The Swimming Pool

by Louise Candlish

  ‘He can, but he doesn’t.’

  ‘Like your sister,’ I said, thinking how interesting it was that two of the people closest to her had rejected the great passion of her life. Not her children, though. And not me. ‘But they could swim, if they had to? Not being able to, like Molly, that’s the dangerous thing.’

  ‘I can tell you’re still really worried about her, aren’t you?’ Lara said, and to my disappointment she paddled slightly away from me. ‘I think you should stop. Things will happen as they’re supposed to. Divine justice. Karma.’

  These were the sort of remarks I would normally dismiss as hogwash, but that night, spellbound, they sounded like the answer to everything.

  As she swam off to join Angie and Stephen, I climbed out to use the staff toilet by the kitchen. Alone, inside, the sense of trespass was much greater; I imagined my towelled figure being caught on CCTV, studied by Liam and his team in the morning. Tipsy enough to be more tickled than appalled by the thought, I was giggling when I emerged, only to find Miles waiting in the narrow corridor that led back to the café.

  ‘You gave me a shock,’ I said.

  ‘Hello, Natalie,’ he said, and it was the entirely normal tone and volume that made it so disquieting, as if there were nothing odd, nothing illicit, about our being in a locked building in the middle of the night. I, by contrast, was keenly aware that I was half naked, damp and unkempt, while he was fully clothed, wholly composed.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ I asked, a tactful way of asking him to move aside.

  ‘Couldn’t be better.’

  Still he did not move. My choice was to remain motionless in front of him or to navigate past, back to the wall and breath held. I chose the latter, but as I edged past he took a step to trap me tighter, as good as pressing me to the wall. Confused, embarrassed, I eased myself the rest of the way, my bare skin making contact with his clothing and dragging slightly against the fabric. Only when this excruciating manoeuvre was complete did he turn from me quite leisurely and enter the lavatory, the door closing soundlessly behind him.

  I hurried across the terrace to where the other three were now dressing.

  ‘Clothes on,’ Angie hissed, passing me my dress. ‘We thought we’d better quit while we’re ahead.’

  When Miles returned he made no mention of our peculiar interaction, so neither did I.

  ‘I should think about getting home,’ I said.

  ‘Come back to ours and we’ll order a cab for you,’ Lara said.

  At La Madrague, Angie and Stephen peeled off for Steadman Avenue and Lara settled me with a drink in a ground-floor room I took to be Miles’s study. When Miles excused himself, I assumed for the night, Lara followed him upstairs to find her phone to call the taxi.

  Perhaps it was the cosy decor, the chocolate leather furniture, crammed bookshelves and wool rugs, but it felt several degrees warmer in the room than outside and I rose to open the only window, a little porthole overlooking the drive. As I did, traces of conversation between the Channings drifted into earshot from above.

  ‘Couldn’t be more perfect …’ (Lara.)

  ‘… too drunk …’ (Miles.)

  ‘… always too drunk.’ (Lara, louder.)

  The voices receded. Another eavesdropped tail-end of a conversation: I was making a habit of it. I thought of that complaint of Lara’s about her sister’s opinions on her ménage – I can’t help it if other people aren’t as inventive as we are – and of the oddness with Miles just now, his immovable, unfriendly body against mine. Then I had a new thought, a fuzzily cautious one: had Lara gone to the Pharm? Was she going to offer me cocaine or some other drug? Should I agree? Should I do it, just once? What would Ed and Gayle and Craig say about that?

  When Lara reappeared, her glass still in hand, she clinked it against mine and said, ‘I’ve got a confession to make.’

  ‘Sounds dangerous,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘I didn’t order your cab.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She looked unblinkingly at me. ‘Because I thought you might want to stay over.’

  I caught my breath, electrified.

  ‘The kids are sleeping at Angie’s, Marthe’s at her boyfriend’s, so we’ll have the house to ourselves.’

  ‘But I only live a few minutes away,’ I said, throat dry, already doubting that I had interpreted this correctly.

  ‘I know that,’ Lara said, and continued to look hard at me, a faint curve to her lips. There was no ambiguity now, or at least little enough.

  And I thought, just as I had about the drugs, Should I ? Should I allow myself to feel feelings just like she felt them? Reckless, euphoric feelings that denied the advancing years, years in which I’d done so little against the grain it was pitiful.

  ‘Lara,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure if –’

  Her murmurs shushed me as a kiss on the corner of my mouth shocked me into stillness. ‘Miles will explain. He’s just coming down now …’

  Miles. Until that moment I had not understood of myself what I now did: if anything were to happen, if any line were to be crossed, I was not interested in crossing it in his direction.

  From above there came the sound of a door closing, then slow footsteps on the polished staircase.

  I sprang to my feet and put the glass down. ‘Thank you, La. I don’t know what to say, but I really had better go. Ed will be wondering what’s happened to me – he’ll be phoning and getting worried. And it doesn’t matter about the cab, I can easily walk.’

  Trembling, every pore of me alive with nerves and confusion, I slipped into the passageway and towards the front door, just in time to meet Miles at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘Natalie,’ he said, and it seemed to me that his tone had a trace of appetite to it.

  I stammered a goodbye.

  ‘Don’t rush off!’ Lara protested, behind me.

  And the two of them stood in the open doorway, watching as I scurried across the pebbles. When I turned, waving awkwardly, Lara blew me a kiss, her other hand on Miles’s arm as he swung away. I could not see their expressions, but I imagined them as beautifully impassive, roused at most to mild surprise.

  I made my way at speed down The Rise, past the grand houses, towards the main road. Though yellow light still glowed behind some of the windows, they’d been closed to the night and not a human sound leaked from them. As I walked, there came across the treetops the scream of a police siren and, for an anxious moment, I thought it was coming towards me. But then I realized it was in fact getting fainter and was soon lost altogether.

  Saturday, 22 August

  By the time I emerged from bed in the morning Ed was already in his office, so I took him a cup of tea and sat in the spot reserved for his students.

  ‘Don’t ask me to do any algebra,’ I said. ‘My brain isn’t working yet.’ Neither was my voice, which was painfully rough, as if damaged from smoking crack. I hadn’t yet decided how much I was going to divulge about the previous night, so I asked after Craig and Gayle. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I did swing by the Vineyard at about midnight, but you’d left.’

  In truth, the walk in the dark had been more intimidating than I’d expected, and when I’d found the Vineyard closing, I’d been glad to continue straight home.

  ‘They were fine,’ Ed said. ‘Disappointed to miss you, though. They’ve invited us for dinner on Wednesday, so it would be great if you could make yourself available.’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘You look terrible, by the way. Hangover, I assume?’

  I gave a weak smile. ‘Were you on the peppermint tea yourself, then?’

  ‘It’s not a competition,’ Ed said mildly. ‘We’re all old enough these days to feel the extra glass.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ I said, though my throbbing head told me he’d made a good point.

  ‘So how was the rest of the night with the Borgias? Did you have an orgy with any courtesans or spike any drinks with arsenic?’

&n
bsp; Though I knew full well humour was his way of showing forgiveness, my hangover made me defensive. ‘It was great, actually. We went swimming.’

  Clear skies clouded. ‘You did what? Where?’

  ‘We broke into the lido and we swam in the dark.’

  I hadn’t intended confessing, but it was worth it – almost – to see his disbelief, his astonishment at what I might be capable of. ‘No you didn’t,’ he said.

  ‘We did. It was completely wild.’

  In retrospect, I see that this was the tipping point, the conversation during which I tipped from seeking his approval of my new friendship to toying with his disapproval of it; to keeping details secret, details like what had been insinuated – was it too bold to say proposed? – in those final few minutes with the Channings.

  ‘It was just a bit of fun,’ I said, shrugging.

  ‘It was just a bit of breaking and entering.’ Outrage coursed from him in almost visible waves.

  ‘Not really. Lara’s practically one of the staff there. She knew the alarm code.’

  ‘I bet she did, but I don’t suppose she was authorized to use it. Imagine if Health and Safety …’ He tailed off, hearing himself, changing direction. ‘I can’t believe you’d do that when you were all so drunk. You of all people know how dangerous it is to go in the water under the influence. It’s a suicide mission.’

  ‘We were fine, Ed, no one died. You’re always telling me I need to stop obsessing about safety.’

  ‘I didn’t mean you should go to the other extreme! Where were their kids while all of this was going on? Please tell me you didn’t take them with you on this crime spree?’

  Crime spree, suicide mission, it was all so puritanical, and I remembered now the illicit thought about not spending the rest of my life with a man who always said no. The instinct I’d had about it being the most important evening of my life, maybe that had been true. I pressed my lips together, not trusting the words that might escape, the truths.

  Lara and Miles want me. Me.

  ‘Georgia is one of my students, Nat,’ Ed said.

  ‘Well, you can rest easy because she wasn’t there. The kids stayed at the house with Angie’s au pair. They were all asleep by the time we left.’ I tried to recall if I had actually seen Milena, but it was a moot point: Josh, Georgia and Eve were all of a reasonable age to be left in charge of younger children. ‘Don’t look like that. They’re all perfectly responsible parents.’

  ‘They’re perfectly responsible children, I’ll grant you that.’

  ‘Come on, Ed, not this again.’ I might have been remaking myself as a rebel without a cause, but he was a conformist with too many causes to count and that, surely, was worse.

  In tighter control of himself now, Ed looked at me with a teacherly tolerance so exaggerated it left me in no doubt of his true intolerance. ‘I don’t have time for this debate. I’ve got Georgia arriving any minute now.’

  ‘Then you’ll see for yourself she’s quite unharmed. I’m going back to bed,’ I said, as if in agreement.

  And it seemed to me that there was the faintest trace of admiration in the way he looked at me as I left the room, a woman he no longer recognized. A woman who no longer quite recognized herself.

  27

  Monday, 31 August, 9 a.m.

  I walk back to the lift with the dazed eyes and unsteady gait of a victim emerging from an explosion. The floor beneath my feet feels uneven, the walls warped. Mrs Channing asks that I leave. Lara wants me to go. Did I really expect anything different?

  Then, like a supernatural phenomenon, her voice reaches my ear.

  ‘Natalie! What the hell are you doing here?’

  I have heard it like this only once before, severe and accusing, and grievous though it is, I feel hope stir. She has changed her mind and come out to see me. She doesn’t hate me.

  I turn to find her six feet from me. Everything in her face is strained and tightened; those smiles, so freely given, so sure of their effect, no longer have any place here. The magnificent green dress is wilted, the sculpted hair in near collapse. ‘Lara, I didn’t mean –’

  She interrupts: ‘It’s not Molly, is it? Tell me she’s not here as well!’

  ‘No, no, she’s at home with Ed, she’s fine. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you, I just wanted …’ I’m stammering. What do I “just want”? She is who I want to see, but he is who I need to see. ‘I just wanted to find out how Georgia is.’

  Her face sags, nude lips tremble. ‘She’s alive, she’s, oh, I don’t know. They’ve told us that because she was unconscious when she arrived, she’s less likely to …’ Her voice falls away, broken.

  I know better than anyone how the sentence ends. ‘That’s just a statistic,’ I say. I wish I could comfort her physically, but we’re as estranged as two people at touching distance can be and I keep my arms pressed to my sides. ‘There are always exceptions, the lucky ones. She’ll be one of those.’

  In response, she leans against the wall, her face now in profile to me.

  ‘Are there enough staff on duty?’ I ask. ‘It’s so quiet downstairs, I was worried there might not be.’

  She nods, a desolate, exhausted dip of the head that stays low, as if her hair is too heavy for her. ‘They’ve been great. The consultant came straight in. Donglas rang him and he just got up in the middle of the night and came. Thank God he wasn’t away for the bank holiday.’

  It doesn’t surprise me that strings have been pulled for her, but it seems to surprise her. She is, understandably, not herself.

  ‘Lara, we’re so sorry. I mean, if Georgia was in the water to help Molly in some way …’

  She turns, interrupts me, smothering a touch of belligerence: ‘“In some way”? I can’t think of any other reason she was in there, can you?’

  I can’t. However I’ve skirted it these last hours, I cannot deny it now: Molly is the reason Georgia is here. There was an incident involving a non-swimmer in the water in the dark; she could only have been a liability, lashing in all directions, wild enough to pull stronger swimmers under. I think of the burden of her soaking dress. I imagine the weight of her fear.

  ‘Well, we’re grateful.’ It’s inadequate, insulting. It would have been better to say nothing at all. It would have been better not to come.

  ‘I have to go back in,’ Lara says, and she takes a step backwards.

  ‘Of course. Please give Georgia our love when she’s strong enough to get messages.’

  She is silent but there is assent in her silence, an acknowledgement of optimism.

  I’m already walking away when I sense rather than hear footsteps behind me. Turning, I get quite a fright to see her so close to me, her eyes livid with feeling.

  ‘Natalie?’

  ‘Yes?’ And there is a moment of preternatural clarity when I not only hear what she says before she says it, but also have my answer ready. Oh, Lara. When darkness fell, I didn’t see it for what it was. In my blindness, you continued to glitter; in my ears, your murmurs still seduced.

  ‘I thought you might have understood?’ she says, and though she makes it sound like a question, she doesn’t wait for a reply.

  28

  Sunday, 23 August – eight days earlier

  The deep end was as restless as the ocean, water leaping at me from all sides. The wind, low and swirling and full of the threat of September, made my ears ache.

  Dipping sleekly under the lane divider into the free area, Lara gestured for my attention. ‘Let’s take a break,’ she called. ‘We need to chat.’

  ‘Thank God. I can hardly move,’ I gasped, my lungs pumping and straining. She’d already begun swimming when I’d arrived and this was our first chance for conversation. ‘I blame Friday,’ I added, low-voiced and conspiratorial. ‘Isn’t it surreal to think we were right here in the middle of the night?’

  I’d done my very best to resist obsession since then, not to overthink what had been intended by a taxi not ordered and Miles’
s footsteps on the stairs as he came to ‘explain’; or by a hand grasping mine under water and lips that lingered on the corner of my mouth. I’d reminded myself over and over that this was Lara and such overtures might be everything or nothing. Nothing, I’d judged, when I’d received her breezy text proposing a swim this morning.

  I followed her up the ladder to where she was settling herself at the water’s edge, calves dangling into the pool. Her golden skin shone, her hair dripped down her face and neck, over her collarbone. I could feel her breath, laughably untroubled considering the dozens of lengths she’d just completed, lapping me several times.

  ‘No Angie today?’ I asked. ‘I thought she’d be keen to get back in the groove after Italy.’

  ‘Actually, I asked her not to come,’ Lara said. ‘I wanted you to myself.’

  Such was my vanity, I actually tipped back my head to the sun as if anointed.

  Lara, however, grew uncharacteristically solemn. ‘I promised Miles I wouldn’t say anything …’ As two women approached and began setting up camp a few feet from us, she lowered her voice; this in itself was odd, for normally Lara didn’t care who heard her views. She expected people to listen in, to pay attention. ‘But I didn’t want to keep secrets from you.’

  ‘Oh.’ I could feel the creeping sensation of shyness – as well as the beginnings of alarm. Having not allowed myself to obsess, I had also not properly considered what on earth I would do if nothing turned out to be everything. If I had to ask myself, Who am I really and what do I want? ‘About Friday, you mean? I hope I didn’t offend you by rushing off like that, I wasn’t –’

  ‘No,’ she broke in, frowning. Again, it was unusual of her to be so impatient. ‘It’s not that. This is about Georgia.’

  This was the second time Lara had admitted to being troubled and the second she’d cited Georgia as the cause. I began to shiver as the wind chilled my damp skin. ‘What’s wrong? Problems with Matt? He is a little older, but you’ve presumably discussed the implications with her.’

  This warranted no more than a brief, querying look. ‘Occasionally I check her social media,’ Lara said. ‘Email and texts, as well.’