Summer at the Lake (14 page)

Before going to work this morning, Adam had cleared the pavement in front of his house in Summertown and he’d noticed when he’d returned an hour ago that his neighbours had done the same, which meant the pavement now resembled something fans of mogul skiing would have fun tackling.

He thought of Latimer Street and hoped Esme hadn’t ventured out. If he’d had time he would have driven over to see if she was all right. He could have phoned but he reckoned her response would be an automatic everything’s-fine-don’t-worry-about-me. And maybe it was wrong of him to assume that Esme would welcome help from him. It was always possible that she would view it as interference – after all, she’d managed perfectly well before they’d met. He remembered how fiercely independent his grandparents had been right up until the end when, one by one, they’d died – but they’d died in their own homes and with the conviction that they would do things their way. So he could understand how Esme might bristle at being considered incapable of caring for herself. Nobody wants to feel they’re on the slippery slope.

Adam took one look at Jesse and knew that this was going to be one of the most difficult nights of his life.

Having invested so much time and effort into trying to keep a lid on his emotions and not raise his hopes, it shocked him how easily the mere sight of her made a mockery of that determination and distilled into one painful blow the desolation her absence had caused him.

‘You look great,’ he managed to say, hanging her coat up and taking in the emerald-green top and skinny jeans with black patent ankle boots he didn’t recognise, with heels so high they made her nearly as tall as him. Everything about her looked fresh and shiny new. And disturbingly altered. She even smelled differently.

‘You’ve had your hair cut,’ he said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

‘Yes,’ she replied, giving her now collar-length hair a self-conscious flick. ‘I decided it was time to shake things up, go for a dramatic change.’

You’re not kidding, he thought. He had always loved her long straight hair; it had been one of the first things he had noticed about her when they’d met at a wedding – he’d been at university with the groom and she was a cousin of the bride. They’d been nicely set up, conveniently seated next to each other for the reception after the ceremony. They had chatted effortlessly from the get-go, an easy and spontaneous attraction on both their parts.

Now as he looked at her, he mourned not just the loss of all that silky waist-length hair the colour of ebony, but the absence of effortless dialogue between them. How could it have come to this? This appalling awkwardness?

‘Please,’ he said, gesturing the way through the house as though she was visiting for the first time, ‘I’ve just opened a bottle of wine.’

‘I’d rather have a soft drink, please. Since I’m driving.’

‘Right, of course.’
Damn!
He hadn’t been shopping for a few days and was pretty sure there was nothing suitable in the cupboards. ‘Um . . . I’ll check to see what there is.’

A quick look in the kitchen confirmed that, other than tap water, he had nothing that didn’t have an alcoholic content. ‘How about some coffee?’ he offered.

‘Decaf?’

Shit, this was going from bad to worse. ‘Tea?’ he offered in desperation.

She smiled and pulled out what looked like a chunky squareshaped wallet from her handbag – the handbag that wasn’t the Mulberry one he’d bought her for her birthday. Had it been consigned to the past already? When she unzipped the wallet, he saw that it fell open like a concertina and each compartment contained an individual sachet of tea. This was something else that was new about her. She passed him a sachet, which declared itself to be rosehip tea.

In an agony of discomfiture, he boiled the kettle, poured the water over the teabag in a mug with a teaspoon and passed it to her to deal with. Meanwhile, he poured himself a glass of wine – large and purely medicinal; something to help relax him so he could talk to her as a normal human being.

The teabag dispatched to the bin under the sink, Jesse walked round to the other side of the breakfast bar and pulled out a stool. Adam took it as a clear message that she wasn’t going to cross the boundary to the sitting area and make herself comfortable on the leather sofa. Opting for the bar stool made it plain she was all business.

In turn he leant back against the worktop and raised his glass. ‘Happy Christmas,’ he said, failing miserably to inject even a trace of festive cheer into his voice.

‘Happy Christmas,’ she murmured. ‘Have you told your family about us?’

He shook his head. Apart from Floriana and Esme he hadn’t told anyone. He’d deemed them as safe to tell; they weren’t part of his immediate circle of friends. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t something I wanted to say over the phone.’ The truth was, it wasn’t something he wanted to discuss with anyone who had known them as a couple. It was the sympathy he dreaded. Or worse, the plenty-more-fish-in-the-sea banality that he could imagine any number of his friends saying. But odds on, the crossover between some of their friends would soon have the news spread.

‘Does that mean your father and Joyce are still expecting me to join you for Christmas?’ Jesse asked.

When he nodded, she said, ‘Oh, Adam, that’s not fair to them. It’s not fair to me either.’

‘I suppose not,’ he said, not really sure why it wasn’t fair to her. As he took a large reckless swallow of his wine and watched her sip cautiously at her drink, he thought how it hadn’t occurred to him to tell his family about being on a break with Jesse. That was the good thing about his family: rarely did they ask or share things of an emotional nature. Questions of that sort were cast aside in favour of assumptions. So yes, the assumption was that Jesse would be arriving with him as had been arranged when it was discussed at the start of December.

‘When you’ve explained the situation to them,’ Jesse said, ‘will you pass on my best wishes, please?’

‘I will,’ he said. ‘And likewise to your parents.’

In the protracted silence that followed, he snatched at the first thing he could think to say. ‘I’ll get your present.’

It was almost a relief to leave the claustrophobic atmosphere of the kitchen and escape upstairs to fetch the present he’d wrapped and left on their bed.

His
bed.

No,
their
bed, he corrected himself. It was still their bed until the very last drop of optimism had been completely drained from him.

He hoped Jesse didn’t think he’d spent too much and would interpret his gift as an extravagant attempt to buy her back. After spending hours online, he’d narrowed the choice down to a Hermès enamel bangle or a Gucci pair of leather gloves. In the end he’d opted for the bangle and a bottle of her favourite Prada perfume, which he’d wrapped as one present so as not to appear too showy or overgenerous. He’d always teased her that she had an unhealthy interest in anything that had a designer label attached to it, and she’d countered that as vices went, it was her only one and was harmless enough. Her credit card statements had told a different story and he’d been shocked at the start of their relationship to discover how much debt she had racked up. What had surprised him more was how freely she discussed the amount she spent and what she owed. ‘I expect you’re in debt far more to your bank than I am to Visa and American Express,’ she’d said with a shrug.

‘But that’s different,’ he’d said. ‘That’s a business loan and I’m fully on top of it.’

Smiling, she’d said, ‘Who says I’m not on top of my loan?’

She hadn’t been on top of it though and six months later he’d helped to pay off the majority of it and put together a spreadsheet on how to manage her money better.

Back downstairs, he breathed in deeply and stepped into the kitchen and put the wrapped present on the breakfast bar. ‘No opening it until Christmas Day,’ he said lightly.

In front of her was a much smaller wrapped parcel. ‘Ditto for you,’ she said, sliding it towards him. At least it wasn’t socks, he thought, guessing from its shape that it was a CD.

It was then that he noticed her mug was empty. Surely she couldn’t have drunk it all while he was upstairs? He hadn’t been that long. A spark of bitterness ignited deep within him. She had probably tipped the tea down the sink so that she didn’t have to drink it and prolong her visit any longer than was necessary. Was it so bad being here with him?

Perhaps it was, because right now he didn’t much like being around himself. This wasn’t the real him. He was on edge and constantly struggling to think of things to say, and everything he did say felt false and forced.

‘You must have been thirsty,’ he said, looking pointedly at the empty mug.

Not meeting his eye, she said, ‘I was.’

‘Would you like another one?’ Now he was just being cruel. For which he got what he deserved.

She slipped off the stool and took the mug over to the sink. ‘No thanks,’ she said. She glanced at her watch. ‘I really ought to be going.’

His heart sank. ‘No, don’t rush off,’ he said, ‘let’s have something to eat. I thought maybe we could have a takeaway. Or go out.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, actually looking like she meant it, ‘I can’t stay, I’m meeting some friends in town.’

‘
Friends?
’ he repeated, immediately regretting it.

‘Jackie and Amanda from work,’ she said with a flare of defiance. ‘We’re having dinner together. I’m not going on a date, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

If he carried on this way, she soon would be, he thought miserably. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry for . . .’ He threw his hands in the air and turned away. ‘Sorry for everything. I seem totally incapable of getting this situation straight in my head. I get the feeling I’m doing and saying everything wrong.’

She came towards him. ‘It was you who wanted us to be on a break,’ she said softly.

Suddenly scared she might pull the plug on him there and then, he forced himself to smile. ‘I’ll eventually get the hang of it,’ he said. ‘And I’m glad you came. It’s been good to see you, if only for a short while.’

She mirrored his smile but with a sadness he found unbearable, then picked up her bag and present and moved around him towards the hall.

He followed behind, helped her into her coat and stood back, unsure whether a goodbye kiss on the cheek would be contravening any of the rules by which she was playing this. ‘Well then,’ he said with excruciating brightness and sounding like an anxious parent talking to a teenage daughter going out for the night, ‘have fun in town. Say hello to Jackie and Amanda from me.’

As if she couldn’t take the forced cheeriness from him, she leant in and kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, Adam,’ she said. ‘Take care.’

The close proximity of her, the gentleness of her voice, the spicy new fragrance she was wearing, the familiar blue of her eyes, it was all too much and he closed the gap between them and kissed her on the mouth.

For a split second he thought he was doing the right thing. The soft warmth of her lips against his convinced him that this was all he’d needed to do right from the moment she’d arrived – just one kiss and she would come back to him and life would be as it once was.

But it was over before it had begun because no sooner had her lips responded to his – and he was sure they had – than she was pushing him away. ‘No,’ she said, ‘please don’t, Adam, that’s not the answer, it will only complicate matters.’

‘No it wouldn’t,’ he said, reaching for her again. ‘It would simplify matters.’

She looked at him with what he could only call horrified disdain.

His face burning with shame, he stood back and watched her pull open the door. ‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she said. ‘It was a mistake.’

Later, when he’d finished off the bottle of wine and had made inroads on another and was doing the man-thing of lying on the sofa and controlling the universe with the remote control, he knew he’d blown it with Jesse. Every time he thought of what he’d said – that kissing her would simplify matters – he wanted to rip his tongue out and stamp on it, because frankly, it was sod all use to him if it was going to go round spewing crap like that.

Never in the history of dumb things to say had he sunk so mortifyingly low. And never would he be able to rid himself of the memory of that shameful utterance.

Oh, he’d really covered himself in glory, hadn’t he?

Christmas Eve and never had the journey back to Kent seemed so tortuously endless or so full of opportunities to bail out. Every time the crowded train stopped at a station, Floriana had been tempted to gather up her things and make a run for it. But the thought of having to explain herself to Mum and Dad, not to mention Ann, had kept the temptation at bay.

Before catching the train from Oxford she had called in to see Esme to wish her a happy Christmas and in return she had been given a pep talk from the old lady, urging her to be more positive about the days ahead and to consider the possibility that her sister might want her presence to offset the weight of her husband’s family. ‘For all you know,’ Esme had said, ‘Ann might feel outnumbered by them and want you there as support.’ It was a nice idea, but Floriana had yet to see any evidence of that since arriving.

She had had another reason for calling in at Trinity House; it was to deliver the invitation for Esme to join her and Adam for lunch when they were back in Oxford. She had also asked if Esme had heard anything from Adam about Jesse, but she knew less than Floriana did.

Floriana had texted Adam the day after he was seeing Jesse and all she’d had back from him, other than agreeing to the date she’d suggested for their get-together with Esme, was that it hadn’t gone well. He hadn’t expanded and she’d been too busy to call him, what with work and making a frantic and statutory last-minute start on her Christmas shopping.

So here she was, Christmas Eve
chez
Brown, a scant two miles from Stanhurst where she and her sister had grown up and where they’d always celebrated Christmas. For the first time since they’d gone on their trip, Floriana really missed Mum and Dad: it didn’t feel like Christmas without them.