The Summer Without You

by Karen Swan

  ‘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, loya
lly, 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.

  He grinned, watching her pert derriere, before looking back to Ro like she was a partner in crime. Another bloke. ‘And that’s what I love about this place: ambition in a bikini, everywhere you look.’

  Ro groaned. ‘Am I going to have to hand this mat back already?’

  ‘Nup, you’re good . . . for now.’

  A small timer beeped on Bobbi’s phone and she turned it off, rolling onto her tummy in one swift movement. ‘You were saying . . . the job,’ she prompted.

  ‘Oh yes. So, it’s not a Marmalade commission, sadly. I met a woman on the beach yesterday evening as I was on my way home. She’s a local councillor—’

  ‘Don’t tell me – Florence Wiseman, right?’ Hump interrupted, pointing his hand at her like it was a gun.

  ‘Yes! How did you know?’

  ‘Aaaagh, everyone knows Florence. She’s one of East Hampton’s matriarchs; what she doesn’t know about this place isn’t worth knowing. She knows everyone, is on the board of everything. She’s not everyone’s cup of tea, not once she gets on her soapbox, but I’ll give her this: the woman’s got balls.’

  ‘Hump!’ Ro shot him a disapproving look. She knew the point he was trying to make, but Florence had too much elegance to be described like that.

  ‘What?’ Hump shrugged, palms outstretched in sincerity. ‘I mean it as a good thing. I can’t even imagine the policies we’d end up with without her. She’s old school. Cares about the town, not just the real-estate prices, unlike every other person on that board. I came up against some of ’em when I first floated the Humper concept.’ He shook his head. ‘They thought I was going to bring down the tone of the place; they didn’t hear anything about me promoting local businesses.’ He shook his head. ‘She gets my vote, for sure. The gossip columns can go hang.’

  ‘I don’t know the woman. Heard of her, though,’ Bobbi offered, her voice a protracted mumble.

  ‘Well, I really like her. She’s asked me to shoot her seed-bombing campaign.’

  ‘Her what?’ Bobbi drawled, lifting her head to break her near-comatose position.

  ‘Seed-bombing. They’re little balls packed with dune-plant seeds that you scatter randomly to help revegetate and strengthen the dunes. Florence says the dunes are one of the most effective defences against the storms that come in off the ocean.’

  ‘Cool,’ Hump nodded.

  ‘No, not cool,’ Bobbi contradicted, pushing herself up onto her elbows. ‘Dunes can’t do diddly-squat against a hurricane. People go on about this year after year. “What can we do? What can we do?” they cry. Jeez, they drive me crazy. They build jetties, they build revetments, they sink old subway cars to create reefs as offshore breaks, but the truth is, nothing’s going to keep that ocean from creeping forward. And all those houses sitting on the shore? They’re going to fall in the water sooner or later – ten, twenty, fifty years from now, they’ll all be gone. I swear to God I could set up here specializing exclusively in strategic retreat. I’ve thought about it more than once.’

  ‘Strategic retreat? What’s that?’ Ro puzzled, finishing off the Coke and unable not to stare at a girl walking past in a flesh-coloured bik
ini that was nothing short of alarming from a distance.

  ‘Knocking down the existing properties and resiting them at the back of their own lots. Might buy you another hundred years before it’s a problem again, but by then it ain’t your problem, and in the meantime you’ve protected your real-estate value.’

  ‘But surely that’s incredibly expensive, knocking down and starting from scratch?’

  ‘The lot’s the thing, not the property.’

  Hump gave a small snort. ‘Besides, down the road in Southampton, they just raised a twenty-four-million-dollar levy against a hundred and twenty-five ocean-front householders to pump two and a half million tons of sand onto the beaches to replenish them. Twenty-four mill divided by hundred twenty-five? Now that’s expensive.’

  Bobbi tutted disgustedly. ‘These people, they’ve got money to burn,’ she shrugged, collapsing back fully on her towel again and turning her head away to tan the other cheek.

  ‘Crikey,’ Ro muttered under her breath. And to think she’d been working up the nerve to ask Matt to consider extending the kitchen with a side return. (Pre-pause, naturally.)

  ‘You want some?’ Hump was holding out some sunscreen lotion. ‘You’re going pink already.’

  ‘Thanks. Celtic skin, what can you do?’ she said, rolling her eyes and taking it from him. ‘So what time are you heading back to New York, Bobbi?’ she asked, squirting too much cream on her face. Way too much. It had warmed in the sun and now ran out of the tube like milk.

  ‘I always get the seven thirty p.m. Jitney.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she said, vigorously smoothing it into her cheeks. ‘And how long is the coach ride home?’

  ‘Three hours that time of night? Depends on traffic. So long as I’m back at my apartment by eleven p.m. latest . . .’

  Ro started dragging the cream down her neck, trying to find more surface area. ‘Whereabouts are you in New York? Would I have heard of it?’

  ‘Tribeca.’