In the Summertime (15 page)

‘Most of them girls?’

‘Shit yes, so many girls. And he’s younger than me. Only twenty-four. I suppose it’s what you get. It was like being with a rock star or something.’ She sighed. ‘It was fun. But over. Definitely.’

They’d reached the beach. Miranda glanced up to the road at the top of the hill and saw a little black Mercedes, top down, racing towards the village. Beside the driver – who might or might not have been Steve – was a woman with the kind of blonde hair that wafts
about like something from a shampoo advert. Cheryl? In a way she hoped it was – at least if she was out with Steve that would mean Miranda could go to the shop later without having to sneak around waiting to be accused of shoplifting.

‘Will Pablo be sacked from the team?’ she asked Harriet as they pulled up a couple of chairs on the café’s little terrace. A girl came out immediately and they ordered coffee and a couple of Danish pastries.

‘Should we order for Mum as well? I thought she said she’d be down,’ Miranda said.

‘She said she had things to do and not to wait,’ Harriet told her. ‘And Pablo was suspended, not sacked, not that it matters much at the moment, not till the season starts. And he got fined about the same as I earn in a year but he didn’t care. He’s too good to be fired. And anyway – he’s just a footballer, not the next Archbishop of Canterbury. No one expects them to behave. No one except an idiot girlfriend –
ex
-girlfriend – like me, that is.’

Miranda gazed out at the shoreline. The sun shimmered on the wet sand, reflecting the few clouds that dared to collect in the vivid blue sky. Another glorious day, though the weather forecast that morning had said it would get stormy over the next few days. Bo and Silva were making learning the art of surfing look like hard work, all that falling off the boards and hauling themselves back on. Beyond them, the skilled
practitioners slid effortlessly across the waves, bending and turning and gliding in on the water right to the sand then stepping off their boards as casually as if they were getting off a bus. Miranda recognized the gangly figure of Freddie, looking more lithe and skilled than she’d expected. The gawkiness she’d noticed about him now made it seem as if being on land wasn’t quite his natural habitat.

‘You should give it a go, Harriet,’ she said, nodding towards the sea.

‘Why just me?’ Harriet replied. ‘Why not you as well?’ She gave her sister a hard look. ‘You’re not thinking you’re too
old
, are you?’ She laughed. ‘Miranda, you
are
, aren’t you! My
God
!’

The coffee and pastries arrived and Miranda played with the spoon and the sugar for a few moments, ‘Not
old
. Just, you know, not the right sort of mindset. For surfing and stuff. It’s just not me.’

‘It’s not me either. I don’t have the shoes for it.’

‘Shoes?’ Miranda looked down at Harriet’s high-soled pink espadrilles.

‘Oh, you know what I mean. I like to dress up, not down.’

There was a shriek from the water’s edge and the two of them looked up in time to see Silva gliding along a wave, standing on the board. She looked awkward, but she was actually doing it. She landed on the beach and waved at them. A few of the experienced
surfer-boys in the water behind her applauded.

‘She’s got admirers,’ Harriet said, taking a huge, unladylike bite from her pastry.

‘Has she? No, they’re just being friendly,’ Miranda said, watching her daughter proudly.

‘No, she has. Look at her. She’s stunning – that cloud of hair and her pretty body. That blond boy, the one who can surf best, he’s been watching her the whole time.’

Miranda laughed. ‘She’s way too young for all that; she’s still a child.’ Was it only the night before that she was arguing with Clare that it was fine for Silva to wear make-up? Her daughter’s teen years were turning out to be as confusing for Miranda as they were likely to be for Silva. One minute she was recognizing the emerging woman in her, the next trying to keep her in little-girlhood.

‘She’s a teenager – she’ll be in her second year of it by the end of next week, and, yes, a child in most ways but not too young to be noticed by boys or to notice them. I remember all that – going to school on the bus and hoping Mark Brymer would get on and sit next to me. It’s all just beginning. Honestly, Manda, you don’t get it, do you? She’s not too young and you’re not too old. And in your case I don’t just mean for surfing.’

Miranda sipped her coffee and watched as Bo, too, managed to ride a wave without falling off. He didn’t get a round of applause.

‘They’re a bit old-fashioned but I can find space for half a dozen and we’ll see how they go.’

Bloody woman. Clare shut her phone down and felt furious on Jack’s behalf. He’d sold paintings to many a hotel chain, to greetings card companies and to major stores that sold prints all over the world. OK, so he wasn’t madly avant garde or Turner Prize material, nor would he have been made a Royal Academy member, but he was
good
and the volume of sales should tell anyone that he painted what people liked to have on their walls. And here was this snotty woman from that obscure little gallery in St Piran giving her verdict on the photos of Jack’s work that Clare had sent to her as if she had the job of considering pieces for a major show at Tate Modern. How dare she? Jack had been
known
and here was a chance for this poxy little venue to take some of his earlier works and offer them at more than tourist prices to the many, many generally loaded summer visitors in this damn place. She should be biting Clare’s hand off.

Clare strode fast and furiously down the path, heading for the beach, hoping to catch the end of the children’s surf lesson. She’d pick up a
Guardian
from the shop on the way and do the crossword after lunch. Perhaps it would calm her down a bit.

She walked fast past the old phone box with the hideous grinning gnome inside and looked across to
where Creek Cottage stood with all its doors and windows open. There was no sign of Eliot but Jessica was outside, hanging T-shirts and jeans on a washing line. She saw Clare and waved, calling out, ‘Thanks for last night. We all loved it!’

Clare waved back, feeling a bit cheered, and went up the steps into the shop where she found Geraldine poking through a box of oranges and being watched by a glaring Cheryl, who was piling her hair up into a pony tail. ‘They’re all the same colour, you know,’ she was saying. ‘That’s why they’re called oranges. I wouldn’t bother expecting to find something different in there.’

‘It’s all about texture,’ Geraldine boomed. ‘Don’t you know anything about fruit?’

Cheryl shrugged. ‘Don’t eat it much.’

‘No, I can see that,’ Geraldine replied. ‘You’d have better skin if you did.’

Cheryl retreated behind the deli counter and Clare heard her mutter, ‘Piss off.’ You couldn’t blame her. Clare went to the newspaper rack and pulled out the single copy of the
Guardian
. A couple of
Daily Mail
s clattered to the floor and Geraldine turned round at the noise. Clare picked them up and stuffed them back into place.

‘Aha – our hostess from last night,’ Geraldine said. ‘I suppose I should thank you.’ She didn’t. ‘That was quite a
disturbance
as we left. When we got home we could still hear the cacophony.’

‘Er … sorry about that, but at least it wasn’t for long.’

‘No, but sound does carry so in the country. And especially across water.’

Cheryl was taking notice again and leaned on the counter top. ‘So you’re another from up at the big rental, then?’ she said to Clare. ‘God, you’re a bunch and a half, aren’t you? One slapper, one shoplifter …’

‘Shoplifter?’ Clare said, astonished. ‘But that was twenty years ago!’ How could this girl know about Harriet’s childhood misdemeanours?

‘Shu’up, twenty years? I was hardly born. No, it was a couple of days ago. She didn’t get away with it. You don’t get away with anything, with me,’ she said proudly, arranging a selection of pork pies and various coloured olives on a dish. The words ‘serving suggestion’ popped into Clare’s head, rather incongruously. The girl put together a classy counter display, she’d give her that. The array was close to Harrods Food Hall standard. No wonder the shop got away with the monstrous prices.

Geraldine laughed. It was a deep and alarming sound, rather like the sudden boom of a bittern across silent Norfolk marshes.

‘No mercy with criminals, that’s what I say. A small crime is just a big crime but, er …’ Clare and Cheryl waited while Geraldine’s brain searched for words, ‘but smaller,’ she finished feebly. ‘That doesn’t make it any less serious.’

‘Anyway, that noise last night. All the shouting and the car revving and stuff. There’ve been complaints from people coming in here today. Holidaymakers come here for peace and quiet,’ Cheryl told Clare. She looked ominously serious. ‘I think you’ll be
getting a visit
.’

‘Oh, really? Who from?’ Clare asked, putting her newspaper on the counter and wishing like mad that the village had more than one shop. She was going to have to nab Miranda’s car in the mornings in future and drive round to Tremorwell for supplies, or make the twenty-mile round trip to the nearest Tesco.

‘From the agency you rent from. About standards. They’re keen on standards here. It’s about not having riffraff upsetting the residents. You’ll likely get a
warning
.’

‘Ha – that’ll be a yellow card!’ Geraldine guffawed. ‘Like footballers. How perfectly apt!’ Even Cheryl giggled. She was quite pretty when she smiled. Clare wished she’d do it more often.

‘Anyway, it was very entertaining last night,’ Geraldine conceded in a way that implied Clare should be very grateful for her presence at their gathering. ‘Now, let me just have twenty Rothmans and a
Daily Mail
and I’ll be on my way. Freddie has apparently gone to the beach and I want to make sure he’s got hot porridge waiting for him when he gets back. He chills easily.’

‘Unlike her,’ Cheryl muttered as Geraldine wheezed down the shop steps and set off back to Andrew’s cottage.

‘So, is it true?’ Cheryl switched her smile back on.

‘Is what true?’

‘That Pablo Palmer is here in the village.’ She looked excited. ‘We get famous people down here. Kylie was here doing a video last summer. And the year before, I heard Johnny Depp was buying a house across the water. He didn’t, though.’ Her smile faded for a moment but then returned. ‘So is he?’

Harriet had probably looked this thrilled when she’d first attracted the footballer’s interest. Would she have seen past the fancy restaurants and red-carpet events and the flashy cars? Clare hoped her daughter had more to her than that. If she’d meant what she’d said to Pablo the night before, it looked as if she did.

‘He was here but I don’t know where he is now,’ she said, ‘but if I find out he’s still in the area I’ll let you know.’

‘Wow, thanks!’

‘Nothing to thank me for,’ Clare said, picking up her newspaper and starting to leave.

‘No, there is, trust me. Nothing much ever happens round here.’ She reached across to the basket of fruit Geraldine had been mauling. ‘Here, have an orange. On the house. And keep me in the loop, won’t you? Please?’

Miranda hadn’t intended to look at her emails more than once every few days but felt she had to keep an eye on them in case something to do with work cropped up. It shouldn’t – there was never much going on in August – but you never knew. The meeting with the hotel people that she had scheduled for when she got home was the only important thing at the moment work-wise and she was completely prepared for it. She was nervous though, stomach-churningly so. In the dawn hours, half waking, she sometimes couldn’t help wondering: suppose they’d been leading her on a bit and were actually still seeing several other designers and making them, too, assume they were the only one in the frame for this job? She’d been assured they were well past that stage, but still the possibility of its all going horribly wrong had to be somewhere in the reckoning. It didn’t bear thinking about but it would be tempting fate not to.

She brought her Macbook down to the terrace, put it on the table in the shade of the cream canvas umbrella and switched it on. While it warmed up, she looked out across the higher lanes of the village, seeing if she remembered any more landmarks from all those years ago. Mostly on the hillside the houses had been ugly white bungalows or even wood-clad near-shacks back then, almost all of them occupied by retired couples keen on regimented floral displays and a well-striped lawn in their gardens. Clare had been sniffy in those days about all the straight lines of luridly vivid petunias and begonias. At the time, Miranda didn’t think she’d noticed differences between types of gardens. Gardens, when she was a child, either had flowers or they didn’t. They were overgrown and scruffy (all the better for making camps and hiding in) or they weren’t. The details didn’t register. I’m all grown up, she thought: I know that I prefer a lush, tumbled planting with soft colours to something all controlled and in shades that pain the eyes. When did that happen? Did it creep up with time and parenthood, in the same way that cheap red wine, after you’re twenty-five or so, starts to give you vile headaches?

Miranda blinked as the sun reflected a fierce ray off the solar panels of one of the hillside houses. Several of them had the panels and she imagined the ecology versus aesthetics battles the owners had surely had with the local councils over that. Or worse, the
mind-crushing talks with pushy salesmen who’d convinced these elderly targets that the reduction in electricity bills would easily cover the massive initial outlay. A few of the tatty old buildings had been completely rebuilt, or ‘de-bungalowed’ as Andrew, in estate-agent-speak, had pointed out at the barbecue. In twenty years, how many of the then-ancient-seeming retired had died long before they recouped the financial benefits from that solar heating? She shivered a bit, thinking of Jack, and wondered if, that time they last drove away from Creek Cottage, it had even once crossed his mind he might only come back here as a pile of grey ash. Grey ash which was – she now knew – resting in the bottom of the wardrobe in Clare’s room. There was time, she told herself; they had ages to go here yet. There was no rush to get the scattering done, although she did hope Harriet would still be around for it. She had a sharp moment of missing Jack, a harsh little ache inside. When she thought of him she could swear she smelled paint. How much worse must her mother feel? No wonder she was being slow to dispose of the absolute last of him.