The Summer Without You (11 page)

Hump was waiting for her, two enormous steaming cups of coffee sitting in front of him. He looked up from reading the local paper as she burst in, breathless and agitated, turning back to make
sure she hadn’t been followed.

‘Hey, what’s up?’ he asked, frowning as he saw her expression. ‘Now what’s happened?’

Ro shook her head, too upset to talk. How could she have run into him –
him
of all people – twice in under twenty-four hours? She pulled her chair back and it scraped
jarringly across the floor, but she didn’t register; she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror as she sat down: Matt’s unflatteringly oversized grey T-shirt clung to her in some
places, billowed in others – giving her the shoulders of a prop forward – and her red and turquoise striped swimsuit had soaked through her beige shorts, giving her the bottom of a
toddler. ‘Nothing.’

‘Doesn’t look like nothing.’

She shrugged and took a gulp of coffee.

He leaned forward on his elbows. ‘Why is it that whenever I leave you alone for ten minutes, you come back looking like your dog just died?’

‘I don’t have a dog.’

‘Matt have this much trouble with you?’

‘No!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s really nothing.’

‘It’s a long story, I bet.’ She met his eyes at her own refrain, just as the waitress came over with their plates. ‘
It is?
Jeez, I think you’d better tell me
this long story. What else we got to talk about?’ he said, gesturing to their over-stacked piles of wholegrain pancakes with fruit that seemingly came as the sidebar to tea and toast.
‘Trust me, we’re gonna be here a while.’

Ro sat on the porch, an untouched beer in her hand and an ache in her bones, her hair finally washed and wrapped in a wobbly towel turban. She hadn’t stopped all day.
Hump had been out doing his beach runs since 9 a.m., giving her time alone in the studio to finish setting up. All the portraits were hanging now, and she had finally managed to get the brackets up
for the small TV screens – although not without quarrying a few holes in the walls first, which meant they were hanging slightly lower than she’d originally intended. She’d also
found a good-sized square table at an antiques store further up the road that Hump had sweetly collected for her – making a small diversion via the studio on one of his runs to Indian Wells
Beach and strapping it to the roof bars – and which now stood centrally in the room, stacked with the oversized album books and a potted blue hydrangea.

After all that activity in the morning, things had been rather quieter after lunch – no one had stopped by, although she’d seen a few women darting into the spa – but she was
grateful for that today. As if the 4 a.m. start wasn’t bad enough, her body was still lingering in Greenwich Mean Time and since 5 p.m. had been ordering her to go to bed.

She’d closed up on the dot of five and Hump had given her a ride home, where she’d wallowed in the bath for an hour while he’d caught up with the latest bids for
tomorrow’s advertising board, before sitting cross-legged on the bed and trying to Skype Matt. She’d calculated the time difference between here and Cambodia was twelve hours, which in
a way was almost an easier, cleaner time-cut to navigate than back in London, where the seven-hour lag was more inconvenient and meant he was always out by the time she woke up and in bed by the
time she got back.

She looked up, hearing the agricultural rumble of the Landy long before she could see it – Hump had gone to collect Bobbi from the Jitney stop on Main Street – and Ro unfurled her
legs from beneath her, taking a nervous breath as she waited to see Bobbi again.

She couldn’t help but smile as the cheery yellow car rounded the corner, up the drive, and she saw Hump talking away as Bobbi looked about her dubiously in the basic cab. A Merc it
wasn’t. The passenger door opened and Bobbi slid out – sliding was all she could do from that height, in such a tight skirt.

Ro stood up. ‘Hi!’

‘Hey! How are ya?’ Bobbi called back, striding towards her and leaving Hump to get her bags from the back. She enveloped Ro in a fierce hug, pulling back to study her face, and Ro
wondered whether Bobbi had forgotten what she looked like during the six-week gap between their two meetings.

‘Weird seeing you without a patch,’ Bobbi said. ‘Your eye OK now?’

‘Oh yes, totally. I’d forgotten all about it,’ Ro said, waving away her concerns with the beer bottle. ‘Want one?’

‘Sure,’ Bobbi replied. ‘Only, let me just change quickly. I can’t bear wearing black out here.’ She gestured to her skin-pinching black skirt suit, which Ro thought
would fit her right leg. ‘You gonna give me the tour, Hump?’

Ro sat back in the chair as the two of them disappeared inside, occasional words floating out to her: ‘
Ercol?
Hump, are you serious . . . ?’

They emerged several minutes later, Bobbi looking refreshed and unnaturally colourful in an almost-neon-peach skinny-knit top, thong sandals and white shorts. Her legs were even better than her
pencil skirts had let on – slim, toned, brown – and Ro felt instantly dowdy in her rolled-up navy chinos and Matt’s ancient school rugby shirt. (She was beginning to wonder if
she’d gone overboard packing half his clothes to wear over here. The view in the mirror at the Golden Pear hadn’t been pretty.)

‘I mean, I
heard
people used to have avocado baths, but . . . I thought they were suburban myths, you know?’ Bobbi was saying as they stepped back onto the porch. She clasped
his arm intently. ‘Hey, listen, I say this with love, OK? All I’m saying is I’ve got contacts. Use ’em.’

Hump nodded obediently. ‘Will do, Mom.’ His eyes met Ro’s and she swallowed down the giggle tickling at her throat. ‘Now have a beer.’

‘Cheers!’ Ro said brightly, and all three clinked their bottles together. Ro took a tiny sip, hoping no one would notice. She’d never acquired a taste for beer.
‘Here’s to summer.’

‘So when’s Mystery Greg getting here?’ Bobbi asked, settling herself on the other end of the swing love seat to Ro, her long legs folded like a flamingo’s. ‘Did
anyone else manage to get a response from him? He didn’t respond to any of my pokes.’

Ro shook her head.

‘He’ll be here soon, I’m hoping. But you never can tell – he can work pretty crazy hours,’ Hump said.

‘Not as crazy as me, I’ll bet,’ Bobbi replied competitively.

‘He passed the foam-party test too, then?’ Ro asked.

Hump laughed out loud at that. ‘Ha! He’s so not the foam type. I’m helping him out, actually. He needed a place to stay and he’s a friend of my brother, Sam. They were at
Penn together.’

‘Yeah? I was at Penn. What did he do?’ Bobbi asked, interested.

‘Law.’

Bobbi wrinkled her nose, losing interest again. Clearly if he wasn’t in architecture . . .

‘So, what about you? Who do you work for?’ Ro asked, even though she didn’t know the name of a single architect in New York, but as she well remembered Bobbi saying that night
in the bathroom, ‘Know me, know my career.’ If they were going to get off on the right foot . . .

‘Brew Eastman Schwarz Associates, Seventh Avenue.’

Ro nodded as though the name meant something to her. ‘Oh yeah, right . . . Enjoying it there?’

Bobbi looked surprised by the question. ‘
Enjoying
it is irrelevant. They’re a name you’ve got to have on your résumé if you want to work in an
inter-disciplinary consultancy which I do because that’s the future, I’ll tell ya that for free. Once I make partner –’ She whistled and Ro could only surmise that she was
suggesting she’d be home free.

‘Of course, yeah. Totally . . .’ Ro trailed off.

‘How about you? Hump said you and he are sharing a studio.’

‘Yes, it’s great. So pretty and such a great location. I think we’re going to do really well there.’

‘Busy today?’

‘Today? Uh, no, not so much, but I expect most people were travelling down after work this afternoon, like you. I’m bracing myself for a rush tomorrow. It’ll have to be early
to bed for me tonight.’ The thought of bed reminded her body how tired it was and an entirely unsuppressable yawn bubbled up.

Bobbi nodded. ‘And how’s your boyfriend? Still gone?’

Ro felt a flash of annoyance at Bobbi’s choice of words. She made it sound like he was gone and not coming back, which was categorically not the case. Why didn’t anyone believe they
were just on a pause? ‘Matt? Yes, yes, he’s on an expedition to some lost city they just found outside Angkor Wat last year. They found it from laser-mapping or something and he wanted
to see it for himself. There’s twelve of them doing it. He’s having a ball,’ she said carelessly. In truth, she didn’t know exactly where Matt was. He had told her but all
the names were so long and unintelligible that his itinerary had long since slipped from her mind and she didn’t want to admit to Bobbi that all she really knew – right here, right now
– was that her beloved boyfriend was somewhere in Cambodia.

Bobbi watched her for a beat and Ro felt herself grow even more agitated in her studied silence than her careless words. ‘Well, at least you’re out here now and having your own fun
back. You can show him what he’s missing . . .’ Bobbi drawled. ‘Hey, there’s an idea! Quick, snuggle up to me,’ Bobbi said, grabbing Hump and Ro each by the wrist and
pulling them in to her on the swing seat. ‘Now look seductive,’ she ordered, angling her phone to face them all and clicking the button before Ro could pull her features into any
considered expression at all. ‘That’ll do,’ she murmured, before nodding and pressing ‘send’.

‘Where did you send that to?’ Ro asked, aghast to see she’d been caught mid-blink beside candy-coloured Bobbi, who was pouting up a storm.

‘Facebook. I’ll tag you. He’s friends with you, right?’

‘Of course.’ Oh God, how many people would see that photo of her?

‘So now you can show him just how much fun you’re having. We’ll take a shot a day. You never know, he might get so jealous he comes back early.’ Bobbi winked.

Not with her looking like that he wouldn’t, Ro thought miserably as the towel on her head finally collapsed like a soufflé and wet hair dripped on her shoulders. He might never come
back if he kept seeing her looking like that!

She checked her watch. Half eight. That meant it was half past eight in the morning over there. Her earlier calls had rung off, but surely now would be a good time? Another yawn caught her
unawares and she covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Mmmghm. Guys, I’m so sorry, but I think I’m going to have to hit the hay.’

‘But I only just got here!’ Bobbi protested. ‘I thought we had reservations at Nick & Toni’s tonight?’

‘We do.’ Hump shrugged.

‘I know, and I’m so sorry to flake, but I’ve still got evil jet lag.’

‘You shouldn’t go to bed so early. You know what’ll happen,’ Hump said, watching her as she stood up.

‘Given what happened this morning after a
late
night, I think I’ll take my chances, thanks.’

Hump grinned. ‘You can’t wait up to meet Greg?’

Ro shook her head. ‘I really can’t. I consider it a personal achievement to have managed to greet Bobbi. I promise I’ll be more sociable tomorrow.’

Hump shrugged. ‘You want me to drop you at the studio in the morning? I’ll be leaving at ten to nine.’

‘Thanks, but I can’t keep relying on you for lifts all summer. Is there a bus? I should learn to be independent out here.’

‘What you need is a bike,’ Bobbi said. ‘Everyone has them here. I get one every summer. Amazing. So easy. I’m getting mine in the morning if you want to come
along.’

Ro considered for a moment. She’d seen the wide cycle lanes here; they looked safe enough. ‘OK, yeah, perhaps I should do that. Thanks.’

‘Tell you what, you can come with me to my yoga class beforehand.’

‘Uh, no . . .’

‘Yes! Don’t give up, there’s still time for you to get toned.’

Ro frowned. What? ‘No, I mean, I’ve never done yoga before.’

Bobbi waved a nonchalant hand at her. ‘You’ll pick it up, no problem – my girl’s the best. Everyone does yoga in the Hamptons – seven o’clock tomorrow
morning, the entire East End will be chanting to “Om Na Shivaya” salutations.’ She looked across at Hump, who shrugged and nodded obediently. ‘Besides, I’ve got a
guest pass for tomorrow as it’s the first class of the season. I’ll wake you in the morning,’ Bobbi continued magnanimously.

‘Oh . . . OK,’ Ro replied nervously. She supposed bonding with Bobbi was never going to be a stress-free affair.

‘Sleep well,’ Hump grinned. ‘You’d better rest while you can.’

Ro walked away, puzzled. What did that mean? Yoga was just heavy breathing and stretching. Right?

Ro tried again. It was her seventh attempt at getting into a headstand and she wasn’t going to give up. Or rather, the teacher wasn’t going to let her. Everyone was
watching now.

‘Just think about creating a triangle with your head and your arms,’ the teacher intoned, as though her request was perfectly reasonable. But since when did people start creating
geometry with their bodies? That was what Ro wanted to know. She’d never been triangular in her life. Round, maybe.

She put her head back down to the ground and kicked her right leg into the air, closely followed by the left, both legs vaguely assuming an upright position just long enough for Matt’s
khaki gym T-shirt to come untucked from her waistband and the whole heavy thing tumbled around her upside-down ears. A collective intake of breath swept round the room like a wind as everyone took
in her bosom resting on her chin.

‘Well . . . I think we can say that was a . . . good start,’ the teacher nodded, clearly equally as startled by the vision and eager not to repeat the process.

Bobbi, sitting cross-legged beside Ro in honeycomb-blond leggings and a white vest, reached over and patted her on the shoulder. ‘Just try to engage your core. That’s what I always
focus on when I’m kicking up.’

Engage your
what
? Ro nodded, mute with shame as she tucked the T-shirt back into her tracksuit bottoms. Everything about this was wrong. The fact that the room temperature was 110 degrees
– on purpose! – was wrong. The fact that the class had started at 7 a.m. was wrong. The fact that no one else in here was wearing – or needed to wear – a bra was wrong. The
fact that they were all wearing second-skin kit and had the tight, sinewy bodies of lizards was wrong, and as for wearing a tracksuit in here . . . well, she wouldn’t have looked any less
incongruous had she come dressed as Buzz Lightyear.