped him.

‘Leave her. I'll put the kettle on.'

‘That poor girl,' my mother said, tailing me into the kitchen. ‘What a way to see your parents after being away from them for a week.'

I had an image then of the first time I'd seen her and my father after my summer in Stoneborough. She'd been in the kitchen getting lunch ready and he'd gone over and kissed her. The joy of seeing them affectionate and peaceful again, it had felt like all I needed in the world. There was no lunch waiting for Molly, but I would set about rectifying that right away. I would make one of her favourite snacks, hot sausage sandwiches with grilled tomatoes.

‘She won't eat those,' my mother said, watching me pluck the packet from the fridge. ‘She says she's on a diet.'

I stopped in my tracks. ‘She doesn't need to diet. I hoped she didn't know what a diet was.'

‘Well, she certainly does.'

The heat of the row with Ed still visible on my skin, I warned myself not to create another family crisis out of a passing remark. As I put the sausages back into the fridge, I tried to recall the last meal I'd shared with Molly. She'd not eaten the corned-beef hotpot, but that was evidence of sanity not disorder, surely. In the New Forest, she'd eaten normally, but I hadn't thought to pay special attention. Before that, I could hardly remember, mealtimes, domesticity in general, having been downgraded, only the more exciting times distinct in my mind.

‘I
take it your week alone hasn't gone too well?' my mother asked, and when I looked at her I couldn't reconcile her with the woman in the kitchen who'd kissed my father and welcomed me home. When had she stopped being on my side?

‘You sound as if you want it to have gone badly,' I said, my voice tremulous.

‘Don't be ridiculous,' Mum said.

But after the day's difficulties with Lara and Ed, I couldn't face another argument. ‘It's been great, actually. You just caught us at a tricky time. Let's have a cup of tea.'

‘Before I forget, your friend Mel popped by before she went back to Southampton.' She was not one to let ill feeling get in the way of gossip.

‘Did she?' Molly hadn't mentioned that when we'd spoken on the phone.

‘She said to give you a message about your old friend – Vanessa, is it?'

‘Nessie,' I said cautiously.

‘That's it. She said she asked her mum about her and Cheryl said the family's not in the village any more. They moved away years ago.'

‘Oh. I wonder where to.'

‘According to Mel, London. They're probably just around the corner.' Mum raised the blind and peered from the kitchen window. Foxes had been at the bins and left an unsightly scattering of rubbish across the road. ‘If you ask me, they must be mad,' she said.

The next few days were miserable. Lara phoned several times but, too wretched and uncertain to know what to say, I rejected each call.

While refusing to utter another word on the subject, Ed simmered almost audibly. As for Molly, I couldn't tell if she was still unsettled by the homecoming row or had simply developed a taste for greater independence, but either way she demanded she be allowed to go alone to her Tuesday hypnotherapy session, which had been rescheduled from evening to morning.

‘I'm thirteen. It's not a big deal. I go to Oxford Circus with Izzy all the time, so what's the difference?'

‘This is a medical appointment, not a shopping trip,' I said. ‘I have to come with you in case there's anything Bryony needs to discuss afterwards. Besides, this is a big week. You haven't seen her since before we went to the New Forest and you've got a lot of brilliant progress to report.'

‘It's not “brilliant”, Mum.'

‘
I
think it is.'

Even
without looking at me she was able to convey how little she rated my opinion. ‘I'm still a freak,' she muttered.

‘Don't say that,' I protested. ‘You're a fantastic, brave girl.'

She allowed a brief touch of my hand on her arm, her eyes bright with the honesty of her response, but then she blinked and they'd clouded again. During the journey into the West End, she was mutinous, glaring as if she hated me.

‘I've lost control of her,' I told Sarah that evening. Though Molly and I had visited together after Inky's walk, she'd left within minutes to fetch her phone. ‘God forbid she be separated from that thing for half an hour. I'm convinced it's why she's withdrawn from us – it supplies all her needs. Perhaps it might cook her meals for her too. Actually, she's saying she wants to cook for herself from now on. Where will it end, Sarah? A legal bid for emancipation?'

Sarah laughed. ‘I think that's an overreaction. Don't forget, she's just been away from you for a week. Trust me, I'm sure it's all perfectly natural.'

Trust me
: they all said it. They all meant it, too. Seeing Sarah was like catching up with common sense, bracing and soothing in one. Like Gayle, she'd been neglected in recent weeks.

‘So long as she's confiding in
someone
,' Sarah added.

‘I'm not sure she is.'

‘What about the friend who's here all the time?'

‘Izzy?'

‘No, the other one. Blonde, very pretty. Comes on her bike.'

‘Oh, you mean Georgia, Lara's daughter. You must have seen her when she comes for her tutoring with Ed.' I wondered if Georgia would turn up to her session the next day, the first since the ‘delicate' matter had been raised. For Molly's sake, I hoped she would. To my knowledge, the two had made no plans to meet since Molly's return from Stoneborough – but what did I know?

Nothing.

‘Have you seen the glamorous Lara lately?' Sarah asked, and the question produced an ache of grief I wasn't prepared for.

‘Not in the last couple of days. I haven't been swimming,' I said. ‘That's where I usually see her, but I've been a bit busy.'

‘Well, her daughter's certainly inherited her looks, hasn't she? And she's so elegant, the way she moves. Quite balletic.'

‘I know. I always think she's like a pixie compared to Molls and the other girls. Though Molls does have the misfortune of having a walrus for a mother,' I added, eyebrows raised.

Sarah smiled. ‘Hardly. You're the picture of health these days, Nat.'

Just then Molly reappeared with her precious phone.

‘You weren't supposed to hear me call myself a walrus,' I told her drily, taking no offence when she failed to
protest at the comparison as Sarah had done. I left the two of them to chat while I put together something for Sarah's dinner.

Bless her. Whatever she said to Molly must have penetrated the teenage self-absorption more effectively than any of my own efforts because when we returned downstairs she followed me into the kitchen and asked if she could help make the vegetable lasagne for supper.

‘Everything all right, sweetie?' I said, as we stood at the chopping board together.

‘Fine.' And she looked not so much abashed as grateful.

‘Think of everything your mother does for you,' I imagined Sarah saying to her, but, no, Sarah was not as overt as that.

Perhaps Molly simply wanted to check how much fat I was putting into the lasagne.

Inevitably, there was apprehension before Georgia's session the next day, apprehension that had to be concealed from Molly, which meant an additional tension.

‘Do not say a word,' Ed warned me. ‘I have no intention of dignifying Lara's ridiculous paranoia with a response.'

Georgia arrived on time, looking and behaving exactly as she always did; either her parents had not shared their
concerns with her or she was an even better actress than Lara. Afterwards, she chatted with Molly and me in the usual way, saying she'd arranged to meet Eve and Josh at the lido and did Molly want to come too.

‘Sure,' Molly said. ‘That'd be cool.'

It seemed to me there was something artificial about Molly's manner and I couldn't help recalling that comment she'd made about being a freak. This would be her first outing near water since before the holiday and it would be quite understandable if she were especially nervous. Divining my fretting, Molly shot me a warning look.

‘Ed?' I said. ‘Are you okay with this?'

‘
Mum!
'

‘Yup, fine by me,' Ed said. Either he remained genuinely convinced of Georgia's good influence – and quality of guardianship – or he had a point to make to me. I had a horrible feeling we might have entered a marital war of attrition.

It was like sitting with leeches on me after the girls had gone. No doubt exacerbated by the new misunderstanding with the Channings, my anxiety exceeded all previous levels and I managed little more than an hour before mobilizing, not specifying to Ed my destination, though admittedly the grabbing of a recyclable shopping bag might have given the (mistaken) impression it was the local Sainsbury's.

Walking through the park, I resisted the urge to tear across the grass like a lunatic but proceeded at a deliberately sedate pace, forcing myself to notice the mother and
her toddler twins resting in the shade, the black Lab eating dandelions, the shorn grass that filled the air with the rich scent of sap. From the distance came the sound of a whistle, long, warbling, the kind you hear at carnivals, which reminded me that it would soon be the bank-holiday weekend, the Notting Hill Carnival and other summer's end celebrations. In Elm Hill, there'd be not a carnival but a pool party. Would we still go? It seemed unlikely that Ed would want to; was it so abhorrent that I did? How would things stand by Sunday? Would I have seen Lara by then? Was she, and not Molly, the reason I was attracted to the lido this afternoon as iron is to lodestone?

If nothing else, such soul-searching sustained me to the end of the main path. As I neared the building, I was struck by the absence of the shouts and squeals I was used to hearing on approach and, peeking through the turnstile at the eastern end, I was confronted by the unprecedented sight of virtually every bather on his or her feet, like crowds on a football terrace. Was some sort of an event taking place? I imagined Georgia and Josh in one of their head-to-heads, Lara having persuaded the mob to clear the pool and pick a side to cheer. But there was no cheering, no laughing, only the murmur of low voices, the uncertainty that comes of unscheduled interruption. Through a gap I glimpsed the pool itself: empty of swimmers, untouched even at its edges, the water was quite still, almost as if it were in disgrace. Now I could see that everyone had turned not to the pool itself but to a spot out of my sightline on the far side.

Something
had happened.

I called through the bars, to anyone who would listen, ‘What's going on?', and was shocked by how my voice sounded, a trapped animal's, frantic with fear.

‘They've just cleared the pool,' said a woman, exiting through the turnstile.

I scuttled aside to let her pass. ‘Why?'

‘The lifeguard had to go in and fish someone out. I think they've called an ambulance and –'

An
ambulance
? She was still speaking as I turned rudely from her and broke into a sprint, reaching the main entrance short of breath and wild-eyed, pushing past the queue to gatecrash a conversation taking place at the front desk. Apparently the admission of newcomers had been suspended.

‘I need to go in,' I cried. ‘It's my daughter!'

‘Natalie, hello.' One of the reception staff who knew me as Lara's friend gestured for a colleague to let me pass. ‘But, wait a second, you –'

I didn't hear the rest as I barrelled through the barriers and into the pool area. Even among the forest of people, it wasn't hard to identify the focus of attention, a gathering of crouched lifeguards around a prone female figure. As I neared, I glimpsed a portion of a navy swimsuit, a section of white leg. I felt vomit fill my mouth, swallowed painfully.

Molly
, I thought,
Molly
. It had happened just as I knew it would. Tired of being a ‘freak', she must have followed Georgia into the water. The shock, the sheer
unfamiliarity, of being immersed would have disorientated her, only for her to find that the floor had vanished beneath her feet. I
knew
I should have gone with her. I
knew
my instinct had been the right one, however retrograde. Ed had been wrong,
wrong
to think we could trust Georgia …

A woman of my age was among those tending Molly, a woman I recognized, and my hijacked brain was slow to make the connections.

‘Gayle,' I said, in that same wild tone, ‘is it her?' And as my old friend's head turned at the sound of my cry, a space opened and enabled me to see the girl fully. Her feet were raised on the lap of a lifeguard sitting beside her – Matt, soaked from head to toe – and he was arranging towels and a foil blanket over her legs. Her swimsuit was in fact dark purple and the style asymmetrical, with a single shoulder strap stitched with love-hearts. Her face, turned from the water and visible to me now, was not Molly's but Harriet's.

Thank God
.

Gayle sprang to her feet, took a step towards me. ‘
What
did you say?'

There was a moment of terror, a moment of knowledge that something horrendous had been committed and it would not be forgiven.

‘Did you say, “Thank God”?' Gayle placed her face close to mine in tear-stained challenge, and I could smell the hot odour of anger on her skin. Behind her, uncomprehending glances were cast my way before attention
returned to Harriet. One of the guards was checking her vital signs, while Matt, calm, grave, dripping, continued to adjust the coverings. ‘Thank God my daughter's had an accident?' Gayle pressed. ‘Might have drowned?'

At last I took command of myself. ‘No, no, of course not. I meant thank God she's fine. Because she is, isn't she?' Indeed, the way Harriet was murmuring to Matt and the others at her side, her distress appeared minimal, closer, in fact, to embarrassment.

But Gayle was not to be mollified so easily. ‘That's not what you meant at all.' Her voice was a furious hiss.

I reached to touch her. ‘Please, what happened? Is she hurt?'

She swatted my fingers from her forearm and ignored my question. ‘You thought it was Molly, didn't you?' And she laughed, a nasty, abrasive laugh I'd never before heard her utter. ‘It's not all about her, you know. There
are
other children in the world, other parents. Parents who care about their children just as much as you do about yours. An astonishing idea, eh?'

All around us faces stared, ears strained, as it became evident there was a second scene to be witnessed. Matt and Harriet looked our way too, with the same slanting expressions of concern.

‘Gayle, please, just tell me what's going on. Tell me if I can help.' But, met only with hostility, I appealed to one of the staff, the young man about whom, just last week, I'd made lascivious remarks to impress Lara. ‘Can I do anything to help?'

‘Would
you mind stepping back, please,' he said, ‘while we follow procedure? We'll be reopening the pool shortly.'

By now Gayle had turned from me and rejoined her daughter. I shuffled backwards before meeting the resistance of the crowd and stood quite frozen, not knowing what to do or say or think, not daring to do or say or think anything at all. My eyes began to leak: tears of anxiety for Harriet or of personal shame, I didn't know.
Other parents, other children
: Gayle's words burned.