The Swimming Pool

by Louise Candlish

  ‘Because they teased us,’ I said truthfully. Somehow she was extracting more information than I normally gave, but this was not the dangerous part, I reminded myself. This was not so different from climbing scaffolding and stealing cigarettes. ‘They teased Mel about her turned-up nose and me about my birthmark. They called us names.’

  ‘What names?’

  ‘Snout-nose and Pock-face. Also the Ugly Sisters. One boy called me Two-face, that’s a character in Batman who has acid thrown in his face. I remember I’d never heard that one before.’ I’d learned that you never forgot hurtful nicknames, from however long ago; I hoped Molly had none to remember.

  ‘Maybe what you did was fair, then.’ She had an air of respectful impartiality, like a coroner. Perhaps it had developed to balance the irrational energy of her phobia or perhaps it was simply her father in her.

  Ed and I often discussed whether or not our parents would even have noticed if we’d had a phobia like Molly’s, whether we would simply have hidden it. After all, it wasn’t so many generations ago that to have learned to swim was the exception to the rule, not the other way around. We always ended up drawing the same conclusion: even if we hadn’t concealed it, they wouldn’t have noticed. Because, back then, stuff got overlooked, which had done our generation a great disservice.

  On the other hand, well … it had done us a bit of a favour, too.

  In my case, certainly.

  Wednesday, 22 July

  It was only when Georgia Channing was next in our flat that I thought again of the lifeguard’s talk of shallow-water blackout – I’d developed a memory for the names of disorders and had no trouble recalling it – and I discreetly read up on it while she and Ed worked. In short, it was when a swimmer passed out under water as a result of a lack of oxygen to the brain, sometimes, as the lifeguard had warned, after having purposely engaged in breath-holding exercises. There being no warning signs and a very limited time frame for possible resuscitation, it frequently proved fatal. SWB victims were often strong swimmers in competitive squads, exactly the sort to push themselves too far, to challenge one another. It occurred more often in males than in females.

  Though Georgia had not been involved, I thought I might have a quiet word with her when she was finished, ideally out of earshot of Molly. She might be able to use her influence to caution her male friends against such stunts.

  However, when the time came she declined my offer of refreshment and issued one of her own: ‘My mum said to say you should come for lunch on Sunday, if you’re free.’

  ‘That’s very kind of her. I’m sure we’d love to,’ I told her. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘On The Rise. Our house is called La Madrague.’

  I restrained myself from crying out, I knew it would be The Rise. I knew it would be a house that had a name and not a number – let alone, like ours, a letter.

  Behind me, Molly had emerged from her bedroom and I saw Georgia send her a look of ironic sympathy. She asked her if she wanted to walk to the high street together.

  ‘Go, darling,’ I urged. ‘You said you needed a new protractor.’

  Molly shot me a poisonous look.

  ‘That’s hilarious,’ Georgia said. ‘I would have thought you’d have, like, a ton of maths equipment in this house.’

  ‘These things get lost,’ Ed said.

  ‘No way. It’s so super-tidy here,’ Georgia said, eyeing the immaculate piles of papers and mugs on coasters on the coffee table before sending another sympathetic glance Molly’s way. ‘You could win an award or something.’

  ‘I know, I’m not even kidding,’ Molly said. ‘I don’t need a protractor anyway. But I do need a lip balm.’

  ‘Hey, I’ll show you the one I just bought from Elm Trader,’ Georgia said. ‘It’s guava and lychee.’

  Lip balm was practically a currency in its own right for this generation. Accounts of olden-days-style scrimping and saving for a single roll-on gloss having been met in the past with condescension, I didn’t offer one now.

  Since Molly was there, I had no opportunity to raise the issue of breath-holding games, though I admit it’s possible that, excited by the invitation – the two invitations – I might not have remembered even if she’d been absent. Instead, I shared my findings with Ed when the girls had left.

  ‘Shallow-water blackout? I don’t think we need worry about that,’ he said, and here came the expression I’d grown used to seeing in such discussions: exaggeratedly co-operative, not a million miles from patronizing. ‘She’s not going to drown on dry land, is she?’

  ‘Not Molly,’ I said, ‘the other kids. People Georgia knows. You know what the pack mentality’s like. They urge each other on.’

  ‘Don’t get neurotic about it, Nat. They’ve all got parents of their own.’ He wasn’t normally so explicit, but he’d had more than his fill of pack mentalities in term time, perhaps. Remembering Gayle’s comment about my dismissiveness, I made a point of agreeing.

  As we lapsed into silence, I found myself recalling Molly’s comment about Lord of the Flies, and for the second time in recent days I thought with a shudder of my old friend Mel.

  Of the sound of our laughter over still, dark water.

  Stoneborough, August 1985

  My grandparents’ village of Stoneborough had a population of 490. It had woods, a recreation ground, and a newsagent’s with stale chocolate and and uncertain opening hours. The bus service to Southampton operated twice a day except on Sundays, when it didn’t operate at all.

  It was a backwater if ever there was one: my father’s words, not mine. The first time we visited after I’d heard the term, I’d actually expected to find streets of rivers, like in the flooded villages I’d glimpsed on the television news and later understood to be in Bangladesh. Then I realized he meant it was boring, which made it the perfect place to send a girl who’d received a warning from her school about disruptive behaviour and whose parents had finally twigged that discussing a child as if she were hard of hearing might be a contributing factor to those behavioural troubles. Warring parents who wanted her out of the way so they could war more freely. Sort out a few things on their own, as they put it.

  ‘It’s only for a month,’ Mum told me. ‘You’ll make friends.’

  ‘I don’t want friends,’ I said.

  ‘Everyone wants friends, Nat.’

  And I remember the hug she gave me – close and long and a little desperate, as if I were an evacuee whose destination was a question of pot luck and who might never return. She didn’t ever hug me like that again – I wouldn’t allow her to because when I came back I was shadowy and uncommunicative, a person with secrets to guard.

  ‘Apparently, at this time of year you can swim in the pond in the woods,’ she said. ‘All the kids do, Gran says.’

  Automatically I touched my right eyebrow. I didn’t like swimming, at least not with other children. The water would slick back my long fringe and expose my horrible birthmark.

  ‘Will it be safe to swim in that pond?’ my father queried, and I knew he wasn’t really concerned but was just looking to find fault in any idea that happened to be my mother’s.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, go with her and be a lifeguard, if you’re that worried,’ Mum snapped, and I watched the fury flare and catch as he searched for the last word.

  ‘On your head be it,’ he said.

  I met Mel on my second day in the village. It was raining and I was bored and angry; I thought I might throw one of my grandparents’ heavy glass photo frames through a window just to make something happen. When I watched television I had the hot, combustible feeling that it – or I – might explode into a thousand pieces.

  ‘There’s a nice girl about your age in the house on the corner,’ Gran said. ‘Cheryl’s youngest. Why don’t you go and introduce yourself?’

  Mel was a year older than me. She was stout and defensive-looking, with very shiny dark-red hair and a left incisor that had grown over the next tooth along
. Her most marked feature, however, was the central one, her nose: upturned and flattened, it was as if she’d been slammed face first into a door. It made me think of Boxer dogs, but I soon learned the local kids preferred an even crueller likeness – to a pig.

  ‘What’s that red smudge on your face?’ she asked me.

  ‘A birthmark.’

  ‘It’s really big.’

  ‘Thanks for the newsflash. So, what’s there to do around here?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Mel said. ‘It’s fucking boring.’

  The thrill I felt at the swearword was the first pleasurable sensation I’d experienced in days.

  ‘We normally go to the pond, but it’s been raining.’

  ‘I heard about the pond,’ I said. ‘You’re allowed to swim in it, are you?’

  She scoffed. ‘Who cares if you’re allowed? We’ll go tomorrow, see who’s there. I’ll call on you in the morning.’

  Not a proposal, but a plan.

  Not a friend, but a partner in crime.

  11

  Monday, 31 Augusts, 3 a.m.

  Exhaustion drags at my eyelids, seals them shut, and at once an unsettling psychedelia of images begins to flicker: black figures silhouetted on night-grey brick; stricken faces caught in the neon-green glow of an emergency exit sign; blue light from the ambulances swirling in the street. Paramedics in fluorescent jackets questioning weeping parents; a police officer with a humid sheen of sweat on his face, standing with Liam and Matt, making notes, looking our way.

  How am I going to explain the missing minutes?

  My eyes snap open, all my reflexes suspended until Molly is found to be where she should be, in her bed, sound asleep. Her breathing is audible, as if she’s consciously controlling its rhythm, as if she’s not disposing of last night’s events so much as reliving them. How many hundreds of times – thousands – have I seen her sleeping face? But only this time do I feel I know her dreams. I wish I could divert from her to me all the terror of the fall, leave her with only the sweet relief of rescue.

  I cross the room and sit on the side of her bed, taking her hand and laying it on mine, a touch without pressure. Her cheeks bear stains of mascara and I have the urge to wipe them clean, restore her innocence, but I resist. I don’t want to wake her. Her rest has never been more precious.

  My arms ache from more than tiredness and I know there must be marks under my sleeves.

  Back in my seat, I spare a glance for Ed, wary of more insinuations about misdeeds, and am brought up short. I have rarely seen him look so ill, as if he was the one pulled from the water. His skin gleams grey, as it does after he’s eaten shellfish.

  We’re bruised and broken, all three of us.

  ‘Go to bed if you like,’ I tell him, and whatever he thinks of me, whatever he suspects, the tenderness in my voice is not manufactured. ‘I’ll stay up. One of us should keep our strength for tomorrow.’ Strength for the fallout, for word from the hospital. ‘I’ll phone for news in the morning,’ I add, but when I look at him again his eyes have hardened. ‘What?’

  ‘You know what.’ His voice is cold. ‘As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care if I never see that couple again.’

  Couple, not family: is he conscious of the distinction? ‘Oh, Ed. Whatever you think of the Channings, they don’t deserve this. No one does.’

  He accepts this – not to do so would be to have no soul.

  ‘But I think you’re right,’ I say. ‘We should stop seeing them. All of us, all of them. Nothing matters now except Molly.’

  Ed frowns, suspecting a bluff, even an outright untruth. It is clear that he no longer trusts my word – when did that happen? Was it when I stopped caring about his?

  ‘Easier said than done,’ he says. ‘Is it even going to be our call? How do we know what happened to Georgia won’t turn them crazy?’

  He doesn’t know the half of it, but the half is enough to bring emotion to his voice as he adds, ‘If she … if she doesn’t make it, who is Lara going to blame then, Nat?’

  And the honest answer is, I don’t know. I can’t speak for Lara Channing. I’ve seen her more than anyone else these last weeks: we’ve become very close very quickly.

  And yet I haven’t got a clue who she is.

  12

  Sunday, 26 July – five weeks earlier

  Though right about the street, I’d been wrong about the house. I’d assumed the Channings were in one of the detached Edwardian villas that formed Elm Hill’s millionaires’ row, but in fact they were in one of the only pair of thirties houses on the southern side of the park. Not suburban semis, you understand, but the curved white kind you see in Agatha Christie films, with a glamorous top-floor sun terrace from which one guest might send another to his death. Evil on The Rise, perhaps. I said this to Ed as we lingered by the gate, adding that I hoped it would not be one of our family who got murdered today.

  ‘If it is, let it be me,’ he said glumly, for the expedition combined two behaviours of which he was most deeply suspicious: spontaneity, which he associated with exposure to the risk of humiliation, and social climbing, which he thought best confined to TV sitcom. It hadn’t helped that I’d Googled ‘La Madrague’ before we left and found it was the same name as Brigitte Bardot’s house in Saint-Tropez.

  ‘Who does she think she is?’ he said.

  ‘She thinks she’s your new client,’ I replied.

  ‘A madrague is a trap, isn’t it? For catching tuna.’

  ‘Very sinister,’ I said, but mildly because, like Gayle, he had every right to expect me to mock such pretensions as readily as he did. That was what people like us did about people like them.

  The truth was, however, that I appeared to be breaking rank; I appeared to be prepared to make an exception. As we stood in front of the stainless-steel nameplate on the pristine white wall directly opposite the steps to the lido, I struggled to recall a time in recent years when I’d felt more exhilarated. Whatever this lunch invitation was – and I was quite certain it was enviable, it was exclusive, it was an opportunity to embrace my declared summer’s mission to ‘live’ – it was not the usual way we spent our Sundays.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to Ed and Molly, and I stepped on to the footpath of grey pebbles that ran alongside flowerbeds filled with the stiff, hardy shrubs of a windswept coastline. In the drive there was an old Jag and a new Mini Cooper, both parked askew as if by the drunk or distracted, all the more breathtaking for the presence a couple of feet away of one of those sculptures of implausibly self-balancing stones. As we knocked at the door, eyes screwed to the violent collision of midday sun with pure white walls, wild laughter rained down on us from the terrace.

  Then the door opened and Miles Channing stood before us. He was clothed in black linen, the colour contriving – or accentuating – a blank, depthless quality in his dark eyes. ‘Hello?’ His voice was polite but uninviting, his mind obviously on some other interrupted activity.

  I smiled at him, noting at closer quarters the brand of corporate ex-pat surface glamour I’d seen at a distance in my classroom. Though he had not yet smiled, I knew that when he did it would be to reveal artificially brightened American teeth. ‘Miles, isn’t it? Hello again, I’m not sure if you remember me? Natalie Steele.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ He regarded me a little bleakly, not acknowledging the other two at all. In any case, I knew that both would be looking away, appalled by our host’s making no attempt to conceal the fact that he had no idea who we were.

  Counter-intuitively I felt emboldened, keen to show I had the necessary social aplomb to meet this challenge. ‘Georgia invited us for lunch … But perhaps we got the wrong day? It wouldn’t be the first time we’d got muddled up.’ It would, I sensed Ed thinking; it was unheard of. ‘Should we make a graceful retreat and never speak of it again?’ I added wryly.

  ‘Nat,’ Ed began, but he had no need to go on because suddenly there was Lara at Miles’s shoulder, dressed in something silky and midnight blue, admonishing he
r husband while welcoming us with open arms. ‘Miles, it’s the Steeles! What are you doing barring them entry like this? You’re making them feel like Jehovah’s Witnesses – or, worse, those people who sell boxes of organic chard.’

  I laughed. Even Ed managed a smile. Molly downgraded her position from shamed-to-the-point-of-suicidal to standard mortified. Miles stepped aside, apologizing in smooth, neutral tones. ‘Please, come in. I was just on my way to get more wine …’

  As he withdrew down a ground-floor corridor, Lara embraced us in turn and directed us to a circular staircase to her left. ‘Sorry about Miles,’ she said unapologetically, ‘but he’s not quite in the land of the living yet. Heavy night last night, but nothing the hair of a pack of wolves won’t solve. Right, we’re on the terrace, as you can probably hear. Follow me!’

  Such was the immediate dazzle of shiny surfaces, I could not at first register anything but her bare feet as I tailed them up the stairs, the faint grey dusting on her smooth soles. By the first-floor landing, however, I had recovered sufficiently to admire the enclosed spiral of polished wood, the wrought-iron banisters and marble treads; the glimpses through half-open bedroom doors of gleaming walnut headboards and grass-deep rugs, of pale paintings with sinuous, unknowable subjects. At the top we reached a spectacular set of double doors with a design depicting Diana hunting, and these Lara shouldered apart to lead the way into a vast room.

  Entering, we Steeles halted, as if caught in searchlights: the sun streamed in from both flanks, causing us to shield our eyes. Adjusting, I saw that we were in an extraordinarily beautiful sitting room, the colour scheme black, white and petrol blue. Of the details, my eyes picked out a central conical light fitting, a large lacquered coffee table heaped with books, a pair of fan-shaped velvet-covered armchairs, a fireplace of chrome or nickel or something else shiny. A perfect balance of materials that reflected and fabrics that absorbed. Beyond, the open-plan kitchen was a showroom of soot-black appliances, marble worktops and sparkling glassware.