Kicking harder, I am certain no one suspects me, the wife of the political attaché. Between ballet classes, piano lessons, art lessons and school runs, I roam the city freely. No one is aware I speak Russian. I’m not sure if Allan even knows how fluent I am. By reading novels in Russian I am able to keep building my vocabulary. No one seems to notice them in the apartment. There are only a few and I’ve said I bought them because of the covers.

Changing to the breaststroke, I watch Diana and Allan leave the beach via the steps to the coastal path and not up to the garden. I frown. Where are they off to? Sometimes I despair that he doesn’t think of our guests. But that’s what I do so well so that he doesn’t have to, and in Moscow he has so little time with Diana. I swim to the shore and up on the path I see Allan is talking to the Venns. They glance down and wave. I respond but do not smile as I see the woman put her hand on Allan’s arm. Towel clutched in my hand, I walk up to the house. There are things that need to be done.

31. Lottie

31

Lottie

4 August 2018, 8.30 a.m.

Lottie waved to the man bringing supplies to the little beach café. Later in the day she would go for an ice cream. Gramps had always lured her off the beach that way as a child. She would have stayed in the sea until nightfall if she’d had her choice. A few eager families were already setting up on the beach, despite the light mist that still hung in the air. Below it was murky but above at Boskenna it was vividly sharp.

She dropped her towel on the sand revealing her bikini and picked her way out to the sea, making sure to drag her feet to alert any lurking weever fish. Before long, her toes were numb and she was up to her knees. She saw old Jacob on the rocks, fishing. She could recall very few mornings when Jacob or another person wasn’t fishing on the beach. Once the village had many fishermen but now it was just Jacob, and the old cottages were gone. Things move on and Lottie was at one of those stages of change.

Taking a shallow dive, Lottie floated underwater letting her body acclimatise to the shock of the cold. Gran had taught her that years ago, when her instinct had been to fight and kick. Now her body rose to the surface and she existed between the sea and the mist. It felt as if her problems were far away, but she knew they were waiting, and she couldn’t push them aside forever.