In the Summertime (25 page)

‘No, Tarquin and Emilia, we can
not
go to the shop. This is educational.’ The brisk, clipped voice of the kind of whip-thin pushy London mother that Miranda remembered all too well from her primary-school-gate days rang out as she addressed her pair of bored children, who were not remotely interested in these floppy, grey, ungainly creatures. ‘You will write about this for your holiday project.’

‘I can’t get a signal,’ Lola grouched as she leaned against the glass, fiddling with her mobile phone and holding it up and waving it. ‘Mum might have called.’ She sounded concerned.

Eliot came over to her. ‘She’ll be fine, Lo-lo, don’t you worry. Let’s just watch the seals being fed and then I’ll take you home if you want.’

Silva was standing beside Lola, looking puzzled. ‘Is she not well?’

‘She’s well,’ Eliot told her. ‘She wasn’t, but she is now. OK, Lola?’

Lola nodded, put her phone away and turned to look at the pool as the volume of seal-honk increased and a keeper arrived with buckets of fish. Children cheered
and the girl with the fish called for volunteers from the audience. Silva nudged Lola. ‘Shall we?’

‘Are you
mad
?’ Lola said, glaring. ‘We’ll get fish-hands and all stinky.’

‘So? Oh, come on, just for a giggle?’ She grabbed Lola and pushed her forward in front of her. Lola started to laugh and the two girls joined a selection of much smaller children in the enclosure. Bo whistled and whooped at them.

‘Go Silva!’ he shouted.

‘She’s a sweetie, your girl. I can see how it is between them – a bit unsure of each other – and that was very kind of her,’ Eliot said to Miranda. ‘It’s not been fun for Lola, you know, her mum being so ill when there’s only the two of them, and it’s left her snappy and scared. There was plenty of family help, but in the end it’s just Lo and Jessica.’ He looked sad. ‘And everyone needs a special someone, don’t they?’ he added, glancing across to Clare who was taking photos of the two girls, who were now shrieking with laughter as they threw mackerel into the water and the great creatures tumbled about splashing them thoroughly.

‘They do,’ Miranda agreed, sending up a little prayer for Andrew and Jessica to be lucky. And not just them, she thought, looking quickly at Clare before turning back to Eliot with a smile. ‘They definitely do.’

It was a vile night. The thunder and lightning raged over
the village as if this place alone out of the whole nation deserved a huge celestial telling off from on high. The thunder had rumbled away to terrorize someone else by the small hours but the wind became more and more demonic as time passed and whirled round the house making howling noises and sending twigs and small branches hurtling to the ground. The rain was pounding down at a tropical rate and Miranda, after some fitful sleeping, was properly woken up not long after five in the morning by the branches of a mimosa sapling outside her room whipping against her window. Unable to sleep any longer and feeling hot and sticky because the poor cat, soaking wet from a brief foray into the garden and scared by the weather, had climbed on to the duvet and was trying to snuggle against her, she got out of bed and went downstairs to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. The rain was streaking down the windows so she opened the terrace doors to watch the low purple and black clouds, looking rather like giant prunes, scudding across the sky against a background of murky grey-yellow. The colours were amazing, she realized, thinking immediately in terms of a bold abstract design for a fabric, and she went to her work bag in the sitting room and fetched her coloured pencils and sketch books and sat at the table drawing till daylight started creeping in and she’d covered four pages with lavish patterns in lurid bad-weather shades that she was completely thrilled with. When she got back she’d scan
them into her computer and play with them a bit more, adjusting it to achieve the boldness of colour that you couldn’t get with the pencils.

It was now nearly seven and there was no time to get any more sleep. I’ll doze on the train, Miranda decided, stretching her stiffened body and yawning.

‘Bloody ’ell, you’re up early.’ Harriet came into the kitchen, plonked herself down on the chair opposite and started looking through Miranda’s work. ‘Wow, these are good. I’d wear this if it was material and you made me a dress.’

‘Would you really? Well, it’s a thought. I haven’t done a clothing fabric line.’ Miranda considered. ‘Not an easy field to get into, but worth looking at. I think I’ll get some sample lengths made up and take them to the big fabric shows. I mean, obviously I do that anyway, but only for the cushions and stuff for my own business, not to sell on. But it could be another outlet.’

‘I’m talking about like for a clothes designer so you can supply limited amounts. Not general market-stall rolls, you know?’ Harriet yawned. ‘God, what a horrible night. I hardly slept.’ She giggled. ‘That makes two in a row.’ Miranda gave her a look. ‘Sorry,’ Harriet said. ‘I shouldn’t flaunt my gorgeous new sex life when you haven’t got one.’

‘Thanks for reminding me.’ Miranda snapped shut the box of pencils. ‘Do you know, just for the last few hours it hadn’t even crossed my mind for a minute.’ She’d
meant it as a joke, but actually it was true. Maybe if she just concentrated on working really, really hard for absolutely every minute of the day she’d never think about the neglected – almost cobwebbed, like Miss Havisham’s boudoir – area in her life where Steve had inconveniently (and, to be fair, accidentally) reminded her the passion department should be. Also, she’d have every chance of being a mega-rich tycoon. Every cloud …

‘What time’s your train?’ Harriet asked. ‘And are you going to leave earlier in case there are trees down? The night was a bit damn wild.’

‘Oh lordy, don’t even think it!’ Miranda said. ‘I
have
to be at that meeting tomorrow morning if I have to walk there.’

‘Oh, you’ll get there. You’ve got ages. You’re not like me – I’d have left it till tonight and got the sleeper and left myself no leeway for anything going wrong and then I’d panic and cry. Don’t worry. More tea?’ She went to switch the kettle on and the moment she touched the switch all the lights went off. ‘Aaagh – power’s gone. Was it something I did?’ She prodded the kettle switch but nothing happened.

‘Oh, great,’ Miranda said. ‘I can’t leave you all here with no power. Maybe I should go this afternoon, or on the sleeper like you.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Harriet said. ‘It’ll be back on in no time. Just go! Have you packed? And you are going
to wear that cobalt blue shift dress for the meeting, aren’t you?’

‘I’ve packed, and yes I’ll wear it. Thanks for the help and for the loan of that mad silver necklace. It’s perfect.’ Miranda put her cup in the dishwasher and went off to get dressed. Halfway up the stairs she could hear her phone ringing in her bedroom and she raced to answer it, her heart no longer doing the swift rate increase it had twenty-four hours ago as she was sure it wouldn’t be Steve. And it wasn’t, it was the cab company telling her that, oh the joy, there were no trains to London as the torrential rain had caused a landslip on the line at Dawlish and did she want to cancel the taxi or still see if she could get a train as far as Plymouth?

She’d have to take the Passat after all, she realized, thanking the bearer of the bad news and cancelling the cab. She just hoped the others wouldn’t mind.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Miranda, of course it’s all right,’ Clare said when she told them. ‘You’ll be back on Friday – we can easily manage a couple of days without a car. It’s not as if there isn’t a shop if we need anything, and you bought loads of food yesterday. And if the weather doesn’t clear up I’ll get the children out to do some proper walking, like we used to do.’ She looked quite pleased at the prospect.

‘Hmm – good luck with that.’ Harriet giggled. ‘I can just see them stomping round the fields in their fancy
London trainers. Can you imagine Silva risking getting cow crap on her Converses?’

Why is nothing simple, Miranda thought later as she shoved her bags in the car and prepared to drive down the lane. She hugged everyone goodbye and they wished her a ton of luck with the meeting and off she went, only to find after less than a hundred yards that the end of the lane was blocked by a fallen oak tree. No way could she drive past it and it would take a crane or someone with industrial-strength chainsaws to clear a path. She climbed out of the car and, ridiculously, went up close to the tree as if by getting near to it and possibly asking it nicely it might just get up and move out of her way.

‘Damn and arse!’ she said, kicking at the massive trunk. She could cry with frustration. Why did nothing she wanted to happen seem meant to happen? Was it karma? Could the fates in this place really still be holding against her the fact that she wasn’t the best of girlfriends at sixteen? For heaven’s sake, who was?

She kicked the tree again, which this time hurt her foot. ‘Oh
fuck
,’ she yelled, sitting on the tree trunk and trying not to burst into tears, this time with pain as well as frustration.

There was the sound of a vehicle squealing to a halt below her on the main village road. Maybe this
was
the magical man with a chainsaw and salvation but she quickly saw that it wasn’t. Just a white van … in fact
Steve’s white van with the curly fish on the side. And there he was, climbing out, and there
she
was trying not to cry and clutching her painful foot.

‘You’ve no chance of getting past that,’ he said.

‘Oh, really?’ she said, not amused. ‘And there I was waiting for the tree elves to push it aside for me.’

He had the grace to smile, which she didn’t deserve. ‘Sorry, yes, the school of the bleedin’ obvious. Why don’t you take the car back and then come and get in the van? I’ll give you a lift.’

Miranda thought for a second. ‘OK, but where to? I was going to …’

‘London. Yes, I know. So am I.’

Clare wished she could ask Jack, just ask him if it was OK. Would it be too soon to have any feelings that were even the tiniest bit more than basic friendship? Yes, of course it would. Even ten years on would be too soon, she imagined, when you’ve lost your life partner. And yet … She sat on the floor of her bedroom looking at the urn there among her shoes on the bottom shelf of the wardrobe and actually contemplated talking out loud to Jack. That way madness lay, she thought. She didn’t even believe in any form of life after death, though in the last months she’d wished she could. Jack had joked about it, in a grim kind of way, pointing out that if he didn’t qualify for heaven at least in hell he’d be in the company of all the fun people. She’d remembered
that when she and Miranda had been at the florist, discussing funeral flowers. One arrangement they’d been offered by the meticulously serious shop manager which had had them almost on the floor with crazy hysterical laughter had been something called ‘The Gates of Heaven’ which was an arrangement on wire of a sort of floral archway sitting on a cloud of flowers with a little pair of metallic gates, half open. They’d reminded Clare of a house up the road in Richmond where the owner was mightily proud of his curly metal gates, which opened with a remote control. She hadn’t been able to look at them since without thinking how well they’d look surrounded by chrysanthemums and topped with a little white harp.

‘Why isn’t there a “Gates of Hell”?’ Miranda had said as they’d fled, still weeping with excess hilarity, from the poor bemused florist. ‘You could have shades of brilliant orange flowers and a tiny pitchfork and some horns on the top of the gate.’ That was the trouble with death, and especially with funerals, Clare thought now as she sat on the floor, leaning down to each foot in turn to do some yoga stretches: everything, from coffins depicting the Last Supper to matching keepsake urns for putting on the ends of a mantelpiece, was so kitsch that you could tip over into unsuitable hysterics at every turn. And the laughter went over so easily into tears and so damn often. Clare was quite aware that she’d been like a leaky tap for months now. Jack wouldn’t
approve of that – he gave tears short shrift during life. She doubted he’d be any different after death.

‘So, maybe if …’ she whispered to him, in the general direction of the wardrobe, ‘I mean it’s not very likely, is it, not when Eliot’s been used to women of glamour, but just say
if
. It wouldn’t be too terrible, would it? Just a … you know? Well, not sex probably …’ She broke off and thought for a minute. Was she really never, ever going to have sex again? This thought had come up before and at the time she’d been sure she’d never want to. But now the rest of her life as a lone celibate woman seemed like an awfully long, passionless time.

‘Mum? Who are you talking to?’ Harriet put her head round the door and looked at Clare. ‘What on earth are you doing down there?’

‘Stretches. Keeping myself fit. No swimming this morning – even the pool doesn’t look too inviting in this wind and it’s full of leaves so I’m doing a bit of yoga instead.’

‘Well, a woman needs her exercise,’ Harriet said, a massive grin splitting her face almost in half.

‘Yes. A woman does,’ Clare agreed, kicking the wardrobe door shut with her foot. ‘Make sure you don’t let those muscles go, Harrie – you know what they say about using it or losing it.’

‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ Harriet said. ‘Believe me, I’m already keeping it in mind.’

‘Oh yes! Oh wow, that was the best, best
ever
.’ Miranda sat back and sighed and wiped the back of her mouth on the back of her hand. ‘God, that was
so
good.’

‘That’s quite a reaction to a simple fried egg sandwich. I’d love to see you on steak and chips.’ Steve was laughing at her. Miranda sighed.

‘Well hey, I was hungry. No breakfast, been up since five.’ She wrapped her hands round the café’s thick white mug and sipped her tea, feeling that contentment really was a trucker’s café just off the A30 with strong tea and the tabloids to skim through.

‘Bad night then? I hope it wasn’t an uncomfortable bed. I haven’t had any complaints before.’

Miranda gave him a sharp look. ‘No, well, I suppose you wouldn’t.’