Out of My Depth (5 page)

I looked at Roman pleadingly.

He shook his head. ‘It’s for you,’ he said, in the drawling public school English that he had learned from his father. ‘You know it.’

I sighed and scraped my chair back. During the summer, we entertained so often that when we had a few days without any guests, I liked to savour the peace. In winter, I would rush for the phone. Now I resented it. I was precariously balanced between terror and excitement about the upcoming weekend. I didn’t need anything to disturb my equilibrium.

I decided to answer it in the office. I hoped it was neither Jackie nor Amanda. Amanda had called four times over three days, wanting to know about the night-time temperatures, the necessity of jackets, whether I wanted her to bring me some Marmite, and whether I had a cat. One of the children was ‘sensitive’ to cats. Luckily we ran a cat-free household.

Amanda had always been demanding. I couldn’t wait to see her, but speaking to her all the time without having caught up properly was weird. As for my sister, she had been trying very hard to muscle in on my reunion. We had completely fallen out over my refusal to allow her to join us.

‘Âllo?
'
I said in my best French voice, hoping to confuse whichever of them was disturbing my evening.

‘Hello,’ said a woman. She sounded unsure of herself, which ruled out both Amanda and Jackie. ‘Erm, is that Susanna Chapman?’

I sensed a work call, so I put on my polite voice.

‘Yes it is!’ I said. I sat down at the trestle table where our finances were supposed to be managed by whoever could be bothered to do it, which was generally me. ‘How can I help you?’ I picked up a pen and doodled a flower and a bumble bee on a post-it note.

‘Um. This is going to sound odd.’ Her voice was crisp. ‘We haven’t met, but I believe you have painted some portraits of me. Which is weird, isn’t it? My name is Sarah Saunders. There’s one picture where you painted me lying by a swimming pool. One where I’m sitting on a wall by a village on a hill. And one where I’m reading a book outside a cottage in Greece or somewhere. They all have your signature on the bottom corner. It’s taken me a while to track you down.’

I smiled. This sounded like another commission, and although I was already busy, you could never be too popular. I forgave her for coming between me and my dinner.

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Hello! Of course I know you. You’re Neil Barron’s wife. You’re lovely to paint.’ I swivelled in my chair, trying to see whether Roman was eating my food.

‘I’m Neil Barron’s wife?’ she echoed.

‘Aren’t you? He commissioned them for you.’

‘Neil Barron?’ She sounded lost.

I frowned. ‘Yes.’

‘You see, I’m not married. And I don’t know any Neil Barron.’

I stopped drawing. ‘Seriously?’

‘Absolutely seriously.’

‘So who is he? I mean, he must be your husband. He sends me photos of you. He sends me postcards of places he’s been with you. If he’s not your husband, then who could he possibly be?’

‘This is what I was hoping we might be able to work out.’

Ten minutes later, I went back out and started picking at the cold pasta.

‘Want me to stick that in the microwave?’ Roman asked.

I looked at the cheesy pasta and thought about my thighs and waistline. Then I remembered my eight kilometre run that morning, and vowed to do another the next day.

‘Go on, then,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

He disappeared. I watched the sun becoming huge and holding itself above the horizon, bleeding into the field of maize. It had been a hot, dry summer with ferocious water restrictions, and even though the farmers irrigated anyway, the crops were clearly unhappy. Even in this light, I could see the brown tips on the leaves.

When Roman came back with a plate that was too hot to touch, the sun had almost disappeared.

‘That was someone called Sarah Saunders,’ I told him. ‘She’s that woman I keep having to paint into postcard scenes.’ I looked to him for recognition.

He nodded. ‘The blonde. With the husband.’

‘Mmm. And yet, not-mmm. She’s the blonde. But she says she hasn’t got a husband.’ I burnt the inside of my mouth, and gulped champagne to cool it. ‘Ouch,’ I added. ‘She says this guy leaves my paintings in her porch as strange little presents.’

‘Like something the cat dragged in?’

I looked at him. ‘That’s my art you’re talking about. But yes. Exactly.’

Roman smiled, and dimples appeared in his cheeks. ‘So you’ve got to dig out everything you’ve ever had from him and hand it over to the police? Can I help? Can I be like Rebus?’

I shook my head, my mouth full. ‘Nope,’ I said, probably indistinctly. ‘She hasn’t told the police. She reckons it must be someone she knows.’

‘So sharp she’ll cut herself. I stand corrected. I’m not Rebus. She’s Miss Bloody Marple. Quite the little detective.’

I ignored that. ‘The sum total of everything I’ve ever had from him has been three photos, three postcards, and probably a couple of answerphone messages that have long since been recorded over. All the paperwork’s with the gallery.’

‘Tell me she’s talked to the gallery, at least.’

I shook my head. ‘Just to get our number off them. On the grounds that they’d already given it to her supposed husband.’ I paused, thinking. ‘Which means she must have pretended to be his actual wife. Which is weird. She doesn’t speak French so she wants me to explain it to Marc in the morning.’

Roman leaned back in his chair and smiled. ‘Just what you need!’ He was sarcastic. ‘You’re already having kittens because your long-lost best friends in all the world — people you’ve never mentioned once in the past four years — are coming to stay the day after tomorrow. And now you have to get involved in a Kay Scarpetta operation at the same time. Brilliant.’

‘Yeah.’ I slumped back and pushed my plate away. ‘No, though. Kay Scarpetta cuts bodies open with a saw. I hope it won’t come to that. But that bloke. He was so jolly on the phone. I never for a moment thought he might be a weirdo.’ I stopped myself. ‘I haven’t even got time to think about him very much,’ I said firmly. ‘There’s so much to do before the girls get here.’

The evening was perfectly still, and the light was rapidly fading. I tried to tell myself that everything was under control. I took a deep breath. We had entertained visitors throughout the summer, and I was sure that most of them had been more demanding than my three schoolfriends. I was an expert hostess. There was nothing to worry about. Neil Barron should have been my only concern. Yet I was petrified. I felt constantly nauseous at the knowledge that Tamsin was about to come to my house.

Roman put a hand on my shoulder. You’re not stressing about the girls, are you?’ he asked, his confusion showing in his voice.

‘No,’ I lied. ‘Just tired. That phone call’s freaking me out. And it’s been nonstop visitors this summer, hasn’t it?’

'And I’ve never seen you fret about any of them. You do it so well. You’re relaxed and welcoming and happy, and everyone has a superb time from the moment they step in through the door. As for the stalker — if he is a stalker-you’re not his target so you don’t need to worry.’ He looked into my eyes. ‘Susie, it has nothing to do with you.’

‘You’re right.’

Roman refilled my glass and I sipped the champagne gratefully.

It was nine o’clock. There were still a couple of tiny, rosy clouds by the horizon. It was comfortably cool. I looked past the lawn, past my studio, and through the cluster of trees. The swimming pool had been finished two months ago, and it glinted temptingly, still golden with the memory of the setting sun.

‘Hey,’ I said, nodding my head towards it. ‘Swim?’

Roman grinned and downed the last of his champagne. ‘Skinny dip?’

‘Always.’

We stood up and raced down the garden. Roman was faster than me. He was fitter than me, bigger than me, stronger than me. I didn’t mind that at all. I was fit. I ran every day, so I was not exactly lumbering fatly after him. In fact I was close behind when he reached the pool.

I stopped and looked at it. This was my swimming pool; my favourite thing in the world. I never tired of gazing upon it. Perhaps I was vain and superficial, but the pool made me prouder of myself than almost anything else in my life. It represented everything. Without my niche art market, there would be no pool. If my cards weren’t stocked by Ikea and W H. Smith and WalMart, there would be no pool. If I didn’t have a huge garden, there would be no pool. If the house were not renovated and thoroughly, delightfully, quirkily habitable, there would be no pool. The swimming pool was a luxury during a drought. A mass of water in the garden. It was elemental, indulgent.

I pulled my cotton wrap dress open and let it fall to the ground. I shrugged out of my pink underwear, ran through the open gate, and dived in at the deep end. The water felt like velvet. It caressed me.

I came up to the surface, giggling and rubbing my eyes, and trod water and looked at Roman. He was swimming underwater, and he surfaced, as ever, right next to me. He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me to the side of the pool. There was always the frisson of danger with skinny dipping: the next door farmhouse, where a gruff farmer called Pierre lived with his silent wife, overlooked us. At least, the far end of their vegetable garden overlooked our pool from a considerable height. There was always a remote possibility that one of them could be standing there, peering down, possibly with binoculars, watching us.

I looked up the hill, and couldn’t see anything.

‘It’s nearly dark,’ Roman pointed out, following my gaze. ‘He would have to really, really want to catch a glimpse of your treasures to be out there spying now.’

‘Well, maybe he does really, really want to catch a glimpse of my treasures.’

‘Of course he does.’ Roman grinned. ‘Tell you what, let’s make it easier for him.’ He pulled himself out of the pool and ran naked to the pool house, where he flicked a switch. The pool lit up, bright turquoise, easily visible to anyone in Pierre’s garden. I squirmed and shrieked, but the exhibitionist in me liked the danger.

‘He never speaks to me apart from bonjour,' I said, with a laugh. I flipped onto my back and looked up at the starry sky.

‘Because he’s paralysed with lust,’ Roman said, diving back in.

I waited for him to surface. ‘And she never speaks to me if she can help it.’

‘Paralysed with lust too. It would make a great lesbian porn flick, actually. Bernadette the farmer’s wife runs, in slow motion, through her fields to join the beautiful foreign artist, naked in her outdoor pool.’ He nodded appreciatively. ‘Mmmmmm. Would work, you know.’

‘Great,’ I told him, suddenly annoyed. I kicked myself upright in the water. ‘Well, you pop up there and ask when would be convenient to film it, then.’ His hands were suddenly on my waist. I shook them off and started swimming away. Insects were flying kamikaze missions into the pool, drawn in by the light. There were going to be dead moths all over the surface in the morning. ‘Have you checked the pH lately?’ I asked, sharply.

I heard Roman sigh. He was swimming up behind me. ‘Yes,’ he said, in a bored voice. ‘And I’ll do it again before Friday. And I’ll clean the filters again, and the pump, and I’ll wash out the baskets and check the temperature and the water level. It will sparkle and shine as if it were wired to the electricity. Every molecule will be clean and clear.’

‘Thank you.’ I turned and kissed him.

‘Oh, she likes me again now.’

‘I always like you.’

‘Prove it.’

So I did. Swimming-pool sex was one of our favourite activities that summer.

Later, we lay on the prickly grass, and looked for shooting stars. My hair was wet, and my legs were sticking to each other, awkwardly unmoisturised. The moon was nearly full. The trees cast shadows.

‘It must be weird to have a stalker,’ I said, staring at the white smear of the Milky Way.

‘Don’t think about it,’ Roman instructed. ‘Just send her the stuff he sent you and let her sort it out. It’s not your responsibility.’

‘Oh, very caring.’

‘Hey, there’s no point losing sleep over it,’ he pointed out. ‘Worry about your visitors, if you must. Not about this strange lady.’ He paused. ‘Do the stars make you feel insignificant?’ he added.

I giggled. ‘Not really. You?’

‘It takes more than an infinite and unknowable universe to dwarf Roman Jackson.’

‘I wish I could stare at the sky and stop fretting over the weekend,’ I said. ‘But all I can think about is stuff like, I’ll do a big supermarket shop tomorrow. I’ve got a list written but I’ll rack my brains for things to add to it in the morning. In fact I’m going to sleep with a pen and paper on the bedside table for all the things I remember in the middle of the night.’

‘Mmm,’ grunted Roman.

‘Breakfast cereal. All the fresh milk Intermarché have got, which won’t be much. Why don’t they do fresh milk in France?’

‘Because they do UHT milk instead. I don’t know. That’s just the way it is.’

‘It’s weird.’

‘Yes. I know. To put so much effort into cheese, and then barely to bother with fresh milk at all is, indeed, weird.’