‘We’ve texted,’ I said vaguely. Displaying precisely the behaviour I counselled my daughter – and pupils – against, I appeared to have sidelined a loyal long-standing friend in favour of a glittering untried one. Indeed, the texts we’d exchanged had left me feeling guilty on more than one level. Ed told me about your birthday plan, Gayle wrote. Tried to get tickets for pool party but it’s sold out. Sorry.
Of course, Ed told me meant that she was less sorry that the party was sold out than she would have been if I had been the one to invite her. Or thought to arrange tickets at the same time that I’d arranged my own.
I scrambled to make amends: Let me see if Lara can help. I would have enjoyed being able to fix things for her, but when I asked Lara, she told me that even she had no more spares, a response I did not question. You’re right, I texted Gayle. But she can put you at the top of the waiting list?
When her response came, I could hear the scornful laugh that accompanied it: Don’t worry, it’s not the be-all. Then: Surprised Molls good with plan tbh.
I couldn’t help reading the rebuke in that, not least because I had yet to consult Molly on the matter. Let’s have a drink another night instead, I texted, finally.
Gayle did not reply. I cared, just as I cared that I was no longer swimming with her in the mornings but with Lara in the afternoons, but I admit I didn’t care as much as I should have.
As for Molly, though I would have preferred to ask her about the pool party face to face, Gayle’s comment weighed heavily on me and I decided it couldn’t wait.
‘Listen, darling,’ I said, when I next called, ‘Dad and I thought the three of us might go to this party at the lido for the night of my birthday. Would you be Okay with that? I’ve checked with Lara and the pool itself will be closed. They’ll just be using the café and the sundeck as a venue.’
‘Sure,’ Molly said.
‘I think you’ll enjoy it. There’ll be a barbecue and a jazz band.’
‘Yeah, Georgia said. She told me all about it.’
‘Great.’
It had been so straightforward that I was momentarily lost for words. Was I to gather that I had Georgia to thank for this easy acquiescence?
At this rate I’d soon need to send the girl flowers.
Angie’s house was on Steadman Avenue, one of the roads running south off The Rise, a relatively modest Edwardian semi from the street but opulent and moneyed inside, with one of those glass and granite kitchen extensions that cost more than the entire Steele pension fund. The garden, where we assembled for drinks around a rattan table, had been landscaped with minimalist severity; it was not clear if the vegetation was the photosynthesizing real thing or simply top-grade counterfeit.
The cocktail du jour was the Aperol Spritz.
‘Welcome back to shore, babe.’ Lara toasted Angie as if she’d returned from sailing the Cutty Sark, not people-watching from a hotel terrace in Portofino. ‘If it weren’t for Natalie, I swear I would have expired in your absence.’
‘You mean your beautiful children aren’t enough to sustain you?’ Angie laughed. At her feet, Choo was savaging what looked like a snorkel, still frantic with excitement at being reunited with his mistress.
‘God, no,’ Lara said. ‘Are yours? I don’t go along with those weird people who say children are more interesting than adults.’
‘I’ve never heard anyone say that,’ Angie said.
‘But honestly, darling, we’ve been bereft. Haven’t we, Miles?’
‘Oh, quite distraught,’ Miles agreed, in his sardonic way.
‘You’re a bad liar, mate,’ said Stephen, tanned and well fed from Italy. Though he had welcomed Ed and me with faultless bonhomie, I couldn’t help being relieved when he’d taken a seat on the far side of the table from me.
The kids wandered out to graze on our bar snacks, inoffensively remote as ever. Georgia, long-legged in fraying cut-off shorts, a pink vest and a trilby, was every inch the girl who routinely shunned model-agency scouts. The sight of her cheered Ed, at least, giving him the opportunity to emphasize a point about co-sines, which, when Lara listened in and contrived to understand, taxed her acting skills more sorely than any challenge I’d seen her face to date.
‘How’s Molly?’ Angie asked me, when the youngsters had drifted off again. Here, the kids chose the soundtrack, and as she spoke, some R&B star shrieked his parallel narrative. ‘Eve hasn’t been able to get hold of her all week.’
‘Her mobile signal’s been a bit dodgy in Stoneborough,’ I said, pleased on Molly’s behalf that she’d been missed by the older girls. ‘I was just telling her the other day how it was when I spent a few weeks down there in the eighties. Just a landline that you had to get permission to use. You’d have thought I was talking about the eighteen eighties the way she reacted. Gayle says she has pupils at Rushbrook who literally don’t know what a fixed-line phone is.’
‘Remind me, is Gayle the one whose daughter likes Georgia’s new boyfriend?’ Angie asked.
‘I’m not sure who her girls are interested in at the moment,’ I said. As Ed had pointed out, it was a while since she and I had had a conversation of any length. I would ask her tonight, I thought. ‘Who’s Georgia’s new boyfriend?’
‘Matt, of course,’ Lara said. ‘I thought I’d bored you enough this week with tales of my rampant sexual jealousy, Natalie.’
I chose not to catch Ed’s eye, this being exactly the sort of comment he would stockpile in evidence against Lara. (He’d probably have something to say about the three-year age gap between Matt and Georgia too.)
‘Well, I saw him first,’ she continued, giggling. ‘No one can dispute that. I was there for a meeting the day they interviewed the lifeguards.’
‘Spare us your tales of the casting couch,’ Stephen said.
‘You shot yourself in the foot hiring him,’ Angie told her. ‘Your own daughter is the least of it: the moment that place opened, he was public property. You’d have been better getting him to do your gardening.’
Lara was delighted. ‘You’re right, I could have been Lady Chatterley! What’s that great quote: “We fucked a flame into being”?’
As the group fell about, I felt Ed wince.
‘You can just imagine the hormonal tensions, can’t you?’ Angie said. ‘Near-naked teenagers in the best shape of their lives, boys at their sexual peak.’
‘It’s certainly a formative time,’ Stephen said, ‘and not one I’d want to revisit.’
‘None of us would,’ I agreed. I was becoming aware that I was trying too hard with Stephen. I was the dog who’d singled out the human in the group the most indifferent to me. ‘It’s so lovely and peaceful on this side of the park, isn’t it?’ It was all too easy to imagine us Steeles in a house like this, living the life of the one-percenters. (‘Isn’t that a gang of motorcycling outlaws?’ Ed asked, when I later made the mistake of sharing the thought.)
‘Compared to during the day, it is,’ Angie agreed. ‘But you get used to the screams.’
‘And that’s just the Channings’ sex life, boom-boom,’ Stephen said.
Miles gave a tolerant roll of the eyes. The two men were seated side by side, complementary characters. Stephen was animated, a crude alpha commentator, Miles self-contained, an observer. It seemed to me that what they shared was an understanding that it was the women who counted in this group; I could hardly say the same for my husband.
‘I love the lido noise,’ Lara said. ‘All that excitement in the air. It feels primal.’
On cue came the sound of a fox, its cry like some diabolical instrument; it was impossible to know if we were hearing agony or ecstasy.
‘Without the crowds, it’s like there isn’t a pool there at all,’ I said. ‘You probably don’t, remember the days when the skateboarders used to break in. And the illicit raves.’
‘We didn’t live here when they had the raves,’ Angie said, ‘but the neighbours say it was a nightmare.’
‘I imagine it was
,’ Ed said.
‘Not your thing at all,’ Lara told him, teasing. ‘I would have gone over and joined them,’ she declared. ‘I would have made you all come with me.’
I thought of what Molly had said about the Stoneborough pond having been drained. Did kids still congregate there? Or did they sit in their bedrooms alone with their technology? What was Molly plugged into right now? What was she negotiating to watch on television? I used to know the answers, but now I didn’t. She was becoming a stranger. ‘Don’t fight independence,’ Gayle always advised. ‘It’s a natural process. Besides, what’s the alternative? A daughter in her twenties or thirties who can’t cross the road or boil a kettle on her own?’
Yes, I thought, taking another mouthful of Aperol. There was something to be said for Lara’s and Angie’s more hands-off approach to parenting. With a twinge of guilt that was becoming familiar, I corrected myself: what I’d meant to think was that there was something to be said for Gayle’s advice.
‘Nat …’ Ed was on his feet, reminding me that we needed to depart to meet Gayle and Craig. Though night had fallen, the sky growing inky, I sensed he was moving us along a little more promptly than was necessary.
‘You go on your own,’ I said. ‘I’ve just started this drink. I’ll join you in a little while.’
He looked hard at me. ‘You should come. I’m sure they’d love to see you.’
‘I know. I’ll be there.’
There was a pause. He wouldn’t make a scene, we both knew that; even if the Channings had not been his clients, he would have kept up appearances.
As he left, a fox, a skinny young thing, ran along the beam-narrow brick wall at the end of the garden, startling me.
‘I’ve just had a thought,’ Lara said suddenly.
‘What?’ we all said.
‘Ooh,’ she said, and she radiated that special energy of hers, edgier than mischief, too guileless to be criminal. ‘It’s a bit naughty.’
Amid groans from the men, Angie and I clamoured to hear it.
‘I know the alarm code,’ she said. ‘For the lido.’
‘You don’t mean …?’ Angie said.
‘Don’t tell her what she doesn’t mean,’ Stephen said. ‘It only gives her more ideas.’
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Miles’s raised eyebrows, his amusement at both his wife’s implied misconduct and his own tolerance of it. Ed had never looked at me in that way, not once.
Lara gave Stephen a playful slap. ‘I’m just saying, if a bunch of kids had the nerve to break in, then surely we do.’
‘There wasn’t any water in it when they did,’ Stephen pointed out.
‘So we won’t need our skateboards, will we?’ she shot back.
‘You’re a monster, La,’ Angie said. ‘Someone should take you into custody for your own safety.’
Even for Lara this was bold. I was thrilled by that boldness, thrilled by Miles’s lack of censure, thrilled, too, that Ed had left, for he would have made it his business to shut this down and, in the event of failure, would likely have phoned the police.
‘Lucky Ed’s gone home,’ I heard myself say, blithe, treacherous.
‘We’ll have to work on him,’ Lara said kindly. ‘Some nuts are harder to crack, but the summer’s not over yet.’ With that, she was on her feet, Ed forgotten. ‘Let’s go!’
‘What about the kids?’ I said.
‘We’ll leave Milena in charge.’ And it seemed that a matter of seconds later the au pair had been briefed, towels bundled into a bag, and we adults were strolling across The Rise towards the park entrance.
This might be the most important summer of my life, I thought, drunk enough to mistake arrogance for significance, weak enough not to realize it at the time. The most important night.
Stephen and Miles were bantering about how the group might best be hoisted over the locked gate without injury, when it was discovered that it had been left open.
‘What about security cameras?’ I said, and we all halted, bumping into one another and giggling. I like to think now that a part of me was paying tribute to Ed, or at least remembering that I had a respectable job to lose, but I suspect the reality was I just wanted to belong, to be a vocal participant in this escapade.
‘The pool lights won’t be on,’ Lara said, ‘so it’ll be too dark for the cameras to catch our faces.’
‘She’s got a point, though,’ Angie said. ‘What about when we go in through the door? There’ll surely be a camera on the entrance and I’m pretty sure Reception has some sort of night light.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, girls, it’s not a jewel heist,’ Lara said. ‘I’ll have a word with Liam tomorrow and get him to delete the evidence.’
‘Will he agree?’ I asked.
‘People don’t turn Lara down,’ Miles said, and smiled at my immediate acceptance – and therefore demonstration – of the point.
We’re playing by different rules, I thought foolishly. We’re living life faster, higher, more memorably.
We entered in fact through the staff door to the side of the main entrance, Lara concentrating comically hard as she disabled the alarm. And then we were in, past the café loos and through the unalarmed door to the pool terrace. The only light was the green security panel above the emergency doors, the rest of the site a palette of blacks. The water was smooth, its dimensions ambiguous, like a secret lake.
When it became apparent that Angie had not packed swimwear, I imagined we would keep on our underwear, but in a matter of moments Lara, Angie and Stephen were naked, hardly bothering to cover themselves with their hands as they dropped into the water with stifled cries.
Exhilarated, I did the same, at once breathless from the cold. Unlit, the water was a sublime unknown and my sense of the distance to the edge imprecise. My blood raced in my veins and I was a child again, imagining myself in the middle of an ocean at the mercy of deadly currents or silent submarine ambushes. The same unseen that frightened my daughter excited me. It always had.
‘Isn’t it the most gorgeous sensation in the whole world?’ Lara was gliding up beside me and treading water.
‘The swimming or the breaking in?’
‘Both. I’m so glad you came with us, Natalie.’
‘So am I,’ I said. ‘What an adventure.’
‘Have you ever done anything like this before?’
I had an unpleasant involuntary memory of her sister teasing and belittling me for my unexciting ways. ‘I’ve swum in the middle of the night, but not, you know, skinny-dipping.’
‘Was that in those woods you told me about? In Stoneborough? I remember what you said that time about feeling free.’
‘Yes.’ I was overjoyed that she remembered details like this. It was as if she instinctively recognized the experiences that had shaped me. ‘We didn’t have to break in, of course, but we had to break out of our homes.’
Her face came closer, hair sleek, cheekbones and brow sharp. ‘I bet you were the leader, weren’t you?’
‘Deputy, in fact. To a girl who’s since been jailed.’ I spoke with a heedlessness that was only half affected.
‘Goodness,’ Lara chuckled. ‘So you were led astray by a delinquent then?’
‘Let’s just say I was open to suggestion.’
‘I’ve noticed.’
As she began to circle me in that smooth way of hers that hardly rippled the surface, I grew freshly aware of our bare skin under the water. If our feet or hands or knees or elbows made contact, would it be different knowing the rest of us was naked?
‘Tell me more, Natalie. Who was this jailbird accomplice of yours?’
‘She was a girl from the village. I didn’t really know her. It was more a friendship of convenience. We didn’t keep in touch afterwards.’ Though it was still only a matter of days since I’d been reunited with Mel, the occasion already felt deep in the past, its purpose served, on its way to being expunged from the record. At the centre of her turning circle, I clumsily trod water
, straining to track her moving face. ‘But that summer, when she and I were together it was like there were no rules. No one to tell us no. I don’t think I’ve ever had that since.’
Delighted as I was with Lara’s response to the persona I’d adopted during this little speech, I was unprepared for the wild, seditious thoughts that came next: Ed was the kind who would have told us no. If he had stayed this evening, I wouldn’t be here now: I wouldn’t have been allowed. Was that how it was going to be from now on? A succession of nos to every one of my yeses? We admitted ourselves that our relationship had been built – partly, at least – on a shared system of disapproval, a belief that we were right and others were wrong. But it only worked, didn’t it, if we agreed?
At last Lara stopped moving and hovered in front of me. Under water her hand reached for mine, lacing our fingers together. ‘I think you must be a water-baby like me,’ she said.
There was a hammering at my pulse points. ‘I think I must be.’
‘You know, I always think that if Heaven falls, I’d like to be swimming.’
‘If Heaven falls? You don’t mean …?’
‘Not the desperate, struggling kind of drowning,’ she said, ‘just being swallowed by the water in a peaceful way.’
‘Oh.’ I was suddenly uncertain, for, inevitably, Molly had sprung to mind. The water will swallow me. But Molly was safe in her bed in Stoneborough, I assured myself. She need never know about this Elm Hill adventure. Lara’s fingers still gripped mine, her face close, inches away, eyes darker than all the blacks around us, pulling me into them. As a swell surprised us, splashing my face, she let go of my hand and rose with the water in perfect synchronicity, minutely attuned to ebb and flow. Beyond, at the nearest edge, I caught movement, a slow stride, and realized it was Miles. He was still dressed.
‘Isn’t he coming in?’ I asked Lara.
‘Oh, he doesn’t do pools.’
‘But he can swim?’
The Swimming Pool Page 22