In the Summertime (12 page)

She shoved a piece of one of the squeezed lemons down the waste-disposal and switched it on, just for a moment breathing in the fresh scent of the fruit and feeling – a rare one this – like a properly competent cleaner. She switched the noisy gadget off and rinsed her fingers under the tap.

‘Where do you want the prawns?’ A male voice came from the terrace doors and Miranda jumped at the sound.

‘Goodness, you startled me!’ She turned round to greet her visitor and came face to face with Steve.

‘Oh … hi. Um … Steve,’ she said, rather pathetically.

‘Hello, Miranda. I thought it was you when I saw you at the pub the other night,’ he said, sounding depressingly as if she were the least welcome person who’d ever dared enter the village. No smile, just a cool, cool gaze.
He put the white polystyrene box of prawns on the table and backed away again towards the door.

‘I see you’ve made yourselves at home, then,’ he went on, raising his eyebrows at the mess by the sink that Miranda was still clearing.

‘I think we’re supposed to, aren’t we?’ Miranda replied, feeling a bit miffed at what sounded like criticism. Twenty years on and he was commenting on her
housekeeping
? How dare he? And how dare he look so damn gorgeous?

‘Sure. Home from home, these rental places. I’ve seen worse. So how are you?’ At last, a small shimmer of a smile.

‘Well. I’m well. Thank you. How about you?’ Miranda asked, feeling strangely trembly. She tried to tell herself not to be so silly but very swiftly through her mind went an uncontrollable flash of wondering: what if instead of looking as if he wanted to get the hell out of the place as fast as possible he took one step forward and kissed her right now? In fact, wouldn’t the friendly thing to do be to give him a hug and a quick hello kiss herself? That’s what she’d have done if, say, he’d been an old art college connection. But his grey eyes looked cold and wary. If she approached him she had the feeling he’d be hurtling down the terrace steps in a heartbeat.

‘I’m fine,’ he said, leaning a tanned arm against the doorframe. ‘Thriving, I think they call it.’

‘Still doing fish,’ she said, cursing herself for stating the obvious.

He grinned, at last, the deep-tanned corners of his eyes crinkling like a fan. ‘As you see,’ he said, pointing at the prawns. ‘Still here, still doing fish, as you call it. So you lot are all back in the village, then. Been a long time, hasn’t it? Why are we graced with your presence again all of a sudden?’

‘Well … it’s mostly because …’ she began, meaning to explain about Jack, but there was a flurry in the hallway and Harriet raced in, all freshly showered and prettied up in tiny denim shorts and a little turquoise top that made her tan shimmer. Most of her seemed to be gorgeous leg.

‘Ooh, a nice man visitor!’ she cooed. ‘Sorry, am I interrupting something?’

‘No!’ Miranda and Steve both snapped at the same time. Miranda glared at her and she smirked.

‘Ah, got it – you’re the prawn man. Are you staying for supper? It’s just a barbecue. One more wouldn’t be a problem, would it, Manda? There’s tons of food.’

‘There is,’ Miranda agreed and then rather recklessly said, ‘And yes, please stay if you’d like to.’

‘No thanks, I’ve got things to do. But nice of you to ask,’ he said, now looking a lot less frosty. Well, what man wouldn’t, faced with Harriet at her most luscious? Miranda was appalled that she was feeling a bit jealous. What did it matter that Steve was seeing her at her most
dishevelled and messy? It was hardly as if he had any interest in her now. Nor she in him, of course. How long was guilt supposed to last? She had a massive urge to apologize to him for how she’d treated him all those years ago, but he’d probably think she was mad because he’d have long forgotten about her, and certainly long got over her. He must have had hundreds of girls like her, back in the day. Either way, any kind of real conversation couldn’t happen here and now. Not with Harriet dancing around being in the way and – unmistakably – flirting as if it were her default setting.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce me, then?’ Harriet said.

‘Oh, er, yes. Harriet, this is Steve. Steve, this is my sister Harriet.’

They shook hands rather awkwardly and Miranda had the depressing sensation that she could well be witnessing the first encounter in Harriet’s next doomed romance, or maybe not doomed. Her brain flew at breakneck speed through the scene where a beaming and triumphant Harriet showed her a diamond ring, asked her to be matron of honour and requested her help in choosing a wedding dress, to watching her sister walk up the aisle towards a radiant Steve and being handed the bridal bouquet of golden roses to hold during the vows. Mad.

‘I remember you,’ he was saying to Harriet, smiling at her. ‘You were about nine, running around and playing in the creek. Or was that the other sister? I seem to remember there were two of you little girls.’

‘Can I get you a drink, Steve? I’ve got beers and wine.’ Miranda needed a glass of something herself. Maybe if they had an open bottle on the table between them they could talk for a few minutes, catch up a bit. If he wanted to, that is. Actually, he probably didn’t, not with her. He only seemed animated when looking at Harriet.

‘No thanks, Miranda, I’ve got some deliveries to do. In fact I’d better get going.’

‘Oh, no, don’t rush off!’ Harriet put her hand on his arm. ‘This is so funny! So we knew you back then? Wow!’ Steve looked quickly at Miranda and she felt her face going warm. He remembered, all right. She wondered if he thought of her sometimes too. On that little beach, on the odd hot afternoon.

‘I expect you knew lots of people,’ Steve said, more to Miranda than Harriet.

‘I didn’t. Not at all,’ she replied, feeling a bit cross that he seemed to be insinuating that she’d put herself about among the boys. Unless he didn’t mean that at all. She didn’t know what to think. Maybe she’d better just get on with skewering the prawns.

‘Thanks for bringing these,’ she said to him as she opened the box, ‘it was really kind of you. I could have sent one of the children down for them.’

‘Your children?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Two, boy and girl. And you?’

‘None so far,’ he said.

Clare came in from the terrace at that moment,
holding a big bunch of flat-leaved parsley. ‘Miranda, I’ve picked almost all the parsley there was. I hope the owner won’t mind. Oh – sorry, I didn’t know we had a visitor.’

‘It’s OK, I was just leaving. And I’m sure the owner won’t mind at all; the stuff keeps on growing however much you pick. I’ll put in a word for you.’

‘You know the owner, then?’ Miranda asked. She’d been curious about who’d bought the house from the Lynch family and she’d been meaning to ask Jessica.

‘I suppose you could say I don’t know him that well,’ he said, giving Miranda a sly-looking sideways smile, ‘but a long time ago I slept with one of his girlfriends.’

And before Miranda could make sense of any of that and come up with a suitable reply, he’d gone.

‘Strange young man,’ Clare said, looking in a drawer for a sharp knife. ‘What on earth was he talking about?’

Miranda took the slide out of her hair and let it fall round her face. It was one way of hiding the fact that she’d gone all confused.

‘No idea, Mum,’ she said, crossing her fingers to cancel what might, once she’d untangled what he said, be a lie. ‘No idea at all.’

Silva didn’t want to wear jeans but she didn’t have much choice, not with her legs looking as if she’d been attacked by a spray gun full of red paint. No way could she let anyone see them. So – here was a fabulous warm evening with the sun still blazing on the pool terrace and she had to swelter in denim. It was that or her flowery maxi-dress, but that would look a bit too try-hard. That Lola would probably say something snide, like asking whose wedding she was on her way to be a bridesmaid at.

She’d put masses of after-sun on all the red skin but it was getting sore all the same, kind of crackly and itchy at the same time. She’d even let Harriet rub some freezing cold cream on her back, but only after she’d made her promise not to tell Miranda how bad it was. She hoped her skin wouldn’t all peel off. If that happened you were back to the beginning but even
more extra-delicate. She should have just got a fake tan like Willow had before she’d gone to Florida. Willow and her mum had gone to You’re Gorgeous! and had full-on spray tan, mani-pedi and a max-wax. ‘It’s like the most agony
ever
,’ Willow had said about the waxing after she’d told Silva in horrible detail just where on her body she’d been defoliated. ‘And you have to keep doing it for the rest of like your actual
life
.’ Something to look forward to then, Silva thought now as she plundered the drawer in which she kept her T-shirts in search of the perfect long pink one. She pulled it on and went into the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror and make sure that what she was looking at – now that she’d put on a bit of soft grey eyeshadow and enough mascara to make her eyelids droop – was not some
child
. She leaned far forward so her head was down by her knees and brushed her hair downwards so it flapped against her legs, then flicked it back again to max up the fluffiness. The result pleased her and she was aware, for a weird few moments that made her hold her breath, that this was one of those moments of big change. This time last year she’d been hardly any different from herself at eight, playing rounders on a French beach with her other aunt, Amy, and some random kids, giving no thought to anything but the here and now, not even considering that she might not always be a child: the future just didn’t exist. But today she looked different. No longer a little girl – and it wasn’t just that she was
getting tall and was curvier. And it wasn’t just for this evening either, not really. This was more a practice run for the rest of the holiday and then the rest of her life. One thing was clear. No way, next time she ran into him, was the Jules boy going to be thinking of her as the little Hello Kitty girl.

Miranda was surprised how twitchy she felt in the moments before Jess and the others were due to arrive. And Andrew and his family
were
coming. Jess had called and told Clare while Miranda was in the shower. She’d had a few moments of thinking she must have been mad to invite them all, but knew deep down that it would be fine. Gentle, shy Andrew could hardly have grown up to be a total monster and there was masses of food, as Harriet was one of life’s generous over-caterers and had bought enough to feed half the village.

‘You’re faffing, Miranda. Surely you’re not feeling nervous, are you, darling?’ Clare asked as Miranda kept tweaking at things on the long wooden garden table beside the pool, moving glasses, straightening forks, counting plates, washing a big pebble to hold down the heap of paper napkins.

‘Not nervous, not really. OK, maybe a tiny bit. It’s fine being with Jess again – that’s easy, and we were good mates years ago – but Andrew … he was quite odd in some ways. I wonder what he’s like now? He might have gone in for extreme politics or joined a religious sect for
all I know. Could be really, y’know, interesting, but there is the outside chance it won’t be interesting in a good way.’

‘Well, I always liked him, and he’s probably just as lovely as he always was,’ Clare said, ‘And I’m sure he’ll be perfectly normal. At the worst he might be a bit dull, but in the grand scheme of things we can put up with more or less anything in life for a few hours, so you’ve no need to fret about it.’

‘I’m not fretting. It’s fine.’ Miranda felt a bit sulky. Was her mother telling her off? How old did you have to be before
that
stopped happening? Clare seemed quite twitchy herself, actually, and was already halfway down a glass of red wine. Miranda poured herself some Pinot Grigio, deciding a sharpener might be a relaxing thing and would stop her thinking about that surprisingly wicked smile Steve had given her as he left. Before that moment he’d been almost hostile. Maybe it was the sight of the gorgeous Harriet that had cheered him up. She topped up the wine with fizzy water as a sense of responsibility kicked in. It would be hugely bad manners to drink too fast and end up slurring over her guests. The thing he’d said had puzzled her too. Working it out, it seemed to mean he was actually the owner of the house. How bizarre was that? Or did he mean something else completely? She’d have to find out. Asking him was the obvious route to information, but the chances were he wouldn’t want to see her
again, let alone have a proper conversation with her.

‘Mum?’ Silva was calling down the terrace steps. ‘There are people coming up the lane. Looks like loads of them.’

‘Thanks, Silva. And can you give your brother a shout? He’s probably in front of the telly or on my computer or something. I think he’s only really happy when he’s completely still.’

‘Will do.’ Silva ran in through the kitchen doors, shouting for Bo.

‘Did you notice? Silva’s looking different. Older, suddenly,’ Clare commented, staring up at the now-empty terrace. ‘She’s got make-up on and her hair is all shooshy. She’s growing up.’ She sounded almost surprised.

‘She’s all right. She’s just making a bit of an effort, that’s all. And I can remember that early teenage stage. You’re neither one thing nor the other. I expect she’s just trying to keep up with Lola.’

‘All the same, she’s not usually one for make-up, is she? And thirteen?’

Miranda gave the hot barbecue coals a cross prodding. ‘Mum, it’s her choice and I’m not going to pick fights with her over things that don’t really matter. I’m saving that for later, like making sure she never gets into a dodgy minicab and so on. It’s not as if she’s plastered in the stuff. All her friends wear it – she can’t help being the youngest in her year group and feeling
the need to keep up. Anyway, hey look, they’ve arrived.’

And there, suddenly as if twenty years hadn’t passed, were Eliot, Jessica and Andrew, along with Lola plus the large woman Jess had presumed was Andrew’s wife and a tallish sliver of a boy who was the image of the younger Andrew but with longer and floppier hair than either Andrew’s mother or the quasi-military powers-that-be at his old boarding school had ever allowed him to have. Miranda waited as Andrew loped towards her and then reached out to hug him. He seemed a bit bewildered by this and was tentative about where to put his hands as she kissed him on each cheek, so he held them out to the side as if surrendering to a gunman in a bad Western movie.