The Summer Without You (15 page)

Ro glanced down the garden, horrified by the image dancing in her mind.

Florence, quickly reading the letter and putting it down on the worktop, looked at Ro and shook her head. ‘Others weren’t as lucky as us. Montauk was hit worst. They lost almost all
their beachfront, and they had a dicky of a time trying to dredge the sand from the Sound before the April 30 cut-off. The channel had become almost completely blocked off.’

‘On 30 April? Why then?’ Ro asked, sipping the Green and watching as Florence opened the next letter with the steak knife.

‘That’s when the piped plovers come to nest in the dunes – yet another reason why the dunes are so important, you see. They’re severely endangered and protected by
federal law. All beach conservation work has to be finished before they migrate here for the summer,’ Florence said, sipping on her own green smoothie.

‘So you want me to help you with dispersing the seeds?’ Ro asked, watching as Florence glanced at the letter before crumpling it in her hand and tossing it into a recycling bin.

‘Heck, no. I need you for something far more important than that.’ She looked up at Ro, resting her hands on the worktop in front of her. ‘Beach retreat, dune erosion and
hurricane risk all combine as the single biggest problem facing this entire area. Our local economy depends upon those beaches bringing in visitors from far and wide, but not everybody is civically
minded. They don’t care about what’s right, or best for the long term. On the one hand, we’ve got residents inland who don’t want their taxes being spent on what they see as
merely protecting the ocean-front properties, and on the other, we’ve got those beachfront homeowners pushing hard for protection simply so that they can maximize their real-estate values and
move on to something bigger and better – “flipping”, they call it – and to hell with what they leave behind.’ She shrugged. ‘The dunes are nature’s way of
keeping both camps happy, and they cost a
lot
less than constantly dredging and rebuilding beaches, which seems to be the fashionable answer du jour. People seem to forget we’re barely
out of a recession.’

‘But what can I possibly do to help you?’

‘It’s quite simple. When I talk, it sounds like a rant and people switch off. What I need is the power of
one
image to convey more than a thousand of my words.’

Ro straightened up, flattered, albeit disbelieving, that Florence thought she was up to the task. Florence was passionate, well informed, articulate, intelligent and persuasive. What made her
believe Ro – barely more than a stranger on the beach – could encapsulate all those qualities visually?

‘You mean you want a marketing campaign?’

Florence nodded back at her intently. ‘Absolutely I do. It has to capture the beauty of the area but also the fragility. It has to make people understand how everything that defines this
area is in jeopardy – and that apathy is the most corrosive element of all. We need to mobilize the town and really get this programme underway before the next storm season is upon us.’
She beamed at Ro, a dazzling smile that stripped ten years off her in an instant. ‘Think you can do it?’

Could she? She photographed families for a living, editing and filing their old forgotten media files into bite-size films. She’d never done anything that needed to convey a message
before.

Ro bit her lip. ‘I’d give it my best shot.’

‘That’ll do for me.’ Florence smiled, her eyes twinkling as they had on the beach yesterday afternoon, as her hands found the small parcel that was left on the worktop. She
slit the sellotape bindings with the knife. ‘I have a feeling we’re—’ She stopped speaking abruptly as she saw, inside, a duck-egg-blue box. Tiffany. Florence raised a
quizzical eyebrow as she lifted it out and removed the lid.

Ro, unable to hide her curiosity, leaned forward on her elbows, trying to seeing in. She’d never had anything from Tiffany before and the iconic blue box held a powerful mystique for
her.

Slowly, Florence lifted a single-strand pearl necklace from the box, letting the pearls ripple over her fingers and warm against her skin. They were magnificent, each and every one notably
larger than the pea-sized pearls Ro remembered her own mother wearing. Her eyes fell to the clasp – a gold oval studded with a ruby and encircled by tiny pearls, the scarlet as vivid as a
pinprick of blood on snow.

‘Wow,’ Ro whispered, as Florence laid the necklace back in the box and picked up the small blue envelope instead. ‘You’ve got a nice husb—’ she started to
say, before remembering Florence’s earlier reference to him as ‘my late husband’. She averted her eyes, embarrassed. ‘Sorry, I . . . You said . . . Ugh, God.’ She
pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers, the hangover too brutal to hide any longer.
Just shut up, Ro
, she told herself.

‘It’s fine,’ Florence said, smiling kindly as she took in Ro’s blush. ‘He died seventeen years ago of a heart attack. I always told him he worked too hard and
smoked too much.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘And he always told me not to nag him . . .’

Ro nodded silently, watching as Florence looked down to read the card. She herself was desperate to know who’d sent it – if not her husband, then who? Though of course their name
would be no clue as to their identity to her anyway. She knew no one out here but Florence, Hump and Bobbi. Did Greg count? Probably not. She couldn’t swear she’d recognize him if she
passed him in the supermarket. Hell, the kitchen! She knew him about as well as she knew the hardware-store owner, and all she knew about him was that his name was Bob.

Florence looked up, meeting Ro’s gaze with a strained smile as she replaced the card in its envelope and slipped it under the tissue paper in the box, beneath the necklace. ‘Anyway,
where were we?’

‘Um . . .’ Ro bit her lip, trying to think, trying to remember what they’d been discussing before this, but her mind had clouded like an English summer’s day and she
could think only of the $20,000 pearl necklace sitting in a box in front of her.

But it wasn’t thwarted curiosity that was distracting her. It was the glimpse she’d caught of the look that had flitted over Florence’s face like a phantom as she’d read
the card – the tiny crease that had winkled in the furrow of her brow, the slight freeze that had set in the corners of her mouth. It wasn’t the reaction most women would have to
receiving such a beautiful gift.

‘Oh, I remember! The dunes . . .’ Florence cried, stabbing a finger in the air.

‘Ah yes,’ Ro nodded, catching sight of a diamond bracelet on Florence’s wrist and immediately pushing the thought away. Florence was a wealthy, attractive, self-possessed woman
who had doubtless received gifts of even greater beauty or worth than this necklace during her life. Ro, on the other hand, had been with the same man for eleven years and couldn’t even get a
ring on her finger. What the hell did she know?

‘Hey!’ Ro exclaimed in surprise as she looked down at the two prostrate bodies on the towels. ‘Fancy seeing you here!’

Hump and Bobbi shielded their eyes to look up at her. Giant bottles of water were jammed into the sand next to each of them, a bright blue cold box locked shut by their heads.

‘Hey, yourself! Where did you go to?’ Hump asked, propping himself up on his elbows, the central groove deepening along his washboard stomach as he did so. ‘I never heard you
leave this morning.
For once.
’ Ro’s clumsiness was fast becoming the stuff of legend with her housemate, although she thought he could hardly talk! He wasn’t one ever to
shut a door if it could be slammed, and Bobbi was incapable of putting the cap back on the milk.

‘Sorry – I had an appointment at eleven and had to dash. I woke up late.’ Ro crouched down on her heels, hugging her knees with her arms. The sun was at its highest point in
the sky now and the glare from the beach was blinding. She realized she’d forgotten her sunglasses.

‘No, you did not wake up late,’ Bobbi said in a low, contrary voice, turning her head fractionally to make eye contact with Ro. ‘I heard you talking to someone in your room at
six this morning.’ A wicked gleam shone in her eyes. ‘Did you hook up with someone last night?’

‘No!’ Ro exclaimed with such force she fell backwards onto her bottom, her feet accidentally kicking sand into Hump’s face. ‘I would
never
. . . You know I’m
with Matt.’

Bobbi shot her a sceptical look – although whether she was sceptical that Ro hadn’t hooked up with someone or sceptical that Ro really was with Matt, she couldn’t be sure. She
looked to Hump for support, but he was too busy coughing up sand to notice.

‘I am!’ Ro protested. ‘It was Matt you heard me talking to. He Skyped this morning.’

‘Huh. Shame,’ Bobbi muttered after a pause, turning her face back to the sun and closing her eyes. She had recovered well from this morning’s low point on the landing: her
mascara was off her cheeks, for one thing, the green tinge in her complexion replaced by a becoming heat flush, and her hair had clearly made friends with a brush again – not that most people
probably bothered to look much further than her yoga-honed figure in a knockout red halterneck bikini anyway.

‘How was he?’ Hump finally asked, loyally, sitting up fully and passing her a chilled Diet Coke from the cold box.

Ro shot him a look of gratitude. ‘Great! He’s loving it! Just loving it.’ The can opened with a hiss and she drank with a rabid thirst. ‘I mean, walking for days among
man-eating monkeys and gripping the walls of ravines with his fingertips? Totally his idea of heaven!’ She slapped a hand to her chest. ‘My idea of hell, of course, but he’s
happy, so . . .’ She shrugged, lost in the memories of him. ‘Oh, and he looked
so
good. Y’know, he’s got a tan now, bit of a beard. And he’s lost a little
weight – I suppose with all the humidity and the walking and only eating rice or whatever.’ Her voice trailed away as she caught sight of Bobbi’s expression.

‘You got a photo of the boy?’ Bobbi asked, a pained look on her face. ‘If we’re gonna hear about him all summer, we may as well know what he looks like.’

Ro fished in her pocket for her phone. ‘Here.’ She handed it over, showing her screensaver – a picture of Matt taken at Christmas as he ceremonially carried the over-cooked,
desiccated turkey to the table, a proud look on his face, the cleft in his chin pronounced as his mouth pouted in amusement at the chef’s hat she’d plonked on his head seconds
earlier.

‘Oh my God!’ Bobbi exclaimed, sitting up in one fluid movement and almost knocking the Coke can from Ro’s hand. ‘He is hot! You seriously let him fly halfway round the
world for a year and you didn’t go with him? Are you crazy?’

‘Half a year. It’s
half
a year. And in fact it’s only one hundred and fourteen days now,’ Ro corrected, feeling instantly panicky, her stomach twisting wretchedly
as Bobbi’s reaction confirmed her absolute worst fear – he was halfway round the world and women everywhere would be falling in love with him. They would be. It didn’t matter that
he was in a monastery – he wasn’t going to be locked up in there for the whole time: they were leaving again tomorrow – or that he loved her. He was out in the world, away from
her, and he was at risk from every woman he was going to meet on his travels.

‘What’s his sport?’ Hump asked, having leaned over and looked at the photo with the merest hint of curiosity. ‘He looks pretty buff.’

‘Football.’

‘As in soccer?’ Hump clarified.

‘Oh. Yes, right. Exactly. Soccer. He plays in a local team on Sundays. It’s just a fun thing, but y’know, they take it really seriously.’ She rolled her eyes, remembering
all the times she’d spent sitting on the sidelines with the other girlfriends – well, they were all mainly wives now – not bothering to watch the game, buckets of sliced oranges
at their feet as they chatted about work and kids and their new coats or boots. What she’d give now, though, to watch him running about, what she’d pay for that quiet luxury of being
able to rest her eyes on him, letting the sight of him seep into her like a big view that touched her soul and became part of her somehow.

‘He looks like a good guy,’ Hump said, pulling his knees up and beginning to look around the beach, his eyes hidden behind blue-tinted mirrored aviators. ‘Hey, you want to lie
out properly? I got a spare here.’ He pulled a rolled-up straw mat from the giant backpack to his right and threw it out so it unfurled beside him. ‘I always carry one with me, just in
case, y’know . . . I get company.’

Ro grinned and pocketed her phone again – allowing herself one last peek at Matt until she got home – then sat down next to him.

‘Where’s Greg, by the way?’

She asked the question to them both, but her eyes fell to Bobbi, who was lying on her back, her face turned away. She didn’t move.

Hump spoke, after a beat, once it became clear Bobbi wasn’t going to. ‘Not sure. Woke up to a note from him on the kitchen table saying he’d pre-agreed to spend the day with
his friends in Southampton. We’ll see him again next weekend.’

‘Oh, right,’ Ro murmured, her eyes on Bobbi as she rolled up the cuffs of Matt’s chinos to show off a little more calf. If only she could remember more of last night . . . She
didn’t recall actually seeing them kiss, but surely that was the way they’d been heading.

‘You not brought your bathing suit?’ Hump asked, watching as she rolled the arms of her T-shirt up to her shoulders too.

Thankfully not, Ro thought to herself, taking in the tiny string bikinis being paraded. ‘I didn’t dress for the beach. Like I said, I had that appointment to go to.’

‘New rule for ya,’ Bobbi drawled, still turned away. ‘Always be beach-ready out here. Your bikini’s basically your underwear. You never know when you might need to strip
off.’

Ro bit her lip. How terrifying. She usually had to fast for two days and down a double vodka tonic before she stepped out in her swimsuit.

‘So who were you seeing? A new client?’ Hump asked, his voice fading out as a girl walked past particularly close to their towels, Hump clearly set in her sights.