‘No, but I’ve read plenty.’ She gestured to the towering pile of crime thrillers that had been her saviour during her recuperation. Though she’d greyed noticeably during the last few weeks, and necessarily slowed physically, her spirit had remained indefatigable and I had nothing but admiration for her.
‘Not in here, I hope?’ I held up a copy of the local magazine Elm Life, which inevitably had a shot of the new lido on its cover, and settled on a footstool to leaf through. My fingers paused at a double-page spread. ‘Lara Channing, who else?’ I said.
‘Indeed.’ Sarah sighed. ‘St Adjutor herself.’
I looked up, curious. ‘St Adjutor? Who’s that?’
‘The patron saint of swimmers. A very minor saint.’ Sarah eyed the magazine in my hands. ‘More people have heard of her, I would guess.’
I checked the issue date: May. It must have been printed well before the opening of the lido. ‘I’m starting to wonder if I’m the only person in Elm Hill not to have heard of her until the last couple of weeks.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, I didn’t know her from Adam until I read this. Now I know she absolutely adores pralines dipped in white chocolate. Or is it white chocolate dipped in praline? One of the two.’
‘I’ve met her a couple of times,’ I said, studying the photo. ‘There’s no way a woman in that kind of shape is gorging on chocolates.’
‘She must be re-launching her acting career,’ Sarah said. ‘Why else would she want her face all over the place like this?’
I thought about the children at Rushbrook, the yearbook produced by the year-six teachers as a farewell gift. Under ‘Career Ambition’ a troubling number had put ‘To be a celebrity’ or ‘Get a million views on YouTube’.
‘Gayle doesn’t like her,’ I said.
‘Does she know her?’
‘Neither of us does, not really. But I must admit I’m intrigued. It’s easy to mock, but what she’s achieved with the pool, it’s pretty incredible.’
‘I agree,’ Sarah said. ‘She’s obviously a woman of great energy. I’d be very happy to have her hips – and I don’t mean for the lack of cellulite.’
As we chatted about her physio exercises, my phone buzzed. ‘Dinner’s ready, I have to go. Would you like to join us? Or can I bring you up a plate?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Sarah. ‘My sister’s coming over with her granddaughter and they’re bringing me a chopped salad, whatever that is.’
‘A salad in which all of the ingredients are chopped?’ I laughed. ‘The sort of thing Lara Channing really eats, I’m guessing.’
Gayle and I wondered sometimes how it would work if everyone were allowed to ditch their own parents and adopt ones more to their taste (she made no bones about her willingness to jettison her own father in favour of Michael Palin). Sarah was the mother I wanted, though I was not so naïve as to misunderstand that, if she were the woman who’d raised me, then by now I’d find her kindness cloying, her equanimity provocative. Meanwhile the criticisms sent my way by the woman in Stoneborough might, from the lips of a neighbour, be considered bracing and entertaining.
‘I’ve got another new student,’ Ed announced, as we took our seats at the kitchen table. He had made spaghetti carbonara, a favourite of Molly’s when she was little because of the way he served each portion with an egg yolk for you to stir in yourself. He’d forgotten that she’d recently come to consider this practice both childish and gross.
‘Raw egg makes me heave,’ she informed us, then, seeing my face, chanted a childhood rule: ‘I know. If someone’s gone to the trouble of cooking for you, the least you can do is go to the trouble of eating it. Yeah, yeah.’
‘Get on with it then,’ I said. I was surprised, even slightly delighted, by my excellent mood.
Ed, also buoyant, returned to his news. ‘Can you believe how quickly it’s all happening? I haven’t even started yet and I’m almost at the point of having to think about a waiting list.’
‘Amazing,’ I said, though it really wasn’t. The ambitious zeal of the current generation of middle-class parents was well documented, Thatcher’s children overinvolved in their own kids’ lives to the point of dysfunction. Hypocritical though it might sound for Ed to be catering directly to it, he would, I knew, do all he could to help relieve the pressure on his students, not add to it.
‘Who’s the new one?’ I asked, twirling sticky strings of pasta around my fork.
‘A girl at Westbridge High. She’s just finished year ten. Didn’t do well enough in her end-of-year maths exam, apparently, and screwed up the statistics GCSE she took early. The parents want two hours every Saturday, starting this weekend, then twice a week once school breaks up. They want her back on track for GCSE year.’
‘I’m sure they do’. I smiled at Molly’s exaggerated grimace.
‘Izzy says private tutors get, like, a thousand pounds an hour,’ she said. ‘They work on yachts.’
‘If that’s the case, then please tell Izzy she’s welcome to act as my agent.’ Ed chuckled. Excitement was causing him to talk with his mouth full, a crime no doubt clocked by Molly and stored away for when one of us next chided her for the same. ‘Mind you, this one did offer to up my rate when I said I might not be able to do the hours she wanted. They live around here. The kid’s got one of those American place-name names, Atlanta or Savannah or something.’
‘Not Georgia?’ I said. ‘Georgia Channing?’
‘That’s it. How did you know?’
‘The mother’s the immoral blonde at the lido, remember? How funny. I was just talking about her with Sarah.’ Professional discretion prevented me adding that Lara had been into Elm Hill Prep for a tour. ‘I wonder how she heard about the tutoring.’
‘From me. We got chatting at the summer fair last weekend.’
I was astonished. ‘Lara Channing was at the All Saints fair? Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Was I supposed to? She didn’t call to book me until today.’
‘Why was she at the fair, anyway?’ I asked. ‘Promoting the lido?’
Ed shrugged. ‘Maybe she was just supporting her local school.’
‘We should Google her,’ I suggested. ‘Find out all about your new client.’
‘I don’t see why. I haven’t Googled any of the others,’ he said.
In the end, I did it myself. I sat down and investigated Lara in exactly the prurient and painstaking fashion that twenty years ago would have roused the suspicions of the police but was today not only acceptable but encouraged.
She had been born Lara Markham in June 1973 and was forty-two. A competitive synchronized swimmer, she’d represented Great Britain in a number of events before missing trials for the Barcelona Olympics owing to illness. In 1992, at nineteen, she’d left the sport – and full-time education – to star in Mermaid on Mulberry Street, a role for which she’d been handpicked after the director had spotted her when watching a televised synchro event with his daughters. The film was a moderate success and, as it would transpire, represented a career pinnacle for Lara. Still in her twenties, she’d gone into semi-retirement when she’d married Miles Channing and started a family.
Since her fame predated the digital era, older images were limited, but there were clips from the mermaid movie, as well as the original theatrical trailer. Even allowing for the hair and make-up enthusiasms of that era, she was stunning, with those doe eyes and that erotic mouth. Her face was more familiar than I might have expected, given that I’d never seen the film, until I remembered the daughter in the picture on the Elm Hill website and in the lido’s publicity material. Of course: the teenaged Lara looked like her daughter did now.
On Amazon, I scanned the customer reviews for Mermaid on Mulberry Street and found them at best lukewarm:
– Not a patch on Splash.
– Bring back Daryl Hannah, all is forgiven!
– OK family viewing, but not a classic …
– Someone should have given the girl some acting lessons
– Lara Markham is embarrassingly bad!
I felt quite defensive on Lara’s behalf and would have considered ordering the DVD in solidarity were it not extortionately priced at £16.99.
I wondered what she would say if she knew I was occupied in this way. She’d be flattered, perhaps, or validated. I snickered to myself at the unlikelihood of her researching me – or even being struck by the thought that she’d bumped into me rather a lot lately. To even things up I Googled myself: Natalie Steele teacher.
There was nothing much. My entry on the Elm Hill Prep website was the first of very few:
With almost twenty years’ experience in primary education, Mrs Steele is our newest member of staff, teaching her first EHP year-four class this year.
Favourite subject: history.
Favourite EHP moment: ‘Taking the boys and girls to the Golden Hinde and learning about Sir Francis Drake.’
An unflattering headshot accompanied this, my hair stripped of warmth, plenty of putty-coloured foundation on my face. As I’ve said, I always covered my skin for work. Disfigurements tended to distract pupils and distractions were frowned upon by parents.
It was Nathaniel Hawthorne, if I remembered correctly, who said about birthmarks, ‘It may be the stain goes as deep as life itself.’
I sincerely hoped not.
7
Monday, 31 August, 1.30 a.m.
To still the mind, focus on the physical.
In the bathroom mirror I inspect my birthmark as if for the first time. I can’t pretend I don’t know why it interests me afresh, why, after the four and a half decades I’ve lived it suddenly has new significance. The size of a dog’s pawprint, it has browned with age from the livid raspberry of my childhood, when I would scrutinize it daily, judging it a disgusting flaw, an impediment to future happiness. As a teenager with an allowance, I learned to conceal it with make-up, a ritual that continued daily, on weekdays at least, right until these last transcendent weeks, when I’ve come to think of it as a mark of distinction, perhaps even grace.
Tonight is different. Tonight I think it’s how they would identify me on the mortuary slab.
Georgia, I remember, and the memory of her damp, blanched face makes my body temperature drop by a degree.
‘Nat?’
I jump, like a criminal, drop my hand from my face.
Ed is in the hallway, watching me from the shadows.
‘You gave me a shock. What is it – is it Molly?’
‘No.’ Only his feet and legs are lit by the bathroom light spilling through the open door, his voice disembodied; the effect is eerie. ‘I just wanted to say, if you won’t talk to me about tonight, fine, I can hardly force you. But you do realize you’ll have to talk to the police?’
In an instant my cheeks are aflame. ‘What do you mean? The police won’t want to speak to us.’
‘I think they will. If I were them, I’d be very keen to know why the parents of a child with her medical history allowed her anywhere near a swimming pool.’
I swallow. ‘The parents’, he said, but what he means is ‘the mother’. No matter how hard I’ve tried, no matter how controlled I’ve been, I’ve always been the sinner in this family.
‘I’ve almost finished in here,’ I say, keeping my voice steady, and I close the door on his shadow, stand with my back against it, facing the room.
My eyes land again on the dress. As I reach to scoop it from the floor, my senses are waylaid by memory: a white bedroom of filtered afternoon sun, palazzo doors meeting with a kiss, the scent of something rarified and intimate and sweet.
You will wear it, won’t you? For me?
Handling the dress with fingertips only, as if the fabric is on fire, I drop the thing into the bin, trying but failing to ignore the smell of shame.
8
Thursday, 9 July, seven and a half weeks earlier
Somehow I was not as surprised as I might have been when, on the penultimate day of term, just as I had five minutes to myself, my mobile rang and it was her.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’ve found you a therapist.’
‘Hello? Who is this?’
‘It’s Lara.’ Of course, silly. ‘So I’ve asked around and she’s supposed to be the best.’
‘The best?’
‘You know, for the aquaphobia. I spoke to the therapist and she says she’s treated it before and had great success.’
I struggled to find a clear response. It appeared that this near stranger had taken it upon herself to make medical investigations on behalf of my daughter, a girl she’d met for about five minutes. On the one hand it was intrusive, not to mention naïve that she should think Ed and I lacked the wherewithal to ‘ask around’ on our own; on the other, I was touched. Most people’s good intentions began and ended with kindly incomprehension.
‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Lara, and I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but we really have tried everything already.’
‘You haven’t tried her.’
Indeed, when she gave the name of the therapist, I didn’t recognize it. ‘You’re right, we haven’t, but I’m guessing that’s because she doesn’t do NHS referrals and is too expensive, in which case we’re not going to be able to see her now.’
‘It’s not as expensive as you’d think,’ Lara said, though vaguely, and I remembered Ed’s report of her having offered him a higher rate to meet her tutoring requirements. ‘Just promise you’ll phone her. I’m determined to get Molly in the water,’ she added.
Again, the audacity of it – and the generosity. I didn’t ask how she’d got my mobile-phone number. Perhaps from the school office. They weren’t supposed to release staff contact details but I had a feeling Lara would know how to get people to do things they weren’t supposed to do.
I relayed the exchange to Ed.
‘You mean she’s the same one who’s just signed up for tutoring? The woman I met at the summer fair?’
‘Yes, she seems to be our new fairy godmother. Maybe she feels bad for having helped open a pool in our neighbourhood and making Molly’s life a misery.’ I remembered Molly at the lido that time, hunched against the wall, emotion locked behind her eyes, released from her torture only when Lara entertained her with her chatter. ‘But she can’t feel personally responsible for the opening of a public swimming pool, can she? Only a complete megalomaniac could take that position.’
Ed smirked. ‘Megalomaniac, fairy godmother: same thing.’
‘Cynic,’ I said, chuckling.
Summer 2003
Molly may have been fine physically after that shocking afternoon in July, but she was not otherwise. Water, from that day onwards, was the enemy. Bath time, which had previously delighted her, became so fraught I would dread it all day, prepare at length my strategy, my calm, only to abort the task the moment she felt liquid creep over her skin and began yelling to get out. Ed fitted a new, lower showerhead and we washed her in the lightest of sprinkles, careful not to allow water to fall on her face.
Subsequent expeditions to any swimming pool, large or small, indoor or out, raised hysteria as awful as the original. A paddling pool, even a bucket, provoked the same distress. She began to refuse to go near the duck pond in the park near our flat, screaming herself into a frenzy each time we tried to coax her towards it, digging her fingers into our flesh, both desperate for our protection and terrified we would not give it. I tried not to notice that she always reached for Ed first, tried not to think that she had good reason to trust her father over her mother. During these episodes she suffered nausea, palpitations, diarrhoea and, worst of all, hideous choking convulsions, though there was never any obstruction in her throat.
As her speech developed, so did her ability to describe her fear.
‘What do you think the water will do?’ I asked her once.
‘It will swallow me,’ she said, and a grotesque image spilled into my consciousness, an image of hands tearing at blonde hair, of desperate eyes still open under water. I p
urged it at once, like bile in the gullet.
Seeking advice online, we came upon the glass of water test, which involved turning a glass upside down and plunging it into a basin full of water. ‘See, the air is still inside the glass,’ I told Molly, though she could hardly bear to look, doing so only through splayed fingers. ‘The same thing happens when you put your head under water. You see, it can’t go inside you! The air prevents the water flowing into your nose.’
‘So long as you don’t tilt your head back,’ Ed said.
‘Ed!’
Molly tilted back her head and cried.
Swimming lessons, conducted by instructors experienced with nervous pupils, were, without exception, disastrous. However thoroughly we briefed the teacher, however specialized he or she claimed to be, it made no difference to the strength of Molly’s aversion, the depth of her anguish. It was heartbreaking, over and over.
On good authority, we tried a lake instead of a pool: no sudden drop, no queuing or climbing required on exit. We tried to tempt her to the water’s edge with a chocolate finger for each step taken. There would be a toy, we promised, if she just put her toes into the water. She became hysterical, straining against our grip to escape us and calling out that we were hurting her, which drew concerned approaches from bystanders. We concluded that we – like the swimming teachers – did not have the necessary expertise to tackle what must surely be a form of post-traumatic stress disorder: a psychologist would succeed where we were failing, an expert in childhood phobias.
That was when the word ‘aquaphobia’ entered our vocabulary, as did the necessary definition for explaining to others how it differed from hydrophobia. (Very occasionally, word leaked that poor Molly had rabies.)
And so to the years of therapists, so many I lost count. The process never varied: waiting for the referral to reach the top of the waiting list, waiting for the next appointment, waiting for advice about subconscious learning and empowerment through knowledge. The Archimedes Principle was discussed, the buoyancy laws we’d demonstrated so unsuccessfully in the bathroom basin explained over and over. Hippocrates came up (so, once, did Jaws). We were told that instead of following our teacher’s instinct patiently to detail time and again the technical reasons why a situation was safe, we were simply to say to her, ‘You know the facts.’ And yet the facts included statistics that made Molly’s fear so understandable in the first place – and stirred our own, frankly. People did drown, thousands a year worldwide, about four hundred annually in the UK; and for those who could not swim, the risk was considerably greater, making our daughter’s condition a catch-22.
The Swimming Pool Page 6