The Swimming Pool (6 page)

‘I'm not sure they're serious about moving him,' Mrs Godwin said, ‘which is just as well since we're full in year four for September. I did tell them that before they came.'

‘I wonder why they're even considering it,' I said. ‘Westbridge is just as oversubscribed as we are, isn't it?'

‘Mr Channing is in insurance. Perhaps he wants something more traditional for his son.'

We exchanged another coded look. Neither of us had the spare hour needed to scratch the surface of what fathers might want for their sons or mothers for their daughters or any combination thereof. Suffice to say that what all parents wanted was to have a silk purse made out of a sow's ear, while at no time acknowledging responsibility for the sow's ear. Well, we did our best at EHP (school motto:
Semper excelsius
– always higher). We couldn't perform miracles, but we certainly couldn't be accused of not giving our cause the Blitz spirit.

‘Where's
Isabella moving to?' I asked. ‘You said Hampshire?'

‘Yes, it sounds like a delightful little place. Stock- or Stone-something, perhaps?'

‘Not Stoneborough?' I felt a tingle of dread – troubling that it should start at the mere mention of the place, and
my
mention at that. ‘How funny, my grandmother lives there. My mother too, actually. She moved down there a few years ago.'

The forwarding address was, of course, at Mrs Godwin's fingertips. ‘Not Stoneborough, Stockbridge, that's right. On the river, I think they said.'

Behind her, light exploded through the glass and it took me a moment to understand the simple consequence of cloud sliding from the sun. Relief did that to you: it disconnected your brain. I wouldn't have been able to pick little Isabella out of a line-up, but it was unconscionable to me that anyone connected with EHP should have the opportunity to fall into conversation with someone in Stoneborough who might remember me.

‘Sounds idyllic,' I said.

First at the lido, then in my classroom: she was like a word you've never heard before that people are suddenly saying everywhere you go, until pretty soon you forget there was ever a time when your vocabulary lacked it.

The next reference came the following evening from Sarah, surprisingly so, since she was housebound to all
intents and purposes and therefore cut off from the local gossip – except for that which visitors like me shared. Actually, now I think about it, it was I who brought Lara up.

Having given Inky his lap around the park, I returned him to his home on the third floor and stayed for a cup of tea. Sarah's flat was exactly the same size and design as ours, but it never ceased to surprise me how much more light was gained by two storeys' elevation. Above the treeline, the sky was closer, almost touching distance, aglow that evening with July sun. After a run of hot, stagnant nights, there was at last enough breeze to disturb the foliage; we would sleep better tonight. Though muted, the TV was on in the corner, playing the unmistakable images of summer: white figures haring across green grass, rows of sunhatted spectators gasping as one. It was Wimbledon, rain had not stopped play, and therefore all must surely be well with the world.

‘Seen any murders recently?' I asked Sarah, for her chair was right by the window, angled in such a way as to give her an unobstructed downward view into the loft bedroom of a thirties semi.

‘No, but I've read plenty.' She gestured to the towering pile of crime thrillers that had been her saviour during her recuperation. Though she'd greyed noticeably during the last few weeks, and necessarily slowed physically, her spirit had remained indefatigable and I had nothing but admiration for her.

‘Not
in here, I hope?' I held up a copy of the local magazine
Elm Life
, which inevitably had a shot of the new lido on its cover, and settled on a footstool to leaf through. My fingers paused at a double-page spread. ‘Lara Channing, who else?' I said.

‘Indeed.' Sarah sighed. ‘St Adjutor herself.'

I looked up, curious. ‘St Adjutor? Who's that?'

‘The patron saint of swimmers. A very minor saint.' Sarah eyed the magazine in my hands. ‘More people have heard of
her
, I would guess.'

I checked the issue date: May. It must have been printed well before the opening of the lido. ‘I'm starting to wonder if I'm the only person in Elm Hill not to have heard of her until the last couple of weeks.'

‘Oh, don't worry, I didn't know her from Adam until I read this. Now I know she absolutely adores pralines dipped in white chocolate. Or is it white chocolate dipped in praline? One of the two.'

‘I've met her a couple of times,' I said, studying the photo. ‘There's no way a woman in
that
kind of shape is gorging on chocolates.'

‘She must be re-launching her acting career,' Sarah said. ‘Why else would she want her face all over the place like this?'

I thought about the children at Rushbrook, the yearbook produced by the year-six teachers as a farewell gift. Under ‘Career Ambition' a troubling number had put ‘To be a celebrity' or ‘Get a million views on YouTube'.

‘Gayle doesn't like her,' I said.

‘Does
she know her?'

‘Neither of us does, not really. But I must admit I'm intrigued. It's easy to mock, but what she's achieved with the pool, it's pretty incredible.'

‘I agree,' Sarah said. ‘She's obviously a woman of great energy. I'd be very happy to have her hips – and I don't mean for the lack of cellulite.'

As we chatted about her physio exercises, my phone buzzed. ‘Dinner's ready, I have to go. Would you like to join us? Or can I bring you up a plate?'

‘No, thank you,' said Sarah. ‘My sister's coming over with her granddaughter and they're bringing me a chopped salad, whatever that is.'

‘A salad in which all of the ingredients are chopped?' I laughed. ‘The sort of thing Lara Channing really eats, I'm guessing.'

Gayle and I wondered sometimes how it would work if everyone were allowed to ditch their own parents and adopt ones more to their taste (she made no bones about her willingness to jettison her own father in favour of Michael Palin). Sarah was the mother I wanted, though I was not so naïve as to misunderstand that, if she
were
the woman who'd raised me, then by now I'd find her kindness cloying, her equanimity provocative. Meanwhile the criticisms sent my way by the woman in Stoneborough might, from the lips of a neighbour, be considered bracing and entertaining.

‘I've got another new student,' Ed announced, as we took our seats at the kitchen table. He had made spaghetti
carbonara, a favourite of Molly's when she was little because of the way he served each portion with an egg yolk for you to stir in yourself. He'd forgotten that she'd recently come to consider this practice both childish and gross.

‘Raw egg makes me heave,' she informed us, then, seeing my face, chanted a childhood rule: ‘
I know
. If someone's gone to the trouble of cooking for you, the least you can do is go to the trouble of eating it. Yeah, yeah.'

‘Get on with it then,' I said. I was surprised, even slightly delighted, by my excellent mood.

Ed, also buoyant, returned to his news. ‘Can you believe how quickly it's all happening? I haven't even started yet and I'm almost at the point of having to think about a waiting list.'

‘Amazing,' I said, though it really wasn't. The ambitious zeal of the current generation of middle-class parents was well documented, Thatcher's children overinvolved in their own kids' lives to the point of dysfunction. Hypocritical though it might sound for Ed to be catering directly to it, he would, I knew, do all he could to help relieve the pressure on his students, not add to it.

‘Who's the new one?' I asked, twirling sticky strings of pasta around my fork.

‘A girl at Westbridge High. She's just finished year ten. Didn't do well enough in her end-of-year maths exam, apparently, and screwed up the statistics GCSE she took early. The parents want two hours every Saturday, starting this weekend, then twice a week once school breaks up. They want her back on track for GCSE year.'

‘I'm
sure they do'. I smiled at Molly's exaggerated grimace.

‘Izzy says private tutors get, like, a thousand pounds an hour,' she said. ‘They work on yachts.'

‘If that's the case, then please tell Izzy she's welcome to act as my agent.' Ed chuckled. Excitement was causing him to talk with his mouth full, a crime no doubt clocked by Molly and stored away for when one of us next chided her for the same. ‘Mind you, this one did offer to up my rate when I said I might not be able to do the hours she wanted. They live around here. The kid's got one of those American place-name names, Atlanta or Savannah or something.'

‘Not Georgia?' I said. ‘Georgia Channing?'

‘That's it. How did you know?'

‘The mother's the immoral blonde at the lido, remember? How funny. I was just talking about her with Sarah.' Professional discretion prevented me adding that Lara had been into Elm Hill Prep for a tour. ‘I wonder how she heard about the tutoring.'

‘From me. We got chatting at the summer fair last weekend.'

I was astonished. ‘Lara Channing was at the All Saints fair? Why didn't you tell me?'

‘Was I supposed to? She didn't call to book me until today.'

‘Why was she at the fair, anyway?' I asked. ‘Promoting the lido?'

Ed shrugged. ‘Maybe she was just supporting her local school.'

‘We
should Google her,' I suggested. ‘Find out all about your new client.'

‘I don't see why. I haven't Googled any of the others,' he said.

In the end, I did it myself. I sat down and investigated Lara in exactly the prurient and painstaking fashion that twenty years ago would have roused the suspicions of the police but was today not only acceptable but encouraged.

She had been born Lara Markham in June 1973 and was forty-two. A competitive synchronized swimmer, she'd represented Great Britain in a number of events before missing trials for the Barcelona Olympics owing to illness. In 1992, at nineteen, she'd left the sport – and full-time education – to star in
Mermaid on Mulberry Street
, a role for which she'd been handpicked after the director had spotted her when watching a televised synchro event with his daughters. The film was a moderate success and, as it would transpire, represented a career pinnacle for Lara. Still in her twenties, she'd gone into semi-retirement when she'd married Miles Channing and started a family.

Since her fame predated the digital era, older images were limited, but there were clips from the mermaid movie, as well as the original theatrical trailer. Even allowing for the hair and make-up enthusiasms of that era, she was stunning, with those doe eyes and that erotic mouth. Her face was more familiar than I might have expected, given that I'd never seen the film, until I remembered the daughter in the picture on the Elm Hill
website and in the lido's publicity material. Of course: the teenaged Lara looked like her daughter did now.

On Amazon, I scanned the customer reviews for
Mermaid on Mulberry Street
and found them at best lukewarm:

– Not a patch on
Splash
.

– Bring back Daryl Hannah, all is forgiven!

– OK family viewing, but not a classic …

– Someone should have given the girl some acting lessons – Lara Markham is embarrassingly bad!

I felt quite defensive on Lara's behalf and would have considered ordering the DVD in solidarity were it not extortionately priced at £16.99.

I wondered what she would say if she knew I was occupied in this way. She'd be flattered, perhaps, or validated. I snickered to myself at the unlikelihood of
her
researching
me
– or even being struck by the thought that she'd bumped into me rather a lot lately. To even things up I Googled myself:
Natalie Steele teacher.

There was nothing much. My entry on the Elm Hill Prep website was the first of very few:

With almost twenty years' experience in primary education, Mrs Steele is our newest member of staff, teaching her first EHP year-four class this year.

Favourite subject: history.

Favourite EHP moment: ‘Taking the boys and girls to the
Golden Hinde
and learning about Sir Francis Drake.'

An
unflattering headshot accompanied this, my hair stripped of warmth, plenty of putty-coloured foundation on my face. As I've said, I always covered my skin for work. Disfigurements tended to distract pupils and distractions were frowned upon by parents.

It was Nathaniel Hawthorne, if I remembered correctly, who said about birthmarks, ‘It may be the stain goes as deep as life itself.'

I sincerely hoped not.

To still the mind, focus on the physical.

In the bathroom mirror I inspect my birthmark as if for the first time. I can't pretend I don't know why it interests me afresh, why, after the four and a half decades I've lived it suddenly has new significance. The size of a dog's pawprint, it has browned with age from the livid raspberry of my childhood, when I would scrutinize it daily, judging it a disgusting flaw, an impediment to future happiness. As a teenager with an allowance, I learned to conceal it with make-up, a ritual that continued daily, on weekdays at least, right until these last transcendent weeks, when I've come to think of it as a mark of distinction, perhaps even grace.

Tonight is different. Tonight I think it's how they would identify me on the mortuary slab.

Georgia
, I remember, and the memory of her damp, blanched face makes my body temperature drop by a degree.

‘Nat?'

I jump, like a criminal, drop my hand from my face.

Ed is in the hallway, watching me from the shadows.

‘You
gave me a shock. What is it – is it Molly?'

‘No.' Only his feet and legs are lit by the bathroom light spilling through the open door, his voice disembodied; the effect is eerie. ‘I just wanted to say, if you won't talk to me about tonight, fine, I can hardly force you. But you do realize you'll have to talk to the police?'

In an instant my cheeks are aflame. ‘What do you mean? The police won't want to speak to us.'

‘I think they will. If I were them, I'd be very keen to know why the parents of a child with her medical history allowed her anywhere near a swimming pool.'

I swallow. ‘The parents', he said, but what he means is ‘the mother'. No matter how hard I've tried, no matter how controlled I've been, I've always been the sinner in this family.

‘I've almost finished in here,' I say, keeping my voice steady, and I close the door on his shadow, stand with my back against it, facing the room.

My eyes land again on the dress. As I reach to scoop it from the floor, my senses are waylaid by memory: a white bedroom of filtered afternoon sun, palazzo doors meeting with a kiss, the scent of something rarified and intimate and sweet.

You will wear it, won't you? For me?

Handling the dress with fingertips only, as if the fabric is on fire, I drop the thing into the bin, trying but failing to ignore the smell of shame.