“My sister had to go to school today. But I’m at home because my head ached when I woke up.” She took a biscuit and Gabriel picked up the last one.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, smiling. “It must be awful to feel ill on a day like this, when the sun is shining and the sea is just down there.”
Flora nodded vigorously.
“I was hoping you might be able to show me the beach,” he continued. “I live such a long way from the sea. I can’t remember the last time I saw a wave or some sand.”
I was saying, “I don’t think so . . .” at the same time as Flora was shouting, “Yes, yes, I can show you the beach. Can I, Mum? Can I?”
“Flora,” I said sternly. “You’re not at school because you said you were ill. You can’t go to the beach.”
“Maybe we could all go?” Gabriel said, and smiled his charming smile. “I’d love to see the beach; we could have a swim. If you like swimming.”
I hesitated for too long, and it was decided without me even agreeing. Flora charged into the house and packed a bag: towels, bucket, spade.
“You have to wear something,” I said to her in her bedroom. “You can’t swim naked.”
“OK,” she said, pulling off her nightie and dragging on her costume. In the hall she shouted to Gabriel, “Do you want to borrow some of Daddy’s trunks?”
The daytime crowds were leaving the beach by the time we got there. I’d put my swimming costume on under my clothes, and Flora had tried to give Gabriel a pair of your trunks, but he said he’d be fine in his underpants. We spread out a rug on the sand and sat side by side while Flora jumped in the surf. Neither of us looked directly at the other, but I could see his body was lean, his skin tight, muscles beginning to form into a man’s. I have become used to your body: the grey hairs on your chest, the crosshatched skin on your neck when you recline, the beginnings of a paunch when you don’t know I’m looking. I used to love them all, but in comparison, Gabriel was like a newly hatched man.
“She loves it in the water,” I said. Flora was floating on her front, letting the small waves push her into the beach, using her hands on the sandy bottom to move out, away from us. “We’ll both do anything to come down here. She’ll even tell lies to her mother.”
He laughed. “Sometimes I don’t see the point of school. I’ve got to go back in a week, but I’m going to leave next year.”
“What will you do?”
“Don’t know. I’ve had enough of it, though.”
“What do your parents think?” Immediately I asked the question I regretted it. I sounded old.
“They don’t know yet.”
We sat watching Flora until I said, “I do find it hard to be cross with her, about wanting to come to the sea. It’s the one thing we both love.”
“And do you tell lies, too, so you can go swimming?” He lay back on the rug with his legs out, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Sometimes.” I felt myself blushing, and raised my hand to my eyes, pretending to shade them from the sun.
“To your husband?” he said.
I didn’t answer, instead shouting to Flora not to go too far out. She ran over, plonking herself between us. Gabriel yowled as her icy skin touched his. “You’re freezing! Get away,” he said, laughing. Flora shook her head over him so that drops of seawater flicked out from the ends of her hair. He scrabbled backwards and stood up. “Don’t you dare,” he said, and set off running with Flora chasing him in between the late picnickers, the metal-detecting man, the elderly couple in their folding chairs. When they returned they were both panting.
“Do you want to build a sand castle?” Gabriel said to her. “You should go for a swim,” he said to me.
Flora barely glanced up when I put my hand on her head and said, “I won’t be long.” When I was far out, I turned towards the beach, pedalling my legs. I scanned the sand for Gabriel and Flora but they weren’t where I’d left them. It was then, when I couldn’t see them, that I considered what I was doing: leaving my daughter with a stranger. He might be fifteen, but I had known him for two hours. I felt sick, kicked my legs, and started swimming back. And then I saw them where they were supposed to be; it was I who’d drifted in the current. At that moment they both happened to stand up, look towards me and wave: big arm waves, slow and synchronised with each other. I waved back and swam out to the buoy.
When I’d dressed, we walked up the chine rather than the zigzag path, Flora running ahead, still in her swimming costume, plucking the flower heads out of the marsh thistles and leaving a trail of purple petals behind her.
“Are you going to have any more children?” he said.
I laughed. “I thought that was one of those questions you weren’t meant to ask, like how much are you paid or whether you’re happily married.”
“Are you?” he said.
We were both silent a fraction too long. And then I said, “Gil always wanted six children.”
“And you ended up with two.”