The Swimming Pool (26 page)

I said her name again and she didn't react. I felt the withdrawal of others' attention, a collective shift from me, a shunning. As I heard the pool manager explain to Gayle that an ambulance was not required after all but that she should take Harriet herself to Accident and Emergency ‘just in case', I started to sob.

Then I felt a hand on my arm, the caress of a thumb over my skin. Lara, I thought. She'll make it all right. That weird conversation, that rift, will be meaningless now. This will restore perspective.

‘Come with me,' Angie said. ‘You look like you might need a drink.'

I turned, mouth open, brain reactivating. Not Lara, Angie. ‘Have you seen Molly?' I cried. ‘Do you know where the girls are?'

She put an arm around my waist. ‘I've just sent them all to my place. Let's go and find them. They're just a couple of minutes ahead of us.'

‘Is Lara with them?'

‘No, she's at a meeting in town.'

I
followed her through the throng – it parted only sluggishly, for Angie had not the same effect as Lara – to the queue for the turnstile.

‘Are you all right?' she asked.

‘I don't know.'

‘You've had a shock, that's all. No one was hurt.'

‘I feel terrible,' I told her. ‘Gayle … Did you hear what she said to me?'

Though I couldn't see Angie's eyes through her sunglasses, I caught the flicker of an averted gaze. ‘She'll understand. Of course Molly would be your first thought. How could she not be?'

I almost wailed. So
she
thought I'd meant ‘Thank God not Molly,' too. ‘I didn't mean it like that,' I insisted. ‘I didn't know what I was saying. I
love
Harriet.'

‘I'm sure you do, darling. Don't get upset.' Her voice was both soothing and hollow, not solace enough and yet the only salvation on offer.

As we passed through the turnstile, I felt like a different person from the one who'd stormed the barriers ten minutes ago. Even the scent of the cut grass had turned, tinged now with rot.

Angie led me through the park gate and across The Rise to her house on Steadman Avenue. The swept path and immaculately pruned roses compounded my sense of unreality, as if I were being led into an illusion of a suburban house, a trick done with mirrors. In the hallway she called up to the floor above, ‘Girls? Are you there? Come down a moment, will you?'

Reluctant
footsteps on the stairs produced first Eve, then Georgia – both damp-haired – and next Molly, bone dry. All three appeared unperturbed.

‘Are you okay?' I asked, the fist-sized knot in my stomach loosening a little.

‘Yes, thanks,' Molly said. The other two only shrugged.

‘Harriet's going to be all right,' I reassured them, and saw Georgia and Eve exchange an inscrutable private look. ‘Molly and Harriet know each other quite well,' I explained to them, with sudden heat. ‘I thought she might be worried.' I had the sense that these remarks, or perhaps the display of passion that had accompanied them, embarrassed Molly so I said no more. She was safe – they
all
were, including Harriet – and that was what mattered. I would contact Gayle later and make things right.

‘Phone your mum,' Angie instructed Georgia, ‘in case she's heard something and is worried about you.'

‘Sure,' Georgia said, in an obedient, humouring way. It was clear that the girls had already turned their attention to more important things.

‘Come in here,' Angie said, ushering me into the sitting room at the front of the house, ‘where we can have some peace.'

By the time I'd taken a seat in one of a pair of tub armchairs by the fireplace, Angie had delivered two glasses of something potent and repulsive that it took me a moment to identify as grappa. There was no immediate effect so I took another large gulp. Now details came into focus: a zebra-print rug, a row of potted
orchids on the mantelpiece. After initial enthusiasm, Choo resettled on a sheepskin throw.

Angie perched settled next to me, wordless as a counsellor. Distant sounds through the open window brought the news that normal business had resumed at the lido.

‘Did you actually see what happened?' I said.

‘No, I was in the café on my phone when I heard the whistle and I saw the lifeguards go around clearing the water. I thought there must be some technical thing, or something in the water. They clear it, you know, if there's vomit, that sort of thing. But then they shouted, “Lifeguard going in,” and the next thing you know Matt is in the water helping someone out. But it was only a false alarm. The kind of alarm we like.' Even so, Angie continued to look vexed, as if the worst part of the story was still to come.

‘What? What are you not telling me?'

‘I don't know if I should say. It's just gossip.'

‘Seriously,' I pleaded, ‘I need to know everything. When I get home I'll call Gayle. She'll want to know any information I can give her.' She won't speak to me, I thought, swallowing. Not yet, maybe not ever.

‘Well, don't tell her
this
,' Angie said, rolling her pale eyes.

‘What?'

At last she spilled: ‘The girls think Harriet faked being in trouble in the water. If so, then that was a very dangerous thing to do, not to mention totally disruptive.'

I was taken aback. ‘But why would she do that?'

Angie's
attitude was markedly less easy-going than usual: she was, in her own way, shaken. ‘Well, to get her knight in shining armour to jump in and save her, apparently.'

I remembered now the casual gossip about Georgia's boyfriend and Harriet's interest in him. ‘You mean Matt?'

‘Got it in one. The incident happened right where he was patrolling. It was quite a coincidence.'

‘That doesn't sound like Harriet at all,' I said doubtfully.

‘Does anything
ever
sound like the child we think we know?' Angie said. ‘Honestly?'

I thought of Gayle's joke about writing a book called
Not That I Know Of
. Poor Gayle. She'd been there on site with Harriet yet it hadn't been enough. These girls of ours, their thoughts were their own, their impulses, their mistakes.

‘As if we haven't got enough worries,' Angie sighed as she trickled the last of the grappa into our glasses. ‘Oh dear, Stephen will have a go at me for finishing this. He's convinced I'm on the slippery slope to rehab. Like
he
's a pure vessel, eh?'

I sipped the alcohol, disconcerted by the mention of her husband. ‘Angie,' I blurted, ‘I wanted to ask you about him. Have I … have I done anything to offend him?'

She looked astonished. ‘Stephen? Of course not. What makes you say that?'

‘Oh, nothing.' I shook my head, at last learning my lesson about cutting short these potentially damaging conversations. ‘I'm sure I just imagined it.'

The
readiness – more than that, the air of knowing – with which Angie accepted this made me suspect that she might have taken part in some past discussion about my state of mind, presumably with Lara, and I felt suddenly victimized. Fine, so I'd been unusually vigilant about poolside safety, and fine, I'd lost my mind slightly regarding Stephen – it wasn't as if I'd got the measure of Miles either, for that matter – but I wasn't the one spinning this nonsense about Harriet or fabricating a flirtation between Georgia and a middle-aged man. Maybe Ed was right: this group
was
trouble.

‘I should take Molly home,' I said, getting to my feet.

‘Of course. Let's go and tell her to shake a leg,' Angie agreed, and when she hugged Molly and pressed biscuits on her before leaving, I felt guilty for those previous uncharitable thoughts. What was wrong with me, second-guessing my friends when they were only trying to support me? If I continued like this, I'd have none left.

‘Thank you for everything this afternoon,' I told Angie. ‘I needed … well, I needed a friend.'

‘You're very welcome.' At the door, she kissed me on the cheek. ‘Where've you been this week, anyway? I haven't seen you since our fun and games last Friday. Nothing's wrong, is it?'

‘No.'

‘It's not to do with La, is it? Not that silly business about Ed? You really mustn't worry. I'm sure he's quite safe from her clutches.'

I
couldn't quite stifle my gasp, startled by her casual reference, but then I saw she meant Lara's attentions, not Georgia's, and must be referring to our conversation at La Madrague about the Channings' marital indiscretions. One thing about this afternoon: it had put the ambiguity of the events of late Friday night into perspective.
Not that
, Lara had said as if it were trivia, just another jape with the gang. Miles's and her peccadilloes, either individual or shared, were none of my concern.

‘Seriously, Lara's one of the good guys,' Angie said. ‘You can take my word for it.'

In the hospital atrium, I stop to buy a takeaway coffee, drawn as much by the cheer and energy at the counter as by any need for refreshment. They're soothing, the stock mundanities between the server and the customer – ‘Drew the short straw, did you?' ‘Every time, love, every time. Sugar with that?' – and the discordant roar and sputter of the coffee machine.

I decide on green tea. It comes too hot to drink.

I thought you might have understood
… Don't think about what that means: nothing matters now except the girl up there in Critical Care and the staff working to bring her back to her family.

I sit at an empty table to phone Ed. As I dial, I cradle Molly's phone in my other hand, as if it connects me to her just by touch.

Ed answers at once, no greeting, only the question ‘How is she?' and the sound of his voice, the urgent dread in it, undoes a catch in me and I have to breathe deeply before I can reply.

‘I don't really know. I saw Lara, but I didn't get much information. She was very upset.'

‘That's
understandable.'

‘It's serious, though, Ed. I don't think Georgia's regained consciousness and the longer it goes on …' I tail off, unable to articulate the rest of the thought.

‘Where are you? In the car?'

‘No, still in the hospital. I stopped to pick up a drink. I felt, just, overwhelmed.'

‘You've been awake all night – you need to come home and rest,' he says, and I search for the tenderness in his tone but cannot find it. I cannot find it.

My eyes refill, colours swim, the passive expressions of those around me distort into anguish. I blink and a woman comes into focus, blue overalls, a stethoscope and security pass around her neck; a man in green, AMBULANCE spelled out on his back in yellow.

‘Has Molly woken up yet?' I ask.

‘No. I've come into the kitchen so I don't disturb her.'

‘Tell her I'll be back very soon with breakfast. I'll stop by La Tasse and get her favourite croissants, the almond ones.'

‘Look, I need to go,' Ed says. ‘I've just missed a call from Liam.'

‘Wait, one thing: Molly's pin doesn't work on her phone. Do you know if she changed it?'

‘What are you using?'

‘One nine oh nine.' Inky's birthday. Every year she makes him peanut-butter biscuits, says they're his favourite, though the truth is he likes all biscuits the same.

‘She
changed it from that a few weeks ago, don't you remember? It's oh three oh eight now. Try that.'

Maybe they told me or maybe I haven't been around to be told. I hang up, key in the digits. Is 0308, as the previous one was, a memorable date? What happened on 3 August?

I'm in. I scroll through the most recent images: nothing from the party, which seems odd, but dozens of pictures of the lido in daylight hours, dating from the preceding days. Faces and legs are cut off, the subject a door or a light, sometimes out of focus as if the phone had slipped as her finger tapped the screen. Then, in perfect clarity, Georgia, in the pool, teeth bared in a theatrical growl, tiny white straps on suntanned skin. The thought of this radiant creature having been rendered inert, inanimate, by the very water she is pictured in: it breaks my heart. It would break any heart.

I open WhatsApp and scan for Georgia's name. There's a group called ‘Water-babies' involving her, Josh and Eve, a long thread of messages dating from weeks ago and continuing till yesterday. Words jump out – ‘Pussy', ‘Champ', ‘Result!' – and there are numbers, 2/05, 2/36, 1/57, 2/58, inexplicable to me, as are many of the emojis and acronyms. Some I recognize (PIR: parent in room; CTN: can't talk now), others are no more than gibberish. PB: who knows what that might be in this new foreign language. Parental bitching? When I was at school, it meant ‘personal best'. Your fastest cross-country score, your longest jump.

When I
was at school
… I stopped doing sports after that Stoneborough summer. Remorse, dread, cowardice: one or all had diminished me and I spent my free time instead in the school library. Indoor spaces, solitary pursuits: these were safe and I had a greater chance of controlling them. But before I'd been active. Gregarious and full of life. I'd been in groups and teams and gaggles.

If the start of the summer feels far gone then the earlier part of my childhood is so remote as to have been built on air. Will I feel like this when Molly is grown and gone? Will all the crisis and drama of the last twenty-four hours seem as if it was dreamed up by a fantasist?

My tea is cooler, drinkable now. It tastes bitter, woody, bracing.

As I close the screen, the last thing I see is:
3/01? F*cking amazing!