The Swimming Pool (30 page)

Lara was Nessie.

‘Your synchro, I suppose. All the turns and dives, it was lovely to watch.' My voice sounded dreamy, disembodied. ‘I know I didn't say it at the time, but that's what I thought. You were beautiful.'

Her mouth came close to my ear, startling me. ‘I think you must have a defective memory, Nat. My name is Lara and always has been. But I suppose guilt does strange things to your mind. And lust, of course.'

Even with the distraction of her lips so close to my face, I knew she wasn't answering in the way she should be: she was speaking lines from a different script. And yet it was what she said, not I, that rang true: of course she'd always been Lara – her name was in the public record; before Channing she'd been Markham. She'd been a competitor from a young age. It was not feasible that Nessie could have been involved in something as uncommon – and ripe for mockery – as synchronized swimming and been able to hide it from the other kids. That was why I had denied the instinct before I could
name it: it was false. Meeting Lara, being with her, it had been a true déjà vu, not a second intersection of our fortunes. And it had been caused, as she'd judged in an instant, by guilt.

But if she wasn't Nessie, then what
did
she think I'd done years ago?

It struck me then that I might be so drunk I had concocted the last few minutes, imagined her whispered comments in some guilty delusion brought on by the recent reunion with Mel and compounded by the stress of my escalating conflict with Ed. I was a believer in the power of hypnotherapy, after all, a fearer of the human mind.

But no, this was real, because she was continuing to talk to me in the same uncaring way, her fingers rough in my hair. ‘Don't you agree, Natalie, guilt messes with your brain? Sends you slightly mad?'

I was suddenly very afraid of her. ‘I want to go back to the party,' I said, reaching to find the door handle. ‘Please let me out.'

‘Oh no you don't. You'll stay where you are.' She blocked my way.

I knew she was stronger, I knew I wouldn't fight. I let out a sob, too fast to catch, and at once felt fingers on my face again, touching the tears.

‘I'm sorry, Natalie.' She was gentler again, almost tender, disorientating me. ‘In a funny way, I
am
sorry. It could have been fun. I hope you believe that.'

‘La …'

Her
voice hardened once more. ‘I
said
don't call me that. Only my family do, and my real friends.'

And at last a fingernail hooked at a thread of memory: there had been a sister. Nessie had had an older sister who'd been a sporting prodigy, away at a residential camp while her sister was left to contend with the village bullies. If that camp had been a training programme for genuine hopefuls, a regional or national squad perhaps, Lara might have been the absent one, the one who returned at the end of the summer to find her sister terrorized and broken.

A younger sister whose beauty had peaked at an early age …

The first knock was so faint I hardly registered it, but Lara reacted before the second one came, manoeuvring me deep into the corner, the edge of the seat cutting painfully into my legs. ‘Don't even
think
about trying to leave.'

‘Iona,' I said simply. ‘Nessie was Iona, wasn't she?'

My tea is finished but I'm thirsty, so thirsty. Captivated by the display of water bottles in the chiller cabinet, backlit and glowing like elixirs or medicines, I decide to buy one to drink in the car. It will not heal me but it will restore me for now.

By the time I've taken one and turned to face the room again, there's a new presence in the small, cheerful space, an alteration in the atmosphere, as if the morning has only now chosen to reveal itself.

And yet everything looks the same.

I join the queue to pay. At home, my family awaits: my duty, my love, my meaning, everything. Molly's phone is still in my hand, its screen displaying those messages shared with a girl upstairs fighting for her life.
2/36, 1/57, 2/58
… An idea sparks: the numbers are timings, perhaps, from those sprint races at the lido, the role that helped her overcome her terror of the water's edge. My pulse quickens as a tangle of thoughts begins its unravelling, but before I settle on any single one my eye is caught by a familiar mannerism: an ankle rotating, a well-shod foot circling one way and then the other, as
if to ease an ache in the joint. Above, a pale trouser leg, creased and discoloured. I hear a trace of a voice giving thanks, then the man turns, a coffee in each hand.

He sees me. He waits for my gaze to rise to meet his.

For a few moments I can't breathe. I put the water bottle down on the nearest table and step away from the queue, but my legs don't work as they should and I stumble.

When I look again he is directly in front of me, feet planted solidly, takeout coffees clutched like twin grenades.

Him.

‘What
are
you talking about?' Lara snapped. ‘Iona's got nothing to do with this. You really have lost your mind, haven't you?'

‘But –'

There was the sound of a bolt sliding from its casing, a sudden release of heat, then the re-sealing of the door. Now there was a third person in the hut. I would have known him by senses other than sight, the quiet tension of him, an energy separate from heat or odour.

‘Hello, Nat,' Miles said.

‘Thank God!' I cried. ‘Do you know what's going on here?' There was the lilt of appeal in my voice, a note of umbrage, as if Lara had failed me, mistaken me, and now Miles must adjudicate and – quickly, please – free me.

But he did not answer.

‘Miles? Is this to do with Iona? Tell me!'

‘Forget Iona,' Lara said. ‘You're deluded. So shut up, please.'

Now I became properly aware of the temperature, uncomfortably, unnaturally high. There were three of us in a confined space and I was conscious of every breath,
thermal, thick with tequila. Blood roared in my ears as I felt the beginnings of claustrophobia.

At last Miles spoke, his tone as remote and agreeable as it had been when we'd spoken earlier in the evening. ‘Take your clothes off.'

‘
What?
'

‘I'll do it,' Lara said, and now I felt what, moments ago, I had longed for, her hands on my clothes, my body, undressing me.

But it was a rough, careless disrobing and it was at his command, not mine. I sucked in my breath, too stunned to protest. My cognition was already blurred by her denial of Nessie and now here was Miles acting on some other unconnected agenda. My brain turned full circle: this must be something sexual, not the rendezvous I had wanted but a more complicated one, one that did not require my consent. I felt the drilling sensation of fear. ‘Guys, please, stop. I'm not interested –'

Miles laughed and it was not the urbane, sardonic laugh I knew, but an utterance of raw hostility. ‘You don't seriously think we want to fuck you, do you? Look at yourself, you dumb bitch.'

I gasped, turned my face in humiliation. My jaw made contact with a wrist bone and the sharp pain it caused was a distraction, almost a mercy.

‘Is her dress off ?'

‘It's not
hers
,' Lara muttered, as if it revolted her to find me in it, as if the pleasure of her gift of it had never been experienced. I could feel liquid bubbling in my stomach.

The
dress was at my feet and now Lara's hands were on my skin, long nails scraping my back as she unhooked my bra. Again, I strained for clarity, finding one last solution: this was a misunderstanding. They'd misunderstood about Ed and now they'd misunderstood about me. Someone was smearing us, poisoning minds against us. I was filled with moral urgency, the need to clear my name, be my right self in their eyes. To go back to what we had been twenty minutes ago.

‘Please –' I began, but was startled by the touch of something soft on my ear. Lips, a mouth so close the words dropped into the cavity. Not Lara's.

‘You don't remember me, do you?'

‘No,' I said miserably. ‘Remember you from where?'

‘Stoneborough, of course.'

‘I thought this was nothing to do with that?'

‘She thought it was me,' Lara told him. ‘Can you believe it? She can't even remember who she destroyed.'

‘I didn't destroy anyone,' I cried. I seized something solid, Miles's upper arm, and squeezed, as if to wrest understanding from him: ‘
You're
from Stoneborough? I thought you said you grew up in Kent.'

‘I did, after my family left the area. Because of you.'

‘I don't understand.' He must have known Nessie, then. She had not been his future wife or his sister-in-law, but his own sister or a close childhood friend. And Lara … I could feel her fingers, spiky with disgust, tugging my knickers down my legs. She was here because he was.

She'll
do anything for him.
Angie knew them far better than I did. The thought of kind Angie on the other side of the pool, giggling with Douglas and Andrew, looking out for our kids or phoning to check on Eve, made me whimper. She wouldn't go along with this, she'd know it was lunacy. Stripping a woman naked and holding her captive in a changing hut! And Ed, Ed would stop them – he'd protect me from their bullying.

You're my wife. At least I thought you were.

‘You almost killed me,' Miles said. ‘Do you realize that?'

Me
. Not Nessie, him. And, with a surge of relief, I was back to the idea of a terrible misapprehension.

‘Please, can we straighten this out?' I said, hearing the shake in my voice. ‘I know the village, and there was an incident, yes, when I was young. It was with a girl, the one I mentioned to Lara. But there was no boy involved. So maybe you're talking about a different place, some other person?'

As his voice came close to my ear again, his hand pressed my head against the wall, flattening my cheek and mouth. ‘The fact that you have no idea what you did makes it even more despicable.'

‘But what is it you think I did?' My voice was not mine, my sense of myself quite lost now.

‘You did what we're going to do to you.'

‘Almost finished,' Lara said, in a confirming tone, and I felt her stoop, squat, elbow bony against my leg, before roughly gripping my ankles as she removed my sandals.

As
tears fell, my mind made a connection, plucked an image that might make a match.

Everyone hates you. Everyone. All the boys.

He must have been one of them. The ones we'd stripped and mocked so casually we'd considered our victims interchangeable. For they had been a pack, a litter, their pubescent bodies and incomplete faces standard issue, everyday fare. I couldn't remember a single individual, only their massed wayward voices, their universal kicks of wildness and rage. Far more powerful in my memory were Mel's snorts and the sudden delicious weakness inside my ribcage as I caught her laughter and felt the howls escape me. It had not haunted me as Nessie had. It had not come close.

‘That was …' I stammered ‘… that was just a prank.'

‘A
prank
?'

And now my face was shoved against the wall, my cheekbone connecting hard, pain coursing through my head and neck.

‘Let me remind you about your
prank
, you whore
.
You left me alone in the woods without any clothes. I had to walk home through the village naked. Two fucking miles. When I got to the high street, people came out to laugh. Everyone I knew, my friends, my brothers.'

‘But … but we thought …' I was, struggling to suppress sobs.

‘You thought someone would help? Well, they didn't. It was the worst humiliation of my life. I didn't leave the house for weeks. It was the holidays, I could hide. But then school
started. I thought if I survived the first day of school I'd survive for ever, but I didn't. Every single child knew about it. It was a witch-hunt. I was bullied, I was destroyed. I was sent to a psychiatrist because I tried to take my own life.'

I was unable to process this, to accept any part of it. All I could do was snivel my excuses, ‘Honestly, Miles, I swear I had no idea. It didn't …' I stopped myself, but he reacted as if I'd continued, roughly pulling my face closer to his by my hair.

‘Didn't mean anything to you?'

I thought of Mel, who had likely attended the same school. Had she been aware of his suffering? As his tormentor, had she been, in the warped childhood hierarchy, a hero? Gulping, I reached for the last cowardly protest at my disposal: ‘It wasn't just me. What about Mel –'

‘I don't care about the other one. I remember
you
. I remember how you enjoyed it. You were sadistic – I saw it in your face.'

‘I didn't enjoy it!' This was overwhelming and yet, aware now of my crime, I could at least think more clearly, could begin to assemble a defence. ‘I can't believe it affected you like this. It was over thirty years ago!'

‘Maybe in thirty years' time you'll still be thinking about tonight. I hope so.'

‘She will,' Lara said.

‘I don't understand what you want from me!' I cried.

A slap to the side of my head shocked me into silence.

‘Shut up and listen. This is what you're going to do,' Miles said. ‘We're going to get you to the turnstile and
you're going to go through it into the park. You're going to walk home naked, just like I did. You won't have your key, so you'd better hope someone's home.'

He knew Ed and Molly were here, of course. I had a vision of myself ringing Sarah's bell, or that of another neighbour, waiting to waylay someone coming or going from the building, and my mind rejected it as unthinkable. How could I explain? How could I endure humiliation like that?

‘An eye for an eye,' Lara added. ‘It couldn't be fairer. You're lucky there's no interest added.'

‘Someone will see me, someone will help me.' Gayle, I was thinking, her house was closer than mine. But she was at the Vineyard, twenty minutes from here, almost on my own doorstep. Then I thought of Eve, at home on her own with Milena, just a street away. I'll go there, make up some story, get her to lend me some clothes.

‘If they do, you'll be luckier than I was,' Miles said. ‘Or maybe you'll be unlucky and someone will film you and post it where your pupils look – and their parents. Your colleagues. Your daughter.'

‘I refuse,' I said, locking my legs, stiffening my body, like an animal. ‘This is ridiculous. You're both mad.'

Lara grasped my bare arm, hurting me. ‘Now, listen to me very carefully: if you make a sound when we go out there, if you do anything to get out of this, then tomorrow we will be making a complaint to the police.'

In the dark, I swung blindly from one to the other: they really were demented. How were they holding down
jobs, running a household, raising kids? At last I found my fire: ‘They won't take you seriously. How could they?' The police hadn't been involved in our assault of Nessie, a crime far more serious than any skirmish with Miles; it was laughable that they would be interested in pursuing what we'd done to him. ‘We're talking about a different age, three decades ago!'

‘Not about that, you moron,' Miles said. ‘A complaint against your husband for the sexual harassment of a fifteen-year-old girl.'

My face and neck flooded with a heat so febrile, so suffocating that only adrenalin could stop me passing out. ‘What? There's been no harassment.'

‘I think only the victim can make that call, don't you?'

I was speechless, utterly broken. I had no idea what Georgia would be prepared to fabricate at her parents' behest or – in the hysteria of the moment it occurred, I admit it – if there
was
any truth in it. But what I did know was that it would not come out of the blue: there'd be a paper trail, screen grabs of messages taken out of context, evidence of doubts raised to third parties, an account to someone convincing of Lara having had a warning word with the wife. They'd laid the trap.

‘Have you been planning this the whole summer? The tutoring, our friendship …?' I was sobbing, speaking in gulps.

‘There is no friendship,' Lara said.

‘This is why you were so keen to get me to the party …'

A
new suspicion was dawning: last Saturday, at La Madrague, had they been going to do this then? Strip me, send me out into the night? Or had it been sexual, after all, to enslave me, guarantee my attendance at the party in spite of the planned alienation of my husband? But I'd left. I'd thought I wasn't ready for their advances, and when the seed had been planted about Georgia I'd announced I wasn't coming to the party after all. And then Lara …

Everything I'd felt, she had not. She had only acted.

Because tonight was perfect. At a drunken pool party, it was not beyond the realms of possibility that there would be some skinny-dipping, some shameful middle-aged character who'd drunk too much and made a laughing stock of herself. But it was more than that: it was public humiliation, the kind of thing that burned for a lifetime … Word would spread even without the incendiary of social media. I would be suspended or fired from work. What would Molly say?

Molly.
Where was she now? Was she safe with Ed, helping put candles on a cake? How long had I been held in this hut? Had I been missed? Was she, right at this moment, picking her way around the pool, her demons reawakening, her step faltering? I felt myself begin to hyperventilate.

‘Let's get on with this,' Miles said, and at once a vertical crack of blue-tinged light appeared, enough for me to see his face, his eyes frigid, emotionless.