The Summer Without You

by Karen Swan

  ‘Oh. Uh . . .’ No. She took some off her forehead and began rubbing it into her arms instead, distracted from the conversation by the laboriousness of such a seemingly simple task. Bloody hell, how much of that stuff had she put on?

  Hump stood up suddenly, his eyes trained on something further up the beach, like a gundog pointing. ‘Hey, isn’t that Greg? Yo, Greg!’ Hump called, waving to a small group playing volleyball a few hundred yards away. They had a gazebo set up beside them and some smart teak portable loungers arranged in the shade. There’d be no sandy bottoms for them.

  Greg, tanned and muscled in navy and red shorts, turned. Seeing Hump, he waved and said something to his friends, before jogging over like a model from a designer deodorant ad. ‘Hi, guys,’ he nodded, his hands on his hips as he stood above them all. ‘I hope I didn’t wake any of you when I left earlier. I tried to be as quiet as I could.’

  ‘Well, that makes one of you at least,’ Hump teased, and Ro dug him in the ribs with her elbow, knowing he was directing his words at her again.

  She watched as Greg’s eyes skittered over to Bobbi, who was still lying on her tummy and appeared to be pretending to sleep. He caught Ro watching him and smiled back, a quizzical expression on his face as he took in her alabaster-white complexion, and she hurriedly began rubbing her face again, this time using the heel of her hands to help drive the goddamned cream into her skin.

  ‘So who you with, man?’ Hump asked, jerking his chin towards the volleyball players.

  ‘You know the Blaize brothers – Todd and David? And Shelley Anderton? She’s a VP at Goldmans in derivatives; Grace Elliman, Kurt Styler’s ex; and Erin Wesley.’

  ‘Your ex?’ Hump said with a small smile.

  Greg nodded. ‘Yes.’ He looked back at his friends throwing themselves around athletically, long legs kicking up sand, arms outstretched, tummies taut.

  ‘And that’s all good?’

  Greg looked at him, bemused. ‘We’ve stayed good friends. She’s with Todd Blaize now. Has been for a long time.’

  ‘I remember,’ Hump said neutrally, slapping him on the arm. ‘You want a drink?’ He pointed down to the cold box.

  ‘I wish I could. It looks a lot more chilled over here.’ He looked back at his friends again as though checking they weren’t leaving without him. Ro saw one of the women, in an emerald-green bikini, jump high to punch down the ball, her limbs supple and elastic like a pro athlete. Ro tried to visualize herself in the woman’s place – jumping around, tiny bikini – and gave a small shudder, rubbing the cream a little harder again. ‘But I’d better get back. David and Todd can get way too competitive if someone’s not there to diffuse them. You know what brothers can be like, right?’

  ‘Totally,’ Hump nodded. ‘So when you heading back to the city? You coming back to Sea Spray later?’

  Greg shook his head, but his stature deflated a little as though he was embarrassed. ‘I’m booked on the seven thirty p.m. I figure I’ll just shoot straight to the Southampton stop from the Blaizes’ place. I’ve unpacked my stuff at yours now, so I can just leave it there. It doesn’t make sense to double back when I’m already at Southampton anyway.’

  Hump nodded excessively. ‘Sure. Well, hang loose, bro. We’ll get together again next weekend.’

  ‘For sure,’ Greg agreed, his expression intent. He looked down at Ro and Bobbi, frowning to see Bobbi hadn’t moved – frowning more at the sight of Ro’s shiny face.

  They watched him jog away again, Hump remaining where he was and turning a slow circle on the spot, scoping the beach – no doubt for hot single girls. Bobbi, by contrast, sat up and reached inside the cool box for a fresh drink.

  ‘Sounds like he’s on the same Jitney as you, Bobs,’ Hump said, finally collapsing back on his towel and fishing in the bag for his Kindle.

  ‘No, I’m on the six thirty p.m.,’ she clipped, setting another alarm on her phone.

  ‘You said you were catching the seven thirty p.m. a few minutes ago,’ Hump frowned.

  ‘No, you’re confused. I said the six thirty,’ Bobbi sighed, rolling herself back down on the sand with impressive abdominal control. ‘Six thirty p.m. Definitely.’

  Chapter Ten

  Ro sat slumped on the steps outside the studio, a bowl of granola on her lap and the sun on her face as she watched the cars gliding past towards East Hampton Main Street in one direction and Montauk in the other, none of them stopping to browse in the pretty square. The designer homeware boutique seemed to make out like a bandit thanks to its highway frontage but if it wasn’t for the faithful regulars darting into the spa and yoga studio, or the high school kids stopping by the ice cream parlour on their way home, she was certain no one would ever stop by it at all.

  She spooned the food into her mouth with depressed monotony, and only the ceramic Chinese runner duck for company. She had been here nearly a week now and not one customer had even wandered in, coffee in hand and a curious look on their face. She paid her rent to Hump from the rent she collected from her own house in Barnes – after agents’ fees, she just about broke even – but she still needed money for groceries and going out. All she had was the small advance she had been paid for Florence’s commission, and she had started work on it already, cycling around the dune roads behind the beaches every evening after she’d left the studio, looking for angles and landscapes that sparked her creativity for the brief, although nothing was jumping out at her just yet. White sand – while pretty – looks bland when there’s mile after mile of it, and besides, anyone could shoot that. Her brief was to find a way to get the viewer to engage emotionally with it; she had to make people understand the dunes weren’t just somewhere people picnicked in films. They had a purpose, a real, ecological role; they were the town’s first and last defence against the ocean’s advance and that affected everybody who lived here, not just the ocean-front homeowners: no beaches meant no tourists, and therefore no jobs.

  By her feet was a wicker basket filled with paper bags of the seed bombs, which Ro now collected every morning as she cycled past Florence’s house on the way to the studio. It had become something of a habit, a new routine. Florence left the bags out on trays for volunteers to take from a painted wooden barrow by the gates at the bottom of her drive. Ro had decided to keep a basket of them for her own customers to take too, but given that she didn’t actually have any customers, she had taken to scattering them herself on her sunset cycle back home as well, her camera swinging round her neck. She had worked out, just before she fell to sleep one night, that she was cycling on average eighteen miles a day. Matt wouldn’t believe it when she told him.

  ‘Hello there.’

  Ro turned with a start to find a tall, rangy woman in orange leggings and a khaki jumper that slid off one shoulder leaning against the porch post.

  ‘I’m Melodie. I run Insala Yoga next door,’ the woman said with a smile that reached her eyes. Her voice was deep and honeyed, and her skin had such a gleam to it, it looked like it had been polished. But her hair – her hair was thick and wiry, and didn’t so much fall to her shoulders as spring just above them like bungee ropes, forcibly held back from her face by a thick, twisted navy scarf that knotted at the nape. Soulmate! Ro liked the look of her immediately, maybe because – she too – didn’t fit the mould of a Hamptonite.

  ‘Hi,’ Ro said, clambering to her feet and slopping milk over her own flip-flopped feet. ‘Ro Tipton, Marmalade Family Media.’ Standing up, she saw how tall Melodie really was – six foot surely.

  ‘Family Media,’ Melodie repeated. ‘I’ve been wanting to ask you about that since the sign went up. What exactly is Family Media?’

  Ro smiled patiently. She spent her life explaining it to people – the downside of being first in on a new market. ‘Basically? It’s editing personal digital content and putting it into physical form that families can actually enjoy – so photobooks, portraits, calendars, short films, slide shows as laptop screensavers, that kind of thing . . . Otherwise
all those images just sit unseen on a hard drive, and if the computer dies or is stolen, it’s so traumatic . . . I’ve had clients come to me after all those memories have been lost and they’ve needed to start again from scratch. Their wedding photos or their pictures and films of their children as babies . . .’

  ‘That sounds like a rewarding enterprise, Ro. You’re really giving people something that enriches their lives.’

  Ro was silent for a beat. Melodie’s words were so . . . warm for a moment she wasn’t sure whether she was being sarcastic.

  ‘You teach yoga, you say,’ Ro said, quickly changing the subject. ‘Do you do the hot one?’

  Melodie smiled as Ro’s naivety on the subject was revealed in just those six words. ‘No, I don’t. Bikram is a bit too aggressive for me, and I find it attracts a certain type of client who is really only interested in the most superficial aspects of yoga – namely weight loss. I understand why some people might choose that, but I prefer to really focus on the connection between the body and the breath within the element of dynamic flow.’

  Ro’s head bobbed to the words as though she was having an Indian head massage rather than a conversation. She didn’t know exactly what Melodie meant, but she felt so profoundly relaxed, did it really matter? ‘Has anyone ever told you your voice is really amazing? It’s so . . .’ She searched for the word.

  ‘Melodic?’

  ‘Yes, exactly!’ She laughed. The word was perfect.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I mean, how clever were your parents to get your name so spot on?’

  ‘Actually, they didn’t. They named me Samantha, but everyone called me Melodie by the time I was three. Apparently my voice has an unusually high number of alpha waves, which make it sound so calming – useful in my job.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll bet.’

  Ro saw a couple of women walk down the boardwalk towards them, rolled mats under their arms. ‘Talking of which . . . I’d better let you go, Melodie. Your clients are arriving. It was lovely meeting you.’

  Melodie turned as the women approached. ‘Namaste,’ she said softly, gesturing for them to go into the studio. She turned back to Ro. ‘Would you like to join us? There would be no charge, of course, for business neighbours.’

  Ro put her hands up immediately. ‘No! No, thank you. I tried yoga for the first time last week. It’s not for me.’

  ‘May I ask where you went?’

  ‘The SoulCycle Studio, I think it was called?’

  Melodie winced. Actually winced. ‘I wouldn’t have thought bikram would suit you, no. From what I see Ro, you are Kapha prakriti.’

  It sounded like a type of fruit. Ro wrinkled her nose.

  Melodie smiled. ‘Prakriti means “body type”. Vinyasa yoga is much more suited to your temperament and body type. I am certain you will feel better after the session than you do now.’

  ‘Oh, but I feel fine.’ What did she mean? Hadn’t Ro come across as warm and chatty? Did eating granola on the steps somehow count as binge-eating out here? Were her emotions really so easy for everyone to see?

  ‘I’ve seen you looking through the windows during the Guruji chants for the past few days. Join us. We can help you find what you’re looking for.’

  Ro cringed. They’d seen her?

  ‘Just put a note on the door directing your clients to my studio – it’s easy enough for them to come to get you, and the clothes you’re wearing will be OK for now. They’re loose enough.’ Ro opened her mouth to protest again, but Melodie simply smiled, radiating a quiet certainty. ‘We’ll wait for you.’

  Ro watched with a rising sense of panic as Melodie disappeared into the small white clapboarded hut. This is what came of eating in public; hadn’t her mother always told her it was rude? People would get the wrong idea . . .

  She stood on the steps for a moment, looking around the deserted square. The sun was shining straight down on it like the landing lights of a spacecraft, but there was no one around to notice. Ha! Unicorns could have been surfing on rainbows and it would stay her secret.

  Sod it. It was time to face it – no one was coming.

  Jogging up the steps into her own studio, she scrawled a note with an arrow on it, pointing to Insala Yoga, five feet away, and Blu-tacked it to the door. A minute later, she was walking into the yoga studio with a look of trepidation on her face. Last week’s encounter with the weekending Manhattanites had been frankly terrifying, what with their Barbie bodies and designer kit and hypoxic breathing techniques. But the first thing she noticed here was the light – or rather the lack thereof. In Bobbi’s class, everything was bleached and blond and white – the walls, the floors, the customers, the candles, the mats, the potted orchids on the table in the corner – and two walls of the class were solid glass, drenching everyone in sunlight and vitamin D, and making their bodies look golden and honeyed, ready for the pools and tennis courts later. But here, the small windows were veiled with jewel-coloured sari silks that fluttered softly like tropical flowers below the air-conditioning vents and cast the room in soothing shade.

  In Bobbi’s class, perfumed candles the size of drums had competed with sticky Marc Jacobs scents, but in this room, Ro could see a lit oil diffuser and, beside it, a small bottle of lotus oil. The smell was heavenly – the one she’d been detecting all week – and when she closed her eyes in the cool, quiet, aromatic space, she didn’t feel like she was in America at all, but across the ocean in Asia – with Matt.

  The connection made her relax and smile. She opened her eyes to find Melodie smiling back at her, a knowing look on her face. She nodded and gestured towards the empty mat near to her.

  ‘Ladies,’ Melodie said in her extraordinary voice, ‘shall we begin?’

  Ro sat cross-legged, resting her hands on her knees, and allowed herself a deep sigh. For the first time since arriving here, she felt at home.

  Ro was just beginning to think levitation might actually be a physical possibility when she heard the knock. She had slipped slowly down into a black velvet hole and found happiness there – memories of her and Matt lighting her up from the inside, and she didn’t want to leave. If she couldn’t be with him there, she could be with him here. The scent of Asia, Melodie’s voice, her incantations – indecipherable but suggestive – had led her into a deep meditation where their love didn’t hurt or need to be numbed – as it had since he’d left – but felt good again, nourishing. For the first time since Matt had stepped out of her sphere, she didn’t feel the profound shock of being alone.

  But the knock . . .

  She opened one eye and looked around the room. Without moving her head, she could see Melodie had risen from her mat. Moving her head, she could see she was walking towards the door.

  She closed her eye again, relieved she didn’t have to move; she wasn’t sure she could, anyway; she actually couldn’t feel her legs at all at this particular moment, as she cast her mind back to the breath in her body, which she had left hovering somewhere around her pancreas.

  Why had she never noticed before how good breathing felt? She inhaled again, imagining the breath in her lungs as a rolling, gathering light, illuminating her from within.

  ‘Ro?’ Melodie’s voice was by her ear, soft and rich like warmed caramel. ‘Ro?’

  Ro dragged open one eye. ‘Uh,’ she grunted, like a teenager being roused for school. ‘Uh?’

  ‘You’ve got a client. They’re waiting outside for you.’

  ‘Uh!’ Ro was aware she sounded like a gibbon and really ought to try to articulate some words at least, but her body felt so deeply relaxed, her mind so thoroughly far from here that she was up and halfway across the room before she was even aware of it. ‘Th-thanks,’ she stammered, rolling towards the door like a drunk, trying to shake off the almost trance-like state.

  She opened the door so that the outside world poured in and she blinked into the bright light and harsh day going on without her. It woke her up. She had a client?

  She had a clien
t! They weren’t on the porch. She straightened up and marched noisily along the planks of the boardwalk connecting the run of small studios, running her hands through her hair and rearranging her shirt, which had become skewed round her body during the cat-cow poses.

  She inhaled again – why had it felt so peculiarly good in Melodie’s studio? – and opened the door with a flourish. ‘Hi—’ The smile died on her lips.

  The Maniac, aka Long Story, held his hands up in a mollifying gesture. ‘I come in peace.’

  ‘I don’t care if you come in twenty-two-carat gold. Get out.’

  The analogy confused them both – Long Story frowned in bafflement – but she stood her ground, out on the porch.

  He took in her refusal to stand in the same room as him. She couldn’t even look at him. ‘Listen, I understand why you don’t want to see me, but that’s actually why I’m here – I’ve come to apologize. Last week on the beach, my behaviour . . . It was so completely out of character. I-I’ve never . . .’ he stammered.

  ‘I don’t want to hear it. Just get out of my studio.’ Her aura of deep calm had been shattered in an instant. The feeling of Matt was gone – because of him?

  Long Story hesitated. ‘I know what I did humiliated you.’

  The memory of it brought bitter tears to Ro’s eyes, but she’d be damned if she’d give him that as well. ‘Not really. You were the one who showed yourself up,’ she said quietly, her voice sounding calm, dignified even. ‘Especially in front of your children.’

  Her words hit their mark and she saw him wince. He blew out his breath slowly, staring down at the floor and clearly wondering what to say next.

  ‘Please just go. I don’t need your apologies. I would just like never to see you again.’ She waved her arm before her, indicating for him to take a hike out on the boardwalk.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not that easy—’

  She froze. Oh God. He really was a maniac. He was stalking her.

  ‘You see, I’d like to hire you – I mean commission you! I’d like to commission you. As a photographer. For my children.’ He raked a hand through his hair nervously and her eyes automatically tracked the movement in bewilderment.