One Lucky Summer

by Jenny Oliver

  She sniffed. ‘I care. Imagine Mungo seeing me now.’

  ‘Screw Mungo.’

  She laughed.

  ‘You really care what Mungo thinks?’ Fox was incredulous.

  She shook her head. Then she nodded. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Dolly, you’d be a better policewoman if you didn’t care. Own it and you’ll stop being afraid of it.’

  She nodded again.

  Fox looked at her closely. ‘Don’t let fear win.’

  ‘No.’ She wiped her eyes with her T-shirt. ‘Is that another Buddhist mantra?’ she quipped.

  ‘No, it’s a common-sense mantra,’ said Fox. His black eyes smiled.

  Dolly wanted to thank him but couldn’t bring herself to say it. She also wanted to lie down and have someone drape a blanket over her. Instead, she peered down at the waterfall, at the swirling mass of frothy blue. Then she turned to look at Fox, who was settling back, resting his hands behind him onto something that didn’t fit with the calm idyllic nature of the place, onto what Dolly suddenly realised was a bloody great adder. Ominous black zigzags along its back. ‘Fox! No!’ she shouted, just as his hands pressed onto the scaly flesh and the sudden movement made the adder dart forward but Dolly had already grabbed hold of his arm and with all her weight yanked him with her over the edge of the waterfall.

  They plummeted fast down the cascading water, smashing through the black, bubbly surface feet first. Deep and icy cold. Dolly’s shoulder jarred on impact, the pain ricocheting through her. She let go of Fox. She opened her mouth to scream and water rushed in. She was still sinking. Down, down. She couldn’t find the surface in the darkness, all she could feel was the agony from her shoulder suffuse through her body. She couldn’t see Fox. When she kicked, her foot thumped against jagged stone. Then her head smashed against a rock, scraping the skin raw on her temple. She wondered if she was going to die.

  In the darkness, she saw herself as a little girl in her homemade dungarees and her thick wild hair. All that talking about the past. Dolly wondered what this kid would think of her now, of who she had become.

  She struggled in the water. Too dark and disorientated to work out which way to swim. Too tired and breathless. Instead, all she saw were her memories swirling thick and bright in her mind. And for the first time, she found herself looking directly at the feelings – the shame, the guilt, the fury. She tried to do as Fox had said, to own it rather than be afraid of it. And she found that laid out before her, they all became valid emotions. She could pick them up, turn them over – like sizing them up in a shop. Yes, Dolly, it was OK to feel second best when your dad left you behind because you cried. Yes, of course it was shameful to try and kiss your sister’s secret boyfriend, but you were young and blinded by infatuation.

  It was a novelty to be able to pick these tangible feelings up, examine and explain them and simply put them down again rather than carry them furtively in the back of her mind, where they weighed down her every move. And soon she felt other things creep in. Sympathy. Sadness. Even gratitude. She found herself more and more distanced from that little girl in the homemade dungarees. She was able to look at her and smile sadly rather than banish her from her mind in horror.

  Disorientated and slightly delirious in the murky water, Dolly found herself stretching out to trace the little girl’s face. She was so innocent and trusting it made her heart hurt. ‘If only you could see how lovely you are,’ Dolly whispered, voice choked as she saw all the feelings – the hopes and vulnerabilities, the sweet enthusiasms – so visible on her round young face. She reached to clutch the little girl’s hand. ‘Don’t change,’ she urged, knowing it was fruitless but saying it all the same, ‘Please don’t change.’ The frizzy-haired reflection just grinned at her, confused about why she ever would. And Dolly found she wanted to burst into tears, but then the hand grabbed tighter to hers. Much tighter and with much more strength than Dolly would attribute to a little girl. Suddenly she was being hauled from the water. Rising fast through the bubbling waterfall and gasping for air when she reached the surface. And she found that it was Fox dragging her up from the dark depths. Bubbles of relief rose from her mouth as he hauled her up onto the bank and they both lay, panting, side by side like gasping fish on dry land.

  ‘You couldn’t make it up,’ Fox said, when he’d caught his breath. ‘Life with you.’

  Dragonflies darted in the air around them. Birds dipped their heads and drank from the edges of the lake. A lizard stood motionless on a rock.

  ‘Life with you,’ Dolly replied, wincing as she tested the movement in her shoulder.

  Fox laughed. Rolling his head so he was looking at her. ‘Are you OK?’

  Dolly nodded, sitting up and trying to retie the sling with her teeth. Fox took over. She was exhausted. Her shoulder throbbed. Her throat hurt. Her temple was bleeding. But as she let him help her to her feet she was overcome by a strange lightness inside herself. It came, she realised, from the belief that possibly she was OK.

  She had a sudden desire to smile. A new kaleidoscopic appreciation of the nature around her. She held in the urge to point out the radiance of a butterfly. The bitonal colours of an uncurling fern. If she searched in her brain for something to panic about, nothing tangible appeared. She thought of the little girl – young Dolly – and she wanted to draw her into a hug. To sigh together and console each other. To kiss her on the top of the head and tell her that she was loved. That she, Dolly, loved her.

  In the verdant undergrowth, next to the waterfall, Dolly stood taking a few calming breaths, swiping her hair from her eyes, feeling all the aches and pains on her body. Gazing at the dappled sunlight through the canopy of leaves, she suddenly saw exactly what she was meant to be looking for. ‘That’s it,’ she said, pointing ahead at a giant monolith half hidden by moss and overgrown vines, carved into the shape of a near-perfect heart. ‘That’s the maiden’s heart of stone!’ Think positive and thee shall find. Maybe Buddha was right after all.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ruben de Lacy had had enough of the King family and their treasure hunt. He decided instead to prove to Olive that he was in fact a very admirable father and took Zadie to the beach.

  The main beach was a short walk round the headland from the crumbling cottage. The sun beat down on their skin. It was quickly apparent that Ruben had not packed adequately for the trip when they arrived at the busy stretch of golden sand and Zadie said, ‘Can I have the suntan lotion, please?’ as if by magic he had thought to bring it.

  Ruben said he didn’t have any. Zadie frowned. In Ruben’s bag was a paperback, a small hand towel to sit on and dry his feet should they get sandy and a bottle of water, for himself.

  The noise of the waves thumped gently on the sand. Bodyboarders in the surf shrieked with laughter. A little kid was crying. Ruben glanced around, everywhere he looked were families with windbreaks, abundant towels, toys, cool boxes. Even fold-up chairs. Enough paraphernalia to sink a ship. The kind of beach-goers he used to mock.

  He hadn’t even put his swimmers on – Ruben was a tropical bather, he did not swim in the chilly English sea. Zadie on the other hand was stripping her T-shirt and shorts off, underneath which she had on a fluorescent green swimsuit covered in sequinned strawberries. He hovered next to her, not even that keen to take his trainers and socks off. ‘Do you want an ice cream?’ he asked for something to do.

  ‘Yes please. Vanilla please,’ said Zadie, plonking herself down directly on the beach, making Ruben wince at the very idea of being covered in all that sand.

  ‘Vanilla? Really?’ he asked. ‘You don’t want anything more exciting, like bubblegum or something?’

  Zadie stared up from the sand. ‘No way. Vanilla’s the best flavour.’

  ‘No,’ he shook his head in objection. ‘No one actually likes vanilla.’

  ‘Everyone I know loves it,’ she replied. ‘Barry calls it the Coca-Cola of ice-cream flavours.’

  Ruben shook his head. ‘No, I’m
sorry, I couldn’t disagree more. The Coca-Cola of ice-cream flavours would be mint choc chip.’

  Zadie laughed like the very idea was preposterous. ‘No way! I don’t know anyone who likes mint choc chip.’

  ‘I like mint choc chip,’ Ruben said, stubbornly defensive. Annoyed that Barry and his boring vanilla flavouring was what his daughter took to be the norm. ‘I’ll ask the ice-cream man.’

  ‘OK,’ said Zadie with grinning confidence.

  Ruben came back ten minutes later with two ice creams, a bottle of Factor 50, two rattan beach mats to sit on and a towel with ‘I heart Cornwall’ written in bright yellow on blue.

  Zadie looked up from her sand sculpture, blinking against the brightness of the sun.

  Ruben handed her an already melting vanilla ice-cream cone.

  She thanked him as he tried to lay the mats down and stop the ice cream from dripping. Once their little patch was all looking a lot more comfortable and Ruben was seated – away from direct contact with the sand – Zadie said, ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’ he replied.

  ‘What did the ice-cream person say?’ she asked, on a lick of her ice cream. ‘They said it was vanilla, didn’t they?’

  Ruben licked his mint choc chip. ‘Might have done,’ he grinned.

  Zadie sniggered. Ruben smiled.

  They ate their ice creams watching the boarders. Seagulls cawed as they circled over the surf. When she got to the waffle cone, Zadie said, ‘I don’t really like these cones. I like those other ones. You know, the ones that taste like cardboard.’

  Ruben looked at her incredulous. ‘I specifically bought you the better cone because the other one tastes of cardboard!’

  ‘Oh,’ Zadie smiled. ‘That’s nice. Thank you.’

  ‘You don’t have to thank me for something you didn’t want.’

  ‘I’m thanking you for thinking of me,’ she said.

  And Ruben wasn’t quite sure what to do with that.

  Zadie finished off her ice cream and said, ‘I’m going to go for a swim. Wanna come?’

  Ruben made a face. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘OK,’ said Zadie, and she skipped off.

  Ruben thought for a second then called her back. She stopped and turned. She stood a bit like a duck, tummy sticking out, feet apart, but didn’t seem to care in the slightest. It actually made her quite endearing – her intrinsic confidence with who she was. ‘You can swim, right? Your mum, she’d let you go in on your own?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Zadie nodded eagerly. ‘I love swimming. My mum reckons I could swim before I could walk.’

  ‘OK, great. Off you go.’ Ruben waved her away then settled down with his paperback.

  Every few minutes he glanced up to check she was still alive. At one point he couldn’t see her and got a bit panicked, trying to work out how he’d explain it to her mother. He stood up, scanning the shoreline in front of him for someone who looked like Zadie. The only person who fit the description couldn’t have been her because she was hanging out with a group of bodyboarders and was about to have a go on one of their boards. But it had to be Zadie, no one else stood the way she did, nor did he imagine there were many fluorescent lime swimming costumes in production. Ruben watched her, wondering how she’d managed to befriend this cool-looking gang so quickly. He supposed she was quite endearing, sometimes. She said such ridiculous things that on occasion were funny. He saw a tall blond boy laugh at something she said after she pulled off a pretty impressive ride on his board. Much better than anything Ruben could manage. But then, he consoled himself, she lived by the sea and Ruben didn’t. He shaded his eyes with his hand so he could see better, he wanted to make sure the loping youth kept his hands to himself. Having been one, Ruben knew exactly what teenage boys were like and he considered striding over just to let them know that he was on to them. But to her credit, Zadie didn’t seem bothered at all, holding her own, even going back for another turn on the guy’s board. Ruben raised a brow in respect as he watched her carefree prowess. Maybe she did have some de Lacy genes after all.

  Keeping one watchful eye on his daughter’s potential suitors made lying on the beach reading his book much less relaxing. Ruben’s contentment was further shattered when a dripping shadow was cast over his sun-warmed body and Zadie’s voice said, ‘Do you want to come and have a go?’ She was holding a black bodyboard with a skull and crossbones printed on the front under her arm. Apparently one of the dudes had a spare and she’d been deemed a worthy recipient.

  ‘I’m OK, actually,’ said Ruben, shielding his eyes from the sun, looking up at her grinning silhouette.

  ‘Oh, go on!’ Zadie pleaded. ‘It’ll be fun. I’ll show you what to do.’

  Ruben held his hands up. ‘No!’ He was emphatic. ‘I don’t have my trunks.’ He stood up, uncomfortable with the dynamic of Zadie towering over him.

  ‘You could go in your T-shirt and pants. That’s what I do sometimes at home.’

  Ruben was not going bodyboarding with a load of cocky teenagers in his pants. Nor for that matter did he think Zadie ever should – he’d have a word with her mother.

  ‘Pleeeeeease?’ begged Zadie.

  ‘No,’ he tried to laugh, hoping it would all go away. Just then one of the lanky youths whistled and shouted, ‘Yo, Zadie!’ beckoning her to rejoin them. Ruben narrowed his eyes. When he looked at the boy, all he could see was raging hormones and swaggering teenage lust. This, coupled with Zadie saying, ‘You know, Barry always goes in with me. He’s really good on a surf board,’ made Ruben tip his head up to the sun and say, ‘Fine. Fine. I’ll come in.’

  Zadie whooped.

  ‘But I’m not doing it in my pants. I’ll go and buy some shorts.’

  Five minutes later he was back wearing a pair of turquoise board shorts with giant pink hibiscus flowers all over them. ‘Don’t laugh,’ he said, ‘it’s all they had.’

  Zadie beamed with delight at the shorts. ‘I think they’re great.’ Which was exactly what worried him. ‘Right.’ He braced himself for more humiliation, ‘let’s get this over with.’

  ‘It’ll be so much fun,’ she replied, gleeful as they walked over the wet sand to the sea.

  Ruben looked down at her grinning face. ‘I can’t believe you’ve managed to get me to do this,’ he said with a shake of his head.

  She looked up at him, all innocent big eyes. ‘You’ll love it.’

  Ruben found himself snorting out a little laugh himself. ‘I very much doubt it.’

  The water was freezing. The surf like pellets of ice splashing against his very white calves. All the cool young kids were messing about on various contraptions. Some surfing, some paddleboarding, others on something you chucked on the shore and rode on. ‘Want a go on that?’ Zadie pointed to where a girl in a red swimsuit was careering through the shallows. All Ruben could think about were the potential chiropractor bills should he place one foot on it. ‘No thanks,’ he shook his head at the kid who held it up for them when she’d finished her ride.

  Ruben had never felt so old. His luminous turquoise and pink flowery shorts didn’t help. All the others were in bold block colours. And any hint of a pattern was a skull or marijuana leaf. No one was wearing hot-pink hibiscuses this season. Except the dad.

  And his tan was so shameful. His white T-shirt marks and pale chest compared to those who’d spent the whole summer in the surf. Usually before a holiday, Ruben went to visit Tatiana on the King’s Road for a quick all-over spray tan. Not that he’d ever admit it out loud. The salon was very discreet.

  ‘OK?’ Zadie was babbling on next to him with instructions.

  Ruben hadn’t been paying the blindest bit of notice. Too busy comparing himself with a load of teenage boys. Pitiful. ‘Sorry, just run it past me again.’

  Zadie sighed. ‘Right …’

  Off she went with more instructions. Ruben listened this time. She was very clear. Very patient. The water had warmed up now where it splashed round his thighs.

&nb
sp; ‘There’s a good set of waves coming in now. Want to try these?’ Zadie asked.

  Ruben shrugged. ‘Why not.’ And he waded out further, looking ahead of him at what seemed to be growing into fairly ginormous blue waves. ‘Do you think these are maybe a bit big?’ he called out to Zadie where she watched in the shallows.

  ‘No! You’ll be fine,’ she replied. ‘Just enjoy it.’

  Ruben clutched his board too tight. His knuckles were white.

  ‘Start paddling!’ she yelled.

  A couple of the dudes had paused to watch. He could sense their sniggers. He was distracted. His hair had flopped into his eyes. The wave was looming. He tried to paddle but the board popped out from underneath him. He spent so long trying to reposition himself, Zadie shouting, ‘Paddle!’ that by the time he started a kind of frantic attempt at swimming, the lumbering wave was teetering over his head ready to crash. Which it did. Hard. Walloping Ruben and the board under the surface, rolling him around as it tumbled to the shore. Sand filled his trunks. His arms scraped the shore. He eventually surfaced like a dying fish, coughing and gasping, hair everywhere, sand-burnt, tangled in the board rope.

  Zadie had her hand over her mouth in giggling pity.

  Ruben tried to gather himself together. Wiped the snot and spit off his face, relieved his shorts of the sand. He panted as he got his breath back. Checking around him to see who had seen his humiliating wipeout. It was only then that he realised no one was looking. The kids were all doing their own thing. The only one glancing in their direction was the boy who seemed to be trying to impress Zadie rather than paying a blind bit of notice of Ruben. To them he was invisible. He was the old dad. He was meant to make a fool of himself. He was on a whole different strata of life to them. He wasn’t one of the cool kids.

  Ruben swept his hair out of his eyes. The realisation, while depressing, was also quite liberating.

  Zadie crouched next to him, concerned. ‘Want to try again?’ she checked, tentative.

  Ruben looked out at the tumbling surf. ‘Yes,’ he said. He would conquer this beast. ‘Yes I do.’