In the Summertime (4 page)

Miranda folded some T-shirts and put them in a drawer and had a moment of wondering what Steve would be like these days. He’d only been nineteen the last time she’d seen him, an age that had seemed truly awesome to an impressionable sixteen-year-old. Steve was a grown-up, long out of school, working for real, running the ferry and the lobster pots. This wasn’t just some student fill-in soft-handed occupation like bar work or being a call-centre temp, saving up for indulgent gap-year travel; this was proper working for a living. He’d been a quiet boy who didn’t need to waste words when a smile and a look and an invitation to an evening trip out in his boat seemed to be enough to attract girls in droves. Almost certainly he’d be long-term married now – Cornwall was big on early weddings – and most likely father to a couple of
children. If they looked anything like him, they’d be beautiful: all huge dark eyes and a smile to charm the toughest heart. That couldn’t, she was now sure, have been him at the pub last night. He’d have long moved on. Australia had been a lot of the local boys’ destination of choice, that and Indonesia, for the surfing, and then maybe London or Bristol in search of the work that wasn’t available locally. No, that one last night was just some random man of a similar build and jawline. She hadn’t really seen more of him than that. The place was sure to be full of them, typical stock from a fairly local gene pool. The teenage Steve had had long brown hair, which was always slightly sun-streaked with a touch of caramel, and his face was tanned from the sea’s constant glare. He’d also had a moody youth’s contempt for upcountry people whizzing about the narrow lanes too fast in what he called ‘fuckin’ poncy drop-heads’, so that pretty much ruled out – unless he’d had a radical change of heart – ownership of that little black Mercedes.

Oh, but the bliss of being single, she thought now as she plumped up the pillows and pulled the soft lavender knitted throw over the duvet. Later, she’d pick some of the pink roses she’d seen down by the pool, put them in a vase on the table by the window. How wonderful to have the scent of flowers and not some man’s smelly trainers. This lovely room, with its glorious view towards the creek, the sea and the tiny
offshore island beyond the first estuary beach, was going to be her private haven for the duration. Clare – when trying to get the teenage Miranda to clear up her room – had once quoted to her from Shirley Conran’s
Superwoman
: ‘Never come back to an unmade bed’, and even during her most rebellious phase it had lodged in her mind. She might be a long, long way from obsessively houseproud, but when she needed space to escape to, the last thing she wanted was to open the door and find it depressingly scruffy.

But downstairs it was a different story. How, she wondered as her sequinned Havaianas crunched over toast crumbs on the kitchen floor, did a mere two children manage to make such a mess in such a short time? Mugs were on the worktop, resting in puddles of sticky spilled coffee. More plates, dishes and knives than could possibly be justified by a few slices of toast and a bit of cereal were drowned in a sink full of cold, grey scummy water with a scrunched-up J-cloth floating on top. The dishwasher was only inches away. Did they, Miranda asked herself, think it opened with a magic key that only a grown-up could be trusted with? As she opened the larder door, pulled a loaf of bread from the shelf and put two slices into the toaster, she resolved to be more assertive when it came to shared chores. Bo and Silva were
not
to be allowed to take after their bone-idle dad.

‘What are we doing today? Can we just hang out by
the pool here or have we got to … er … y’know, do the Granddad thing?’ Silva came in through the utility room door in her blue and white stripy bikini, dripping water and rubbing a towel across her wet hair.

‘I hadn’t really thought about it yet,’ Miranda told her after a moment or two of considering the options. Beach? It was already pretty sunny out there. Were Bo and Silva too old for simply messing about on the sand, or was her mother right – that they’d missed out on the bucket and spade stage and might quite enjoy (though pretending it was beneath them really) some childlike fun in a place where none of their so-cool friends would see them.

‘I think I’d better ask your gran,’ she decided. ‘I thought she’d say something last night about what she wanted to do about Jack’s ashes but she didn’t mention it and we were all so knackered from the journey that it didn’t seem right to put any pressure on her. She’s not up yet, so we’ll have to wait and see.’

‘No, Mum, she is up. She’s in the garden pulling up random weeds just like this was her own place.’ Silva suddenly sniffed the air like a cat. ‘I smell toast. Can I have some?’

‘You can. Though I see you already have. Or did the elves come in the night and make this mess?’ Miranda started spreading her own toast with honey. No butter. She was sure her middle was starting to spread
(should that happen before you were even
forty
?) and she wanted to let it know that this wasn’t allowed.

‘Must have been Bo,’ Silva said, shrugging off all responsibility and looking in the larder for the bread Miranda had just put away. ‘Gran’s been up ages and down to the sea and she’s swum out to the little island and back. She said we should have gone with her but I said what’s the point of freezing in the sea when you’ve got a lovely warm pool right here.’

‘She has? Already? And hey, put that bread back once you’ve finished with it, please.’ Miranda glanced at the giant station-style clock on the wall. It was only just after nine. Maybe Clare couldn’t sleep. Once again she wondered if this trip had been the best idea. After she’d had her breakfast she’d go and check the back of the car, see if the urn had been taken out and brought to somewhere in the house. It wasn’t in the kitchen, though she’d half dreaded coming downstairs and seeing it sitting on the table when she’d walked in. Back at Clare’s flat, overlooking the Thames in Richmond, the urn had been kept on the table beside her bed. Amy, sounding nervous all the way from south-west France, had asked Miranda on the phone if she thought Clare actually slept with it, ‘like,
under the duvet
?’ Miranda had told her not to be so ridiculous but, all the same, she’d slightly wondered too. Harriet had seen it one day when she and the footballer were on a weekend trip down to an away match and she and Miranda had gone to
Clare’s with food supplies that Miranda didn’t quite trust Clare to bother getting for herself.

‘Ugh! It’s completely
gross
!’ Harriet had said in her usual tactless way, shuddering over-dramatically.

‘It’s not gross, that’s your father,’ Clare had said simply, very quietly.

Harriet had, for once, waited till she was out of range of Clare to mutter, ‘It’s just dust, not Dad,’ but there’d been tears in her eyes. Not so tough, that time.

Perhaps, Miranda considered, Clare had taken the urn up to her room. She hoped not, because if she had it could be a sign that she wasn’t after all ready to say goodbye to Jack’s remains and they’d end up taking his ashes all the way back to London again at the end of the three weeks. Although she didn’t – and never could – take Harriet’s harsh line, it would surely be the right thing to do to dispose of the ashes exactly the way Jack had asked. That could be an emotional blackmail point, should the need arise.

‘I don’t mind what we do today, Silva, but I would like to look around the village a bit, see what’s changed. We could see if they still let visitors be holiday members at the sailing club, so you and Bo would have something to do. Back in the old days we used to have loads of good times down there. You might meet some people to hang out with.’

‘Uh? “Hang out”? Who says like,
hang out
?’ Silva gave
her the utter-incomprehension look, though of course she knew perfectly well what it meant.

‘OK, OK, I give up. It’ll be just you and Bo on your own, then. Exclusively in each other’s company for three whole weeks. I’m sure you’ll manage to have a perfectly brilliant time, amusing yourselves, just the two of you. Together.’

Ha, thought Miranda, seeing Silva’s eyes narrow – a clear sign that some cog-wheels were clunking around in her thought processes. That worked.

There was such a lot of garden here to deal with, Clare thought as she took out a few well-grown stinkhorn weeds along the hydrangea-lined path on her way back from swimming in the cove. She remembered how Liz and Eliot’s gardener had always seemed to be around, pushing a wheelbarrow silently across the grass past where the rest of them were sitting on the terrace or by the pool with drinks. What a privileged and idle bunch they must have seemed to him, all the tedious domestic tidying being done for them while they lazed and sailed and were forever going out to eat at prices that would have kept the gardener’s family for a week. She stopped now by the pool and pulled fronds of goosegrass out from between the clumps of agapanthus. She didn’t have to, but when you saw something that needed doing there was no point in leaving it. Goosegrass was a bugger for strangling plants, clinging to them stickily
and dragging them down till they were covered over and smothered. She couldn’t bear to leave them to struggle when the stuff unravelled so easily with only a light tug. With a garden this size you’d need either nothing else to do with your time or a knowledgeable gardener – and more than just once a week for an hour or two. Outdoor space was only a good thing so long as it was manageable. One of her upstairs neighbours, after Jack had died, had said to her, ‘Well, at least you have your garden. It’ll be a comfort.’ What a stupid thing to say, she’d thought at the time, feeling
that
close to whopping the woman hard across the head with a trowel. How could a garden possibly even come close to making up for the loss of the person you’d loved and lived with for over thirty years? And yet she’d found herself out among her plants in her little greenhouse on the morning of Jack’s funeral, potting on the calendulas she’d grown from seed the previous autumn, absorbing herself in weeding and tidying and not thinking about anything but the job in hand. It was only an hour later that she’d stood in the chapel at Mortlake crematorium as the congregation sang ‘Love Divine’, picking compost from under her fingernails and trying not to look at the coffin.

Toby purred around her feet, rubbing his face against the plants and chewing at the flowers on a rambling clump of purple catnip. She stroked his ginger ears and wondered if he should have sunscreen on the tender
tips to prevent skin cancer. The air was so thin and clear here by the sea. At Miranda’s home in west London he was probably protected from burning by layers of sticky urban air, with its constant outfall of aircraft fuel, and at very low risk. She would sneak some Piz Buin on to him later when no one was around. They’d only laugh. She reached for another clump of the goosegrass and pulled it out to add to the pile on the path.

‘My stepmother hated this stuff,’ a voice behind Clare suddenly said. She looked up. The girl who had fallen in the water the night before (Lola? Lily?) was standing by the diving board close to her mother, who was pulling another long strand of the goosegrass from among the agapanthus. It was the mother (with her hair hidden under a scarlet scarf this time and a newspaper tucked under her arm) who was talking, and she came over to add her weeds to the pile Clare had heaped on the paving. ‘Especially after Dad told us one of its names was sticky willy.’

The woman giggled; her daughter rolled her eyes and said, ‘Gross, Mum. Like shu’ up?’

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ the woman went on. ‘I mean, why would you – it’s been a long time. I hope you don’t mind – I went down to the shop to get the paper and thought, I just have to come up here and see if it’s actually you. When you were on the bridge yesterday I thought I kind of knew you but then I thought, as you do, no, it couldn’t be, but then it nagged
at me half the night. But you are Mrs Miller, aren’t you? And that was Miranda who was with you?’

Clare looked carefully at her and hesitated only a few seconds. ‘Oh, goodness, Jessica! Eliot’s daughter! You’re still here. How wonderful! And you have this beautiful girl too. You must come on up to the house and see Miranda – she’ll be so thrilled!’

Jessica hesitated. ‘Will she, though? We did sort of lose touch.’ She sounded shy and almost as young as Clare remembered her. ‘Are you sure it’ll be OK?’

‘I don’t see why not. I’m sure she’ll be delighted!’ Clare assured her, then asked, ‘You didn’t end on a big falling out or anything, did you?’

‘No, but … well, I did try to find her on Facebook a few years ago but all the Miranda Millers weren’t the right ones.’

‘That’s because she’s not really a Miller. Never was, really, though she tried it for a while when she was in her teens. Miller was Jack’s surname and the one her younger sisters have. She had my maiden name and we never changed it to my husband’s. I had her before I met him, you see, so she’s Miranda Beck.’

‘Ha!’ Jessica laughed as she followed Clare up the steps to the house. ‘That’s funny – she’s got the same name as all that kitchen design stuff that’s absolutely everywhere. Mugs and trays and flowery plates and all that. Do people keep thinking it’s her? Must be a pain.’

‘Well, yes, they do.’ Clare turned and smiled at Jessica.
‘But it’s not a pain because she
is
that Miranda Beck.’

‘Crikey, is she really?’ Jessica said. ‘I mean, wow – she’s done well! She’s everywhere. There’s like, Cath Kidston, Orla Kiely and … Miranda Beck. Impressed.’

She went quiet but her daughter Lola chipped in, ‘Don’t worry, Mum. I don’t think you’re an underachiever. It can’t be that hard to paint flowers on a plate.’

‘Gran’s coming in. She’s on the steps and she’s got someone with her. It’s those people from last night – you know, that stupid girl who fell off the wall. Better wake Bo up – that Lola girl’s going to be
in da kit-chin
in like a
minute
and he’ll be well vexed if he misses her.’ Silva, now wearing a long grey T-shirt with its neckline roughly scissored off over her bikini, was opening the door to the terrace to let them all in.