It was Maud who came up to find me in my room, where I was reading—she burst in, holding a towel and her bright red swimming costume in one hand, and her sunglasses in the other.
“Get a move on, Maggie!” she said, plucking the book out of my hand and tossing it onto the bed, losing my place, I noticed with a flash of irritation. “We’re going swimming in the lake!”
I didn’t want to—that’s the strange thing to remember. I don’t mind pools or the sea, but I’ve never liked lake swimming—the slimy reeds, and the mush at the bottom, and the mouldering branches that catch at your feet. But Maud is a hard person to say no to, and at last I let her pull me downstairs to where the boys were waiting, Ezra holding a set of oars.
In the crumbling boathouse Maud untied the rickety flat-bottomed skiff, and we rowed out to the island, the lake water dappled and brown beneath the hull of the boat. Maud tied the boat to a makeshift jetty and we climbed out. It was Maud who went in first—a flash of scarlet against the gold-brown waters as she dived, long and shallow, from the end of the rotting wooden platform.
“Come on, Ed,” she shouted, and he stood up, grinned at me, and then followed her to the water’s edge, and took a running jump.
I wasn’t sure if I would go in—I was content to watch the others, laughing and playing in the water, splashing each other and shrieking. But the sun grew hotter and hotter, and at last I stood, shading my eyes, considering.
“Come in!” Abel yelled. “It’s glorious.”
I walked to the end of the jetty, feeling the damp wood fraying against my bare toes, and I dipped—just dipped—the tips of my toes in the water, watching with pleasure the scarlet polish I had borrowed from Maud glowing bright beneath the water.
And then—almost before I knew what had happened—a hand seized my ankle, and I felt a tug, and I stumbled forwards to prevent myself from going over backwards—and I was in, the golden waters closing over my head, the mud swirling up around me—and it was more beautiful and terrifying than I could ever have imagined.
I didn’t see who pulled me in—but I felt him, beneath the water, his skin against mine, our arms grappling, half fighting. And in that moment when we both surfaced I felt it—his fingers brushed my breast, making me shiver and gasp in a way that wasn’t just the shock of the water.
Our eyes met—blue and dark—and he grinned, and my stomach flipped and clenched with a hunger I had never known—and I knew then that I loved him—and that I would give him anything, even myself.
After we rowed back, we walked up to the house and had tea on the lawn, wrapped in towels, and then we stretched out to bask in the sunshine.
“Take a photo . . .” Maud said lazily, as she stretched, her tanned limbs honey-gold against the faded blue towel. “I want to remember today.”
He gave a groan, but he stood obediently and went to fetch his camera, and set it up. I watched him as he stood behind it, adjusting the focus, fiddling with the lens cap.
“Why so serious?” he said as he looked up, and I realised that I was frowning in concentration, trying to fix his face in my memory. He flashed me that irresistible smile, and I felt my own mouth curve in helpless sympathy.
Later, long after supper, when the sun was going down, Mrs Warren had gone to bed and the others were playing billiards on the faded green baize, laughing in the way they never did when my aunt was home. Ezra had brought his stereo down from his room and the tape deck blasted out James, REM, and the Pixies by turns, filling the room with the clash of guitars and drums.
I could never play billiards—the cue never did what I wanted, the balls flipping off the cushions with a life of their own. Maud said I wasn’t trying, that it was perfectly simple to match up cause and effect, and work out where the ball would end up, but it wasn’t true. I had some gene missing, I think. Whatever it was that enabled Maud to see that if a ball were hit from this angle, it would ricochet over there, I didn’t have.
So I left them to it and wandered out onto the lawn in front of the old part of the house. I was sitting, watching the sun beginning to dip towards the horizon, and thinking about how beautiful this place was, in spite of it all, when I felt a touch on my shoulder, and I turned, and saw him standing there, beautiful and bronzed, his hair falling in his eyes.
“Come for a walk with me,” he said. And I nodded, and followed him, across the fields and through sunken paths, down to the sea. And we lay on the warm sand and watched as the sun sunk into the waves in a blaze of red and gold, and I didn’t say anything, because I was so afraid to break this perfect moment—so afraid that he would get up and leave forever, and that everything would be back to normal.
But he didn’t. He lay next to me, watching the sky in a silence that felt like the breath you take before you say something very important. As the last streak of sun disappeared beneath the horizon, he turned to me and I thought he was going to speak—but he didn’t. Instead he slipped the strap of my sundress down my shoulder. And I thought—This is it. This is what I have been waiting all my life to feel, this is what those girls at school used to talk about, this is what the songs mean, and the poems were written for. This is it. He is it.
But the sun has gone now, and it’s winter, and I feel very cold. And I am no longer sure if I was right.
CHAPTER 19
* * *
Hal wasn’t sure how long she had been sitting there, staring at the photograph, trying to work out what she should do. But at last she heard, very faintly, the sound of the clock in the hall downstairs chiming eleven, and she stood, stretching out her cramped, chilly limbs.
The urge to run back to Brighton and hide from the nightmare she had created was still strong—except that they knew where to find her. Mr. Treswick had her address, and he would come and track her down and start asking questions. And besides . . . Her stomach clenched at the memory of Mr. Smith’s awaiting enforcers, her crushed belongings. Hal had never thought of herself as a coward, but she was, she knew that now. She thought of the man’s voice, his slow soft lisp . . . broken teeth . . . broken bones sometimes . . . and she knew she did not have the courage to face him again.
No. She could not go back there without the money.
Could she run away for good—from everyone? But where would she go, and how, without money? She didn’t even have the money for a taxi back to Penzance, let alone the cash needed for a fresh start in a strange city.
Well, whatever she decided, she couldn’t hide up here forever. She would have to go down and face the family at some point.
Flexing her cold fingers, Hal opened the door.
Standing outside, perfectly still in the darkness of the hallway, was a figure, dark clothes disintegrating into the shadows, standing motionless just inches from Hal’s face.
Hal gasped and took a step backwards into the room, her hand pressed to her chest.
“Jesus—what—”
She found her hands were shaking, and caught at the metal bedstead to steady herself.
“Yes?” The voice of the figure in the shadows was cracked, with a flat Cornish burr. As her fright subsided, Hal felt anger flood in its wake.
“Mrs. Warren? What the hell are you doing snooping outside my room?”
“?’Tain’t your room,” Mrs. Warren said bitterly. She took a step forwards, over the threshold, sweeping Hal’s meager possessions with a contemptuous look. “And it never will be, if I’ve anything to do with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know.”
Hal pushed her hands inside her pockets to hide their trembling. She would not show this old woman she was afraid.
“Get out of my way.”
“Just as you like. I came up to tell you, he wants you downstairs.”
“Who’s ‘he’?” Hal said. She tried to keep her voice steady, and it came out colder and sharper than she meant.
“Harding. He’s in the drawing room.”