Summer at the Lake (43 page)

‘Why, Mr Strong, are you flirting with me?’

‘Bloody hell, I certainly hope so. It may not seem much to you, but I’m working my arse off here!’

She laughed. ‘And to great effect, I might add.’

He was so close now he could practically count the lashes around her shining eyes. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I’m asking nicely, put me out of my misery and give a sign that it would be all right to kiss you.’

‘What kind of sign would be clear enough for you?’

‘I’d settle for one that indicates you won’t bite me.’

She laughed again and lifted her chin so that her mouth was just a few tantalising inches from his. He could feel the warmth of her breath against his skin.

‘How’s this?’ she whispered. She brushed her lips against his, first his top lip, then his lower lip. As erotic moments went, it was right up there. ‘Is that obvious enough for you?’ she asked, tipping her head back and looking into his eyes.

‘I can’t be sure, but what the heck, I’m happy to take my chances.’ With one hand holding onto the side of the pool, he placed the other to her neck and kissed her.

Restless and unable to sleep, Esme got out of bed and went and stood at the open window. Looking down to the pool that was still brightly lit, she saw Adam and Floriana. She hastily backed away from the window.

Her work was done, she thought happily. All they’d needed was a jolly good shove in the right direction.

Everyone slept in the following morning.

Up first, and with no sound of activity coming from the others, Floriana was in the kitchen pouring herself a glass of water and contemplating whether she had the energy to fetch some croissants for breakfast.

It was not all she was contemplating. Drinking the water thirstily – she’d drunk more red wine and limoncello than perhaps was good for her last night – she went outside and looked over to the pool, its flawless surface gleaming in the bright sunshine.
Here kissed Adam Strong and Floriana Day
, she thought with a happy smile, picturing a blue plaque proclaiming the historic moment to future guests who stayed here.

Walking barefoot across the parched grass, she went over to the swing seat where, after their late night swim, she and Adam had sat wrapped in the warm, still, night air. In the glow of light from the pool, her head resting against his shoulder and his arm around her, she had begun the process of recalibrating the balance of their relationship. Funny how one kiss could change things. It was going to take some getting used to.

It had been nearly two o’clock when finally, and with her hand slipped inside his, they’d walked back up to the villa to go to bed. Kissing her one last time outside her bedroom door, he’d turned away and taken the stairs quietly up to his own room on the top floor.

Playing her feet over the dry grass beneath her, Floriana hoped Adam believed her about Seb; that she no longer loved him in the way she once had. Her feelings for him really had undergone a change. It was difficult to explain, even to herself, but for the first time in a long while, she felt free – free from the self-inflicted pain caused by loving someone who didn’t love her in return.

Nonetheless, Seb was still immensely important to her and if Adam couldn’t accept that Seb would always figure in her life, it would be better to stop things right now. Was it asking too much of him – or any man, for that matter – to accept that situation?

She sighed deeply, wondering for the millionth time what on earth had possessed Seb to propose to Imogen. Why couldn’t he see how wrong she was for him? And what would he think of his wife-to-be and her conversation with Floriana last night?

She thought how miserable he had been when he’d stayed with her in Oxford, his mood worsening exponentially with each glass of wine he drank. Whenever the memory of how melancholy he’d been came to mind, she couldn’t help but recall an earlier time in his life when depression had plunged him terrifyingly close to rock bottom.

It had happened in their final term as undergraduates and some weeks after May Day when Seb had spoken so disconsolately on Magdalen Bridge and then again over breakfast. The concern she had felt for him that day had been lessened by his absolute conviction shortly afterwards that he was fine, that he’d just been having a bad day. Maybe it was relief that had allowed her to believe him for she instantly threw herself into revising for finals, as well as taking up with a new boyfriend. With hindsight, Angus – a second-year PPE student at St Peter’s – had been nothing more than an amusing distraction from the pressure of revising.

The day of her last exam, Angus had arrived outside the Examination Schools to help celebrate in the time-honoured fashion by trashing her with eggs and flour. No sooner had he kissed her and hurled the first egg than she caught sight of Seb standing awkwardly back from the raucous group gathered in the High. He was holding a bottle of champagne and sporting a half-hearted beard that couldn’t have suited him less – it was a stark reminder that it was some weeks since she had seen him. The last she’d heard from him was that he was revising hard and didn’t want to be disturbed. ‘No distractions!’ he’d insisted when she’d suggested they meet to relax over a pizza and a beer. But seeing the state of him now, how drawn and dishevelled he was, she was concerned that he’d been hiding from her.

She pushed her way through the noisy crowd to reach him. Close up she was alarmed just how ill he looked – his cheeks were sunken and deep violet shadows dragged at his dull eyes; he’d lost weight too and his hair needed a good wash. She said the first thing that came into her head. ‘You OK?’

‘Never better. You?’

‘Relieved I have no more exams to do.’

‘Lucky you, mine don’t start for another ten days.’ His eyes darted to glance over her shoulder. ‘Yonder lover-boy’s not looking too happy. If you don’t mind me saying, he doesn’t seem your type, he’s got tosser stamped all over him. Correction,
posh
tosser. What his name?’

‘Angus.’

‘So what’s the deal with him, you trying a social experiment to see how the other half behave close up?’

‘And what’s your social experiment?’ she said, annoyed at the criticism. ‘To see how many chemicals your body can withstand until it finally wastes away?’

‘Don’t be like that. I’m here to say sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘For being as big a jackass as your boyfriend.’

‘That’s an apology?’

Hands thrust deep into his pockets, he’d smiled. ‘You know the old adage, can’t gild a turd.’

She’d laughed at that and, linking arms with him, not caring about Angus, she’d said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’

They’d gone down to the river where Seb prised open the champagne and apologised for his absence for the last few weeks. ‘I couldn’t face anyone,’ he said, passing her the bottle.

‘Not even me?’

‘Especially not you. You’re too censorious these days.’

Handing the bottle back to him, she watched him take a long swig. Then another. ‘Tell me what’s wrong, Seb. Tell me why you look so awful. It’s more than finals, isn’t it? What’s happened?’

‘Censorious
and
perceptive.’ He took another long swill. ‘It’s my father.’

Surprised, she waited for him to elaborate. Apart from funding him through college, Seb’s father had all but detached himself from his son. It was a situation that Seb had long since accepted. Or so she thought. ‘What about him?’ Floriana asked when Seb appeared to have retreated behind a wall of silence.

‘I did what I always swore I wouldn’t, I got in touch with him, to see if, you know, we could actually meet up, get to know each other, make some sort of relationship actually happen between us.’

Never before had Seb spoken about wanting to meet the man who had left him and his mother for another woman and with whom he’d created a new family. ‘What made you do that?’ she asked, watching Seb snatching at the grass to his right. ‘Why the change of heart?’

He shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘It’s Mum’s doing. You remember that bloke I told you about, the one she met online who lived in Spain?’

‘Yes, I remember, we joked he’d turn out to be a gangster hiding out on the Costa del Crime.’

‘Who knows, he may yet prove us right. Anyway, Mum went to stay with him and low and behold, they got married. She wrote to tell me the glad tidings of her nuptials a couple of weeks ago. She’s selling up here, lock, stock and near-empty barrel. She said if I was stuck for somewhere to stay when term’s over I could either go to her in Spain, or try my luck with my father.’

Floriana was incredulous. Although in truth she shouldn’t have been, Seb’s mother was one of the most selfish people she knew and had never taken her parental role seriously, telling Seb repeatedly that he was better off without any input from her.

‘Do you think it will last,’ Floriana asked, ‘this latest whirlwind romance?’

‘Who knows? But we’re getting off-track, this isn’t about my mother, it’s about my father.’

‘Sorry. Go on then, what did he say when you asked to meet?’

‘He said something like, “I suppose we could work something out”, like it was some kind of debatable point.’

‘It was probably surprise,’ Floriana said, trying to be generous. ‘Perhaps it was something he’d been waiting to hear for years and suddenly there it was and you took the wind out of his sails.’

‘Nice try, Florrie, but all I subsequently got from him were excuses to any date or time I suggested. He was either busy with work or travelling, or was occupied with some family occasion with his kids.’

Floriana’s heart went out to Seb. How it must have pained him to take that first step only to be rebuffed so cruelly. She couldn’t imagine how it must feel to be so summarily rejected by a parent. By both, to all intents and purposes.

In comparison her own parents had been much more caring towards Seb. They always gave him birthday and Christmas presents and Dad had even given him driving lessons, despite having been terrified half to death when he’d tried to teach Floriana – she’d failed her test and never attempted it again, whereas Seb had passed first go.

‘Did you manage to pin him down in the end?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, he said he’d come here to Oxford and take me out for dinner.’ He fell silent again, snatched at a long blade of grass and tapped it against his chin. ‘But he never showed. Not even a phone call or a text to say he was running late or couldn’t make it. I emailed him the next day to ask what the hell he thought he was playing at and all he said was something had come up.’

‘Oh, Seb, I’m sorry.’

He tossed the blade of grass away from him. ‘No! No sympathy. Anything but that. Give me anger. Give me anything but pity!’

‘Seb, don’t you dare ever confuse my sympathy for pity. Not when it hurts me so much to see you like this.’

‘Like what?’ He sounded angrily defensive.

‘Looking like hell,’ she said bluntly. ‘Like you’ve given up on yourself.’ She hated to admit it, but right now with his crumpled clothes smelling as if they hadn’t been washed in a long time, his shaggy hair dull with grease and his patchy beard, he could easily pass muster as one of Oxford’s many down-and-outs.

‘Why shouldn’t I give up on myself? Everybody else has.’

‘I haven’t,’ she replied vehemently. ‘And you bloody well know that!’

‘Could have fooled me. I’ve seen precious little of you since you took up with Angus the rugger-bugger.’

She gave him a playful nudge with her foot; it was a gesture that belied the hurtful sting of his accusation. An accusation that wasn’t without an element of truth. ‘He doesn’t play rugby, he’s a rower,’ she said, ‘and besides, it was you who said you didn’t want to be disturbed. If you’d wanted me you only had to call or come and knock on my door.’

‘And catch you in flagrante? I think not.’

‘So torturing yourself in isolation was preferable?’

‘You know me, the tortured soul sits well on my shoulders, better than that of a happy camper. You know how I hate false notes.’

The following day Floriana realised that Seb had been fooling her with a whole symphony of catastrophic false notes. The extent of what he’d been hiding from her was made clear when she received a call from the John Radcliffe Hospital and was told that Seb had been admitted early that morning and was asking for her.

‘Don’t believe a word they tell you,’ he said gruffly when she sat by the side of his bed. ‘It wasn’t intentional; it was just a binge that got out of hand. If I’d wanted to kill myself, I’d have succeeded. And for God’s sake, don’t look at me like that, or I’ll wish I had!’

‘I’m looking at you like this because you’re frightening me, Seb. Why do you always have to do everything in the extreme?’

‘You want half measures from me? Never!’

‘I want you to be happy. Is that so very terrible?’

‘Happiness is beyond my reach.’ Yawning deeply, he’d closed his eyes and fallen asleep.

The hospital staff didn’t believe Seb’s story either and after checking his medical records with the GP he’d signed up with in Oxford, it was revealed he’d been taking anti-depressants for the last eight months.

He was discharged the following day with an appointment made to see a psychiatrist. Floriana took him back to the house he shared with two Chinese physicists – it was they who had found him collapsed on the floor in the bathroom. Moving in with him, Floriana watched over Seb day and night and then very gently reminded him that his finals were only two days away. He’d laughed at her, declaring her madder than he was if she thought he gave a damn about his degree. She begged him to reconsider, if for no other reason than to please her. ‘I swear this is the only thing I’ll ever ask you to do,’ she said. ‘What have you got to lose by giving it a go? I’ll help you prepare all I can.’ Amazingly he gave in and when the exams were over, she took him home to Mum and Dad where for two and a half weeks he did nothing but sleep and eat. When he surfaced and resembled something more like his old self, he thanked her for not giving up on him. She promised she never would, that she would always be there for him.

Having found the energy to go down to the supermarket, Floriana was now climbing back up the hill with a bag of croissants and a carton of milk. She was just wondering if Seb had ever shared with Imogen just how close he’d come to ending his life when her mobile buzzed. Fishing it out from her shorts’ pocket, she saw that it was Seb. ‘That’s weird,’ she said, more than a little spooked, ‘I was just thinking of you.’