The Summer Without You
Read The Summer Without You Online
Authors: Karen Swan
For Ollie.
You’re golden. My son and my sun.
‘We are not breaking up.’
‘No? What else do you call disappearing halfway round the world for half a year without the person you’ve spent nearly half your life with?’ Rowena Tipton did her best not to
let the tears drop from her lashes, but her voice sliding up to soprano was just as telling.
‘Not a half-measure?’ Matt tried joking, before seeing the look he knew all too well that told him now wasn’t the time. He rubbed her hands which always felt so small in his.
‘I call it a new beginning.’
‘But why do we need a
new
beginning? We had one eleven years ago. I like our middle.’ She hiccupped, letting her hair blow in front of her face as she stared back at him with
her soulful dark brown eyes – ‘doe eyes’, he’d always said – willing him to see reason. But the omens weren’t good. It would be so much easier to talk him out of
this notion under a whimsical blue sky, clouds frolicking in the wind above them and daisy chains round their wrists – it would mean her cleavage was out for a start. He could never get his
way against that. But she was wrapped and swaddled, and the weather was as bleak as his words, the sky as grey as an old towel, the ancient oaks that stood around them like elders still bare and
budless. Everything seemed lifeless and spent. She strained to hear the first birds of spring on their return migration, scanned the clodded ground for flowers, but the daffodils had made a poor
showing this year, the bluebells not yet pushing their sharp green tips above the earth. It was mid March but nature seemed suspended. The dormancy had a scattering effect every bit as effective as
a gunshot and the park was deserted, driving families inside to huddle round the last of the winter fires and leaving the unseen sun to slip from the sky for another day.
Matt tucked her hair behind her ear, his hand cupping her head so that she could rest her cheek against his palm. His tone, when he spoke, was calming, his eyes steady upon hers. ‘Because
our middle is flabby. We’re in a rut, baby. We need to freshen things up.’
‘Which is code for “see other people”, you mean?’
‘No, that is not what I mean. This is not a break-up, Ro.’
‘What
is
it, then? You have to call it something. It’s not something without a name. Nothing’s anything without a name. I mean, how will I explain to
peo—’
‘It’s a pause.’
She blinked at him, her lashes dewy with poised tears. ‘A pause?’
‘Before we commit to each other for the rest of our lives, it’s a pause, an opportunity for us both to be selfish for the last time.’
‘But I like being unselfish!’ she wailed.
Matt nodded, as though he’d predicted every one of her responses. ‘I know you do; it’s one of the things I’ll miss about you. But I also
want
to miss you, Ro. I
want to feel that –’ he shrugged, reaching for the word ‘– I don’t know, that yearning for you again, and I can’t if we’re lying together in the same bed
every night and sitting on the same park bench in the same park every Sunday morning.’
‘So you
have
got tired of me.’ The wail was replaced with a wobble.
‘No!’ he laughed, exasperated. His hand dropped from her cheek and he sat back, draping his arms over the bench and looking out over the Ham corner of Windsor Great Park. The wind
blew Ro’s tangled not-brown, not-blonde hair across her face again as she studied his profile; it was a face she knew almost better than her own, the one that had excited her when she’d
seen it for the first time among the university library stacks, the one that had soothed her when she hadn’t got the 2.1 she’d craved (and needed) to win a scholarship on the
post-graduate photography course that was otherwise financially out of reach, the one that made her laugh with its impressive eyebrow flexibility . . . How could she not see this face – those
blue eyes with the halo of fire round the pupils, the crooked smile that veered left, the cleft chin she could almost rest her thumb in, and that thatch of almost-black hair – for six
months?
He looked back at her and for the first time what she saw in that familiar face frightened her: certainty. He was going to do this. He was going to go.
‘I could never tire of you. I’ve just tired of our routine. We’ve been doing this for too long already and we’re only just thirty. We’ve been together since uni and
I don’t really know life without you. I don’t know who I am without you. You’re the love of my life, Ro, but we met too young.’ He stroked her cheek tenderly. ‘I need
to do this. I want to be away from you specifically so that I get to come back to you. I want us to fall in love
all over again
– do you see?’ His eyes searched hers, trying to
see if she did, but it was hard to see anything behind the tears. Panic was overriding everything.
‘No, I don’t see! I don’t understand why you want to go back to the “getting there” phase when I already love you.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re not hearing me, baby. I want us to fall again, get back that feeling of running off a cliff and realizing we can fly! I fell in love with you eleven years
ago, and I am deeply
in
love with you now, but everything’s too . . . cosy. I want us to shake everything up, refresh the page, come back to each other with passion. I mean, who said
you can only fall in love with someone once?’
‘Because that’s how it works. Nobody falls in love twice.’
He dropped his dimpled chin. ‘Is there a law against it?’
She knew he was taking the mickey out of her, puncturing her earnest words with a faintly mocking, bemused smile. ‘There’ll be some law of chemistry or something that says once a
chemical reaction has occurred, it can’t be repeated. It either mutates into something else or just . . . dies.’
They stared at each other. Neither one of them had taken chemistry beyond GCSE.
‘And what if you meet someone else?’ Her voice sounded hollow and small, scarcely up to the task of articulating such an apocalyptic thought.
‘That’s not going to happen. The whole point of this, Ro, is that I’m wanting to rediscover
you
again.’
‘But what if you change while we’re apart? Or I do? Or we both do?’
‘We’ve been together our entire adult lives already. You really think that much can happen in six months?’
‘Famous last words,’ she muttered, watching a red deer graze nearby. She felt Matt take her hands in his again. She looked back at him.
‘Ro, I don’t want that to happen, and I don’t think it will – on my life I don’t – but if we’re meant to spend our lives together, we’ll pull
through this.’
‘So you’re saying it
will
be difficult.’
He rewarded her with a crooked smile. He’d never won an argument against her yet. ‘I’m saying it’s not going to be easy. The reality is, I’m not going to be able to
call regularly, maybe sometimes for a few weeks at a time.’
‘A few weeks?’ she spluttered.
‘I don’t think mobile reception is all that great in Cambodia. Anyway, that could be a good thing! We speak probably twenty times a day, but when did you last feel excited to see
that it was me on the line? Or actually not hear what I was saying because you were listening to the sound of my voice? You always used to do that, but now we just talk about cleaning the fish tank
or covering the bay trees before the frost. I want you to be desperate to get my call, like you used to be. I want you to blush when I see you naked, just like you did first time round.’ She
saw a small light ignite in his eyes at the memory. ‘We can get all that back, Ro. This six months is just an adventure that’s going to bring it all back.’ He winked at her.
‘It’s sexy, I reckon.’
Ro blinked at him in disbelief. ‘Six months’ enforced chastity is sexy? Are you mad?’
‘Just think how mad for it you’re going to be when I get back.’ He smiled. ‘You’ll be ripping my clothes off.’
She pouted, but her eyes were dancing. ‘You could just play a little harder to get. You don’t actually need to fly all the way to Cambodia to force me into making the first
move.’
‘You know I can never turn you down,’ he said, his finger tracing down her nose to the tip. His eyes locked on hers. ‘I want you disoriented and desperate without me.’
She saw the smile twitching on his lips, the look of conspiracy in his eyes. He was joking and yet she could see that the idea of her unsated lust appealed to him.
‘I already am.’
‘Now multiply it by six months.’
She swallowed. The thought of even a weekend without him was unbearable.
‘And then when I’m back . . . straight to Happy Ever After.’
Ro looked away. His words hurt to hear – he knew the weight they carried. He knew he was all she had – her family, her love, her best friend. But he was going anyway. He cupped her
cheek with his palm again and made her look back at him.
‘That’s a promise, Ro. This isn’t just about six months off from the rat race. I’m going to take this time and think of a way of asking you that shows you exactly what
you mean to me. You deserve more than just a bended knee.’
‘A bended knee would do me fine.’ After eleven years, frankly a plastic ring and a train ticket to Gretna Green would pass muster.
He shook his head. ‘Think bigger. Let’s not settle for this.’ He gestured to the park around them, distant cars stopping for the occupants to take photographs of the herds of
deer grazing by the road, the tower blocks of Roehampton peeping through the tumbling grey clouds. ‘I’ve got grand plans for us, Ro. I don’t want there to be anything humdrum
about our lives. Let’s take this six months to stretch and really wake up. You’ve got that wedding in New York in a few weeks, anyway. It’s your first overseas commission. You
never know – it could be the start of you taking the company international! Or transatlantic at least. Why not? Think big.’
Ro rolled her eyes and huffed crossly. He wouldn’t be saying this if he’d met the bride. He’d never leave SW14 again if he met
her
.
He hooked his finger under her chin and made her look back at him. ‘I know that look. Stop being so stubborn. You need to set up the company properly. The website’s too slow, for a
start. This is your chance to really focus on getting everything just the way you want it. By the time I come back, you could have the company in a completely different place. I’ll be
refreshed, and we’ll both have our eyes wide open again. We’ll be unstoppable.’
Ro had lost. She knew she couldn’t talk him out of this. He had played his trump card – promising to propose – and what was she going to do, anyway?
Not
wait for him? As
if.
Slowly she gave a small shrug. What else could she do? ‘Well, it doesn’t look like I’ve got much choice, does it?’
