The Heatwave

by Kate Riordan

  She sighs. ‘Look, don’t be angry but I’ve been thinking a lot about it and I don’t feel completely comfortable here, with Emma not knowing the full story. I understand why you’ve done it, and I would probably have done the same myself, but I can’t quite look her in the eye.’

  ‘Camille.’ Something in my tone makes her put down her cup. ‘I’m afraid.’

  ‘Come on, Sylvie, there’s not much more to sort out here. You can go back to England soon. If you want, let’s just pay for house clearance. I’ll go halves with you.’

  I let out a shaky breath and she regards me thoughtfully, her head on one side.

  ‘I think part of you doesn’t want to let go. Even I’ve felt reluctant. It’s our family home. But you’ve got so much more history here than me. Now you’re back, it’s got you in its grip again.’

  ‘It’s where it all went wrong.’

  Camille sighed. ‘And maybe it’s the only place where it can be put right. Tell her properly, Sylvie. Okay?’

  I nod, unable to speak because I’m suddenly in tears.

  ‘So I’m allowed to go, then?’ She smiles and hands me a tissue.

  ‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine. You’ve always been a weeper. You get it from Maman. It’s not your fault.’

  ‘I’m afraid Emma will never forgive me.’

  Camille shrugs. ‘She might not, but she’s much more likely not to forgive you if she finds out in some other way.’

  After that, I feel a little lighter, and in the sun-steeped garden, where the pigeons are squabbling companionably again, the weight of the past seems to lift a little. I’m suddenly full of conviction that I’ll be able to explain everything. Tonight, after dinner, I will finally find the right words.

  *

  After Camille leaves, I set to work clearing up the garden. I get the old lawnmower out and drag it up and down in the intensifying heat, the sweat pouring off me freely, my hair plastered to my skin. It seems to take for ever, the grass too long to be cut cleanly and the lawnmower blades rusted and blunt.

  About halfway through, I crouch to put a finger in one of the cracks opening in the dried-out earth. I think of Camille complaining about the heat and wish she’d stayed another night.

  When the last section is done, I abandon the damn lawnmower where it is and jump into the pool without changing out of my shorts and T-shirt. The water is gloriously cool and I stay in for a long time, not really swimming, just floating, watching the water scatter like emeralds when I lift my arms towards the sky.

  You’ve stayed in your room most of the day, only coming down to wave off Camille, and I tell myself the sun has finally beaten your desire for a tan because it’s even hotter this afternoon. But I think it’s more than that, and when I knock on your door and try to coax you down for some food about six, you refuse, turning towards the wall and saying your stomach hurts again.

  I wash some deep red tomatoes, and they’re so juicy that when I cut into the flesh the seeds burst out of them. I arrange the slices on a plate, then scatter them with basil leaves and wizened black olives so salty they make my mouth water. I wash it all down with half a bottle of wine, which is a bad idea on an almost empty stomach, but the heat has taken my appetite. As I pass the phone, I consider ringing up the ferry company to enquire about return crossings but then I think about what Camille would say. You just want to avoid telling her the whole story. Instead I go upstairs to lie down, drifting on the woozy detachment the wine has infected me with.

  The light behind the shutters is muted when I wake. I can hear music coming from downstairs, some jazz record I can’t imagine you playing. I know I could sleep on and on, but that reminds me of the muffled days when Élodie was young, and the thought makes me get up immediately. I open the shutters and see that the searing afternoon has tipped into the gentle relief of evening, the light purpling the lawn below. Beyond the parasol pines, the last sunrays are glancing off the pool. I can just make out the glitter of them. As a tendril of girlish laughter silvers the air, I can see movement.

  When I get there, the temperature in the garden is soft and perfect. I can only just smell the cut grass, the scent of the oleander flowers almost overpowering it. Hearing the laughter again, high-pitched and fluting, I go cold, despite the balmy air. It is as though the act of stepping into the garden has ripped open a hole in time. It must be you, but it doesn’t sound like your laugh.

  It’s easy to creep up silently, shoeless as I am. Through the dense, bluish foliage of the pines, I can see a bare leg stretched out. The toes are painted a shell pink that makes the smooth skin of her foot look golden. Her. I move closer, blood roaring in my ears.

  She’s wearing white, which glows eerily in the spreading twilight. I don’t notice anyone else because I can’t take my eyes off her.

  ‘Élodie,’ I say, as I blunder into the open, the word coming out low and strangled.

  But then she turns and everything distorts for a second, as it does under moving water. Because it isn’t her. It’s you. Of course it’s you – as if moved by some unerring instinct to disturb me – wearing that sundress of your sister’s. Her Lolita dress.

  You’re perched on the end of a lounger, your legs angled towards the boy stretched out along the side of the pool, his long body flat against the still-warm stone. Luc.

  You look up at me quizzically and I’m glad you didn’t hear what I said. There are some empty cans of lager under your lounger and they rattle as you knock them with your heel.

  ‘What are you doing down here, drinking?’ I say sharply. ‘Luc? Why are you here so late?’

  He props himself up on one elbow. ‘Salut, Sylvie.’ He laughs and you giggle in response. What are you laughing at? I want to cry. I can feel the nervous energy coming off you, like a scent, just as it did at the circus. That feels like years ago.

  ‘Em, why don’t you go up to the house?’ I say.

  You don’t move.

  ‘You’re too young for … all this. Please, go inside and put something else on.’

  ‘What’s your problem?’ you say, and there’s a slight slur in your voice. I know you’re only showing off in front of Luc but your transformation into someone like your sister in this moment, in that provocative, semi-sheer dress – which, in Élodie’s case at least, was always too short and tight across her chest – makes me furious. I go over and pull you to your feet.

  ‘Ow, Mum, you’re hurting!’ you say, though I’ve only taken your hand. You wrench out of my grip and sit down again, face determined and furious.

  I turn to Luc instead. ‘I think you should go home. Take the rest of those cans with you.’

  Though part of me wants to slap him, he looks quite beautiful in the failing light, every limb perfectly turned and browned; his soft, vulnerable mouth and gold-tipped hair. What he doesn’t look like is a boy, not any more. I can’t see Laurent in him now.

  He begins to walk away but something falls out of his pocket. He turns to pick it up but I get there first. It’s a Polaroid photograph and, though I’ve never seen it before, I know every millimetre of its subject. I take in the secret it exposes. Luc’s face is in deep shadow when I look back at him.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  He holds out his hand for it but I draw mine back.

  He shrugs. ‘Found it.’

  ‘It’s not yours.’ I put it into my pocket. ‘You should go now.’

  He starts to walk away, but then looks over his shoulder. ‘À bientôt, Emma. Remember, I have a surprise for your birthday. Un petit cadeau.’

  ‘Va-t’on, Luc.’ It comes out almost as a snarl and he backs away, hands raised, though there’s a mocking tilt to his mouth. I only breathe out when he’s finally absorbed by the dark.

  ‘That was so embarrassing!’ you exclaim, when I turn back to you. You’re livid, the words pushed out of you in staccato huffs. You go to the edge of the pool and kick at the water, sending an arc of it over the stones. />
  ‘Let me see what he found.’ You hold out your hand.

  I cover my pocket protectively. ‘It’s nothing. Just an old photo.’

  ‘Mum, give it to me. If it’s just an old photo, why can’t I see it?’

  ‘Because I said so,’ I snap, at a loss for what else to say.

  You sit down in a heap, landing heavily and slightly unsteadily. I think you’re probably halfway to being drunk for the first time in your life. I lower myself next to you and lean out to dip my hand in the darkening water. It’s so close to body temperature that I can barely feel it. I reach for your bare foot, which is the nearest part of you, but you tuck it under yourself and wrap your arms protectively around your body.

  I look at you, unable to believe now that I mistook you for your sister. You look nothing like her, the white dress innocent on your still-childish frame, your poor face strained from the effort of not crying. Your burst of defiance has been short-lived.

  I think about my earlier optimism, the promise I made to Camille to confess everything. The photograph crackles in my pocket as I shift towards you, my arms out. Now, I tell myself. Now is the time to tell her the rest. The photo should make it easier – a visual aid dropped into my lap by the gods – but now the moment has arrived I can’t convince myself to jump. I don’t know where we might land.

  You resist me at first but then I feel you give way, like a sigh, your head coming down on my shoulder, your hair soft under my lips as I kiss the top of your head. Your warm breath smells slightly sour as you shift round until you’re lying in my lap. I’m just thinking, gratefully, that your wooziness has saved me for now when you make a grab for my pocket. I twist away.

  You get unsteadily to your feet. ‘You’re being such a bitch tonight,’ you say, and I’m too shocked to reply – you’ve never said anything like that to me before. I reach out my hand for you, but you’ve already turned. I watch you flounce away, and for once I let you go.

  I pull out the photo. It’s hard to make out much. Night has almost overtaken day. That it’s a Polaroid doesn’t help, the image slightly blurred and the contrast too high, but even a conventional print would have come out strangely, her skin waxy and her eyes hooded and dark because she’s lit from beneath by a blaze of birthday candles. Whoever took it has caught her in the second before blowing them out: she’s bent over, one hand holding her long hair back from eighteen tiny flames.

  Even in the low light, I can see the challenge in her eyes. Not the kind of challenge she had regularly aimed at me, which was something shuttered and flint-hard; this was playful, a studied kind of teasing. Whoever had been behind the camera was a man, I know that for certain.

  If Élodie has become a ghost over the years, events now seem to be conspiring to make her real again: the medical notes, the Polaroid, even the spectre I saw at the circus. It feels as though my first daughter’s outline is growing stronger, the vivid colours of her filling in again. It sounds absurd, like something from a dark fairytale, but I feel as though these revelations are giving her power one by one. That, somewhere, she’s gathering strength.

  1975

  Anxiety clutches at me. I can’t seem to take deep enough breaths. Today we are hosting a children’s birthday party. Not for Élodie but for a little girl who also goes to the village school. Her father is a civil servant Greg got talking to one day while buying cigarettes at the tabac. Yesterday Greg heard that their pool filter had broken, with little Marie-Laure inconsolable because she’d so wanted a swimming party, and he offered ours.

  ‘But Élodie wasn’t even invited,’ I said in astonishment when he informed me. ‘Will she be allowed to attend this party now it’s taking place in her own garden?’ My fraying nerves made me sound petulant, though this had happened many times before: Élodie the only child excluded.

  ‘They probably don’t know each other,’ Greg said blithely.

  ‘There are eleven children in the class.’

  I caught the roll of his eyes.

  ‘You won’t have to do anything. Monique has all the food ready to go, apparently. I just thought we’d help them out, that’s all. She and Yves will take care of it – we’re just providing the garden and the pool. You know we’re the only other house in the village with a decent-sized one.’

  ‘Well, if you’ve offered there’s nothing I can say, is there?’

  A muscle ticked in his jaw and I wished he could still read me as he used to.

  I don’t mix with the women in the village much. I didn’t intend it to work out that way: when I returned home from Paris I expected to slot back into old friendships from childhood. It was difficult with Élodie, though. She wasn’t like the other children and, in the end, it wasn’t worth the disapproval. Occasionally, I exchange a few words with one of them at the market but it never seems to go further with these women, some of whom I’ve known my whole life. Greg and I don’t get invited to much either, unless Laurent surreptitiously intervenes. Since Élodie started school, it’s got worse. Coolness has curdled into judgement: I know they whisper in the street when they see us. They disapprove of Élodie but they disapprove of Greg and me more – for the assumed parental failures that have made her the way she is.

  I once overheard a conversation between two mothers at the school gates, who hadn’t realized I’d come back for Élodie’s coat. ‘Sylvie Durand’s girl has a terrible mean streak,’ one said.

  ‘Oh, but it’s more than that, don’t you think?’ the other replied. ‘She might be pretty but I don’t think there’s anything behind the eyes. Nothing good, anyway.’ And then she shuddered. She actually shuddered, and I was filled with a fury that was oddly liberating. It wasn’t often that I found myself jumping to my daughter’s defence – such a normal maternal instinct a novelty for me. I didn’t say anything, though, to my later shame. They had articulated my own fears and I was too frightened they would see that in my face if I dared tackle them.

  It’s been a month since Luc ended up in our pool, a month since I took Élodie to see Morel. The follow-up appointment is next Wednesday. Annette hasn’t spoken a word to me since it happened. She came round that evening, when I was upstairs putting Élodie to bed. She wanted to talk to me but Greg, to his credit, said I was in bed and couldn’t be disturbed. She shouted at him instead and, though I closed the windows, I could still hear every word she said and knew Élodie must be able to as well.

  I had stolen a look at her, sitting up in bed in clean pyjamas, her cheeks scrubbed and glowing from the bath, but there was nothing in her expression to betray any stress or emotion.

  ‘Annette’s very upset because of what happened to Luc by the swimming pool,’ I said tentatively.

  She fixed me with those incredible eyes, long lashes made longer by the nightlight above her head. ‘He’s stupid. A stupid cry-baby.’

  ‘Is that why you pushed him?’ I hid my hands in the covers because they were shaking. ‘You can tell me the truth now. I won’t tell anyone else, not even Papa.’

  She smiled quickly, no more than a pearly flash of teeth, and then it was gone. ‘He fell,’ she said, in a flat monotone, and turned away to face the wall, her nose just a couple of inches from it. As I reached up to turn out the nightlight – which she’d never needed: Élodie was impervious to nocturnal fears – I glanced down to see that her eyes were open and unblinking. The smile was back.

  When Annette had finally gone, I went down to find Greg at the kitchen table nursing a large cognac, his face flushed a dark, ominous red.

  ‘That fucking woman,’ he said.

  I began to knead the tension out of his shoulders. He reached back to take my hand and we stayed like that for a long time. I had the feeling he wanted to be outraged when really he felt defeated. Strangely, an outsider explicitly accusing Élodie of not being like other little girls had brought us together. For that night, at least. He was getting some of the treatment I got, and it made us allies again.

  Now I am hiding in our bedroom, though th
e party for Marie-Laure has already begun. The swell of voices rises from the garden, like the buzz of hornets. Greg has already been up twice to see what’s taking me so long. I will him to understand that I’m not being rude or sulking because this was his idea, that what I am is scared – scared of the collective judgement of the mothers if something happens.

  The thought of Élodie running unchecked finally gets me down the stairs and out into the blinding day. The first couple of hours pass without incident. I drink a couple of glasses of the Crémant de Bourgogne Yves has brought over for the parents, which froths palely out of the bottle, still chilled enough from the box of ice to cloud the glass. My muscles slowly loosen and the beauty of the day comes into focus for the first time: the brilliance of the sun-struck pool, the dark gloss of the oleander leaves, the unfamiliar sounds of a large group of people enjoying themselves. I haven’t experienced this since I was a child, handing round trays of hors d’oeuvres at my parents’ parties.

  At first, the cry that goes up is not immediately discernible from the rest. Children jumping in and running around a pool are noisy. It takes a second, maybe two, for the wail to lift the fine hairs at the back of my neck. Silence settles around it fast, like blanketing fog. And then, as though released from a spell, everyone is suddenly moving. A little boy – Jean-Claude – is pulled from the water, his father grasping him under his arms and lifting him free.

  As I run towards them, I see the long graze that stretches the length of his thigh. As it reacts to the air it darkens into a purple welt, though in fact the skin is only broken in one place, where pinheads of bright crimson rise. It will scab and bruise, though. It might even scar.

  I look towards the pool for an explanation, expecting a broken tile, but there’s nothing. The boy is sobbing by now.

  ‘Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé, chéri?’ his mother Claire cries, her dress wet from kneeling in the pool of water her son has made, the water running off his small body.