The Swimming Pool (4 page)

On
weekdays after work, Ed and I took it in turns to walk Sarah's cockapoo, Inky, for her, mostly to offer practical assistance during her recuperation, partly to assuage our sporadic urges to acquire a pet of our own. Because we all knew
that
wasn't going to happen – we would never be able to suffer the hairs and the dirt.

As with most other Steele activities, strict protocol was in force and whichever one of us did not dog-walk was expected to cook dinner and take care of any other domestic chores. When my mother had made that comment about not knowing which of us was worse, the answer was easy: neither, because Ed and I liked order equally. The difference was in motivation. For him, it was about efficiency, time management. Divide and conquer, he would say, whenever we drew up schedules or cross-referenced diaries, sometimes punching the air for effect. (When he did this, I could see how he might be mocked by his students if he wasn't as nice-looking as he was.)

Keen for her to benefit from the fresh air, I always invited Molly on my walks, though she invariably
declined on homework grounds (what parent who happened also to be a teacher was going to challenge
that
excuse?). Gayle sometimes came, however, depending on whether or not she was on a weight-loss mission, and this evening, with the school holidays only weeks away and the new parading ground of the lido on our minds, we both were.

‘Weight doesn't mean a thing,' she said – with two teenage daughters she was as vigilant as I was about judgements on body image. ‘But I'd prefer it to be ten stone that doesn't mean a thing, not thirteen.'

‘I agree.' Actually, I liked Gayle the way she was, approachably sized and animated of feature. She had a heart-shaped face and narrow nose that flattened slightly at its tip, and the kind of faintly bulbous eyes that looked wonderfully emphatic in heavy make-up (though bare, as they were this evening, gave the unsettling impression of their owner being caught mid-throttle).

‘Do you think we should sign up for this early bird aqua-aerobics?' she asked, a little out of puff as we took a break at the lido noticeboard. It was an uncomfortably humid evening, the slow-rising, ripe-smelling humidity that you know isn't going to break in time to deliver a good night's sleep. The buttercups, normally on springs in late June, were heavy-headed. ‘Eight a.m. isn't
too
crazy, is it? The café won't be open that early so there'll be no one to witness the horror of our exposed flesh.'

I remembered the teenagers laughing at me on my first outing, and my shame under Lara's gaze. ‘Well, we
could certainly try,' I said. A few weeks ago, I would have scoffed, referenced one of our failed pursuits of previous summers (Zumba, transcendental meditation, bridge), but now I felt only the same gush of optimism I'd had on seeing the picture of the Channings on the community website. How lucky we were to have the long holiday ahead – that sacred stretch when hope triumphed over experience to make you believe you'd be free for ever.

‘Of course, you'll have the place to yourself soon,' Gayle said. ‘How long between your lot breaking up and the release of gen pop?' (
Gen pop
: general population. American prison parlance was used often at All Saints and even at Rushbrook, though not at EHP. The day I heard my new head, Mrs Godwin, referred to as a screw would be the day the British monarchy was overthrown.)

‘Just over a week and a half,' I said. ‘We'll be here with our verbal reasoning papers and iPhones and I don't know what else – cellos? This sounds good, Gayle, look – a Last Day of Summer party.' I pointed to a poster for a ticketed event to be held on the August bank-holiday weekend.
Cocktails … Live music … Limited tickets still available!

‘Dress code: the French Riviera,' Gayle read. ‘Hmm. The last time Craig and I went to the South of France it rained and we wore anoraks. I seem to remember he slipped and twisted his knee.'

‘Do you think you'll come, Natalie?'

‘What?'
I was startled both by the question and the sudden quickening in my veins. ‘Oh, hello, Lara.'

Presumably having emerged from the nearby exit turnstile, she had come to a halt rather close to us, near enough for me to catch the scent of chlorine on her skin. I had not seen her face uncovered before, or at such close range, and I experienced for the first time the kind of persuasive velvet-brown gaze that sells washing-up liquid and frozen peas, its blink designed not for the owner's physiological needs but to give the beholder a moment's relief.

‘How are you?' I said, and – I couldn't help it – I felt a shiver of proprietorial pride.

‘Exhausted.' Lara took an illustrative deep breath. ‘I've just done fifty lengths.'

‘Wow.' Remembering the measly six of my own first effort, I didn't need to pretend to be impressed by this.

A second blonde strolled up alongside her, possibly the friend I'd seen cradling her dog like a newborn. While not in the same league as Lara in appearance, she was certainly in the one above mine, her figure the right side of athletic, jawbone enviably sharp. The whites of her eyes were pink from the water, the irises glowing the pale blue that can look unearthly, even sinister, if the emotion is wrong.

‘This is my friend Angie,' Lara said. ‘We've been toasting ourselves all afternoon.'

‘In both senses of the word,' Angie added, miming the raising of a wine glass, and I stopped myself voicing
the hope that they'd done their swimming before drinking, given that alcohol was a contributory factor in at least twenty per cent of deaths by drowning.

Both women were in waffle robes, as if leaving a hotel spa for their guestrooms, which appeared to confirm my hunch about a residence on The Rise. Since it was a weekday in term time, I deduced that they had neither conventional jobs nor any requirement to be at home feeding children or supervising homework. In Lara's case, perhaps the head-turning teen broke away from practising poses in the mirror to put fish fingers in the oven for the little boy. More likely there was an au pair or a housekeeper – no, both, a whole staff of helpers.

I introduced Gayle, who gave a grudging smile, and at once Lara returned her attention to me. ‘So you'll come to the party?' she said, and I noted the ‘come' instead of ‘go', as if the invitation were personal. ‘I'm helping organize it,' she explained. ‘You and Ed should definitely come. And Molly too, of course. We want a family vibe.'

I was flattered that she had remembered Ed's and Molly's names – and mine, for that matter. Perhaps it was the effects of exercise, perhaps the contrast with her tipsy friend, but she had a less capricious air about her today, and the sincerity of her invitation prompted an unusual honesty in my response. ‘I'm not sure,' I said. ‘I'd like to, but we don't come to the pool often, not as a family.'

‘Why not?' Lara and her friend waited, confident that there was no problem I could propose that they couldn't
solve on the spot. By my side, Gayle was restless, poised to move on. She didn't expect me to explain my family difficulties to members of a different tribe, especially not one so remote from our own. As if to reiterate our less upmarket credentials, Inky strained the lead to sniff a patch of half-dried urine at a nearby bin.

‘It's Molly,' I said. ‘She suffers from aquaphobia.'

‘Aquaphobia? What – is that like hydrophobia?' It was Angie who spoke, her forehead crinkling only at the hairline, which pointed to Botox or some other desperate measure.

‘Not quite. It's a fear of being in the water. She's still willing to drink the stuff, she just doesn't want to get into it.'

‘But that's
terrible
.'

Lara's reaction was rather more contained. ‘Oh, yes, you said before she didn't like the water. Is it really that bad, Natalie? An actual phobia?'

‘It's pretty bad. But it could be worse. It could be severe allergies. Or agoraphobia would be more restrictive.' My brain held a league table of phobias, ranked not only in order of severity of risk to life but also of hardest to hide.

‘So how does that work with swimming at school?' Angie asked.

‘There
is
no swimming at her school,' I said. That was hard for them to understand: the independent schools their kids likely attended would have sports facilities galore, including an indoor pool. ‘It's not
compulsory at state secondary schools. In primary school, she had a medical exemption.'

‘What about when you go to the beach?' Lara said, in an earnest tone. ‘Is it the same in the sea?'

Sensing Gayle smoulder, I knew she had automatically interpreted this as some superior allusion to Mauritius or Antigua, exotic family idylls thrown off kilter by the inconvenience of a reluctant snorkeller in the family. And yet intuition told me that Lara was not completely ignorant of the hardships of other people. Her eyes were unusually expressive of empathy, expressive in fact of considerably more pain than I was currently feeling.

‘It's the same, I'm afraid,' I said. ‘To be honest, we don't go. We try to work around it, have different kinds of holidays.'

Angie continued to frown. ‘But wouldn't it be better to tackle it head-on than avoid it like that?'

Gayle made a disapproving huffing noise just as Lara said, ‘Poor you,' and placed a hand on my upper arm. Her touch was very gentle, the thumb moving in a faint, comforting caress, and I felt myself colour at the intimacy. ‘And Ed, of course. That must be very difficult for both of you, very worrying.' She sighed, as if personally burdened, before withdrawing her hand and stepping from us. ‘Anyway, we'll leave you to it. I'm sure you don't want to be waylaid like this when you're walking your dog. Isn't he adorable? So
bouclé
.'

Our parting left me with the absurd sensation that I'd received the healing touch of Mother Teresa.

As
Gayle and I strode off, legs working far faster now (there was nothing like an encounter with richer, thinner women to urge you towards the pain barrier), I didn't have to wait long for her explosive verdict.

‘Who do they think they are? “Tackle it head-on”! Like you haven't thought of that yourself. You're the girl's mother!'

‘They meant well,' I said. ‘It's hard for people to get to grips with Molly's situation when most kids love the water so much.'

Gayle changed tack. ‘Seriously, though, she spoke as if she knew you really well. I can't bear that kind of overfamiliarity, can you?'

Seeing her scowl, I felt an unexpected flare of impatience. She had a tendency to condemn everything that failed to conform to her life view; Ed was the same, always so sure of his position. Normally I went along with them, today I thought, hang on, wasn't this a case of inverted snobbery? No more attractive than the conventional kind, at the end of the day. ‘Well, we did chat at the lido on Sunday, so I suppose it's not
that
overfamiliar.'

‘That explains how she knew Ed's and Molly's names.' She tutted. ‘She was like the lady of the manor checking on her peasants. Your dog is
bouclé
! I mean, come on, why do they feel the need? No wonder the other Westbridge mums call them the Noblesse.'

I chuckled. ‘That's a good one.' Westbridge was a more-expensive-than-most private school in Battersea with a liberal-arts bias, just the kind of school I would
have expected the Channing children to attend. ‘Every school gate has its alphas,' I added, ‘even Rushbrook. How do you know all this, anyway?' (A ridiculous question: Gayle knew everything.)

‘Are you kidding? Everyone knows
Lara
. She's our new local celeb. You know she helped get the pool reopened?'

‘I gathered that, yes.'

‘Apparently she was some sort of competitive swimmer before she was an actress, hence it being her pet project.'

‘She's an actress?'

‘Well,
was
,' Gayle said, with a faint sneer. ‘Don't you remember, she was in that mermaid film in the early nineties? A kind of British
Splash
. She was still a teenager. And then she was in a soap briefly, plus those nauseating ads for some bacteria-fighting yoghurt.'

Not frozen peas, after all. I did some quick arithmetic. ‘So she must be, what, early forties now? Not much younger than us.'

‘Looks
a lot
younger, though,' Gayle said crossly. There'd been a stinging incident recently when her electrician had mistaken her older sister for her younger. ‘Must be all that swimming. Fifty lengths? That's two and half kilometres and she didn't look remotely knackered. Life's not fair, is it?'

But I refused to admit defeat so easily. ‘Come on, we'll be getting just as much exercise in the holidays when we
start our regime. It'll be a fresh start. Oops, not by the picnic, Inky …'