Chapters (40)
- Cover
- About the Author
- PENGUIN BOOKS
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- THE BEGINNING
Lying on her back in the green water, Irene listened to his voice, calm and grave, solicitous. She trusted it. She liked the way he was respectful to a weeping child even when he was brusque with adults; how he gave her his concentrated attention. The way he was silent, not spewing out treacherous words. Everything he said had the weight of his sincerity behind it. Last night seemed a long way off now; she should have told him there was nothing going on with Mickey. She should have stepped forward then, taken the whisky from his hand, pressed her wet body against his under the rain, put her mouth against his cool lips … Oh, but she’d forgotten how to do all of this. She’d lost the confidence, lost the knack. She turned over and let herself sink under the surface of the lake.
Lorrie and Neil were returning to the boat now, swimming slowly side by side, talking to each other as they came. Occasionally they stopped, trod water facing each other. Irene saw Lorrie lay her hands on Neil’s shoulders; their heads were close together, two seals with sleek, blunt heads. She imagined their limbs tangling under the water in a promise of later.
‘They’re nearly here,’ said Luke above her. ‘Let’s dry your eyes, shall we? Hmm?’
Katherine whimpered, a little spasmodic shudder of ebbing panic. For an instant, Irene could feel Aggie pressed against her, arms wound fiercely around her neck, plump strong body racked with sobs, wet cheek against wet cheek; damp candy-floss hair, salt tears and grassy breath. The flurry of heartbeats which are your heartbeats too. How do you ever get over the love of a child? How do you get beyond it?
Gripping the rim of the deck, she hauled herself out of the water and tumbled into the boat.
They swam, they had races, they persuaded Katherine, wreathed with a red rubber ring and fat yellow armbands, to walk from the beach into the lake up to her knees, where she stopped dead and refused to go in an inch further. They drank cold beer and then had relay races round the boat – one adult always staying with Katherine and acting as umpire – and whoever was in Lorrie’s team always won. She shone with a transfiguring sexualized vigour. Whenever he was near her, Neil couldn’t resist touching her, laying his hand across her flat, wet belly, along her strong shoulders, proprietorially on her thigh.