Not Without You (54 page)

A tear runs down my cheek. He shakes his head. ‘You mustn’t cry. You mustn’t cry. When I said you were different, Sophie – do you know you’re more beautiful now than you ever have been?’

I laugh. ‘You really are a hippy, Patrick.’

He shrugs and grins. I grip his hand, clutching onto it as if he’s about to be swept away. ‘Well, so what. That’s what I’ve realised I am. I’m going to do something different. Head upstate, go back up Route 101. Maybe open a bar, help my folks out. Take my time and do something right, anyway.’

‘You’re not making movies any more?’

He nods. ‘Nope. Told Artie yesterday. He fired me on the spot. He was mad.’

I can’t help but smile. ‘Two clients in three months. Wow, there must be a lot of happy actors out there.’

We’re both silent for a moment, watching the view. It’s going to be a beautiful day. Patrick clears his throat.

‘So Sophie … I wanted to ask you something. What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Any plans?’

I shake my head. ‘Maybe I’ll go over to Tommy’s. Anita makes a delicious turkey, but it’ll be full of industry people and I don’t—’

His hand is warm. My hands are cold, stiff in the crisp morning sun. ‘Come to Big Sur with me,’ he says. Come stay with my mom and dad.’

‘Big Sur?’

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘We’ll hike into the hills. Walk on the beach. You can get some fresh air in your lungs. See some otters! My dad does an amazing grill. It’s famous at Thanksgiving. We’ll hang out, maybe come back on the bike if you wanna …’

‘A motorbike?’ I stare into his brown eyes, push the hair away from his forehead, touch the little scar by his eye. ‘Are you mad? Why the hell would I get on a bike, after everything I’ve been through?’ I feel panicked and I don’t know why. Like I want to let go of something, and I can’t, I can’t, it’s too hard. ‘Look, I think perhaps I’ll just stay here. Go to Tommy’s.’

‘Are you sure?’ he says. ‘’Cause I was thinking, I won’t go. Not without you. I’ll stay here with you if you want. We can just get some takeout, then. Watch an old movie together.’

I smile up at him, and warmth floods through me. Something fighting inside me gives up. ‘Well, if you put it like that … thank you. Thank you very much. I’ll think about it.’

I slip my hand into his and we stay still, watching the sun creep higher in the sky.

Writing this novel was a protracted affair. I had a baby in between and I had the help of many people, not just delivering the baby but the book as well. Firstly, I would like to thank amazing edimama Lynne Drew for shaping it into a much better novel, and then Thalia Suzuma who was so helpful, thorough and reliable, and is brilliant too. The title is her idea and it’s wonderful. Also big thanks to Kate Elton, for her special help and support, and everyone at HarperCollins, especially glittery Liz Dawson, Ann Bissell and her trousers, Roger Cazalet, Martha Ashby, Lucy Upton, Katie Sadler, Liz Lambert, Oli Malcolm and everyone else who worked on the book.

Thanks for help with research to Fred Casella, for his advice and lunches and map-gifting. To Simon Mulligan and Lance Fitzgerald for their East Coast/West Coast coffee knowledge. To Doctor Jon Mutimer for explaining facial injuries in gruesome detail and answering my odd questions. What the people passing me on the stairs of the London Library thought as I sat there discussing shattered jawbones, I have no idea. To Reb for her swing-bys and her friendship. Finally, huge thanks to James Coleman. For his help with LA and Hollywood, and for always being a wise sounding-board.

To Jonathan Lloyd, Lucia Rae, Melissa Pimentel, and all at Curtis Brown: my gratitude and love. And to Kim Witherspoon and David Forrer and my US publishers Simon & Schuster, especially Louise Burke, Jen Bergstrom and Karen Kostylnyik. To Christine Steffen-Reimen at Droemer Knaur, and to Frederika van Traa at Uniboek (and little Rosa!) thank you for sticking by me and for being such great colleagues.

I also want to say thank you to everyone at Hopes and Dreams nursery, especially Amanda Little and Sarah Payne. You, as much as anyone, have helped me finish the book because I never worry about her when she’s with you.

And I want to thank my dad, who has better taste than anyone, for passing on to me his love of films, especially the way they used to make them.

Lastly thanks to the Boss and Chris
^*
waves arms in the air
^*
. You’re just too good to be true.

Harriet Evans is the author of six previous novels,
Going Home, A Hopeless Romantic, The Love of Her Life, I Remember You, Love Always
and
Happily Ever After
. She lives in London with her family.

Going Home

A Hopeless Romantic

The Love of Her Life

I Remember You

Love Always

Happily Ever After

Cornwall, 1963

If you close your eyes, perhaps you can still see them. As they were that sundrenched afternoon, the day everything changed.

Outside the house, in the shadows by the terrace, when they thought no one was looking. Mary is in the kitchen making chicken salad and singing along to
Music While You Work
on the Home Service. There’s no one else around. It’s the quiet before lunch, too hot to do anything.

‘Come on,’ she says. She is laughing. ‘Just one cigarette, and then you can go back up.’ She chatters her little white teeth together, her pink lips wet. ‘I won’t bite, promise.’

He looks anxiously around him. ‘All right.’

She has her back to him as she picks her way confidently through the black brambles and grey-green reeds, down the old path that leads to the sea. Her glossy hair is caught under the old green-and-yellow towel she has wrapped round her neck. He follows, nervously.

He’s terrified of these encounters – terrified because he knows they’re wrong, but still he wants them, more than he’s wanted anything in his life. He wants to feel her honey-soft skin, to let his hand move up her thigh, to nuzzle her neck, to hear her cool, cruel laugh. He has known a couple of women: eager, rough-haired girls at college, all inky fingers and beery breath, but this is different. He is a boy compared to her.

Oh, he knows it’s wrong, what they’re doing. He knows his head has been turned, by the heat, the long, light evenings, the intoxicating, almost frightening, sense of liberation here at Summercove, but he just doesn’t care. He feels truly free at last.

The world is becoming a different place, there’s something happening this summer. A change is coming, they can all feel it. And that feeling is especially concentrated here, in the sweet, lavender-soaked air of Summercove, where the crickets sing long into the night and where the Kapoors let their guests, it would seem, do what on earth they want … Being there is like being on the inside of one of those glass domes you have as a child, visible to the outside world, filled with glitter, waiting to be shaken up. The Kapoors know it too. They are all moths, drawn to the flickering candlelight.

‘Hurry up, darling,’ she says, almost at the bottom of the steps now, in the bright light, the white dots on her blue polka-dot swimming costume dancing before his eyes. He clings to the rope handle, terrified once more. The steps are dark and slippery, cut into the cliffs and slimy with algae. She watches him, laughing. She often makes him feel ridiculous. He’s never been around bohemian people before. All his life, even now, he has been used to having rules, being told when to wash behind his ears, when to hand an essay in, used to the smell of sweaty boys – now young men – queuing for meals, changing for cricket. He’s at the top of the pile, knows his place there, he’s secure in that world.

He justifies it by saying this is different. It’s one last hurrah, and he means to make the most of it, even if it is terrifying … He stumbles on a slippery step as she watches him from the beach, a cigarette dangling from her lip. His knee gives way beneath him, and for one terrifying moment he thinks he will fall, until he slams his other leg down, righting himself at the last minute.

‘Careful, darling,’ she drawls. ‘Someone’s going to get killed on those steps if they’re not careful.’

Shaken, he reaches the bottom, and she comes towards him, handing him a cigarette, laughing. ‘So clumsy,’ she says, and he hates her in that moment, hates how sophisticated and smooth she is, so heedless of what she’s doing, how wrong it is … He takes the cigarette but does not light it. He pulls her towards him instead, kissing her wet, plump pink lips, and she gives a little moan, wriggling her slim body against his. He can feel himself getting hard already, and her fingers move down his body, and he pushes her against the rock, and they kiss again.

‘Have you always been this bad?’ he asks her afterwards, as they are smoking their cigarettes. The heat of the sun is drying the sweat on their bodies. They lie together on the tiny beach, sated, as the waves crash next to them. A lost sandal, relic of someone else’s wholly innocent summer day, is bobbing around at the edge of the tide. The cigarette is thick and rancid in his mouth. Now it’s over, as ever, he is feeling sick.

She turns to him. ‘I’m not bad.’

He thinks she is. He thinks she is evil, in fact, but he can’t stay away from her. She smiles slowly, and he says, without knowing why he needs to say it, ‘Look, it’s been lots of fun. But I think it’s best if—’ He trails off. ‘Break it off.’

Her face darkens for a second. ‘You pompous ass.’ She laughs, sharply. ‘“Break it off”? Break what off? There’s nothing to break off. This isn’t … anything.’

He is aware that he sounds stupid. ‘I thought we should at least discuss it. Didn’t want to give you the—’ God, he wishes it were over. He finds himself giving her a little nod. ‘Give you the wrong impression.’

‘Oh, that’s very kind of you.’ She stubs the cigarette into the wet sand, and stands up, pulling the towel off the ground and around her again. He can’t tell if she’s angry or relieved, or – what? This is all beyond him, and it strikes him again that he’s glad it will be over and that soon he can go back to being himself again, boring, ordinary, out of all this, normal.

‘It’s been—’ he begins.

‘Oh, fuck you,’ she says. ‘Don’t you dare.’ She turns to go, but as she does something comes tumbling down the steps. It is a small piece of black slate.

And then there is a noise, a kind of thudding. Footsteps.

‘Who’s there?’ he says, looking up, but after the white light of the midday sun it is impossible to see anyone on the dark steps.

In the long years afterwards, when he never spoke about this summer, what happened, he would ask himself – because there was no one else he could ask: Who? His wife? His family? Hah – if he’d been wrong about what he’d seen. For, in that moment, he’d swear he could make out a small foot, disappearing back up onto the path to the house.

He turns back to her. ‘Damn. Was that someone, do you think?’

She sighs. ‘No, of course not. The path’s crumbling, that’s all. You’re paranoid, darling.’ She says lightly, ‘As if they’d ever believe it of
you,
anyway. Calm down. Remember, we’re supposed to be grown-ups. Act like one.’

She puts one hand on the rope and hauls herself gracefully up. ‘Bye, darling,’ she says, and he watches her go. ‘Don’t worry,’ she calls. ‘No one’s going to find out. It’s our little secret.’

But someone did. Someone saw it all.

It is 7:16 a.m.

The train to Penzance leaves at seven-thirty. I have fourteen minutes to get to Paddington. I stand in a motionless Hammersmith and City line carriage, clutching the overhead rail so hard my fingers ache. I have to catch this train; it’s a matter of life and death.

Quite literally, in fact – my grandmother’s funeral is at two-thirty today. You’re allowed to be an hour late for dinner, but you can’t be an hour late for a funeral. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime deal.

I’ve lived in London all my life. I know the best places to eat, the bars that are open after twelve, the coolest galleries, the prettiest spots in the parks. And I know the Hammersmith and City line is useless. I hate it. Why didn’t I leave earlier? Impotent fury washes through me. And still the carriage doesn’t move.

This morning, the sound of pattering rain on the quiet street woke me while it was still dark. I haven’t been sleeping for a while, since before Granny died. I used to complain bitterly about my husband Oli’s snoring, how he took up the whole bed, lying prone in a diagonal line. He’s been away for nearly two weeks now. At first I thought it’d be good, if only because I could catch up on sleep, but I haven’t. I lie awake, thoughts racing through my head, one wide-awake side of my brain taunting the other, which is begging for rest. I feel mad. Perhaps I am mad. Although they say if you think you’re going mad that definitely means you’re not. I’m not so sure.

7:18 a.m. I breathe deeply, trying to calm down. It’ll be OK. It’ll all be OK.

Granny died in her sleep last Friday. She was eighty-nine. The funny thing is, it still shocked me. Booking my train tickets to come down to Cornwall, in February, it seemed all wrong, as though I was in a bad dream. I spoke to Sanjay, my cousin, over the weekend and he said the same thing. He also said, ‘Don’t you want to punch the next person in the face who says, “Eighty-nine? Well, she had a good innings, didn’t she?” Like she deserved to die.’

I laughed, even though I was crying, and then Jay said, ‘I feel like something’s coming to an end, don’t you? Something bigger than all of us.’

It made me shiver, because he is right. Granny was the centre of everything. The centre of my life, of our family. And now she’s gone, and – I can’t really explain it. She was the link to so many things. She was Summercove.