In the Summertime (22 page)

A City Link van pulled up outside the gate. You didn’t see many of those round here, she thought idly, picturing home streets full of red buses, ambulances with sirens blaring and the general dusty kerfuffle of town
life. A man walked into the garden clutching a parcel. ‘Anderson?’ he asked, holding out the package. ‘Can you sign here, my lover?’ Silva giggled and signed and took the parcel into the house. It was addressed to her. She ripped it open and out fell a crumpled, folded lump of plastic. ‘Whee – another crocodile!’ she squealed, looking at the picture on the packaging. ‘And purple!’ Lola’s lovely mum – huge thanks to her for knowing
she
would be the one who’d actually
want
this! She set to work immediately, puffing herself out inflating the pool toy. She went and got the crocodile from the utility room and laid the two of them out on the floor side by side. Almost the same size and not so rounded that their project wouldn’t work. All they had to do was work out how to attach some wood (and Freddie had found an old pallet in his dad’s shed that they could take apart) and the raft would be sorted.

Poor Willow, Silva thought as she lined up her two childish toys against the utility room wall; when it came down to the deep down old-school fun of being like a little kid again, she might actually be
missing out
.

‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Jess said to Miranda as they sat on the wall dangling their legs over the creek as they used to when they were teenagers. ‘I’ll miss you when you go back. You’ll come again, won’t you?’

‘I hope so – I don’t see why not,’ Miranda said. ‘Now we’ve rediscovered the place I can’t imagine never
coming here again. Though maybe I wouldn’t stay in Steve’s house next time.’

‘You can always stay here,’ Jessica offered. ‘There’re only two of us here so there’re two spare bedrooms since I had the attic done. Come any time.’

‘Where’s Lola’s dad?’ Miranda came straight out with the question she’d been wanting to ask.

‘Australia,’ Jess said. ‘I met him in France. He thought we were a holiday thing and I thought it was more than that and when I got pregnant he flew off back to the homeland so fast I don’t think Qantas were even involved.’ She laughed. ‘There’ve been a few others since but nothing that lasted very long. With all of them I ended up thinking I just preferred it as me and Lola, on our own. I wouldn’t mind hooking up with someone, though; I want Lola to be able to go off to university or travelling or whatever she wants and not feel she’s got to be kind of responsible for me for the rest of my life, especially since the cancer. But I’m not sure there are many men who’d be too keen on this.’ She patted her front.

‘Would you want one who
couldn’t
cope with it, though?’ Miranda asked. ‘I mean, look at most men – the older they get the more worn round the edges they are. They should be so lucky as to get you, frankly.’

Jess hugged her. ‘Thank you! But honestly, I’m fine. Though …’ she glanced across towards the house next door, ‘it’s funny having Andrew around again. I kind …
of …’ she looked down at the river and Miranda could see her face going pink, ‘I sort of like him, you know? I didn’t think about it seriously but last night, really late, I was out watering the pots and there was Geraldine having a cigarette in the garden.’ Jess looked across towards Andrew’s cottage. ‘I can’t believe she smokes so much when she’s always going on about healthy stuff. Is she totally mad?’

‘She likes to fuss over Freddie, I suppose. A case of do as I say, not as I do. But go on – tell me about last night.’

‘Ah yes, well, Andrew leaned out of the window and asked her to move because the smoke was going into his room. It was his old room, that one with the single bed in it. And I thought, oh good, he really definitely isn’t sleeping with her. I sort of surprised myself with the thought.’

‘Andrew, though?’ The words were out before Miranda could stop herself. ‘Sorry – I didn’t mean it to sound like that. He’s sweet, it’s true. And he looks far better now than you’d have thought he would back then.’

‘I know. He’s kind of grown into his geeky look. I like that. And I like it that he’s still quite an innocent-seeming sort and you don’t get many like that. I don’t think there’s a bad bone in him. But anyway, you said you had something you wanted to do here. Tell me – I’m intrigued.’

Miranda reached down into the bag behind the wall
and pulled out the wodge of tissues she’d been carrying around.

‘We have to bury this. In this garden,’ she said.

Jess looked at the scrumpled paper in Miranda’s hand. ‘Twenty years I don’t see you, back when we did the funeral on the beach, and you tell me we’re doing
another
one?’ She was almost exploding with pent-up laughter. ‘Sorry! It’s not funny, but I can’t help it. And the other one wasn’t even remotely funny. Sorry.’ The laughter escaped and pealed so loud across the creek that it echoed back at them. ‘But what
is
this?’ The hilarity vanished as suddenly as it had come, ‘Oh, God, you haven’t lost …?’

‘No, no! Nothing like before.’ She told Jess about the spilt ashes and about mopping up the last of them. ‘So I just couldn’t bin him, could I?’

‘No. I guess not.’ Jess started laughing again. ‘Sorry, but I’m picturing you on all fours wiping up the ash and apologizing to it at the same time. It’s really not funny. Not even a bit.’ She was shaking with laughter and by now so was Miranda, but eventually Jess managed to speak. ‘And you want to bury him here?’

‘Well, he loved this house. Loads of the plants in this garden were put in by him and Mum. I thought, maybe under that white camellia? If that’s OK? It’s one he bought for her. It was at the flower and produce show in Helston. I remember trailing around the exhibits in the
tent, bored witless and probably moaning about it, the way Silva would now. At thirteen you’re too old to make gardens on a plate but too young to appreciate giant marrows.’

‘I’ll get a spade from the shed.’ Jessica climbed off the wall and gave Miranda another hug. ‘And we’ll make it pretty deep. When Lola was small and we were in London, we buried her dead guinea pig, wrapped in a bit of pink blanket. The next morning when I got back from taking her to school I could see the foxes had been. There was the blanket, trailed across the lawn, and no sign of poor Gilbert the piggy.’

‘Oh, awful. But didn’t you worry he hadn’t been dead in the first place? I would have.’

‘No, he was dead all right.’ Jess mimed feet in the air and eyes shut tight, which made Miranda giggle. ‘Still, I suppose it’s a form of recycling, isn’t it?’

The ground was tougher than they’d thought it would be. ‘All these roots plus no rain,’ Miranda said, leaning on the spade.

‘Also doing it in flip-flops. Come on, give me a go.’ Jess reached out for the spade.

‘No, I’m stronger than you.’ Miranda held on. ‘Plus you’re feebled from chemo. I don’t want you to strain something.’

‘Hello. Are you two doing gardening?’ And there was Andrew, climbing nimbly over the fence from next door.
Miranda glanced at Jessica, who was smiling at him, all sparkly-eyed.

‘Just digging a hole,’ she told him. ‘But the earth’s like concrete.’

‘Give me the spade,’ he said. ‘How deep do you want it? And is it OK if I make it big enough to put Geraldine in?’

‘That bad?’ Jessica said. ‘Is she staying all summer?’

‘That wasn’t the plan. She said a few days. She’s terrifying. And I very much mind being lectured about the dangers of soft cheese through a haze of poisonous smoke,’ he told her. Jessica was beaming. Miranda felt like creeping away and vanishing, just as she had when Harriet had joined her and Duncan at the hotel. Always the gooseberry, she thought, but this time she thought it in a happy way. Quickly, she explained about the ashes, and Andrew, appreciating the situation and not even thinking of suggesting the kitchen bin, bless him, easily got the hole to a good eighteen inches deep. Miranda, feeling slightly awkward, put the tissues in and covered them over with earth.

‘We’ve done this before,’ Andrew said, looking puzzled, as if his own memory had quite startled him.

‘We have. But at sea that time. Thanks for the digging, Andrew,’ Miranda said, giving him a quick hug. He didn’t flinch, which was something, but he did look surprised.

‘Yes, thanks,’ Jess added, also hugging him. Miranda
noticed that with her he actually put an arm round her and squeezed her to him. Good, she thought. Time to make her excuses and leave them to it. Who knew? Maybe they would make a lovely and happy couple. Another one.

Where were Steve and Cheryl going that evening and what would they be doing? As if she couldn’t guess. Cheryl wouldn’t have been so hyper if they were going to quiz night at the village pub. Miranda tried not to think about them as she slowly stirred stock into the risotto on the stove. The stove in Steve’s own house, she thought, stroking its glossy black surface. She was feeling almost self-indulgently maudlin and wondering if he’d chosen all the fittings or if someone else had had a hand in it. She imagined him driving back from London in his fish van, having loaded the empty storage space with this set of pans from John Lewis that she was using and boxes of the cutlery that was laid out on the table. Apart from his two brief visits to this house, she’d never seen him in any domestic setting. Years ago he hadn’t set foot in Creek Cottage and she’d never visited him at his parents’ house. She didn’t get the impression he’d be a lazy sort like Dan,
one who would pile up dirty plates in the sink ‘to soak’ and imagine the washing-up fairy would deal with them. But you could never tell. Maybe it was just as well that she’d never know. She was beginning to look forward to going home and feeling normal again. This crush business was very wearing.

‘When’s food? I’m starving.’ Bo wandered in and collapsed in his usual drama-boy way on to one of the Ghost chairs, then tipped it backwards so it was only on its back two legs.

‘Bo, please don’t do that. We have to pay for breakages,’ she snapped at him. Steve would not be happy if his carefully chosen furniture got broken.

‘Won’t break it. Not stupid,’ he grunted, but he did put it back down on its four feet then got up and wandered over to the cooker, peering into the pan. ‘What is it?’

‘You know what it is. It’s a risotto. There’ll be prawns, baby beans and peas and herbs in it. You’ve had it before.’

‘Prawns,’ he said. ‘It’s not, like, meat.’

Miranda, feeling criticized, flung the spoon down in the pan, splashing herself with the newly poured stock. ‘Shit.’ She wiped at her front with a tea towel.

‘No, it’s not
like
meat, Bo,’ she said, feeling so wound up that if she went outside she’d surely spin through the air all the way down to the harbour. ‘You don’t need meat every damn day.’

‘You’re in a mood,’ he said, putting his hands in his pockets and shuffling backwards out of her way.

‘Well done, Sherlock,’ she said, then felt guilty. It wasn’t his fault. Nothing about her dark blue mood was his fault, her beautiful, sweet, ever-hungry, ever-growing boy. She took a moment to shut her eyes and imagine taking a photo of Steve and Cheryl with a loved-up glow you could light a room with holding hands as they walked into a gorgeous restaurant; then she pressed a kind of mental delete button and opened her eyes again, determined that that was the last bit of attention they’d get that night. ‘Sorry, Bo. I’m just a bit tired.’

‘’S OK,’ he said. ‘But it was only about meat, not the Gaza strip. I don’t mind prawns. Prawns is cool.’

Miranda’s text alert pinged and her heart did a couple of massive thumps as she grabbed the phone. Jessica, inviting her for a drink at the pub. ‘Andrew’s coming too,’ she said. Miranda wondered if she should leave them to it, just the two of them, but then decided that a short break with them would be good. She didn’t have to stay long. She replied and went back to stirring the risotto.

Clare bustled in, bringing a heap of dry towels and swimsuits from the line. They were stiff from sun-blast and even above the scent of the risotto Miranda could smell the warm outside air still on them. You didn’t get that in Chiswick, she thought, where even though they were a good way from the Heathrow flight path there
was still the hint of aircraft fuel in the air and the ever present dust from the nearby tube line. And now she found herself, after briefly thinking that home would be a good option, wondering about what it would be like living down here full time. Would the children like it? Probably not. They were used to being able to walk out of the house and find fast easy transport as close to the doorstep as you could get, to anywhere they wanted to be. They had their circles of friends – shrieky ones in Silva’s case, watchful and taciturn in Bo’s – and there was school, though she knew from when she was sixteen and Clare and Jack had followed up a whim to move to Totnes that change was possible and quite exciting. New friends could be made, adjustments, changes; all of it was doable. People did it all the time.

‘Any sign of Harriet?’ she asked Clare.

‘Oh, sorry, I should have said. She called and said not to wait up again. Key to be left out under the flower pot like last night.’

‘Lucky girl,’ Miranda said, mentally ripping up the Steve–Cheryl picture as it threatened to return.

‘Oh, dear. Are you feeling a bit of envy? You could do with some love interest in your life.’ Clare came close and Miranda felt her body stiffen. She didn’t want to be swamped by pitying sympathy. All was fine. Really it was. All she’d got was an inconvenient crush, probably caused by hot weather and too much sun. It would go away when some of the rain that the weather reports
promised fell. And it wouldn’t do to moan about the lack of a love life when her mother was mourning a more final end to hers than Miranda could even begin to imagine.

‘Supper’s ready,’ she said, briskly moving to the fridge to get out the salad she’d already made. ‘Can somebody shout for Silva? I think she’s Facebooking with Willow again.’

Bo sloped out of the room and Clare closed the door after him. ‘You know, Miranda, you could always try internet dating,’ she said in a hushed whisper. ‘There’s no shame in it. Not these days.’