by Clare Boyd
‘We’re glad you’re back home,’ Amy said.
Then Johanna giggled and buried her head in Ben’s black T-shirt. I glanced up at Rob, who was hovering next to my chair. His features were washed with grey. Blood collected around my heart, leaving my fingertips cold.
‘What’s going on, you lot?’ I asked them. I looked at Catalin. She sat very tall; too tall.
‘I think you should ask Rob,’ she said.
Rob’s Adam’s apple moved slowly down his throat.
He held his champagne glass out in front of him and I noticed how the line of bubbles juddered. ‘Okay. Okay. Thanks for coming, everyone,’ he began, with a tremor in his voice. He paused to gulp. ‘I’ve brought you all here today …’ Then he seemed to change tack. ‘To be honest, I brought you here so that I don’t bottle it.’ There was a tinkle of laughter around the table. ‘So here I go.’
I fixed my eyes on a thick vein that was throbbing in his temple, knowing it was a sign of nerves, remembering our first date. It had been a kite-surfing lesson. Rob had been the instructor and the conversation had been limited to instructions from him and screaming from me, in both delight and terror. After the lesson, we had been joined by his kite-surfing friends, who stayed with us until we left for his flat, where we had sex for the first time. That summer, five years ago, we had fallen into a rhythm with each other: swimming and surfing and sex. We would drink tea under wide blue skies or huddle in Jason’s Kiosk to shelter from howling gales. He would plait my hair as we watched the sun go down; give me fireman’s lifts across the pebbles if I forgot my beach shoes; steal the bacon from my bacon baps. I had loved his strength and his humour and his excitement about the day ahead, but his shoulder injury, a year later, had changed him, and I hadn’t realised quite how much until now.
‘Right, I’m just going to get straight to it,’ he said.
He sank to one knee by my side and my heart could have dropped from my chest. I stayed very still, just in case a sudden movement dislodged the smile that I was struggling to hold on my face, and rallied myself for what was coming.
‘Heather Shaw,’ he said, snapping open a black box to reveal a diamond ring, ‘would you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’
Knowing that any hesitation meant doubt, I replied almost before he had finished his sentence. ‘Yes,’ I said, and buried my face in his neck to hide my uncertainty.
When I pulled back from him, to allow him to push the ring over my knuckle, the tears I wiped away might have been construed as pure joy.
‘Thank fuck for that!’ he said, to an eruption of relieved laughter and clapping and whooping. The empty feeling in my gut was filled with the force of my friends’ happiness.
Once I had shown them the ring close up, and given Rob a few more happy kisses, I knew I had to get out of the room before the tears came again. Tears might have been appropriate straight after the proposal, or during it even, but not five or ten minutes afterwards, out of nowhere.
‘I’m just going to the toilet,’ I said, excusing myself.
‘Me too,’ Amy said.
She checked that the cubicles were empty.
‘Those are tears of joy, right?’ she whispered. She undid the pink scarf around her neck and shoved it into the oversized pocket of her flowery mini dress.
‘I’m just in shock,’ I whispered, twisting the alien object around my ring finger.
Amy lowered her eyes to my hand. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said.
‘Couldn’t you have given me the heads-up?’ I asked.
‘He swore us all to secrecy. Apparently your mum called him and said how miserable you were, and he asked her if it was the right time to ask you and I guess she said it might be.’
‘You knew all this and you didn’t tell me?’ But that was unfair of me.
‘What was I supposed to do?’ Amy said. ‘It would have spoilt it for you.’
‘Sorry. Sorry,’ I said, knowing it wasn’t her fault. ‘It’s not quite how I imagined it all happening.’
‘How did you imagine it?’
‘I don’t know. On the beach or something? I don’t know, not in front of a crowd of people.’
‘I had a feeling you’d be freaked,’ Amy said, shaking her head.
‘I’m not freaked exactly.’
‘But not overjoyed?’
‘I suppose I should be,’ I sighed. ‘Maybe it’s just the shock.’
‘Like a delayed reaction?’
‘Maybe.’
Amy sucked in her breath and closed her eyes. To anyone else, it would have seemed like a frustrated sigh, but I knew this was her thinking pose. She opened her eyes, which were filled with understanding.
‘You love him, though, right?’ she asked me.
‘Yes.’ The tears pushed behind my eyes.
‘You definitely think he’s the right guy for you, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘You feel it in your gut?’
‘I couldn’t imagine life without him.’
‘Okay, well a nice long engagement then,’ she said, pressing her finger on her eyebrow.
‘Yes,’ I sighed. Lucas’s face shot into my mind, and then I felt my father’s grip as though he were standing in front of me now.
‘How’s it been back home?’
‘Great. Yeah.’ I turned to the sink and redid my ponytail.
Amy stood next to me and spoke to my reflection. ‘You look different.’
‘In what way?’
‘Remember when we went on holiday in Thailand and you dived off that ginormous cliff into the sea?’
I laughed, pretending I didn’t understand. ‘That’s a bit random,’ I said.
‘You look like you did just before you jumped.’
In that moment I wanted to tell her about Lucas, but there was too much to say and everyone was waiting for us outside.
‘Come on. We’d better get back out there.’
Before we walked out, Amy added one more thing. ‘You’re allowed to be happy, you know. We’ll all survive it.’
‘I am happy,’ I insisted.
* * *
I sat at Rob’s side playing the bride-to-be, letting him hold my hand under the table. Possession, more possession.
As he became drunker, I sobered up.
When I heard a text come through on my phone, I remembered the list of friends and family I would have to tell about my engagement. How would I keep up the enthusiasm to convince them I was starry-eyed in love and joyful about the prospect of a wedding? I imagined telling my parents that I had said yes. They would start pointing out houses for sale in Cobham, houses similar to theirs.
I slipped my hand out from Rob’s and took a quick look at the text under the table.
When I saw who had sent it, I could have leapt up and out of my seat in shock.
‘Who’s that?’ Rob asked, ever watchful.
I lied coolly. ‘It’s Dad. I’m just going to call him back and tell him the good news.’
Outside, on the pavement, I stared at the bright green text glowing in the dark.
Hi. That was all it said.
My heart swelled to twice its size.
I would not text back. I would leave it unanswered and pretend he had never sent it.
Pocketing my phone, I walked back inside and over to the crowd of hot, happy faces around the table. A wave of sadness hit me. Whether I replied to Lucas or not, I was already in a quandary about my engagement and emotionally separate from my friends; as though I were a ghost among them, loved by them, no longer part of them. To reply would set me on a path away from everything familiar. I knew I shouldn’t take that path, but I couldn’t help feeling that Lucas was dragging me by the hand with all of his strength.
* * *
The next morning, while Rob slept off his hangover, I found my wetsuit and towel and headed to the beach. The text sat unanswered on my phone in my bag. I knew I should delete it.
I walked through the dunes to the water and laid my to
wel down over my rucksack. The cord of my wetsuit was stiff. The summer wind whipped a hurricane around my neck, flicking my hair across my eyes. It was a cold day, and the chill bit into my fingers. The beach was empty. The sea spiked with white ridges and sank in grey troughs. A misty haze hung low in the sky.
The icy hit of the water was a shot of adrenalin. I swam, trying to settle down the confusion that jangled in my chest. About the world, about my father, about Lucas Huxley.
* * *
‘Like a banana,’ Lucas said, bending me from the middle. I no longer flinched when he touched me. ‘Don’t get distracted,’ he said, twisting my head to face the water instead of him, shaping my hands into a point. ‘Then you tip in,’ he said.
His words were muffled by my arms pressed over my ears. It didn’t feel natural. I couldn’t trust that the water would take me. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Just tip.’
I belly-flopped onto the surface. My stomach burned. I felt foolish when he laughed at me. ‘I won’t ever be able to do it.’
‘Of course you can. You can do anything you put your mind to.’
Again I tried. And again. I wanted to cry. I was angry with him, but he wouldn’t give up on me. The dusk turned to night. My jaw juddered. My fingertips pruned.
‘Again,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, stepping back from the side.
‘Again.’
‘No. I can’t do it.’
Gently, close to my ear, he said, ‘You can do this.’ He pressed his finger up my spine, from my coccyx up to the nape of my neck, and my body curled into position.
An imaginary finger continued to roll up and down my spine as I let my body fall head-first into the pool, trusting the water to suck me in gently, trusting him. The surface was broken by my fingertips, the water swallowed me without a splash, and I shot down to the bottom, where I felt the weight of the whole pool on my eyes. I swam up to the surface and yelped.
‘I did it,’ I said, pulling myself onto the side.
He sat down next to me, dangling his legs in the water.
‘You’re amazing,’ he said, pinging my swimsuit strap.
Unable to handle the surge of feeling inside me, I splashed him, soaking his T-shirt. He took it off, then slipped into the water and pulled me in by one leg. My back scraped against the edge, but the happiness overrode the pain. He wrapped his arms around me. I was slippery within them. I felt young and excited in a way I had never felt before. ‘You can do anything you want to do. Have anything you want. Anything,’ he said.
Then he slid the straps of my costume off my shoulders. ‘In the water, I won’t be able to see you,’ he whispered. Sculling with one hand, he took his trunks off. I could see the darkness between his legs. ‘Come on, take the rest off. It feels amazing.’
Copying him, I untangled the costume from my limbs and threw it towards the side, just as he had, but it missed and floated on the surface. I set off to get it, but his hand was between my legs and I froze, startled. ‘Relax,’ he whispered, ‘It’ll feel good. I promise.’
* * *
I cut through the waves, heading further and further out. In the water, I was a fighter, thrashing out my feelings. I propelled myself forward, heading away from shore.
Perhaps I should swim the Channel right there and then, to end up in France and walk off into a new life, where nobody knew my name.
Previous swims rolled through my memory. Lightning bolts, hailstorms, jellyfish stings, dark caves, jagged rocks, hurricanes, cramps, rip tides: my fullest life. My body was branded with the scars to prove it. The safe road ahead wasn’t one with my hand weighed down by diamond rings; the only way ahead was one where I could be real with myself and those around me, where I could stick my head out of that cold water and shout across the charged sea to tell the world about what I, Heather Shaw, really wanted.
I felt as volatile, unpredictable and dangerous as the sea itself. I was playing a game with the water. It had become a bully and a best friend wrapped into one. I was ready to stand up to it but I was scared of being beaten down.
My father’s rhetoric flooded my thoughts. The Shaws didn’t have choices! The Shaws hadn’t been born with a silver spoon! The Shaws were second-rate citizens and that was okay! And so it had come to pass. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. A self-imposed shackle. Survival had become the buzzword for fear: head down, pay the rent, bow down to the gods of money and status, bow down to the better-born, cower from the more powerful.
It dawned on me that I couldn’t exist with such a heavy, bowed head. It was weighing me down and I refused to sink. Enough was enough. It was time to take responsibility for my own life. I turned my head, sucked in the fresh air – free to all – pulled my arms through the water, powerful and slick, and headed back.
My legs were wobbly and I collapsed onto my towel. I pulled my phone out and took a photo of the seascape with my Thermos propped up in the foreground and my wetsuit spread flat next to it, and texted the photograph to Lucas. I wrote as the caption:
I wanted it and I got it.
This was my life. This was what I wanted. This was where I wanted to be. This was who I was.
I always knew you would. L x
There had been a pause of an hour. I deleted the thread, thinking that that was the end of it. Then he wrote:
When are you coming home?
Home? I didn’t trust myself to reply.
Twenty-Four
Elizabeth walked through the gate in the laurel hedge looking for Piotr, to talk to him about another request Lucas had about the pool house. And to ask him when they would be flying out to see Rafal’s new baby, now that Lucas had returned their documents and cleared up the misunderstanding.
Over in the corner, she spotted Isla and Hugo with their towels draped over their shoulders, hair dripping into their laps, making daisy chains. Neither of them noticed her. It was quiet. The noise of construction had stopped and she wondered where Agata was.
She didn’t want to disturb the children, so she removed her flip-flops and made her way silently across the patch of grass to the building site, which consisted of four untreated oak frames covered in tarpaulin. Through the opening, where there would soon be a sliding window, she saw Agata and Piotr together, framed by the doorway as silhouettes, like a sentimental greetings card. Piotr knelt in front of Agata offering her a ring made of three linked daisies. The daisies’ faces were bunched closely, like three diamonds. The pair of them giggled as he tried to slide it onto the ring finger of her left hand. It broke, but he re-threaded the delicate stems, dropping a daisy, fixing it. Agata’s thin fingers dangled in front of him, waiting patiently for the big moment.
He carefully pushed the ring into place and asked her a question in Polish.
‘Tak!’ she cried.
Piotr leapt up and swung her around. They kissed, long and lingering.
The simplicity and power of their act of love left Elizabeth open-mouthed.
She stayed very still, desperate to escape but scared that any sudden movement would alert them to her presence. Transfixed, she watched as Piotr spoke tenderly to Agata. But as Agata tilted her head coyly away from him, she caught sight of Elizabeth standing there, intruding on this intimate moment like a perverted voyeur. Instantly the joy on her face disappeared. Her right hand covered her left, hiding her beautiful engagement ring.
‘We get married,’ she said defiantly.
‘Congratulations,’ Elizabeth stammered.
‘Thank you.’
‘You’ll be able to celebrate your news with your family when you go home.’
They glanced uneasily at each other.
‘We not go home. We have not passports, Mrs Huxley,’ Piotr said simply.
‘Lucas gave them to you last night, didn’t he?’ He’d had an envelope in his hand and had told her he was going out to the camper van.
Piotr said, ‘You think we stay here if he gave them?’
Elizabeth reeled. ‘But he came down to see you
. Last night.’
‘No, Elizabeth, he did not,’ Agata said.
Elizabeth’s diaphragm jerked. ‘He lied to me?’ she rasped.
Piotr took Agata’s hand and kissed it. The innocence of this gesture poked deep into Elizabeth’s conscience. In the face of Lucas’s treachery, they loved each other more. It seemed nobody could patrol their inner lives and nobody could imprison their minds.
* * *
At bedtime, Elizabeth did not tell Lucas about what she had uncovered. The magnitude of what Agata and Piotr had implied was ghastly and unmanageable, and she hadn’t known how to process it or what to do with it. She was keeping it at bay for now, in a box in her mind that petrified her, that she could have labelled Warning. High Voltage. Danger of Death.
For now, she mentioned Piotr and Agata’s engagement, and studied his reaction.
‘How sweet,’ he said. He dropped his rotating electric toothbrush in the sink. Flecks of toothpaste splattered his T-shirt. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he said.
‘I thought they could maybe get married in our grounds,’ she said, beginning to floss, knowing he would loathe this idea, wanting to exploit his guilt, rub it in.
The toothbrush vibrated noisily against his teeth. ‘Sure. They deserve it.’
‘They’ll really appreciate that,’ she said robotically.
He turned off his toothbrush. ‘It’s good to see a smile on your face again.’
She tried to drift off to sleep by thinking of ways she could make it better for Agata and Piotr. Planning a beautiful wedding day for them would be a start. There would be few guests, she imagined, if any, but she would plan it as though there might be hundreds. In her head, she designed a garland of meadow flowers as an archway under which they could say their vows; hay bales for them to sit on; a tier cake that Sarah would bake.
But when she imagined this young couple being forced to live out their future at Copper Lodge, her head began to throb.