by Jenny Oliver
‘Then you’re the stupidest person I’ve ever met,’ said Jessica. And suddenly she pushed herself off the rock, yanked her top off and then her shorts, kicking off her sandals at the same time. Standing in just her underwear she said, ‘Now we have to go swimming.’
‘Why?’ Libby frowned.
‘Because we’re the fools, Libby.’
Libby was unconvinced.
‘We’re the watchers. The ones waiting on the side lines. The losers in the story that no one wants to be. You’ve just admitted that you’d take your idiot husband back after he’s publicly shamed you. If that’s making me want to swim it should certainly make you want to. Libby Price,’ Jessica said, unhooking her bra, ‘take all your clothes off and get in the god damn water. Because I’m not doing this on my own.’
Libby was so shocked that she laughed. Jessica suddenly reminded her of her aunt. She would have made her strip and get in the water, no excuses. Jake on the other hand would have let her stay back, would have been more than happy with her just watching him swim.
She realised then why her aunt would always sigh at the idiot tourist boyfriends that Libby would end up with. Because what she didn’t want from Libby was congratulations for how she ran the hotel, she wanted her to be as free and unencumbered as she was. To find herself and have fun while she was about it.
*
They dried off in the heat of the sun, Bruno happily lying completely starkers, giving Dex and Jimmy the confidence to do so too, while Libby, Jessica, and Eve pulled on underwear with awkward haste in order to bask in the warmth. Miles put on boxers and his t-shirt and went climbing across the rocks to explore.
Libby had never felt so invigorated in all her life. She had never done anything quite so out of her comfort zone, ever. She felt refreshed, changed, as though she could cavort in the shallows naked every day for the rest of her life. But was also secretly quite pleased to have her underwear back on.
The sun was hovering like a tennis ball mid-play, wisps of cloud just taking the edge off its afternoon heat. Libby rolled her head to look at them all, lying like seals on the beach, and suddenly wished that they were never going home. There was a comfort and familiarity of having them here that took her back to the safety of the flat. To when everything was just possibility. To the safety of their early twenties when she didn’t have to think about things like the frown lines that were starting to stay long after she stopped frowning, trolling internet comments, her bloody biological clock, and whether she could run a hotel on her own. Then she remembered her aunt and thought about her rolling her eyes at her now—a cigarette between her lips, a gin and tonic in her hand, a bathing cap over her sleek silver hair—pointing towards the sun and the sea and telling her to just live in the god damn moment. She’d have waved the cigarette and said something like, ‘You could be dead tomorrow and where would all this worrying have got you? Dead, that’s where.’
So Libby rolled over towards Eve who was lying on the sand next to her and said, ‘What are you thinking about?’
Eve opened one eye. ‘I’m thinking about the fact that my back doesn’t hurt. Ever since having the twins, when I lie on my back in Pilates it really aches down one side but right now it doesn’t hurt at all. Like it’s resetting itself.’
‘Have you had any time on your own since having your kids?’ Jessica asked.
Eve shook her head.
‘Wow.’
Eve propped herself up. ‘I think most mums don’t get any time on their own.’
‘Yeah, and I think some do,’ said Libby. ‘My mum shipped us off every summer. To pretty much every relative we had. I don’t think she would have survived otherwise.’
‘I don’t really have any relatives,’ Eve said with a shrug. ‘Not ones that would take the kids for more than an hour anyway. My mum and dad are too old now—they couldn’t handle them. And I’m not sure they’d want to.’
‘What about Peter’s side?’ Jessica asked, raising herself up so she was resting on her forearms.
‘Yeah, his mum has offered but I don’t know. She feeds them loads of crap and, well, she’s babysat a couple of times and they’re always up watching TV when we come home. God knows what would happen if they stayed the night with her.’
‘But isn’t that the whole point of grandparents?’ Libby said, glancing at Jessica for support, who shrugged like she had no idea. ‘To let you stay up late and eat crap? When I came to stay here I remember having to remind Aunt Silvia that I was only thirteen. She was plying me with sloe gin and asking me if I fancied any of her friends.’
‘I know, I know.’ Eve shook her head. ‘I think I’ve got this impression in my head of this really perfect childhood that I want them to have. I want them frolicking in fields, not eating Krispy Kremes and cheese made into straws. The times I frolicked are etched in my memory. I loved frolicking.’
‘I’ve never the heard the word frolic used so often,’ Jessica mused. ‘I think it’s pretty safe to say that I never frolicked.’
Libby frowned at what Eve had said. ‘But you didn’t frolic all the time, did you? Your parents were pretty temperamental.’
‘That’s what I’m saying,’ Eve replied. ‘The moments spent frolicking were the great bits.’
‘Well, maybe instead of frolicking, just be a good parent all the time,’ said Jessica, but Eve twitched her face as if she’d missed the point.
‘Do you frolic quite a lot at the moment?’ Libby asked, thinking that actually Jessica had made quite a good point.
‘We frolic a fair bit.’ Eve nodded, readjusting the pebbles underneath her so she was more comfortable. ‘I probably get a bit panicked that we don’t frolic enough and that can take the edge off the frolicking. Forced frolicking is less enjoyable.’
‘Frolic,’ said Jessica. ‘It’s such a weird word.’
‘You know, I could take them,’ Libby said, almost before she’d run through the thought in her head.
‘The kids?’ Eve looked confused.
‘Yeah,’ Libby said, a bit less confident. ‘I mean, they could stay here. Frolic in the lemon grove. You know, if you wanted. Give the two of you a break.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that, Lib.’ Eve shook her head, the expression on her face suggesting the idea was so preposterous it was amusing.
‘No, maybe not,’ said Libby, feeling foolish for even offering and rolling away to lie on her back again.
Eve sat up on her elbows. The sun seemed to sizzle on the water in the silence before she said, ‘Dex looks good doesn’t he? Very fit.’
Libby wanted to have a look but her dented pride made her stay facing the other way.
‘He’s become a jogger,’ Jessica said. ‘Jogs to work at like seven in the morning.’
‘It’s paid off,’ said Eve.
Libby really wanted to look.
‘I can hear you, you know?’ Dex called over.
Eve slunk down, embarrassed.
Libby sniggered.
After a couple more seconds’ silence, while Eve got her confidence back, Libby heard her say to Jessica, ‘Ask Bruno what he’s thinking about. I bet it’ll be funny.’
‘No, you ask him,’ said Jessica.
‘Bruno?’
‘Darling Eve?’ he said. ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘The lovely Ms Jessica,’ he said without a moment’s hesitation.
Dex guffawed.
Libby sat up to see Jessica’s whole body flush crimson at the same time as Miles strolled back from his exploration on the rocks. He smirked, clearly knowing down to the exact molecule how the statement would make Jessica feel.
Libby watched as Jessica rolled onto her tummy so she could bury her head in her folded-up t-shirt. She realised then that Jessica’s lack of relationships wasn’t to do with a lower tolerance. It was more to do with the six-foot, Ralph Lauren clad bloke suddenly blocking out the sun.
EVE
The skinny-dipping had done what skinny-dipping proba
bly always did. It had broken down the barriers. Cemented the gang. Given them a shared experience of daring and laughter and awkward nakedness. When Libby had suggested cocktails on the Limoncello terrace it had gone without saying that Bruno should join them. Jessica had tried to suggest that maybe he had too much to do at the bar but Bruno was one of them now—a fellow momentary nudist—and he couldn’t be brushed aside.
‘So you were in the Olympics?’ Dex asked, trotting with Jimmy and Miles next to their new hero.
‘I was,’ Bruno agreed.
‘What for?’ asked Miles.
‘Sailing.’
‘You get a medal?’ Jimmy asked.
Bruno nodded. ‘Seven.’
‘Seven!’ Jimmy repeated, stunned.
‘All gold?’ asked Miles
Jessica rolled her eyes.
‘The seven are gold,’ Bruno said. ‘I have two bronze.’
‘But those don’t count?’ Eve asked with a laugh.
Bruno shrugged. ‘I like to win.’
Eve watched him glance momentarily to his right to see if Jessica was listening. Jessica however had deliberately turned away to show she wasn’t interested and had quickened her pace to catch up with Libby.
‘This guy’s a hero,’ said Dex. ‘A bona fide Olympic hero.’
The light was dimming, the clouds starting to gather and cool the evening air. Eve considered that she would quite like a cardigan to throw over her previously sun-warmed shoulders as she watched Libby and Jessica fall into step together. She felt a bit out of kilter with the girls. When she’d been skinny-dipping, she’d watched them on the rock before they ran into the water together. Watched their conversation and the obvious closeness of it and felt a surge of jealousy. She had wanted to know what they were saying, what it was that convinced them both to take the plunge.
She’d have liked to have run in with the two of them; felt their protection either side of her. Striping naked and high-tailing it into the surf two kids down the line wasn’t Eve’s idea of a jolly time but she had forced herself to do it, spurred on by the image of her young, carefree self, brown as a berry, happily whipping her clothes off whatever the scenario.
Later, when they’d been chatting on the beach, Eve had found herself deliberately being a touch aloof. And yet as soon as she had rejected Libby’s offer to look after her kids she had wanted to take it back. The fantasy that at some point in the future it might happen, her children frolicking as she had done in the lemon groves of the Limoncello was a beautiful thought and one that, had she just said thank you to Libby, might have been a giant step to the re-bonding of their friendship. Envy had got the better of her.
She kicked some loose pebbles on the boardwalk and listened to them bounce onto the beach.
That was always the way. She was a grass is greener kind of girl and it drove Peter mad. Someone else’s kids were always happier, their house cleaner, their Christmas tree bushier, their dinner parties funnier, their holidays hotter, their lives shinier. She didn’t just scroll through Libby’s Instagram with envy, she scrolled through everyone’s with a green tint in her eye. If someone had made a funny comment she’d go back days later and see how the conversation had developed, sometimes she’d go on the pages of people who had liked other people in the village’s photos—getting deeper and deeper into the network of their friends and family—coming up for air amazed that so much time had passed. On Facebook she liked to see how people she went to school with had chosen to decorate their homes, zooming in on the photos of kids baking cakes or painting pictures just so she could see the home furnishings in the background. She wanted to know everything about everyone, almost as if she could then find out where she fit. Where she could rank her own life and see if it was all OK. Because she used to know, she used to get endless validation, when she was the young, angelic blonde with the fairy wings in the field, or the messy-haired boho beauty who had all the boys mesmerised, or the slightly more groomed, pencil skirt wearing exec shooting up the ranks in the office. But now she was tired all the time, and her hair was more beige, and her shoulders were a bit rounded and her back ached. Now she worked from home so didn’t strut into the office in a new pair of black leather leggings. Somewhere along the line she had lost her confidence and in turn her ability to judge herself.
Perhaps, she thought as she strolled along, the easing of the pain in her back had nothing whatsoever to do with not hefting the kids about but was actually because of a break from her phone. With no Peter to call or text and limited WiFi away from the hotel she had it on her only for emergencies. She was on an enforced break from her love affair with anything and everything social media. Gone was her obsessive refreshing. And her constant checking.
As she climbed the steps to the terrace, pink-tinged, a touch chilly, and nicely tired, she looked at Jimmy in front of her. His body was lithe and relaxed, his laugh at Bruno’s stories loud and echoing. She wondered if a certain portion of his freedom came simply from the fact he didn’t own a mobile phone. He was completely free to go off on his boat, uncaring of who was posting what online. Then she tried to imagine him sitting with a cup of tea on the prow of his boat scrolling through a Facebook account while buffeted by the waves, with dolphins gliding past and the sun setting on the horizon, and realised that maybe it was more that even if he did have a phone, he was too busy doing things to use it.
‘What’s everyone drinking?’ Libby asked.
‘I’ll have a beer,’ said Dex, pulling out one of the heavy white wrought iron chairs. Miles, Jessica, Bruno, and Jimmy nodded in agreement as they each took their seats, Jessica between Dex and Jimmy, then Miles and Bruno to Dex’s right.
Eve said, ‘What was it we always used to drink here, Libby?’ in an attempt to make up for her shortness with her earlier.
‘Negronis.’
‘Oh yeah!’ Eve nodded her head, about to take the vacant chair next to Bruno. ‘Yeah, I’ll have one of them.’
Jimmy looked puzzled. ‘What’s a Negroni?’ he said as he pushed out the chair next to him with his foot, nodding for Eve to sit down there instead.
Libby had to think about it for a minute. ‘Campari. Vermouth. And gin, I think.’
‘Urgh,’ said Jessica. ‘Campari tastes like earwax.’
Miles snorted a laugh, which made Jessica blush.
Eve nodded. ‘There’s definitely an earwaxy quality, but I like it.’
‘D’you know it’s actually made from chinotto,’ said Libby. ‘There are some trees in the lemon grove—you’ll notice them, they’re like tiny oranges.’ She paused, seemed to be checking if people were listening or not before carrying on. Eve wondered where that habit had come from. Probably from Jake talking over her for years.
‘Are they nice?’ Eve asked.
Libby seemed almost surprised that someone had been listening, when in fact they’d all been listening.
‘Well, kind of. Not really. They can be.’ Libby laughed at her own garbling and paused to get her words in order. ‘When I came here when I was little we’d soak the fruit in sea water and boil it in syrup because it’s too bitter to eat. Stay there, I’ve got a jar of them inside.’ Libby jogged quickly into the bar and came back with a big glass jar crammed full of little round fruits. ‘They’ve been preserved in maraschino. It’s how they always used to be eaten,’ she said passing the jar round so they could pluck out an orange each. ‘Aunt Silvia said they used to say, tough skin, soft heart. Like her, she thought.’
They all took bites, varying from the tentative—Jessica, to the in the mouth whole—Jimmy.
When Bruno had finished he said, ‘The chinotto. The Ms Jessica of the fruits.’
They all sniggered. Jessica went bright red.
Dex saved her in his own inimitable style by leaning his elbows on the table and saying, ‘I don’t understand this whole earwax thing. How do you know what earwax tastes like?’
‘Oh, come on!’ said Jimmy, sitting back with a laugh. ‘You’re telling me
you’ve never tasted your own earwax?’
‘Absolutely not!’ said Dex, aghast. ‘Have you?’ he said to the rest of the group as a whole.
Jessica shrugged. ‘I don’t think I’ve done it on purpose, but I know what it tastes like so I must have done.’
‘I have,’ said Miles.
‘Me, I have,’ added Bruno.
‘That’s disgusting,’ said Dex.
‘Do it now,’ Jimmy goaded.
‘No way.’
‘Go on.’
‘Jimmy.’ Dex shook his head, pushing back his chair to stand up as Jimmy grinned up at him. ‘I am no longer susceptible to that type of immature pack animal antic. I am a grown man. If I wish to taste my own earwax I will do it in the comfort of my own room, perhaps later this evening when I’ve gone to bed.’
Eve smiled as she chewed her fingernail.
Jimmy sat back, chuckling.
‘Now I’m going to help Ms Libby with the drinks.’
Libby smiled. ‘Thank you.’
‘You are most welcome.’
As they disappeared into the hotel, Jimmy leant forward and swept the fallen olive leaves off the table before glancing back at Eve. ‘Are you cold?’ he said, nodding at the goosebumps on her arms.
She shrugged. ‘Sort of. I think I caught the sun.’
‘You want me to get you a sweater?’
She laughed. ‘No. No, it’s OK. I’m not that cold.’ She paused, and he looked down at the hem of his shorts. ‘Thanks, though,’ she said and he nodded.
Behind them the sun was hovering over the lake like a nervous swimmer dipping a toe into the water. The swallows and house martins were arching in the sky while the cicadas made the lemon grove hiss.
After a second Jimmy said, ‘Hey, I’m sorry about what I said earlier. You know about how I wished you’d come on the cycle. It was a stupid thing to say. Too much sun I think.’
Eve felt unexpectedly crestfallen. She shrugged as if it didn’t matter at all.
Jimmy’s eyes crinkled up at the sides. ‘Don’t look like that.’ He laughed. ‘I’m not saying I didn’t mean it, just that I shouldn’t have said it. It’s the past. No one should try and change that. You might have come, hated your bike, and flown home.’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows what might have happened?’