The Swimming Pool

by Louise Candlish

  ‘What do we do?’ I asked Ed.

  ‘We get on with it,’ he said. ‘With the rest of life.’

  Not all of it, however: for one thing, there would be no second child until we’d fixed the first, until I’d stopped blaming myself, stopped declaring myself unfit. But how could I stop when I knew that Ed had not? Even the least educated or experienced of parents knew you didn’t take your eye off a toddler in water, however shallow; a teacher of young children and possessor of an up-to-date first-aid qualification had no excuse. There were times when I allowed myself to be overwhelmed by the fear that he might believe complacency had caused me to reach too sluggishly for that towel or even – on ghastly nights when I couldn’t sleep – that he thought I’d toyed with risk for the perverse thrill of it.

  ‘Poor thinking’, the therapists called this sort of thing: feelings of helplessness on the parents’ part that served no one, least of all the child.

  Finally, there came a new approach. ‘This is a childhood fear that has not been outgrown – yet,’ said the last therapist. ‘I suggest you let nature take its course. Pools can be avoided easily enough, can’t they?’

  Well, yes, we’d managed by then to avoid them for years. Moving to Elm Hill when Molly was three or so, we’d been relieved, if not attracted, by the absence of a duck pond or lake in our new park. That crumbling old lido was never going to reopen.

  We agreed to take a year off from therapy and revisit on Molly’s thirteenth birthday. (‘Not literally on her birthday,’ Ed said. ‘That’d be no treat.’)

  ‘So long as we crack this before she reaches the age of independence, we’ll be fine,’ the therapist said. ‘After that, she’s less likely to want to communicate with you about it.’

  Which brought us to the present day. We hadn’t cracked it, we’d reached the age of independence, and as to whether she still wanted to communicate with us, well, she was a teenager now and the odds were not exactly in our favour.

  Friday, 10 July

  ‘A hypnotherapist?’ Gayle said, looking up from her salmon in watercress sauce with a short-tempered frown. She said it exactly as you might exorcist or warlock.

  ‘A hypnotherapist,’ I confirmed. The sight of a rogue flake of fish inside her open mouth reminded me that the light was much too bright and I rose to dim the spots. I should have lit candles, created an ambience, but our dinners with Craig and Gayle were so easy and frequent that we often didn’t shop specially for them or make any particular preparations. At least we could speak freely, Molly being at Izzy’s for a sleepover and Gayle and Craig’s two girls having long since established social lives of their own.

  ‘She’s called Bryony Foster. I checked her out online.’ It was only right, I had felt, that I should pay Lara the respect of taking her recommendation seriously, if for no other reason than that when our paths next crossed I wanted to be able to give an informed reason for my failure to make the appointment.

  It had come as no surprise that the therapist was based in Harley Street. That she was a hypnotherapist, well, maybe that hadn’t come so left of field either: what I’d seen so far of Lara Channing did not suggest a rigid adherence to convention. But there were stranger therapies in the world and it was certainly worth sounding out the notion on parenting forums. There, I discovered that Bryony Foster was considered the best in her field.

  – I heard she’s a total genius. We tried for Lucie’s bedwetting but there was a six-month waitlist!

  – Keep trying! We got a cancellation, so lucky! Charlie’s anger issues have been completely cured.

  What Molly had, however, was nothing like bedwetting or anger issues. It was a chronic and debilitating phobia. When I’d phoned the previous morning, Ms Foster’s receptionist had made no mention of a waiting list. ‘Oh, yes, Mrs Channing contacted us about Molly a few days ago. We’d be pleased to help. We have a cancellation next Tuesday at five? Does that give you enough time to get here after school?’

  It would be a scramble, but only that first week: we’d be more flexible once Molly broke up for the summer on the Friday. I was surprised to find myself already thinking in terms of multiple visits. ‘How much does it cost?’

  ‘The standard fee for a private session is a hundred and ninety pounds.’

  ‘And how many sessions do you think she’ll need?’

  ‘It’s impossible to say without meeting Molly, but the average is five or six.’

  Quick mental arithmetic told me that even at the full price the sessions would be more or less the same as the fees paid by the Channings for Georgia’s twice-weekly tutoring.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ I said.

  Now, salmon finished or abandoned (it wasn’t my finest culinary hour), Gayle and Craig looked to Ed for a rational explanation of so lunatic a leap of faith.

  ‘We’ve tried everything else.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s only alternative therapies left.’

  ‘So you have to pay for it?’ Gayle asked. ‘Hypnotherapy’s not available on the NHS?’

  ‘No, but it’s acknowledged by them as a treatment for phobias, addictions, a lot of stuff.’

  But Gayle was not convinced. ‘What would she know about phobias, anyway?’

  Craig exploded with laughter. ‘Listen to that she. Always a sign that you’ve got it in for someone.’

  Gayle shot him the kind of fiercely contemptuous look that was more common than you’d think between spouses of two decades’ standing. ‘Seriously, Nat, you have no personal connection with this family, how can you trust their recommendation?’

  This was getting unduly obstructive, almost as if Gayle were hoping Lara’s therapist would fail like all the others. That Molly would never be cured. ‘We have no personal connection with anyone we go to for help,’ I said mildly, ‘and referrals by medical professionals have so far been one hundred per cent unsuccessful. As Ed says, we exhausted mainstream options long ago, and time’s running out. This could be our last real chance.’ Just saying this caused a twinge of anxiety, and I knew instinctively that it had been right to take the appointment. ‘Besides, we do have a connection now. Starting from tomorrow, Ed is the Channings’ daughter’s new maths tutor.’

  ‘Ah,’ Gayle said, somehow both pleased and displeased by this information. ‘I get it. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ed said. ‘Though I’m hoping no spinal injuries will be sustained in either activity.’

  At the mention of tutoring, we’d arrived at the well-trodden subject of escape routes from the System, of teaching having become a minority pursuit, most of our time spent writing up notes in one form or another for some phantom authority who would never read them.

  Gayle drank her Oyster Bay with the gusto of the institutionalized. ‘Is it really too much to ask that I be allowed to prepare a lesson, teach it, and then start preparing the next?’

  ‘I think we’d all like that,’ I said, and was met with the now-familiar humouring nods of those who did daily battle with a grisly crew of between thirty and forty pupils while I swanned about with my selective intake of twenty-four. I felt selfish relief that Ed had made the first step towards bridging the divide.

  Evidently Craig was thinking the same thing. ‘So you’re joining the dark side as well now,’ he said to Ed. ‘Never thought I’d see the day. Et tu, Brute and all that.’

  ‘You should consider it yourself,’ I told him. ‘The demand for private tutors has never been higher.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot of scare stories,’ said Gayle. ‘One on one, it makes you very vulnerable.’

  ‘I wouldn’t risk it, personally,’ Craig agreed, and we all nodded, downcast. In my eagerness I’d forgotten that two years ago he had been investigated following a complaint made by a male pupil about his relationship with the boy’s on-off girlfriend, a classmate. Rumours of teacher-pupil fraternization were fairly routine. Every year, there would be at least one girl at All Saints who eschewed her peers in favour of a teacher h
er father’s age (Ed, with his allegedly Delon-esque bone structure, had been the object of his share of crushes) and the issue was often escalated unnecessarily, thanks to parents drawing fire before listening to a word of evidence. What had been less routine in Craig’s case was the parents making a complaint to the police. Eventually, it had been dismissed and the accuser suspended, but it had been a frightening experience for Craig and his colleagues.

  ‘Under-fourteens will come with a parent,’ I said. ‘We’ll use the living room as a waiting room.’

  ‘Fat lot of good that does anyone,’ Gayle said. ‘Parents never have a clue what’s going on, even under their own noses.’

  There was a brief silence as each of us wondered what we might not be noticing under ours.

  ‘Kids have got us over a barrel,’ Craig said. ‘There’ll come a time when we’re not allowed to make eye contact with the buggers.’

  ‘The answer is robots,’ Gayle said. ‘TeachBots. I’m going to apply for a patent.’

  I began to stack the plates. How many times had the four of us had this conversation? Friendships were built on this, I supposed, on the comfortable familiarity of a shared script. Perhaps it was the completion of my first year on ‘the dark side’, as Craig put it, but I felt detached from the collective sensibility, even liberated.

  ‘Anyway, the downside to all this is I’ll be working through the summer while you lot are free to malinger,’ Ed said.

  ‘One of us already is,’ I said from the counter, where I unboxed and quartered a readymade apricot tart. ‘I didn’t want to rub it in, though, so I haven’t displayed the twenty-four thank-you cards I received this week.’ One from every single child in the class, mostly hand-crafted: the rich were different indeed. ‘But I know you’ll appreciate the Fortnum & Mason chocolates we’re having with coffee. I’ve got kilos of them.’

  ‘So how did you spend your first day, Nat?’ Craig asked.

  ‘Toasting at the lido mostly.’ Hearing the echo of Lara and her friend, I wondered if Gayle had too. I added dollops of crème fraîche to the tart and began passing the plates to the others. ‘You know what my ambition is this summer? To forget that I’m a teacher – who cares what kind? I know, I know!’ I raised my voice above their cries. ‘I wouldn’t be “malingering” at home if I wasn’t one. I’d be chained to a desk in town somewhere with a week’s leave if I was lucky. But I’m still going to try. I’m going to live this summer like … like a civilian.’

  There was brief silence, then Craig and Gayle broke into laughter, raising their wine glasses to me and crying, ‘To Nat, the civilian!’

  Only Ed looked perturbed, even a little fearful. ‘Good luck with that, Nat,’ he said.

  9

  Saturday, 11 July

  If Lara traded on one brand of persuasive charm, her daughter Georgia, I discovered, was the agent of quite another. I’d like to say I happened to be at home for her first session with Ed, but the truth was I deliberately returned from errands in good time to be there.

  When I arrived, they were in his study. (‘Study’ was perhaps overstating the definition of a zone that had previously been a cloakroom. All it needed was bars across the tiny square window and a slop pot in the corner and it would have been an authentic cell.) The door was ajar and I could see on the small desk a stack of sample GCSE papers, along with the stapled assessment Ed had prepared. Over this a blonde head was bent, long strands veiling the details of her face. She was a dainty girl, I could tell that much, and graceful: the way she drew up an ankle and tucked it under her, as if her limbs were made of more pliable materials than the rest of ours, spoke not only of good genes but also of a decade’s worth of dance or gym classes – or perhaps synchro, her mother’s sport.

  After the session, they came into the living room, where I was reading a novel and Molly socializing online with friends who lived so close by she could virtually have conducted the conversation from her bedroom window. Ed made the introductions and Georgia regarded us with well-mannered ease. We were all standing.

  ‘Hello,’ I said very brightly. ‘I’ve met your mother, but not you, I think.’ It was unconvincing, the notion that I might not remember her, and I hastened on: ‘Would you mind passing on our thanks for her recommendation?’

  As Georgia widened her eyes I noted that the irises were paler and more golden than Lara’s. I knew from the photograph, of course, that she was a pretty girl, but what the image had not conveyed was the frankness of her appeal, the lack of embellishment. She was devoid not only of make-up and other adornments, but also of the twirling and flicking of hair, the twisting of ear studs, common in adolescent girls. Her clothes appeared to have been selected if not for camouflage then for comfort, light cotton garments that skimmed the sharp symmetry of her hips and elbows and collarbones. Not so like Lara then, after all, with her tousled up-dos and fringed shawls and kohl-smudged gazes.

  ‘If you just say that, she’ll know what it means,’ I added. I didn’t want to be more explicit about the hypnotherapy in front of Molly.

  ‘Sure.’ She gave an elegant half-shrug. ‘I like your top,’ she said, and I was about to thank her when I realized she was addressing Molly. She liked Molly’s high ponytail, as well; in fact, now her attention was on Molly and not me she was far more forthcoming. Her voice was standard posh girl, with an endearingly earnest quality. ‘Don’t you sometimes wish you had a younger sister so you could do her hair for her? I do. Like my mum used to do mine.’

  I imagined Lara and her sitting in front of the mirror brushing that spun-gold hair, mother and daughter Rapunzels who could never be lonely while they had each other.

  ‘My mum thinks it’s vain to spend hours on your hair,’ Molly told her. This was a new habit: to present opinion that might not be entirely generous-spirited as mine, not hers. Whereas in the past she’d have looked to me for reassurance in the presence of an affecting new acquaintance like Georgia, lately she’d become dismissive, keen to disassociate herself from me. It was classic stuff, just another signifier of growing independence, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

  ‘You can probably tell that just by looking at me,’ I joked.

  ‘I think spending a little bit of time on your hair is acceptable,’ Georgia said, glancing politely from Molly to me. ‘It’s social grooming, isn’t it? Primates do it. It’s not just about hygiene, it’s about bonding and communication. It’s not like we’re trying to look like some Disney princess.’

  Goodness, had she read my mind about Rapunzel? My hand sought the corner of the sofa, anchoring me. Georgia’s presence was starting to cause a strange uncertainty in me, making me tongue-tied, a little soft-kneed, and the trigger seemed to be her unselfconscious beauty. After all these years, might I have got it wrong? Might being pretty be important, after all? As the thought developed, I felt a terrible plunging sensation: since I was feeling this with Georgia when I had not with Lara, who was as beautiful as her daughter, if not more so, did that mean my issue was not with beauty but with youth? I must be experiencing the terrible midlife realization they say awaits us all, that the departure of youth is not some temporary wheeze, like when you have flu and look a decade older in the bathroom mirror, but is permanent, gone and never coming back. And every day that passes takes you further away from when you had it, every day that passes carries you closer to the end. Like Gayle and Jo, with her stripe of white roots, I was far closer to Sarah and her worn-out joints than I was to Georgia and her elastic, peak-condition anatomy.

  How horrendous: a midlife crisis right there in my own living room. Curious though I’d been to meet Lara’s daughter, I was grateful when she left, frankly.

  ‘Do you think she’s one of those teenagers with a totally secret other life?’ I asked Ed later, when I’d recovered from my turn. ‘You know, that whole cliché? She seems all sweet and simple on the surface but in reality has a career in underage porn and a crack habit?’

  ‘I actually think she’s the real deal,�
�� said Ed. ‘A genuinely nice kid.’

  ‘Then maybe it’s a case of role reversal. The parents are free-spirited so she plays it by the book. Is she bright? She seems it. I bet she doesn’t even need extra tuition.’

  ‘I’ll have to mark her assessment,’ Ed said, ‘but I’m guessing she needs it no more or less than most of them. But you know how it is, they infect each other – even the hippie ones.’ He meant mothers. Mothers spread infection. FOMO, they called it: fear of missing out. They saw another mother pushing ahead and they thought they ought to push ahead too, the inevitable result being that everyone remained the same as everyone else, just in a new, more expensive way. A way that placed children under greater strain – particularly, I’d observed, girls.

  Once, I’d left school early during term time to go with Molly to see a psychotherapist at the Maudsley Hospital. Arriving back in Elm Hill, I’d taken her to La Tasse on the high street for a hot chocolate. All around us women chattered about themselves – even the staff in the place comprised opinionated females – and I’d had a sudden sense of being in a piece of science fiction, a world in which men had been eliminated from society.

  ‘Well, they pretty much have, haven’t they?’ Gayle said when I told her about it later. ‘In Elm Hill, anyway.’