In the Summertime (26 page)

‘I meant from the rental punters.’

‘So did I,’ Miranda said, trying to look innocent.

They’d only got as far as Okehampton and if this was going to be the level of innuendo, Miranda could hardly think how it would be by the time they hit the M3. She went off to the loo and scrubbed bits of egg and melted butter from her fingers and face. She’d been so hungry she’d gone at the sandwich a bit like a ravenous wolf. Not what you’d call ladylike, she thought, but then it didn’t matter. She’d made a decision about Steve now that she was out of the village. He was to be Just A Friend. Everything was easier all round that way and she could get back to being a normal, capable woman again, especially as there wasn’t much more than a week to go of living in his house. If her mother had her down as the Reliable One, well so be it. There was a lot to be said for being sensible. Probably. She applied a bit of perfume to dispel the fried-egg scent, rinsed her mouth from a miniature bottle of breath freshener and put on a bit of minty-flavoured lip gloss. A woman’s faux-diet trick, she thought – there was something about tasting mint flavour that made you feel the several hundred calories just ingested had actually vanished into thin air.

‘Not too whiffy for you, is it, all the fish in the back?’ Steve asked as they got back into the van. ‘You smell all fresh like a toothpaste ad.’

‘I can’t smell anything. You’ve got a really good aircon system going on here.’ It was true – there was a faint overall scent of fresh fish but nothing that Miranda
found anything but mildly appetising, or would if she hadn’t just stuffed a doorstep of bread and egg. Besides, they weren’t in the same compartment as the actual fish – there was a barrier between the seats and the refrigerated freight area.

‘Well, when you drive the stuff about as much as I do, you really wouldn’t want it to be all-pervasive. I don’t really notice it any more, but I remember my father always carried the scent, sort of Eau de Haddock. That’s the kind of memory that means I spend half my life in the shower.’

She had a moment of imagining him naked and soapy after a fishy day’s work but quickly deleted the thought from her head. She must concentrate on thinking about the next day’s meeting. She must
not
feel that awful zing from being only inches away from him for hours on end yet not allowed to touch him, not even accidentally. And she mustn’t think about him with that shrew Cheryl. Though, in fact, perhaps it kind of helped if she did. Because after all, if he was dating her, what kind of taste in women did that tell her he had?

The miles were flying by and Miranda felt hugely grateful for this unexpected lift.

‘It’s so lucky you were passing,’ she said as they approached Stonehenge. ‘That tree will probably be there for weeks and I hadn’t a hope of getting out. I hope it doesn’t keep the rest of my lot trapped in the
garden for too long. They were hoping to get out in the car and maybe do that St Ives Tate visit. Bo wanted to go to Newquay too.’

Steve laughed. ‘Are you serious? This is Cornwall. There’ll have been people all over it like vultures on a dead dog by eight and by ten o’clock it’ll have been reduced to neat piles of logs all stacked in village woodpiles. All there’ll be left to show it was ever there will be the remains of the stump and a scattering of sawdust.’

Miranda felt nervous as the van approached Chiswick. She wanted to think of a way to thank Steve but wasn’t sure how. There was no food in the house, not so much as a pint of milk; she’d go out later to Waitrose on the High Road for some basic supplies. For now, though, she couldn’t even offer him a cup of tea.

‘Er … it’s left here,’ she said. ‘And do you want to come in for … well, it would have to be black coffee or tea? Sorry. It’s about all there is till I go out later.’

‘No, I won’t actually, but thanks for the offer,’ Steve said, then laughed. ‘Such as it was. I’ve got to get this stuff delivered. Will you be OK? You’ve got a key and everything?’

‘Please – you sound like my mum!’ she said, yet suddenly feeling mildly panic-stricken and starting to search through her handbag. Phew, yes, the door key was there. She knew she’d remembered to take it off her key ring when she handed the car keys over to Clare but
there was always a remote chance it had got dropped somewhere. If bad luck couldn’t get you one way, like the tree and the landslide, then it often tried to get you another.

‘Actually, I suppose you’re staying at your friend’s flat tonight?’ she asked tentatively as he pulled up outside her house. He gave her a wide-eyed look. Was it alarm?

‘I just wondered, I mean I don’t want to get a load of food in and cook as I’ll only be here a night, but I was thinking, you know, if you’re not doing anything …’ she was waffling on, she realized, wishing she could just get the words out. OK, so there was a risk of a big fat NO, but as it was only a friends thing that really wouldn’t matter. At all.

‘I’m not doing anything,’ he said, looking at her, waiting for the rest of her request.

‘I just wanted to thank you for this. For the lift. If you hadn’t happened to be passing, you know … all that. So, I wondered, could I buy you supper tonight? There’s a nice little place just round the corner here – I go there a lot. I’ll be going there later anyway but it’s more fun if you’re not on your own. Um, you’d be doing me a favour. Another one.’

‘Yes,’ he said, smiling at her.

‘Yes? Yes you will?’

‘Of course. I can’t let a lady go to a restaurant by herself. It’s too sad. And horrible men will hit on you.’

‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘I’ve been there several times on
my own and only the waitress talks to me. It’s always full of older men with their wives who’ve believed the fashion pundits who say it’s fine to wear leather trousers when you’re over forty.’ She shouldn’t have said that, she realized; it sounded bitchy and he might hate her for that, which she didn’t want, even if she had absolutely no interest in attracting him. But he laughed anyway.

‘Toying with an oil-free salad?’

‘That’s the kind of thing,’ she agreed. ‘So I’ll see you later?’ She didn’t quite believe it. She hadn’t wanted to ask about Cheryl while they were in the van as it could be an awkward conversation to deal with if you still had a hundred miles to go in close proximity, but later she’d find out, over a glass or two of wine. Even though in a way she didn’t want to know, she sort of
had
to. Any woman with the normal amount of inborn curiosity would feel the same.

‘I’ll come and knock on your door at seven thirty and ask you out to play,’ he said, climbing out of the van to help her with her bags. He carried them to the purple front door and hesitated. ‘Till tonight then,’ he said eventually.

‘Tonight. And thanks again, so very much, Steve.’

‘You can thank me properly later,’ he said. ‘Dinner, I mean.’

‘Sure,’ she said, putting the key in the lock and thinking, yes, just dinner.

‘Thank goodness for Sea Scouts. Not something I ever thought I’d say.’ Lola was laughing as she looked at the one hopeless bulging and useless knot she’d tied compared with the many brilliantly tight and firm ones that Freddie, who’d learned dozens of them in his Thames-side troop, had managed.

‘I only joined for the uniform,’ he said, looking serious. ‘A proper old-school circular sailor hat. Can’t beat that.’

Lola and Silva stopped trying to tie their knots and looked at him. Did he mean it? He couldn’t keep the expression up and started laughing. ‘No really, it’s great for learning boat things. You get to do dragon boat racing and powerboat skills and shooting and trekking and loads of really good stuff. But actually, the big love for the hat: not so much. I used to carry mine to the meetings hidden in a Sainsbury’s bag in case I got beaten up.’

The raft was done. It was two inflatable crocodiles and a double rack of wooden planks so expertly tied together that even with the four of them balanced on board it would take a whale to sink it. Lola now thought it needed painting. ‘If we paint say the top ones pink and the bottom ones purple, it’ll match the crocs.’

‘Or alternate planks pink and purple? Because you won’t see the bottom ones, they’ll be under water,’ Silva suggested.

‘I expect the whole thing will end up under water,’ Bo said, looking a bit gloomy. Silva prodded him, hard.

‘Don’t be so negative,’ she told him. ‘It’s got to work. It’ll be my birthday so it’s got to work and we’ve got to win. But …’

‘But?’ Freddie asked.

‘Maybe we should have painted the planks before we tied them on.’

‘Hmm.’ Lola considered. ‘Or maybe flagpoles with the right coloured fabric, like streamers, instead? Mum’s got loads of scarves. There’re bound to be some the right colours. We’re going to need to take it for a test drive, too.’

‘Not on the creek though, surely?’ Bo said. ‘We don’t want any opposition people to see it. How about the pool up at the house?’

‘Good idea,’ Lola agreed. ‘Mum’s been painting in the house and there are loads of dust sheets. We can put a couple over it so no one sees.’

Silva felt ridiculously happy. Any residual envy of Willow’s high-pressure boy-fest in Florida had completely vanished. School was, she realized, divided into those who were so stuck into cool that they couldn’t actually ever buy a T-shirt unless everyone knew it was from Hollister and others who were more adaptable and could just fit anywhere, cool or uncool, like this, where they’d all, even Bo, reverted to being like they
were nine again. She imagined if Willow were here right now. She’d be sitting on the wall a bit detached, watching and bored and asking every few minutes when they were going over to St Piran to sit outside the wine bar and look at fit boys. She’d have spent an hour that morning bigging up her hair and putting on nail varnish and picking out the right earrings. If she could be persuaded to join them on their raft, she’d want to go and buy a glitzy new bikini to be seen in and probably have to go to the Pengarret spa for a tan top-up. And then – and this is where a small cloud came into the picture – that Jules boy would be all over her and she, Silva, would be consigned back to the role of Little Girl. That was the trouble with having the friend who was the pretty one. You only got a chance at shining if you were on your own. She had a little waver of confidence. Jules always talked to her. But he talked to her like a young sister or something. How many years would it be before she got to be treated like a proper teen, the sort boys fancied?

She was twiddling with a bit of leftover twine, and when she looked up from her thinking, there was Freddie looking at her. She smiled and he smiled back then went back to concentrating on the last of the knots.

‘Anybody fancy a sail a bit later? The wind’s gone down quite a lot so you probably won’t fall in.’ He’d asked them all but he was looking at Silva. ‘I can’t promise, though.’

‘I’d like to,’ she said. ‘And I don’t mind falling in.’ She liked Freddie, probably in the same way that Jules liked her. But maybe Freddie liked
her
the same way she liked Jules. That was fine. It didn’t hurt to be nice to him.

The house looked a bit odd, as if the time away meant she could see it, for once, from a stranger’s perspective. Miranda felt conscious that from getting here to the point where she and Steve went out, she wouldn’t be able to settle to anything useful without feeling madly jittery. She left her bags at the bottom of the stairs and wandered through the cool, rather dark rooms, opening the plantation shutters and letting light pour into the long knocked-through sitting room with its soft creamy sofas and palest turquoise walls hung with a mixture of Jack’s paintings and the naïve Caribbean art that she loved. It felt as if, although she hadn’t been gone that long, the place minded that she’d been away and wasn’t going to let her have back her usual easy familiarity with it as easily as she’d expected. Or maybe, she thought, wondering if she was actually slightly loopy, the house had plans of its own for these weeks and wasn’t pleased that she’d sneaked back early.

She opened the kitchen’s French doors and went out into the garden. The house might be immaculate, thanks to Nadja the cleaner, but in the short time she’d been gone, the garden had already started to get out of
control. She drifted along the side flower bed, picking the dead heads off the cornflowers and cosmos, fetching her kitchen scissors and snipping the tatty browned seed stalks from the lupins and foxgloves. She thought of what her mother had said about gardens being at their best in June and realized she’d been right. Here, looking around at what felt like the dry hot high point of summer, she could see autumn sneaking up. If she’d been here to tend it, she could have forced some of the plants that had rampantly gone to seed to carry on blooming for longer, but she’d missed the moment with most, though the hollyhocks next to her studio were flourishing. A bit of her wondered if it was the same with people. Or, strangely, a bit the opposite. All the young women who were forever moaning in magazines that they were about to hit thirty, maybe they should stop and think, hey, this is the best bit, appreciate it and look after it.

Miranda unlocked her studio and went in to collect the samples she’d need for the meeting the next day. The place felt dusty and hot and there were dead flies all over the floor. It would need a good clear-out before she could start work again, but that was all right. There was something about September that would – and even Clare at her age still felt the same – be for ever the ever-hopeful start of term, like school. Carefully, she wrapped the crockery in coloured tissue paper and took the fabrics into the kitchen for a final ironing before
packing them away too. Then, after a brief foray down the High Road to get milk, croissants and fruit for the morning, she turned her thoughts to the evening.

What to wear? The eternal question. She stared into her wardrobe at what was mostly a winter collection of clothes, way too hot for the sultry town evening that it was going to be here. She didn’t want to wear tomorrow’s blue dress because for absolutely certain sure she’d spill red wine down it. In the end she picked up her keys and bag and left the house. What was the point of having a high street full of lovely shops only a few steps away if you didn’t go out and take advantage of the sales? All that was missing was Harriet to tell her that no, that goldy colour did nothing for her.