In the Summertime (29 page)

‘Steve …’ Miranda said as Dan was hurled out to the garden, whoopingly cheerful in defeat. ‘Honestly, we’ve been divorced for years.’

‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘But – you know, if you don’t mind I’ll be on my way. It was great, you were … great. But.’

‘But?’

‘Fish fryer? Fuck him. Your ex is a total arse. But you know, deep down, nothing changes, does it? Good luck with your meeting. I’ll call you.’

It must have taken Steve all of three minutes to gather the rest of his clothes, start the van and go. Miranda was left alone on the doorstep, all the glow of the night fading.

She couldn’t think about it now. She couldn’t. She called Steve’s phone but he wasn’t replying. He couldn’t claim lack of mobile signal in west London so she had to conclude it was his choice to ignore her and simply get on with her day.

There was too much to do to allow time for worry about her private life, too much at stake, and she didn’t want to screw up the meeting. Everything else could be thought about later. Miranda very carefully took one step at a time and felt she was doing everything by numbers: showering, washing her hair, mechanically telling herself what came next so she’d stay focused. ‘Spray on the Frizz-Ease, Miranda,’ she found herself saying. ‘Now plug in the straighteners’ and so on.

At the last minute, after a final glass of water having brushed her teeth yet again, Miranda put her blue dress on. The cab driver had called to say he was outside. She
added Harriet’s silver necklace, took one last look at herself and decided that was
it.
She was ready to face the room full of suits, as she thought of them.

The meeting was at the big white Holiday Inn just by Heathrow airport. It seemed appropriate that it was a hotel, as that was where her products were destined for, but she’d have thought they’d choose a smaller one, something more like the boutique type that they already ran. In fact, one of theirs would have worked, somewhere over in France, perhaps. A day or two out of the country would have gone down well with her, shaken her horizons up and forced her to remember there was a lot of world out there, not just this bubble she felt she was currently in.

The cab pulled up at the hotel and she went in through revolving doors big enough to accommodate a ton of luggage. She didn’t trust those kinds of doors, thinking there was too much scope for the whole thing to get stuck and leave the occupant trapped like a fish in a bowl, slowly gasping for air and crumpling to the floor.

She was met by a waif of a girl in a blue skirt and a jacket which looked too big for her, as if it needed pinning together at the back like one on a dummy in a shop window, although her shoes, as she click-clacked across to the lift, had the scarlet soles of Louboutin. Serious stuff, Miranda thought, taking a deep breath as, up a couple of floors in the lift, the girl showed her into a room where six men and two women sat round a
boardroom table. Here we go, she thought, putting her bag of goodies down in front of them.

Silva felt slightly frightened. She woke up from difficult dreams about trying to swim through mud and remembered the night before with a bit of a shiver. She buried herself deep under the duvet for a couple more moments before gradually sliding back up the bed to face the daylight.

Jules. On the beach. Just as it was getting dark and when they were all about to head back home … he’d come up and sat beside her on the rock, so close that most of his body was snug against hers. Bo and Lola and Freddie were mucking about with seaweed and looking for stuff on the shoreline to decorate the raft. Seaweed wasn’t going to work, she thought, because it might fall to bits and she didn’t like the slimy feel of it, but they were collecting great bunches of the stuff and ramming it into a couple of supermarket bags that they’d found lying around.

‘So after the regatta, you’ll be coming down here for the party?’ Jules asked her.

‘I don’t know. It’ll be my birthday. There might be plans.’

‘Would be a shame to miss it. Should be a good one.’ He smelled slightly of beer. She didn’t mind that too much. It was better than smoke, anyway, if she had to choose.

‘Time to go, Silv.’ She heard Bo calling to her and looked up. He was staring at her, giving her a look that meant something but she wasn’t sure what. Freddie was already halfway up the hill and Lola was trailing a last piece of seaweed from the sea’s edge. There was loads of the stuff, Silva was thinking, dumped by the storm.

‘So I’ll see you on Thursday then?’ Jules went on. Behind him, further along the beach, Silva could see others lighting cigarettes, passing them round. They weren’t just cigarettes, she realized. How cool was that? Or was it? And the number of bottles of vodka going round – it was all new to her.

‘I … probably,’ Silva said, getting up to follow Bo.

‘Excellent.’ He slid down from the rock, suddenly put an arm round her and kissed the edge of her mouth. ‘Goodnight, Kitty,’ he said.

Silva lay in bed now, touching the bit of her mouth that he’d kissed. There’d been a boy at her ninth birthday party who’d decided she was
definitely
his girlfriend and kissed her hard and made her cry, but apart from that she hadn’t been kissed before. Also, if she were to tell Willow (and this wouldn’t be going on Facebook) she couldn’t even claim it as a snog, nowhere close. But it was … nice. Tingly. Slightly scary. But best of all, it looked like the beautiful Jules, the boy at the top of the local surf-tree, actually fancied
her
. Bring on next week. She couldn’t wait to be fourteen.

Done, finished, sorted and worthy of massive celebration. All order details were confirmed, dates set and an income stream for at least a couple of years was in the bag. Miranda should have been up in the air with delight, but as the train pulled out of Paddington station late that afternoon all she could feel was a sad numbness and an ache where she was pretty sure her heart should be.

The train was crowded and everyone else seemed to be talking on the phone. She should have reserved a seat in the quiet carriage but she’d booked in a hurry and hadn’t thought it through. All the grey-clad business people in first class were spreading out over the tables with their laptops and their so-important papers and were yacking about projects and spreadsheets down the phone as if what was left of the industrial and financial life of the nation depended on them.

She took her phone out and checked again for messages, just in case. Nothing. What had he meant, ‘nothing changes’? She’d thought about that in the cab back to Chiswick from the Holiday Inn. She had a vague idea and it was about that old thing called class. Bloody Dan, kicking off about the van like that, how dare he? He was hardly the prime example of the Protestant work ethic himself, relying on family trusts, his saintly but skewed mother and old-school-tie gallery owner friends who occasionally, over the years, had let him exhibit his impenetrable abstracts on their walls. He’d once
accused her of ‘selling out’, back when she’d sold her first set of chinaware to a major department store. She’d thrown one of the mugs at him then, in fury. ‘It’s called earning a living. Money for food,’ she’d said, hoping the two small children upstairs wouldn’t be woken by the crash of china on the chipped tile floor of their rented flat’s tiny kitchen.

When they got to Exeter and the numbers in the carriage thinned out, Miranda called Harriet to tell her which train she was on, thankful she was on one at all after the disruption from the storm.

‘Everything all right?’ she asked. ‘Are the children OK?’

‘They’re fine, everyone’s OK. The kids are in the pool, testing their raft and trying to get all four of them on it. They keep falling in and shrieking and must be driving half the village nuts. I’ve done them all some supper. Eliot’s here too. He and Mum keep giggling.’

‘A party without me. Jealous,’ Miranda said, not entirely joking. She had a sudden massive longing to be back with them all, getting a virtual hug in a cocoon of the family warmth. To think she’d rather dreaded Harriet’s coming to stay – now she wondered how she’d cope without her. Harriet was now the grown-up and she the chucked adolescent.

‘How’s Duncan?’

Harriet giggled. ‘Still brilliant. I think this is a keeper. Er … not in the goalie sense, you know. But proper. He likes me, Mand!’

‘Well of course he does!’

‘No,
really
likes. But there’s one weird thing. Pablo is still around. I haven’t seen him but his car’s there. And he hasn’t gone away and just left it here either; Jessica said she saw it zapping through the village. I don’t know why he’s still hanging around.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t have the brain to find his way out of Cornwall without Duncan to guide him.’

‘Miranda, he’s dim but not
that
dim. And anyway, I bet people would be queuing up to program his sat-nav for him if he really wanted to leave. The Pengarret staff, for sure. I heard he’s big on room service at three a.m. But tell me about Steve.’

Miranda sighed. What could she say? She looked out of the window as the Exmouth estuary approached. Soon there’d be no signal as the train went through the tunnels in the red Devon rock.

‘When I get home, Harrie,’ she said. ‘Meet me at Redruth?’

‘OK. But for someone who’s had a brilliant day, you sound a bit dow …’ The phone cut out and Miranda put it away in her bag and took out the newspaper. She’d give the cryptic crossword a go, she decided, realizing she was turning into her mother.

It was all the other way round for once. Harriet seemed to be looking after Miranda and the family and taking the domestic load off her. Who would have thought
Harriet could, after all, keep a kitchen clean and be a fussy mother hen when it came to teenagers trailing sand across a clean floor? Miranda, trying her best to keep her mood of misery to herself, set off for the shop on Monday morning to get a few supplies. Got to face the enemy some time, she thought, picturing the loved-up face of Cheryl.

‘Maybe it could never have been more than a one-off,’ she said to Jessica over coffee when she called in on the way. ‘It just felt like so much more. You’d think at my age I could tell the difference between a one-nighter and something else. I set myself up for it, really. I was so sure about Cheryl.’

‘I still think you’re wrong. They’ve known each other for years – why would they suddenly be an item? They weren’t before. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘What
does
make sense, Jess? Maybe he was just getting revenge for my treating him badly all those years ago.’

‘That would be one long-held grudge. Listen, why don’t you just call him up, and if that’s the case tell him to get over it?’

Fortified with that advice, and knowing she’d be seeing him on Wednesday for Jack’s ceremony (he had at least texted to confirm a time to pick them all up at the pontoon), she went off to the shop for bread, eggs and milk.

Cheryl was there, talking across the counter to
Geraldine as Miranda approached. ‘Still all “loved-up” as you young ones say?’ Geraldine was booming.

‘Yeah, I
so
am!’ Cheryl confirmed as she weighed out mushrooms. ‘I won’t be here much longer. I’ll be moving away from this place very soon. And about time. All my mates have gone up-country years ago. Mind you, most of them came back.’

‘God knows why,’ Geraldine said, pocketing her change. ‘There can’t be any work. I suppose you all just have babies.’ She stomped out, giving Miranda a brief hello, and receiving a V-sign from Cheryl as soon as her back was turned.

Miranda picked up a loaf, a dozen eggs, some apples and a couple of bottles of milk and took them to Cheryl at the till. ‘Good luck with your move,’ she said, trying her best to smile and be generous with her wishes.

Cheryl gave her a look. ‘Well, coming from you, that’s a surprise. After everything an’ that.’ In sulky silence she bagged up Miranda’s goods and took her money. ‘You’ll be going home soon then,’ she said, pretty much speeding her on her way.

‘Saturday, yes.’

‘Won’t be seeing you again, then.’

‘Probably not. Looks like it’ll be me coming back to the village in the future rather than you, if you’re off. I’ve got friends here still.’

‘Well I’ve got me mum and me old mates. I won’t lose
touch with my roots and go all big-time on them, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

Miranda wasn’t thinking anything of the sort, but she wished her well and took her heavy shopping bag and even heavier heart out of the shop and up the lane back to the house. Steve’s house.

It was time. Clare took the urn out of the wardrobe and carried it downstairs. She put it on the table in the hallway and stared at it for a few moments. Something was missing inside her – not love for Jack, that would never go – but the idea that he – or any essence of ‘he’ – was inside that container. All the same, the ceremony had to be got through. She hoped the girls wouldn’t be horribly upset by it. And more than that, she hoped no one would get seasick. There was still quite a swell out there, left over from the storm

‘You ready?’ Miranda came out from the kitchen carrying bags of food and bottles of champagne.

‘Ready,’ Clare said. ‘I need something to put this in.’ She pointed at the urn. ‘I don’t want to carry it through the village like some sort of weird … thing.’

‘Um … OK, hang on. I can put the fizz in a Sainsbury’s bag and the urn in the basket?’

Clare waved her away. ‘No, I’ll use the Sainsbury’s one. Jack wouldn’t care,’ she said. There was a noise outside and someone tapped on the door. ‘Is that Eliot?’ she asked, perking up.

‘Aren’t he and the others meeting us at the pontoon?’ Miranda said, wondering why Eliot would trail up the hill just to walk all the way back down it again minutes later.

‘He said he’d come up and give us a hand,’ Clare said, opening the door. Eliot came in and kissed her, holding her tight for a few seconds. Miranda noticed and thought how kind he was.

Steve was waiting on the pontoon with the boat and Jessica and Andrew were there too, already aboard. He greeted the party warmly but only nodded briefly at Miranda, who felt hurt. How could he be like that after what they’d done and the evening they’d had and the laughs? But it wasn’t about her, this trip, so she put on a bright enough face and climbed on board without accepting the helping hand he was offering to them all to steady them.