by Karen Perry
‘Hey there, Birthday Buddy,’ I said, smiling down at her.
‘Hi, Dad.’
She made no move to get out, just stayed there swishing around.
‘What’s it feel like to be twelve?’
‘It’s okay,’ she said, impervious to my attempts at good humour. ‘Did Mum tell you about the bridge?’
‘She did.’
‘It means we can’t go to La Rochelle.’
‘I know, sweetheart. We’ll do something else instead.’
‘Okay.’
Her heart had been set on a day in the city. Caroline had promised to take her shopping and we were going to have lunch, the four of us, in a swanky restaurant. In the wake of such disappointment, Holly was entitled to have a little sulk, I supposed.
‘Your mum’s been to the market. She’s bought all manner of things. We’re going to have quite the birthday feast.’
Taking her glasses from her towel, she put them on and said: ‘I suppose she’ll be there.’
She, meaning Zoë.
‘I expect she will be,’ I said gently, ‘and Chris.’ I wanted to be sensitive to her mood but had to be firm too. It wasn’t as if I was thrilled at the prospect either.
‘Mum hates her,’ she told me.
The word struck me like a physical object. ‘That’s a bit strong, Holly.’
‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘I do too.’
The blankness of her voice, the way she said the words so tonelessly, with such sincerity, was chilling.
I didn’t say anything, just watched as she put her palms down on the poolside terrace and pulled herself out of the water. She reached for her towel and shook it out. She was still my little girl. I opened out my arms to her. ‘Birthday hug?’
‘I’m all wet, Dad,’ she told me, turning away so she could dry herself.
The sun was hitting the water behind her, the shimmering light blinding. Her body was silhouetted against it and I saw, with sad surprise, the buds of new breasts beneath her swimsuit that I hadn’t noticed until now. This change in her, coupled with her dismissal of my embrace, tugged sharply at my emotions, and I felt the shock of imminent tears. This was my first birthday without my mother. Somehow Holly’s coldness and the understanding that she was shutting down the physical affection between us – a natural side-effect of adolescence, I knew, but still – drew out my grief in a new and unexpected way. The light bouncing off the pool made my head hurt. The heaviness I had felt in the air when I first awoke no longer seemed atmospheric. Rather, it had moved inside my head – an inner pressure pushing outward against the boundary of my skull.
Holly went inside, and I stood there, feeling wobbly, an unbidden thought entering my brain: What if Linda had told me? A dangerous thought. It conjured up images of a different life, a different holiday, a different wife – Linda in the kitchen now chopping fruit, rather than Caroline. A blonde version of Holly going indoors to dry off, a different son lounging upstairs in bed. And Zoë – how differently might she have turned out had her natural parents stayed together? Physically the same, but might she have been less mercurial, more grounded and together? In that scenario, I had no doubt that the insides of her arms would be free of scars, and there would be no middle-aged man sharing her bed.
And what about me? How different might I have been? I shied away from the thought, uncomfortable with the gnawing doubt it brought on. I slipped back inside, past the kitchen where Caroline was rinsing a salad. Her back was to me and I noticed the tension in her shoulders, a tightness that had come on overnight. Holly and Chris had disappeared, and as I climbed the stairs, I felt the quietness of the house all around me.
The children’s door was closed. I had the impression that the room was empty. Walking past Chris and Zoë’s, I heard low whispering. At least, I’d thought it was whispering. But as I lingered I realized that what I was hearing was not language but the fluency of movement. A subdued grappling, the tangle of sliding limbs, a moan so hushed I hardly heard it.
Recoiling, I hurried down the corridor to my bedroom, the heaviness bursting in my head. I closed the shutters and lay down for a long time. But even though my body was present in the room, my mind was elsewhere. It was back down the corridor, hiding in a corner, scared and watchful in the darkness as they twisted and writhed together.
21. Caroline
Because of the fire we couldn’t leave. Even though we couldn’t see leaping flames or billowing plumes of smoke, the air above us became infused with the smell of it, as the day progressed and news reports told of a growing inferno. As our planned day-trip to La Rochelle was cancelled, I suggested we take the bikes and cycle along the paths that crisscrossed the salt flats leading to Saint-Martin-de-Ré. There were plenty of shops, though mainly of the tourist variety, but still, I was hopeful of finding something to please Holly. It bothered me when the others pounced on my suggestion, Chris and Zoë making a quick run to the marketplace to rent bikes. But it was part of the weirdness of the day, brought on by the haze of smoke, the heavy heat pressing down on us, so it didn’t matter. Torpor suppressed my fear, making me disinterested. It was just one day, I told myself. We could get through it.
We were sitting around on the sun-loungers, waiting for David to come downstairs so we could leave, when Chris said: ‘So, July, the eighth. What does that make you, Holly – Cancer or Leo?’
‘Cancer,’ she answered quietly.
The sun was rising high in the sky and I wanted David to hurry, the boundless heat making me restless.
‘What about you, Robbie?’ Chris asked, striving against the collective silence.
Robbie didn’t answer. He didn’t have it in him to be conversational that day. He was sitting halfway along the diving board, his feet dangling into the water. Since the lovers’ arrival the night before, he had grown sullen, hardly speaking apart from the odd grudging reply when a question was put to him. If either Zoë or Chris was aware of his unhappiness, they hid it well, the two of them perched on the sun-lounger opposite me, Chris’s hand resting on her thigh.
‘Robbie’s a Leo,’ I answered in his stead.
‘Like myself,’ Chris said. ‘Not that I believe in any of that astrology stuff.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘There are personality traits common to David and Holly.’
‘That’s because they’re father and daughter, not because they have the same star-sign.’
‘What about you, Zoë?’
‘I’m Pisces.’
‘What’re they like?’ I asked, keeping up the veneer of civility. I already knew what she was like.
‘Spiritual, intuitive. The chameleons of the Zodiac.’
‘Chameleons?’
‘Yes, we’re very adaptable. And our inner lives are important to us. Our secrets and dreams.’
Her expression was masked by large sunglasses; she might have been staring at me mockingly or with an empty gaze.
‘In other words,’ said Chris, winking at me, ‘they have a hard time distinguishing fact from fiction.’
‘We’re watery types too,’ she continued, ignoring the jibe. ‘Just like Cancerians. Which makes us excellent swimmers.’
Robbie shot her a sidelong glance. ‘You can’t be a good swimmer just because of your birthday.’ His expression, though guarded, seemed quietly furious.
‘Our sign is symbolized by fish,’ she answered coolly.
‘So what? You’re a better swimmer than me just because you’re a Pisces?’
Unfazed, she smiled sweetly: ‘One way to find out.’
Instantly rising to the challenge, Robbie got to his feet.
‘No, Robbie,’ I said. ‘We need to go.’
He ignored me, pulling the T-shirt over his head as he padded back along the board to the pool’s edge. Zoë looked on with amusement although there was something mean about her smile, the corners of her mouth turning up in hard edges.
‘Well?’ he demanded of her. Then, without waiting, he marched to the far en
d of the pool.
She rose slowly from the sun-lounger, removing her sunglasses with a deliberate air and placing them carefully on the table. In a single movement, she reached down for the hem of her dress and pulled it up over her head, revealing a small mint-green bikini with orange laces tied at the back of her neck and below each hip.
Chris grinned. ‘Here she goes!’ he said, watching as she stepped to the water’s edge. It was not pride or amusement I heard in his voice, but nerves.
I took in the curve of her hip, the crevice running the length of her spine. Shoulder-blades pronounced like wings, she was so thin. Her breasts were small but shapely, neatly cupped by the bikini. Narrow thighs, rounded calves tapering to narrow ankles. Her skin was smooth and lightly tanned, unblemished apart from a large mole the size of a one-euro coin just above her knee.
I was transfixed by her body and held by Robbie’s expression as she took her place beside him. Bare-chested, his shoulders wide and square, his waist and legs skinny, there was something fierce about him, as if the challenge thrown down was far more than just a race. They stood at the lip of the pool, the sparkling water a backdrop to their lithe youthful bodies, and I felt a tug of sadness I couldn’t explain or understand.
Robbie was first to break the water. Harnessing the power in those newly widened shoulders, he charged ahead, Zoë’s strokes even and patient as she glided in the wake of all that froth and foam. They reached the end, tipped the side and turned back. The heat had sucked the life from my own limbs and I could see that once the first burst of his energy had been used up, Robbie was flagging, his strokes becoming more erratic, while Zoë continued calmly. When he reached the end first, he drew himself up, ready to express his triumph, but instead, as she caught up, she simply tipped the lip of the pool, then swerved in the water, kicking off for another lap. The race was not done yet.
He shouted: ‘Hey!’ then plunged after her, messy strokes, like an excited puppy, but she had found her groove, strong and steady. She swam with confidence, never looking back to check his progress, her face turning in the water, her mouth an O taking in air, clearly in control as she tipped the end and turned back for the final lap.
Reaching the finish, she didn’t pause to raise her arms in triumph, or look back at her opponent. Instead, she pulled herself out of the pool, wringing out her hair, her face expressionless.
‘Not fair!’ Robbie shouted, when he reached the end. Standing in the water, he thrashed the surface with his hands in frustration. ‘You never said two laps! I won that!’
She paused, and I saw the way she turned back to the edge of the pool, gazing down at him, towering and imperious. I watched my son looking up at her, the wet bikini gripping her breasts, the outline of two sharp nipples, water dripping from the ends of her hair and between her legs. There was another challenge in the way she stood looking down at him, this one different from the last. Her face was lost from view, but I saw his – the expression changing from outrage to something softer, more secret. He kept looking up at her. I watched as his hand emerged from the water and realized he was reaching out to clasp her ankle.
I don’t know what he had in mind, but something within me reared up against it, seized by a cold revulsion. Don’t touch her, I thought. Please don’t.
She took a step backwards and his hand fell down into the water. Turning from us, she stalked towards the house. Robbie launched himself back into the water, swimming away from us and from his own humiliation. David emerged on to the terrace.
‘Everyone ready?’ he asked.
Chris ran a hand through his hair, momentarily undecided, before he followed Zoë back into the house.
‘What?’ David asked me, but I didn’t answer.
I was thinking about the fire burning at the other side of the island, making prisoners of us. On the limestone terrace Zoë’s dark wet footprints were fading beneath the sun.
We cycled in a row along the narrow white path, through the dead heat. We crossed swamps and marshes, the water glittering through the reeds and grasses. The wetlands, usually straining with life, were unusually quiet that day, no swish of tails in the water, no sudden flap of wings. As we neared Saint-Martin, the smell of smoke changed, became textured with the tang of burning rubber.
We stopped for lunch at the oyster bar and sat with glasses sweating in the heat. It was after midday but the heat was still rising. We ate in silence, the food tasting different now, flavoured with smoke. Looking out at the haze of blue sea and sky, the horizon appeared shimmery and indistinct. The wine had a soporific effect on the men, and they began to voice reluctance to travel any further, content to sit in their own uneasy silence gazing at the ocean. Robbie was locked within the grim confines of his defeat, and so it was that our group split along the gender divide as Holly, Zoë and I mounted our bikes after lunch and continued on to Saint-Martin.
We pedalled the short distance to the town, locked our bikes at the marina and set out through the narrow cobbled streets, Holly going ahead, now and then turning back to check we were still behind her. The air felt dry, the alleyways quiet, and there was a sleepy feeling in the town, as if everyone else was having a siesta while we trudged through shop after shop.
‘Look,’ Zoë said, holding up a black T-shirt she had found, white lettering emblazoned on one side: Sweetness, I was only joking. ‘I’m going to get it,’ she declared, clearly delighted. ‘I’ll wear it any time Chris and I have an argument. It will be my way of apologizing.’
I couldn’t picture them fighting. The way he fawned over her, Zoë’s sulkiness – it seemed an uneven match.
Holly, having picked out a few items of clothing, disappeared into the changing rooms while I went outside to wait. Zoë emerged with her purchase in an orange plastic bag and, for a few moments, we stood alongside one another on the cobbled street in the shade thrown by the awning overhead.
After all that had happened between us, small-talk seemed impossible. She had a way of standing still, her face impassive, as though she were waiting for me to say something, do something, an expectancy that I found troubling. I noticed she was twisting the ring on her finger and I glanced down at it – a trio of diamonds clustered on a white-gold band. It was an old ring, purchased in the Clignancourt markets outside Paris, they had told us, and both the size and the setting of the stones bore the veneer of age. It was not a very delicate ring – the diamonds looked heavy on her slender finger – more suited to a woman in her thirties or forties.
It was the first time we had been alone together since the announcement of their engagement. I suppose, with the incident at the pool that morning still troubling me, on top of what I already understood of her fickle nature, I couldn’t help but wonder whether she was serious about it or whether her acceptance of the marriage proposal was just another strand to her elaborate game.
‘Have you told your adoptive parents about your engagement yet?’ I asked, thinking about Celine Harte, imagining her hooded eyes growing fractionally heavier at the weight of this news.
‘No,’ she admitted, letting go of her ring and looking around distractedly. ‘They’ll go nuts when they find out.’
‘Oh?’
‘When they hear I’m marrying a divorced man they’ll hit the roof. Not that I care what they think.’
She leaned back against the window, her arms crossed, the plastic bag hanging from her wrist. I had the impression she was affecting nonchalance. Beneath the bravado there was uncertainty.
‘What about your friends?’ I asked. ‘Have you told any of them?’
‘Yeah, a few people. Mostly they didn’t believe it.’
‘I don’t suppose there are many married students in your class,’ I remarked.
‘Nope, apart from the mature students.’
‘It’ll be something of a talking point, I imagine. Your engagement.’
She shrugged. ‘For a little while, I guess. Until something else comes along.’
‘How do you think you’ll
manage it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What about parties, nights out with your friends? Won’t it be strange for you, having a husband or a fiancé you must return home to instead of staying for all of that? Won’t you find it limiting?’
She looked at her ring, twisted it on her finger. ‘Not really. Chris is cool – he doesn’t believe that marriage needs to tie us to each other.’
‘Did he say that?’
‘Sure.’
I thought of how closely he shadowed her, the way his gaze followed her around the room, and scepticism inflated within me.
‘After all he’s been through with Susannah,’ she went on, ‘he wants things with me to be different – more free and relaxed. She was such a head-fuck, constantly making demands on him. I’m like the exact opposite.’
‘That’s a little unfair on Susannah.’
‘I know she’s your friend. But she really did give him a hard time.’
‘I’m not saying Susannah is a saint, but I wouldn’t say that of Chris either. Marriage is complicated. Things go wrong – unexpected things. We all start off full of hopes and ideals, armed with the notion that our relationship, our marriage, is going to be a success, but no one can see into the future. Things come along to test us. Are you ready for that?’
She pushed her hair over her shoulder. ‘Is that how it was for you?’ she asked then.
‘Yes,’ I admitted carefully. ‘When David and I got married, I believed we had faced our big trial. I was young and naïve. We both were.’
‘And now?’
She had put on her sunglasses so that I could no longer see her eyes. I remembered her in my kitchen with my phone in her hand, having read Aidan’s text message. I remembered Holly at the quarry’s edge, the hand reaching out to push her. I remembered all those lies Zoë had told about me, the damage she had inflicted on her own face and then blamed on me, the corrosive way she had come between me and David, and with these memories came caution. I already knew she was dangerous to me.