Rush of Blood (5 page)

While Dave stands in the shallow end and watches him, Ed is swimming lengths. He has done ten or more already, taking care
to steer clear of the middle-aged woman who is moving rather more slowly than he is, and the young boy, eight or nine years
old, who keeps throwing a nickel into the water before diving down to retrieve it.

Each time the boy comes up clutching the coin, a short, hirsute man on one of the sunbeds claps and shouts, ‘Way to go, Timmy.’

Barry walks slowly along the edge of the pool. Though he is a better colour now, he wears a baggy, black T-shirt over his
shorts and a straw trilby to protect the bald patch at the back of his head. He reaches into his bum-bag for his cigarettes.
As he is about to light one, the woman sitting at the table beneath the coconut palm says, ‘You want one of these?’

Barry turns round and says, ‘Sorry?’

The woman is sitting across from her daughter, smoking and flicking through a magazine. The girl is frowning as she scribbles
in a colouring book. The woman picks up a yellow packet of cigarettes from the table and holds them out. ‘American Spirit,’
she says. ‘All natural. None of the crap, you know?’

‘Yeah, I’ll give it a go,’ Barry says. ‘Thanks.’ He puts his own cigarettes away as he walks over, and takes one from the
woman’s packet. She leans forward to light it for him. She is wearing a bikini today, and her blonde hair is tucked away beneath
a white baseball cap with an ‘A’ embroidered on the front.

She sees him looking at it. ‘Atlanta Braves,’ she says. ‘You know anything about baseball?’

‘Same as rounders,’ Barry says. ‘Just a bit more complicated.’

The woman shakes her head, not getting it. She lifts her sunglasses and puts a hand on her daughter’s arm. ‘Thanks again for
the other night, by the way. For being so sweet about everything.’

‘Not a problem,’ Barry says. He takes another long drag and says, ‘These aren’t bad, as it happens.’

The girl looks up and blinks at him, then turns to her mother. ‘When can I go swimming, Mom?’ she asks.

‘Soon, OK.’

‘I want to go swimming now.’

The woman rolls her eyes at Barry. ‘The pool’s still a little busy right now,’ she says. ‘So you’ll have to wait.’

‘I want to go swimming.’

‘She’s hot,’ the woman explains to Barry. ‘But she can get a little noisy, well, you
know
… so I thought I’d wait until things got quieter.’

It’s not clear if either Ed or Dave has heard what the woman or her daughter were saying, but Ed stops at the end of the next
length and Dave moves to the end of the pool and climbs out. Dave walks back to his sunbed to pick up a towel before moving
across to stand next to Barry. Ed just heaves himself out of the pool and walks, dripping, towards the table. He stops just
short of it and shakes his head like a dog.

The girl watches him, her mouth opening and closing slowly. When he looks at her, she goes back to her colouring. Her mother
picks up her cigarettes again, waves the pack at Dave, and then at Ed. ‘You guys want one?’

‘Not for me,’ Dave says.

Ed hesitates for a second or two then says, ‘I will.’

The woman shakes one out and hands it to him then leans forward with her lighter. Her smile suggests that she can see it is
not something he does very often. Not something he does when his wife is around. As if to confirm her suspicions, Barry nods
and says, ‘Naughty …’

Ed shrugs. ‘So? I’m on holiday … and these are the ones without any additives, right?’

The woman nods. ‘Right.’

He pulls out one of the tatty wicker chairs around the table and drops into it. ‘These fags are actually
good
for you. It’s like one of your five-a-day!’

Behind them, the boy surfaces and holds the coin aloft. His father’s enthusiasm shows no sign of abating.

‘So, you guys on your own today then?’ the woman says.

Ed nods towards Barry. ‘His wife’s at the mall.’ He takes a drag and exhales through a grin. ‘Giving the old credit card a
hammering.’

‘She wants to pick up a few bits and pieces for the kids,’ Barry says. ‘T-shirts and what have you.’

‘Is that stuff cheaper here?’ the woman asks.

‘Yeah, loads cheaper.’

‘And our two are at the beach,’ Ed says, with a nod in Dave’s direction.

‘They’ll be back in half an hour or so,’ Dave says. Dry enough now, he drapes the towel around his shoulders and looks back
at Ed. ‘Are we all going out to get some lunch?’

‘That’s the plan,’ Ed says.

The woman puts her cigarette out and reaches for a bottle of suntan lotion. She squeezes some into her palm and starts rubbing
it on to her arms. ‘So, you guys all work together, something like that?’

Dave says, ‘No,’ and the others shake their heads.

‘He’s a builder,’ Ed says, pointing. ‘
He’s
a computer nerd, and I’m a professional racing driver and part-time male model.’

Dave laughs.

‘You’re a full-time wanker,’ Barry says.

‘You’re yanking my chain,’ the woman says.

Ed says, ‘Only a bit,’ and tells her he’s not really a racing driver.

The short, hairy man walks to the edge of the pool and tells his son that it’s time to go get something to eat. The boy asks
if he can dive down one more time and the man says, ‘OK.’ A few feet away, the middle-aged woman is climbing slowly up the
steps out of the water.

‘You do all know each another from home though, right?’

Barry shakes his head and Dave says, ‘We met out here.’

‘Wow.’ The woman starts rubbing the lotion into her legs. ‘So it’s just Brits sticking together.’

‘I suppose so,’ Dave says.

The girl looks up from her colouring book.

‘Ganging up on us, huh?’

‘What about now?’ the girl asks, pointing at the pool.

The woman looks across and sees that the boy is climbing out, that nobody else is swimming. ‘Yeah, OK.’ The girl puts down
her pencil and stands up, excited. She is wearing a striped blue and white one-piece swimsuit that is stretched across her
large breasts and the soft roll of fat around her belly. ‘You got plenty of sun cream on?’

‘Got cream,’ the girl says.

Dave, Ed and Barry watch as the girl reaches into a plastic bag for a pair of goggles and pulls them over her face. Once her
mother has adjusted them, the girl walks quickly away from the table, smacking her hands against her legs, fingers outstretched.
As soon as she reaches the edge of the pool, she bends her legs and presses her palms together. She pushes her arms out in
front of her, mouths something to herself, then fearlessly belly-flops into the water.

Dave sucks in a fast breath and Ed says, ‘Ouch.’

The girl instantly begins flailing her arms in a frenzied attempt at front crawl, which sends water flying in all directions.
She stops after half a dozen strokes and holds out her arms. She shouts, ‘Mom, look!’

‘What about you?’ Dave asks. ‘Did you come here with anybody?’

The woman stands up and waves at her daughter. She shakes her
head and says, ‘No, it’s just me and her,’ then she walks across until she is only a step or two away from the edge of the
pool. Dave follows a few seconds later and, once they have stubbed out their cigarettes, Ed and Barry drift across to join
them.

They stand there and watch the girl.

‘She’s great,’ Dave says.

‘Yeah,’ the woman says. ‘She is.’

The girl scoops up handfuls of water, throws them in the air, then squeals when the water comes back down on her head.

Barry laughs and points. ‘Look at her face.’

‘Happy as Larry,’ Ed says.

It was just her smile, no more to it than that.

When people write about these things – in those paperbacks you see in racks at stations, the ones with the blank faces of
the so-called monsters staring out from the front covers – it’s never quite that straightforward, is it? Maybe they need to
make
it complicated, to justify the fact they’ve written a stupid book in the first place. Maybe they really believe such and
such a terrible thing happened because X was locked in a cellar when he was a kid, or Y had to wear his mother’s clothes or
whatever it was. Or maybe they just don’t want to admit that, in the end, it’s usually something nice and simple.

The colour of a shirt, a smell, a smile …

Trigger, that’s the word they use, isn’t it? ‘Psychologists believe the trigger in this case was blah, blah, blah.’ It’s not
the word I would choose myself, but at least it gives you some idea how quickly these things happen.

We might as well stop going round the houses.

This
thing.

Thinking back, I suppose it
was
virtually instantaneous. Just the time it took for that smile to appear … wet-lipped, wide and a little
crooked, and for me to see it. Having said that, there must have been
something
different about the girl’s smile that day, because it wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen it before. So, her smile was different,
or I was different, I’m not sure it really matters which. Or perhaps, for all my going on about how simple it all was, there
were other things going on which I couldn’t possibly be aware of. The time of day, the weather, some song on the car radio,
the combination of
all
those things, whatever. There’s no way I can know any of that stuff, that’s up to shrinks and scientists to figure out. I
can only tell you what it felt like to me at the time.

I can only tell you about that smile.

What I
can’t
say for certain is that I knew what was going to happen the moment she recognised me. Not all of it. I remember that my mind
was all over the place and that I could feel myself starting to sweat, but I can’t remember much of a plan. I just started
to drive and before too long, just a few sets of traffic lights further on from where she got in, I was starting to put it
all together. She was gabbling, asking questions ten to the dozen, and I suppose I must have been answering her, but all I
was thinking about were the wheres and the hows of it all.

I needed good spots. I needed to figure out the timings.

It was strange, but once things came together in my head – when I decided where I was going to pull over and where I would
be going later on – I actually found myself starting to calm down. I think I needed that, so that I could focus. So feelings
wouldn’t get in the way when it came to the crunch. The trigger or whatever you want to call it, that was
all
about feelings … but I was kind of detached from everything that came afterwards, and I think you’d have to be, wouldn’t
you?

The things I did in the car, the things I said and did later on.

Thinking about it – and obviously I’ve thought about it a
lot
– I’ve asked myself if what happened was … avoidable, and you know, there’s every chance it might have been if she’d stopped
smiling. It’s all hypothetical, obviously, but worth mentioning. Maybe I could just
have dropped her off somewhere or she could have wandered back to the resort, but the fact is she wouldn’t stop.

She kept on pulling that trigger.

She smiled, swigging from that water bottle, telling me about her pets and her friends and all the people who lived near her
house.

She smiled, asking me where we were going.

Why we were stopping.

Where her mom was.

She smiled … wet-lipped, wide and a little crooked, right up until the end.

Barry’s visit to yet another dissatisfied customer had not left him in the best of moods, though he had hardly been dancing
a jig when he’d left the house first thing that morning. With a big dinner in the evening to come, Angie had plumped for a
light lunch and had watched as Barry worked his way stolidly through a cheese sandwich and a packet of crisps, looking like
he was a hair’s breadth away from topping himself.

A face ‘like a smacked arse’. One of his favourite expressions.

Angie had kept smiling. She had passed the pickle when it was wanted and refilled her husband’s glass with Diet Coke. She
had known very well that his foul mood was down to the whole business with his brother, it usually was, but she also knew
better than to say anything. Not right then, at any rate. It was all about choosing your moments when it came to that particular
hot potato, and picking the wrong one was definitely something to be avoided. It was frightening how quickly Barry could go
from being somewhat pissed off at his brother to being seriously pissed off with her.

‘That temper of his can turn on a fucking
sixpence
. It’s a bastard, I’m telling you, so you want to go a bit careful.’ Something Barry’s younger
sister had told her once. Flushed and full of herself, after one Bacardi Breezer too many.

‘You should put your feet up for a couple of hours,’ Angie had said, wiping the surfaces. ‘Go back to bed, even.’ There had
been a grunt of interest then, and he had not needed too much persuading before he disappeared into the living room, with
lager can, chocolate bar and remote control all within easy reach. Angie knew that – crashed out in front of the TV all afternoon
while she did all the work – Barry would not feel the smallest twinge of guilt, but the fact was that she would not want him
to, because with dinner for six people to get organised, this was how she preferred it.

With the kitchen to herself, she turned on the radio, tuned it in to Radio 2.

As far as the food itself went, there wasn’t a great deal to do. She got the veggies ready and into pans, chopped the slab
of paté into six equal portions and hulled the strawberries. She would put the chicken on as late as possible, let it finish
cooking while everyone was tucking into nibbles and dips.

What she really wanted to spend time on was the table.

She dug out the best plates and the posh knives and forks and wiped dust from the crystal glasses that her mum and dad had
bought when she and her first husband had got married. She tried to remember the last time they had used any of it. Decided
it had probably been the previous Christmas …

Eleven for lunch that day. Dry turkey, sprouts and snide remarks.

On top of Angie’s parents, and Barry’s father – who wasn’t really all there any more, poor old sod – Adrian and his lot had
sat around while Angie had waited on the bunch of them hand and foot. His idle wife and spoiled kids. It didn’t help that
her
kids had been sullen and barely spoken to his, while Barry had been in a foul temper with just about everyone because his
ex-wife had gone away for Christmas and taken his son with her. He’d finally managed to get a few minutes on the phone with
Nick while everyone else was watching
Doctor Who
, but it had only made things worse.

Sitting there afterwards, red-faced and muttering ‘bitch’ in his paper hat.

In the end, Angie had decided that she was just going to get ratarsed on Buck’s Fizz. Let the miserable bastards sort themselves
out …

Half an hour on from ironing the tablecloth, she laid the last serving spoon on the table, stood back and decided she’d made
a nice job of it. She leaned down to straighten the decorative candle-holder she’d picked up in TK Maxx the previous week.
She would light the candles just before the guests arrived. Once she’d showered and changed. Now, she poured herself a large
glass of Pinot Grigio and sat down at the central island to work out a seating plan. Boy, girl, boy, girl went without saying,
with her and Barry at either end of the table. She
had
been toying with place cards, but had finally decided they would be that one step too far, like napkin rings or a cheese-board.

She took a slug of wine. Partners opposite one another? Directly or on the diagonal?

From the radio, she recognised a song that she and Barry had heard almost every day in Florida. On whatever that station was
the radio in the hire car had been tuned to. She closed her eyes, just for a few moments, and remembered the feel of salt
drying on her skin.

The taste of daiquiris and ice cream and prawns as big as fish fingers.

The sound of the drummers on the beach nearby at Siesta Key and between the beats, just for a moment before it is drowned
out by wind and rhythm, the wail of a woman shouting out her daughter’s name.

She stood up when Barry came in. She slid the wine glass away and watched as he walked across and stared down at the dining
table.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘It’s a bit … over the top, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know why I bother,’ Angie said. ‘We’ll just send out for pizza, shall we?’

‘I’m just saying, all this.’ Barry waved a hand towards the table. ‘It’s a lot of trouble to go to.’

‘Not for you it’s not.’

As Barry wheeled away to make for the fridge, Angie swore out loud, realising that she had completely forgotten the big surprise.
Her finishing touch.

‘What?’ Barry asked, turning.

Angie eagerly opened one of the cupboards they had built in beneath the island and pulled out a plastic bag. She removed a
rectangular package and ripped off the wrapping, then proudly handed one of the six items inside to Barry.

He stared at it.

‘It’s a tablemat,’ Angie said. ‘With a picture of all of us in Sarasota.’

‘I can see what it
is
,’ Barry said.

‘I got them done at that Snappy Snaps place, when I had the photos put on to a disk.’ She took the others out and laid them
in a row on top of the island. ‘They do placemats, mouse pads, all sorts … and I just thought it would be something unique,
you know? Something special for tonight, and the best part is, afterwards, everybody can take one home as a souvenir.’

‘Christ,’ Barry said. ‘Why don’t you just go the whole hog and have T-shirts printed up?’

Angie picked up a placemat of her own and looked at it. She moved her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘You know who
took this, don’t you?’

They both stared at the same picture of the six of them.

‘This was on our last morning,’ she said. ‘Remember?’

‘Yeah, outside the main entrance.’

‘It makes you feel a bit funny, doesn’t it?’

Barry pointed. ‘You can just see a bit of the sign.’

‘Ed asked her, you remember? And we gave her our camera.’ Angie laid the placemat back down next to the others and reached
across for her wine glass. ‘Her daughter was definitely with her, standing next to her, because I can remember she was holding
that
colouring book. I remember that one of the pictures was only half coloured in. Bloody hell, Barry, this can only be an hour
or two before … bloody hell.’

‘Nice souvenir,’ Barry said.

He could hear the shower running upstairs as he walked across to the table and sat down to study the picture. He picked the
placemat up carefully so as not to disturb any of his wife’s meticulously arranged tableware. He leaned it up against a wine
bottle and sat back.

Barry and Angela, Ed and Sue, Marina and Dave.

Not that anyone was necessarily standing next to their partner. He remembered them bundling somewhat awkwardly into a line,
squeezing together as soon as the cameras had been handed over. Sue on one end standing next to Angie, Ed up close to Marina
in the middle, then Barry and finally Dave at the other end.

Some more tanned than others, more at ease.

Barry didn’t dwell overlong on his own appearance. He almost always thought he looked like a bag of shit in photographs. There
were a couple of him and Nick he was reasonably fond of, but that may have been because they were the only pictures of his
son he possessed. That he was
allowed
to possess. He looked predictably awful in this one though, in a shirt Angie had forced him into buying which was too big
and way too flowery.

‘He reckons it makes him look like a gay darts player,’ Angie had said. She was a glass or two to the good, in one of the
bars near the beach, a night or two after the six of them had got together. She leaned across to kiss him on the cheek. ‘Don’t
you, darling?’

‘It’s not me, that’s all.’

Ed, of course, had been unable to resist. Flapping his wrist around and lisping, ‘One hundred and eighty!’

Fucking hilarious …

In the photograph, Ed was showing a few too many of those nice, straight teeth, whiter than white against his tan. Angie was
smiling too, more or less, and Marina, while four-eyed Dave on the end had that
slightly superior look you caught sometimes, when he thought nobody was looking. Maybe the picture was taken before he was
quite ready, but he definitely had that expression, something close to a smirk;
you should think yourselves lucky I’m even talking to you idiots
. To be honest, whatever face he had, Dave Cullen was a funny-looking sod: skinny as a stick, with bad skin and a wispy beard
like some student or whatever. Geeky, that’s what Angie had said. Certainly not what you’d call an oil painting, though Marina
didn’t seem to have any complaints, so maybe he was hung like a donkey or something.

It was Angie who had said that as well, like
she
should be so lucky. Like Barry had nothing worth writing home about.

Looking at the six of them, in shorts and sandals, brightly coloured shirts and sunhats, he decided that Sue probably looked
the most … natural. A half-smile sort of thing, as though she’d just turned around and found a camera pointed at her. She
had her hair up, showing off her shoulders. In fact, all of her was looking pretty good and Barry tried not to compare her
slender figure with Angie’s, but it was hard with the pair of them standing side by side like that. Funny, but in terms of
being sexy or whatever, it wasn’t an in-your-face thing with Sue. Not like it was with Marina, who was a bit, you know,
obvious
. In actual fact, you wouldn’t give Sue a second look nine times out of ten, but every so often you just got this feeling
– at least Barry did, at any rate – that whatever she wanted people to think, she probably went like a train given half a
chance.

There’d been plenty of talk about what Sue and Ed got up to. Dave and Marina too, come to think of it. As per bloody usual,
Barry and Angie had talked about sex a damn sight more than they’d actually done it.

Down to him, no getting round that.

Angie had been good about it while they’d been away, he couldn’t fault her on that score. Saying that it didn’t matter, because
she was happy enough just to read her book and that it was far too hot to be doing any of
that
anyway. Letting him off the hook.

It wasn’t too hot in bloody Crawley though, was it?

He let his head drop, then lifted it again, trying and failing to ease a little of the tension in his back and shoulders.
It wasn’t difficult to work out what was going on, was it? There was no great mystery about why certain parts that
should
be working
weren’t
, no need for cuddles or counselling. He had a cow of an ex-wife and a bossy twat of a brother and both of them wound him
up to the point where he felt like something was going to snap.

End of story.

‘You just need to relax,’ Angie kept saying.

Oh … you
reckon?

He did his best to keep calm and to pretend that
he
didn’t think it mattered either. Truth was though, he knew it was only a matter of time before she started dropping hints
about ‘seeing’ someone. Made some joke about buying tablets off the internet. The sad, simple, sodding truth was, the tension
was everywhere except his cock, and the irony was that not being able to do the business in the bedroom was making him even
angrier.

A vicious cycle, or circle, whatever the fuck it was.

He realised that the water had stopped running upstairs. He listened, heard Angie’s footsteps as she walked from the bathroom
to the bedroom. He should probably go up himself and change into a clean shirt or something.

Make an effort.

Barry took one last look at the photograph as he carefully laid the placemat back in position. Five people staring straight
at the camera. And him.

He wouldn’t say anything, but he couldn’t help wondering if this was really the best photo that Angie could find. If there
was not one when, at the crucial moment, he had at least been looking the same way as everyone else. His eyes where they should
be, on the woman with the camera, and not fixed on something two feet to the left of her.

One of the pictures only half coloured in.