by T. M. Logan
His words rang in my head.
I’m sorry.
At least the fact that he was here in front of me, in the pool with our daughter, meant that he couldn’t be with her. With Izzy. I wondered what their plan was, how they would do it. Was I supposed to just wait until he decided to tell me, until I found more of their secret messages, until they were caught in the act? Was I supposed to just sit and wait until I was told my marriage was over?
No. That wasn’t going to happen. If Sean didn’t have the guts to tell me, then I would force the issue – confront Izzy and make her admit it, get it out there in the open. Tonight. When she returned from whatever it was she was doing.
The game of water polo carried on regardless, Sean, Lucy and Rowan versus Alistair and his boys. Sean and Alistair manned the goals at each end of the pool, while Rowan and the three teenagers blocked and dodged and took shots in the space in between. Sean was distracted, his eyes still wandering towards me, but I refused to give him the eye contact he was looking for. My eyes were firmly on Lucy, her golden hair fanned out behind her in the water, swimming and diving and turning like a beautiful mermaid. My little girl. Jake and Ethan had left their phones on a side table and they were pinging and bleeping almost constantly with notifications, a continuous stream of updates on social media that seemed ferociously frequent even by teenage standards. But it was nice to see Lucy – to see all three teenagers – doing something that didn’t involve their mobiles, that didn’t involve the endless picture-posting and status-sharing, the comparison with friends and the unspoken fear of missing out that drove the constant need to be connected all day, every day.
*
It was subtle, at first.
So subtle I almost didn’t register it.
But as the ball was thrown back and forth and the players splashed and laughed, a sense of unease began creeping up my arms. With every goal scored, every shot blocked, the distance between certain players in the middle – Lucy, Jake and Ethan, to be precise – got smaller. And then a little smaller still, until only a few feet separated them. The brothers moved further and further into the deep end, into Lucy’s half of the pool.
As I watched, the prickle of concern climbing up to the back of my neck, Lucy got the ball and raised it high to throw at the goal. Ethan waded towards her and hurled himself forward with his arms raised high to take the ball from her, lunging into her, pushing his body into hers, no space between them at all, faces inches apart, arms touching, hands touching, his chest against hers, skin to skin, nose to nose, him pushing and reaching and grabbing in a full-contact tackle, his shoulders and arms overpowering her slender frame, his hands snatching the ball away from her and holding it up, and I knew, I just knew, that what he wanted more than anything was for her to come back at him and try to take it away as he had just done.
Instead, Jake lunged at his brother and took the ball from him, hurling it aside and shoving his brother in the chest. Pushing him away from Lucy.
‘What the hell, Ethan?’ he shouted angrily. ‘It’s not a bloody rugby line-out, all right? It’s not supposed to be full contact.’
‘Chill out, bro.’ Ethan splashed water into his brother’s face. ‘Just a game, isn’t it?’
Alistair started to wade forward to separate his boys, before seeming to think better of the idea. He moved back into his goal, reaching for the ball.
I sat forward in my seat, a hot bloom of anger unfurling in my chest, torn between a mother’s instinct to protect her daughter and a parent’s instinct to avoid embarrassing a teenager. But Lucy dived beneath the surface and came up a few feet away with her back to me, smoothing her hair off her face, holding her hands up to continue the game.
Perhaps I had imagined it. She seemed OK and the shout died in my throat.
Don’t embarrass her. Don’t make another scene. You’ve done that enough already this week.
Sean was taking a long pull from a bottle of beer at the side of the pool and appeared not to have noticed.
The game continued. Lucy intercepted the ball on its way to the goal and drew her arm back to throw, but Ethan was on her immediately. He waded forward and lunged again, hardly even seeming to go for the ball. Both hands held up, he launched himself towards her even more forcefully than the last time. Pushing and reaching, hands grabbing and pulling, his face in hers. Lucy wasn’t giving in so easily this time and she turned to dodge away from him, but then he was all over her, grappling with her for the ball, laughing, both hands on her shoulders as he almost climbed up her back, spinning her around to face him. A thrashing melee of bodies and arms and water splashing everywhere, and then Jake was pulling Ethan away and squaring up to him, fist cocked back, Alistair diving forward, arms out, trying to separate his boys, Ethan dodging away—
Alistair’s hands landed squarely on Lucy’s chest.
Lucy’s shriek of alarm.
Sean’s shout of anger.
Lucy dived under the surface again, kicking hard and surfacing next to Sean in the deep end, gasping for breath, one bikini strap hanging loose on her shoulder, a dark line of fingermarks showing red on her upper arm. Her face seemed to be frozen in shock, chest heaving for breath as she gripped the side.
Sean spoke to her briefly, quietly, a gentle hand on her elbow. She put her bikini strap back into place and said something back to him, her head down, then climbed out and wrapped a towel around her shoulders, pulling it tightly across her chest.
I hurried over to her, putting both hands on her shoulders. She was shaking and wouldn’t look at me. We were both shaking.
‘Lucy, are you OK?’
‘Fine.’
‘Why don’t you head up to your room? I’ll come up in a minute.’
She nodded and walked quickly to the stairs up to the balcony, head still down. Sean was wading into the middle of the pool, his face dark with anger.
He had evidently seen things differently to me.
‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ he said to Alistair.
Alistair retrieved the ball and threw it past him into the empty net, his face a picture of innocence.
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘Grabbing my daughter? What the hell is that about?’
‘Nobody grabbed anyone,’ he said, his voice neutral. ‘Water polo always includes a bit of rough and tumble.’
‘Rough and tumble?’ Sean repeated. His voice had taken on an edge I had only heard once or twice before, his Limerick accent hard and loud. ‘Are you having a laugh?’
‘You’re drunk, Sean.’
‘And you’re a bloody pervert.’
Alistair turned and began to wade towards the steps in the shallow end. ‘I’m not listening to this.’ He turned to Jake and Ethan. ‘Come on boys, game over. Time to get out.’
‘Hey!’ Sean shouted, going after him. ‘I’m talking to you!’
Alistair ignored him, water flowing off him as he climbed the steps out of the pool and picked up his towel. Sean caught up with him, grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.
‘I said, I’m talking to you. You know she’s only sixteen, right? And you know what that makes you?’
Veins were standing out in Sean’s neck and arms, his face a mask of rage, his hands clenched into fists. He was taller, broader than Alistair, and in much better shape. I hurried towards them along the side of the pool, dreading what was about to happen.
‘Sean,’ I said, ‘I don’t think that was how it—’
‘I saw what he did,’ Sean said. ‘Grabbing at her.’
Alistair, drying himself with the towel, cocked his head slightly to one side and gave Sean a concerned smile. His counselling face, Jennifer had called it once.
‘I don’t think that’s quite how it happened, Sean.’
‘Fuck off! I saw you do it.’
Ethan climbed out of the pool and Jake followed him, both keeping an eye on their dad in case punches started being thrown for real.
I could see that
Alistair was in an impossible situation. What was he supposed to say? It wasn’t me who grabbed your daughter’s breasts, Sean, it was my son. And I was trying to stop my other son from punching his lights out, OK?
I put a hand on my husband’s arm.
‘Sean?’
He seemed not to notice, jabbing the smaller man in the chest with his forefinger. Once. Twice.
‘You’re full of shit.’
Alistair looked down at the finger.
‘You know,’ he said, his voice shaking slightly, ‘technically that’s assault.’
‘I tell you what, you put your hands on my daughter again and I’ll show you what assault is. I’ll technically take your fucking head off, how about that?’
Russ stood up and put both arms between them, shifting the two men apart slightly.
‘Lads, lads,’ he said, his voice slow with alcohol. ‘Let’s all step back and take a minute, shall we?’
Sean was immovable, a solid six-foot wall of anger.
‘I’m warning you,’ he said, jabbing his finger at Alistair. ‘You stay away from her.’
Russ put a hand on each man’s shoulder.
‘Lads, we’re supposed to be on holiday, having a lovely jolly old time. Not doing handbags at ten paces.’ Almost to himself, he added: ‘However entertaining that might be to watch.’
Alistair turned away, slipping his glasses on.
‘Come on, boys, into the villa now I think.’
Jake and Ethan, already absorbed in their phones again, appeared not to hear him.
58
Russ
Russ held the book in his hands, but he didn’t really need to: he had read The Tiger Who Came to Tea so many times he knew the words off by heart. He thought Odette probably did too, but she was finally drifting off now. It was her third Daddy story of the night and she was just about surrendering to sleep, her blinks getting longer and longer as he sat on the floor by her bed and turned the pages.
‘. . . He ate all the supper that was cooking in the saucepans,’ Russ read slowly, ‘all the food in the fridge, and all the packets and tins in the cupboard . . .’
Odette’s eyes were almost closed.
Russ stopped for a moment. Immediately, her eyes flickered half-open again as if to say finish the book, Daddy.
He smiled and continued reading, keeping his voice low and soft.
At the end of the story he sat with his daughter a moment, watching her breathe, feeling himself sobering up a little. Feeling the familiar pang of guilt because he liked this part of the day, he liked it when she went to sleep – but shouldn’t he prefer it when she was awake? Why couldn’t he be better with her during the day, more patient? Why couldn’t he make the most of spending quality time with his only child?
He resolved, as he always did, to do better tomorrow.
Kissing her gently on the forehead, he backed slowly out of the room and dimmed the light.
He went downstairs and grabbed a fresh bottle of Kronenbourg from the kitchen, dumped a large bag of tortilla chips into a bowl, and carried them both out towards the balcony.
‘Russ?’
He turned towards the voice, squinting into the shadows at the far end of the lounge. Alistair was there, sitting on his own, hunched in one of the big armchairs.
‘Hey, Alistair.’
‘Have you got a second?’
‘Sure.’ Russ walked over to him. ‘What’s up?’
‘About . . . what happened earlier. I just wanted to say thank you for stepping in.’
‘Oh, that?’ He shrugged. ‘No worries, it was nothing.’
Alistair circled a fingertip around the rim of his almost empty wine glass.
‘All the same, I appreciate what you did.’ Speaking more softly, he added, ‘I’m not sure it would have ended well for me if you hadn’t got involved.’
Russ studied him for a moment, hearing the slight tremor in the older man’s voice.
‘Much ado about nothing,’ Russ said with a grin, checking over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening in. ‘Are you . . . all right, Alistair?’
‘Oh yes, of course. Right as rain. Never better.’
Russ picked up the wine bottle from the table and topped up Alistair’s glass without asking.
‘Thanks,’ Alistair said. ‘It wasn’t what it looked like, you know. In the pool, I mean. I didn’t do what Sean—’
‘I know, buddy. I saw what happened. Ethan just needs to . . .’ Russ struggled for the right words. ‘You know, learn, mature, whatever. You can talk to him about this stuff, he’s still a young lad, isn’t he?’
Alistair took a large sip of red wine.
‘He has a lot of violence in him.’
‘Ethan?’
‘Sean.’
‘You think?’
‘We all saw it earlier, didn’t we? There’s a great deal of tension there, unresolved anxiety seeking a violent outlet.’
‘More like the booze and the heat making everyone snappy,’ Russ said.
‘Aggravating factors, perhaps.’
‘I mean, there’s violence in all of us, isn’t there? If someone pushes the right buttons.’
Alistair shook his head. ‘It shouldn’t be that close to the surface. Sean is on a perilously short fuse this week, from what I’ve observed.’
Russ drank half his beer in one long pull, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘Do you analyse everybody you meet?’
‘Occupational hazard. Sorry.’
‘So what’s your analysis of me?’
‘Well, if you really—’
‘Actually, you know what?’ Russ held a hand up, cutting him off. ‘Forget I said that; don’t think I want to know. Let’s just have a few more drinks and enjoy the evening, shall we?’
‘That sounds like a good plan.’
‘Are you coming out onto the balcony? We’d better rejoin the ladies.’
Alistair nodded reluctantly.
‘Yes,’ he said, standing up. ‘I suppose we should.’
59
Thankfully, Sean didn’t react when the other two men reappeared on the far side of the balcony. I sensed him looking over, his eyes following Alistair and Russ as they sat down with drinks and snacks from the kitchen. Sean tensed, but didn’t make a move, didn’t say anything that might reignite their confrontation from earlier. After a moment he went back to the cards he was shuffling, mechanically dealing out another hand of trumps to Rowan and me.
We played the hand, and I was on the point of being knocked out of the game when Jennifer appeared on the balcony steps.
‘Ali,’ she said, ‘have you seen the boys?’
Alistair shrugged, feeding tortilla chips into his mouth.
‘Not recently. Have you checked their rooms?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice tight with tension. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m sure they’ll be around somewhere close by. It’s not even nine yet, is it?’
‘It’s gone half past nine! When did you last see them?’
‘An hour and a half ago?’ he said, crunching into another tortilla chip. ‘They were both on their phones for a bit after water polo, then they took themselves off somewhere.’
Jennifer put her hands on her hips. ‘You might at least pretend to be concerned about your sons.’
‘Is there a reason to be concerned?’
‘Jesus, you’re impossible sometimes!’
I stood up. ‘Jennifer, do you want me to help you look for the boys?’
‘No,’ she said, a little too quickly. ‘No, it’s fine, Izzy’s helping me look for them.’
‘Is everything all right?’
‘I don’t know, Kate. They seemed a bit wired earlier after you guys played water polo. If you see them, tell them to stay here until I get back, would you?’
A voice cut across us, coming from the vineyard gate.
‘Guys? Can I get a little help
, please?’
All eyes turned towards the sound. A couple had appeared at the edge of the garden, arm in arm, but deep in shadow. One much taller than the other, making painfully slow progress up the hill towards us.
Jennifer moved first, stumbling towards them.
‘Jake?’ she said, her voice rising. ‘Jake, is that you?’
The couple stepped into a pool of light at the edge of the garden. Izzy, her arm slung awkwardly around Jake’s skinny waist. A third figure – Ethan, I realised – trailed after them before lying down flat in the grass.
Jennifer broke into a run, with me close behind.
‘Jake?’ she shouted. ‘Oh my God, Jakey, are you all right?’
He groaned in reply, his head lolling from side to side. Jennifer and I reached him and took an arm each, as Izzy disentangled herself.
‘They were down in the gorge,’ she said.
‘Jakey?’ Jennifer said again. ‘Talk to me. Are you ill?’
Jake groaned again, put his hands on his knees and vomited noisily into the grass at his feet.
He was in a bad way. There was a dark, wet stain down the front of his T-shirt, the stench of spilled wine and fresh vomit surrounding him like an overpowering cologne. Jennifer and I led him to a lounger where he sat heavily and retched again, long strings of saliva hanging from his lips. Alistair wandered over, surveying his eldest son with a rueful smile.
‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Bit of overindulgence, Jake? Still, a useful lesson learned for you and your brother, eh? I’ll get some water from the kitchen.’
He headed off back towards the villa.
Jennifer knelt down, putting her hands on Jake’s knees. ‘Talk to me, honey, what happened? Are you hurt? Did you fall down, did you bang your head?’
Rowan and I exchanged a confused glance. It seemed painfully obvious to me why her son was as sick as a dog, and I couldn’t work out why Jennifer hadn’t made the same assumption.
Jake groaned, a deep guttural sound like an animal in a trap. He dry-heaved again, his stomach bucking with the effort, but only a thin string of bile came out. Jennifer didn’t flinch.
‘Oh dear, Jakey, what are we going to do with you? Was it something you ate at dinner?’ She turned to the rest of us. ‘What did we have for dinner, the pasta and chicken? Maybe the chicken wasn’t fully cooked through?’