The Summer Without You (2 page)

He swooped down and kissed her gratefully, his fingers winding through her hair as jubilation slowly began to give way to lust.

‘Let’s go home,’ he said in a low voice.

‘Already? But I thought we were having brunch at—’

‘I fly out on Tuesday, Ro.’

Ro felt her stomach lurch.
This
Tuesday?

‘Shh, shh. I didn’t want to upset you even a week longer than I had to. But six months off from this body is going to drive me almost out of my mind,’ he murmured, running his
hands up her waist. It was true. What she lacked in height or athletic prowess, she made up for with a naturally curvy, soft pin-up figure. It was camouflaged in her signature boyfriend jeans, but
gave a knockout punch in dresses at the almost constant stream of friends’ weddings. Even now, after over a decade together, when their sex life had cooled to several degrees below simmering
and could justifiably be called ‘regular’, Matt couldn’t walk past her in just her underwear. Could he really do without her for all that time?

She saw the same doubt in his eyes as his hands traced the contours he knew so well. Muscle memory alone led him around her, knowing exactly where to skim and where to pause and explore.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her up to standing, kissing her more passionately now. When he pulled back, Ro felt her stomach flip to see his eyes so clouded with desire. ‘Home. Now.
I’ve got forty-eight hours to stock up on six months’ worth of you.’

Ro giggled delightedly as he suddenly pulled her into a fast run back towards the shiny red Polo parked at the bottom of the hill. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was working already. If they were
missing each other before they were even apart, this could be the making of them after all. Six months from now, she’d be Mrs Rowena Martin and they’d both have what they wanted: Matt
his bright new beginning, her the happy ending.

‘Look at me, please . . . And just one more,’ Ro said from behind the camera, her right hand making tiny micro-adjustments on the lens until she found the pin-sharp
focus she was looking for on the bride’s face. Not that this bride lacked focus. This was a million-dollar wedding if it was a cent, and Ro had several times glimpsed the veins of steel that
had bagged this bride her groom – most recently, dressing down her own father through gritted, whitened teeth for standing on the hem of her dress.

Outwardly, everything was as perfect as a Martha Stewart set: the twelve bridesmaids were all dressed in blue-sky silk columns and pearl chokers, with buffed shoulders and upswept hair; the huge
potted blossom trees were in full bloom, the aisle densely carpeted with pink petals; and the guests had, thankfully, all honoured the cream dress code. Ro had been grateful to have the camera to
hide behind as she’d snapped away in the bridal suite before the ceremony, shocked and embarrassed by the no-knickers (full Hollywood) look the bride was working under her modest tiered silk
mousseline dress by Vera Wang. Personally, Ro gave them eight months. She didn’t see this couple getting to a year, not judging by the way the groom kept looking over at the maid of
honour.

She walked slowly round the Waldorf Astoria ballroom, her camera dropped by her side as she watched the guests; some were still seated at their tables, but most were beginning to get up and
mingle again, and the room was starting to throng. She guessed they were mostly around her age, possibly slightly younger – late twenties, rather than early thirties. There wasn’t a
baby to be seen anywhere, though they may have been banned – probably had been: this bride didn’t do ‘messy’ or ‘unscheduled’ – but she had clocked a few
bumps. They were likely all still in the throes of wedding fever, that time in their lives when they went to five or six weddings a year as friends and acquaintances jumped on the merry-go-round
and life seemed like one long party lived out in a marquee and pretty dresses.

It was interesting seeing the differences to the British weddings she usually covered. She’d never photographed an American wedding before. The commission for this had come through the
bride’s sister, who’d been a bridesmaid at a wedding Ro had covered in Dorset ten months earlier. She’d taken Ro’s card after seeing her signature colour-saturated filters,
which lent each image a dreamy, nostalgic vibe. The most obvious difference between the Atlantic cousins was the men all wearing dinner suits rather than morning suits – the strong black and
white stamping effect looked great through the lens – and the bridesmaids all looked a lot more sorted, professional even, than their British counterparts. None of them was drunk yet, for a
start. The speeches had been a lot more corporate too, and obviously the couple had written their own vows – something that hadn’t really taken flight back home, where it was considered
more proper to go along with the traditional King James version and have a reading of ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’.

Yes, it was interesting, all this – but not diverting. It didn’t matter that she was in the ballroom of the famous Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan, 3,500 miles from home. That only told
her that she was even further away from where Matt was, now nearly 9,000 miles away in fact. The distance between them had never been greater, and they’d spoken only three times in the three
weeks since he’d gone (and one of those had been as he’d boarded the plane).

‘Not going to be easy’ – his phrase – wasn’t even close to covering it. ‘Devastating’ was closer to the truth. It had been one thing accepting the
sentiment behind his grand plans in theory, but returning home from the airport to a house full of his absence – his clothes strewn across the floor, his electric toothbrush wet next to hers
(‘There won’t be any electrical points where I’m going’), his pillow still indented with the shape of his head – had poleaxed her. She’d barely told anyone
he’d left, and she wasn’t sure the milkman counted, anyway. Matt had kept his plans a secret from everyone, not just her – knowing they’d try to talk him out of it, question
why he was really leaving her behind – so the phone had sat quietly on its cradle, no offers of rallying drinks at the pub or Indian takeaways or shopping trips to boost her spirits.
She’d spent the first week dressed almost entirely in his clothes and spraying herself with his deodorant, and the house was so quiet that one evening in the kitchen, she’d actually
convinced herself she could hear Shady, their long-crested goldfish, moving through the cloudy water of the fish tank.

But extending her trip here by a few days had been a mistake. Just because the days were dragging by in London didn’t mean they would actually be any shorter over here. Going to bed early
only made the nights longer instead of the days, taking the boat out to Staten Island didn’t make the minutes tick past any quicker than cycling over to Barnes Common, and walking through
Central Park may as well have been Richmond Park. The only concession she could make was that spring seemed more forthright here. It was early April and already the trees were fully in bud; the
grass was speckled with daisies basking in the sun; joggers were wrapped in lighter layers . . .

Ro watched as the bride – bored, now, of her veil – wandered off to a cloakroom to touch up her make-up, her shoulder blades swishing like scythes above the top of her dress, while
the groom made a dash for the bar. She rested against the back of a chair for a moment, exhausted and parched, and wondering whether to run to the kitchens to beg a plate of food. She’d been
on her feet all day and no one had had the presence of mind even to offer her a glass of water, much less a sandwich. Everyone had eaten but her, and the reception was segueing into the
‘party’ section of the night, with drinks being drunk at twice the speed and the band tuning up by the dance floor.

She turned quickly, too quickly, the rubber tip of one shoe catching the other, and she tripped, almost colliding with a waiter who was walking towards her with a tray carefully balanced with
drinks.

‘Whoa!’ he laughed, his arm swaying above her like a tree branch. ‘Easy, tiger.’

‘Easy,
tiger
?’ Ro echoed, mortified and grasping for dignity. ‘You – you can’t speak like that to the guests, you know.’

His eyes swept over her black trouser suit and red Converses. ‘But you’re not a guest,’ he replied. ‘I’ve been watching you. You haven’t stopped all
day.’ He grinned and held the tray out to her. ‘Want one of these?’

She eyed the champagne regretfully. ‘Well, like you say, I’m not a guest.’ Her voice sounded peevish even to her.

‘I won’t tell,’ the waiter replied.

‘No. Thanks, but I never drink when I’m working. There’s a direct correlation between a blurry head and blurry pictures,’ she said, automatically raising her camera to
her eye as she saw a line-up of groomsmen behind him lifting one of the bridesmaids in a replay of the shots she’d taken of them all outside the church earlier. Clearly, beer was hitting
bloodstreams.

‘I bet you haven’t eaten either, huh?’

‘What? Oh, uh . . . no,’ she replied politely, her finger rapidly depressing the shutter button.

‘Tch. They never cease to amaze me, these people. They’ll spend thirty grand on flowers, but not . . . Come on, follow me.’ He put his hand over the lens and she pulled away,
annoyed.

‘Hey!’ She pointedly grabbed a microfibre cloth from her pocket and began cleaning the glass. ‘If I end up with your fingerprints overlaid on the photos . . .’

‘What, it might distract everyone from the bride’s mother’s Botox addiction?’ he laughed.

Ro laughed back. It was true – the bride’s mother had an expression every bit as frozen as a ventriloquist’s dummy and Ro had been struggling to get a ‘natural’
shot of her all day. In every frame she looked like she’d just hiccupped.

Ro looked at him properly, this irreverent waiter. He was tall and easy on the eye, his light brown hair closely cropped in not quite a buzz cut but only a grade above, and he was sporting
week-old stubble. ‘Come on, I’m offering you a once-in-a-daytime opportunity here. Dinner on the house while the bride’s preoccupied with her own reflection. What time are you on
till tonight? Midnight?’

Ro bit her lip. She was ravenous. She didn’t cope well without food. Matt always said her appetite was one of the things he loved most about her. ‘Well—’

‘Just follow me.’

He set off at a rapid pace, expertly balancing the tray above people’s heads – one advantage of his extra height – as they wove through the crowd. Several people tried to stop
him for drinks, but he smiled and told them he was on his way back to the kitchen for refills, even though the glasses on his tray were blatantly full and untouched.

Ro followed, jogging lightly behind, her camera swinging round her neck.

‘Uh-uh, keep right here,’ the waiter said, as he kicked open a right double door just as the left one swung open in the opposite direction. ‘See what I mean?’ He grinned
as another waiter sped past with an overloaded tray.

She only just jumped out of the way in time.

‘Lethal,’ Ro breathed.

‘Yo, José!’ he called out, sliding the tray onto an empty counter. ‘We got any food for the photographer here? We’re not the only ones being worked like
dogs.’

A minute later, a medium-rare filet steak with a red wine jus and vegetables was passed through to the serving station. Ro was so hungry she wanted to fall into it face first.

‘Over here,’ the waiter said, carrying it over to a small chef’s table in the corner and grabbing some red-hot cutlery from the still-steaming dishwasher. Someone placed a
glass of water in front of her too.

‘Thanks,’ Ro marvelled, sitting down quickly and tucking in without delay. She only had a few minutes before the bride would be back.

‘So, you’re English?’ the waiter enquired, watching her follow every hot mouthful with a gulp of water.

‘Yup.’

‘First time to New York?’

‘Second, technically,’ she mumbled, her mouth full.

‘Technically?’

She chewed quickly, not sure she had time to eat
and
chat. ‘I was born here. My parents moved to England when I was eight months,’ she said quickly, spearing a broccoli
floret.

‘Oh, right. So then you’re American.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, technically, but I don’t have any sense of it. I feel as British as pie.’

‘What – key lime?’ He grinned.

‘Steak and kidney.’ She chuckled.

‘You’re lucky you belong to both. I’ve always wanted to go to London. Stay for a bit.’

‘Mm.’ She glanced at him suspiciously, hoping this wasn’t some warm-up for an invitation to stay.

‘You here alone?’

‘Yup.’ The video cameraman back in the ballroom was a local freelancer she’d hired on recommendation from a photographer friend but only met for the first time yesterday
morning: he didn’t count as company. ‘My boyfriend’s travelling,’ she added, just in case this was also a warm-up for a chat-up line.

‘Well now, that’s a shame,’ he said, but with such a hapless grin she found herself grinning back again before she caught herself and abruptly stopped – she didn’t
want it to be confused for flirting. ‘So do you like it here?’

‘Mm.’ She made a so-so movement with her head.

He nodded. ‘Yeah. New York can be a tough place to be on your own.’

‘Yo, dude! What you doing sittin’ there, man?’ They both looked up to see a man in a white jacket marching towards them. ‘You can’t be chatting up the chicks! I got
people with a thirst on out there! Don’t you need the money or nothin’?’

The waiter stood up with a heavy sigh. ‘Guess I’d better shoot. Nice chatting to you.’

‘Yeah, you too,’ Ro nodded, having to place a hand in front of her mouth for politeness’s sake. ‘And thanks . . . For the meal, I mean.’

He winked and jogged off. ‘All right, I’m coming, I’m coming!’

Ro watched him go, bemused to notice a flash of lurid Hawaiian-print boxer shorts peeking out between his shirt and trousers.

She finished her meal quickly, wiping her mouth with the napkin that had also been – thoughtfully – provided and marching quickly back through the kitchen, remembering to stay to the
right on her way back out through the double doors.