The Summer Without You

by Karen Swan

  ‘Oh yes, Florence mentioned that on the Artwalk,’ Ro said. ‘She’s talking about not renewing their permits. Brook thought she was just trying to pen-push and waste time. He was pretty angry about it.’

  Greg thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘It’s got nothing to do with the new beach. That’s what we need to find.’

  A sudden sound made them all start – but not in fright.

  Someone was laughing.

  They looked on, frozen to the spot as Florence came through the French doors, a tartan blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her seed-bomb basket over her arm, her hair windswept, her cheeks pink – and followed closely after by Brook.

  It was hard to say who was the more astonished, although Florence recovered first.

  ‘Ro?’

  ‘F-Florence . . .’ she stammered, not sure where to start. ‘We came over to see that you were all right.’

  ‘Why on earth wouldn’t I be?’ Florence asked, shaking her head and putting down the basket. She frowned quizzically. ‘And how did you all get in?’

  Greg, Bobbi and Ro’s eyes slid over to Brook. He was standing by Florence, growing wary as he picked up on the suspicious stares being directed at him.

  Greg stepped forward, his eyes darting back and forth between the older couple. ‘Florence, I’m sorry to say we came over because we believed you were in danger.’

  At Greg’s words, Brook put a hand on her arm, but Greg stepped further towards her. ‘From Brook.’

  ‘Brook?’ Florence laughed.

  ‘What?’ Brook uttered in disbelief. ‘Why on earth would you think Florence is in danger from me?’

  ‘Because she’s the last person standing in the way of Montauk building an emergency engineered beach and therefore qualifying for federal funding,’ Ro said, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks flushed as anger spurred through her at the thought of what he’d done – to Florence, to her, the threat he’d raised against Ella and Finn. ‘And you need that approval to come through. You’ve bought up the Montauk Harbor wharves using your privileged access to uninsurable properties in the area, and getting Kevin Bradley to negotiate the rest. As soon as the area’s protected again, those values will skyrocket and you’ll be a very rich man – especially if you pull off the deal for the waterpark.’ She looked at Florence. ‘It’s about hundreds of millions of dollars, Florence, not five. It isn’t about the house. It’s about the vote.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Brook cried. ‘I don’t own any property in Montauk.’

  ‘Granted, you’ve certainly made it difficult for anyone to attach your name to it,’ Greg said. ‘Registering the company offshore makes it all but impossible to get names. But we do have one.’

  ‘What company? Whose name?’

  ‘SB Holdings Ltd,’ Greg replied. ‘And we have proof that Kevin Bradley was a director.’

  ‘Well, maybe he was, but how does that link to me?’

  ‘It’s registered in Bermuda – an odd choice for anyone in property, but for someone in the insurance trade who travels there numerous times a year . . .’ Greg paused, his voice calm and steady, letting the cool logic of his words settle over Brook’s bluster. ‘You told us yourself you conduct most of your business on the golf course, the exact place where Kevin Bradley was murdered.’

  ‘I never murdered Kevin Bradley. I never murdered anyone,’ Brook protested angrily.

  ‘I saw you, Brook,’ Ro snapped. ‘I was watching from the window. You were wearing a panama, the same hat you wore to the Artwalk two weeks ago.’

  ‘Anyone can wear a hat.’ Brook’s mouth fell slack. ‘I would never kill anyone.’

  ‘Not even for two hundred million dollars?’ Greg asked.

  ‘Give it up, Brook,’ Ro said. ‘Now that we can link Kevin to SB Holdings, it’s only a matter of time before the police get the names of the rest of the board. I mean, you even named the company after your own wife. Songbird? I’ve heard you call her that myself!’

  ‘Uh, guys . . .’ Bobbi murmured, holding up a finger.

  ‘What is it?’ Greg asked, alerted by her tone.

  ‘The dredging company – the one that’s had the permit for works in Montauk.’ She pointed her finger to some print that, upside down and too far away, Ro couldn’t read.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Ro repeated as Greg fell silent too.

  Greg looked up at her slowly, a look on his face that made her blood suspend its race through her veins.

  ‘It’s owned by SB Holdings Ltd. The permit was signed ten years ago by someone called . . .’ He squinted, unable to decipher the photocopied scrawl. ‘S-something Barrington.’

  Brook’s eyes met Ro’s – real fear in them now.

  But Ro already knew. She remembered that very first conversation, eating breakfast in the sun, how badly her parents had chosen her name. SB, not for Songbird at all, but Samantha.

  Brook was right. Anyone can wear a hat.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Ro stayed with Florence after Greg called the police and he and Brook drove back to the house to meet them. Bobbi went home. Hump would need someone to talk to when he got back. Out of all of them tonight, he was the one in for the nastiest shock.

  She slept – or rather, didn’t – in the room that had been Marina’s when she’d been a child, and which Florence had kept almost the same for her grandchildren – a pink pony print on the wall, the view over the dunes and out to the ocean unchanging but for the daily vagaries of clouds, wind and tide.

  Ro sat on the single bed all night, her eyes tracking the moon’s silver march over the black ocean as she thought about the girl who turned into the woman who would always be the one before her. She thought about Florence and the children, and how she’d fallen for them all in such tiny spaces of time, their lives flung together from across an ocean and enmeshed with the deep, abiding trust that comes from surviving tragedy.

  And Ted. He was back again. She could almost feel his closeness, knowing he was sleeping somewhere – maybe within a mile of here – knowing he had moved through this house, sat on this bed, swam in that pool . . . She looked down at the phone in her hands, the brief text flashing as a draft.

  He had said she had the decision to make. She had to be the one to do it because she wasn’t free. He was, in the most terrible of ways, and he was waiting for her; had been – he’d said – since almost the beginning, when she’d stood laughing across the Wölffer party in a too-small dress, flip-flops and wild hair. She had spent the summer running from him, hiding from him even as she’d been propelled towards him, drawn into the folds of his family as she watched their past with a fast-beating heart. But how could she be their future? How could they be hers? Nearly half her life had been devoted to another man, another dream . . . How could she put her trust in another future when last night’s revelations had shown the flaws in her judgement? Her thumb tapped the ‘send’ button and she watched the icon spin on the screen, closing off the door to another life. No matter what her heart told her, the bonds of history felt like a chain she just couldn’t break.

  Ro walked slowly home, her feet dragging and her head full as she tried yet again to recast Melodie in the light of her actions: she had been provocative, Ro saw that now – flirting with Hump like it was a combat sport and dazzling him with a spirituality and flexibility that threw a shadow over all the pretty party girls wanting his eye. And what about the odd chip on her shoulder about the smart society scene she helped to lead, despising it on the one hand, craving its approval and acceptance on the other? She remembered Melodie warning her off Florence too – some sort of misguided show of friendship, perhaps? Trying to protect her? Painting Florence as erratic and unpredictable—

  Wait . . .

  Ro stopped walking, a frown on her face – the money, the missing $3 million. That would count as pocket change to Melodie surely, with an offshore bank account and a loaded husband?

  Her feet began moving again, the thoughts
non-stop, whirling around in her head like spells in a cauldron: she remembered Hump’s petulance that day in the studio as Melodie left to get ready for another party. He had been jealous, pulling her down with envious spite as she went back to the husband whose status and financial clout she needed – and would never surrender. Put together, everything painted a brightly coloured picture, clear to see. Why, why hadn’t she seen Melodie for what she was?

  God, what a mess. She had sat down to a breakfast with Florence that neither of them ate; she had looked for catharsis in the pool and found nothing but exhaustion. Everyone had been undone, and she knew Melodie couldn’t even begin to understand that Kevin wasn’t her only victim in this – Florence fretting almost constantly about Brook, Ro almost constantly about Hump.

  A trio of sun-kissed girls in Lilly Pulitzer dresses cycled past, their beach bags slung across their shoulders as they chattered about last night’s party, and she suddenly felt old, like she wasn’t part of their carefree world anymore. Last night, she hadn’t been looking pretty and flirting with a stranger; she’d been confronting an ugly truth about a new friend. The golden shimmer of her all-American summer had been tarnished and she felt sullied by the truths she had confronted. To have been so deceived . . . how could she know, anymore, what was real? Her shoulders slumped again as she tried to imagine Melodie in a windowless interview room, lying, justifying . . . ‘Ambition in a bikini,’ Hump had said once, but it had turned out to be more like a pair of harem pants and a diamond toe ring – materialism disguised by spirituality, ruthlessness hidden by a smile. At least in a bikini there was nowhere to hide.

  She walked up the porch steps and opened the screen door. ‘I’m home,’ she called, hearing voices in the kitchen.

  They fell quiet, only the sound of her feet to be heard on the wooden floor. ‘What?’ she asked, leaning against the doorframe and looking in.

  Hump (looking dreadful) and Bobbi stared back at her.

  And—

  ‘Matt!’ she gasped, running over to him, her arms around him before he’d even risen from the chair. He laughed as she buried her face in his neck, tears spilling helplessly from her as his presence marked the sudden end of the dream, the nightmare, the pause. He was her safety – always had been – and finding him sitting in this kitchen pressed ‘play’ in her again, releasing her from the freeze-frame she’d been stuck in since that windy March day in the park.

  He said nothing as she sat on his lap, sobbing, his tanned hands rubbing her back slowly as everyone else discreetly scarpered – Hump, no doubt, to bed. He looked like he’d been up all night.

  ‘W-what are you doing here?’ she hiccupped, finally drawing back and looking at him, her hands running tentatively over the dark fuzz that was still too short to flop but could only bristle beneath her palm.

  ‘We got to Phnom Penh on Thursday and I visited an internet cafe to pick up emails. There was one from my father saying he’d read an article in the papers about a murder in the Hamptons – and citing you as a witness.’

  Ro blinked as she saw the hurt in his eyes, picked up on the glint of bitterness in his words. He had been worried; now he was angry – she had specifically told him everything was fine.

  ‘It wasn’t as bad as that makes it sound. I didn’t see it happen,’ she said quickly. ‘And I didn’t lie to you, Matt. It happened after we last talked.’ During, actually, but she shrugged the thought away. It was academic now.

  ‘But a murder, Ro.’ His voice cracked, hoarse, as he shook his head sadly. ‘What the hell have you got yourself into out here?’

  There it was again – the suggestion that she’d floundered in his absence, got it wrong, made poor decisions . . . The decision that had felt most true, most right, swam into focus again and she rose quickly from his lap, walking over to the sink to wash her face, trying to hide the truth he would surely see in her eyes.

  ‘Would you have told me about last night, or would I have had to find that out on the internet too?’ he asked, watching her back.

  She turned off the tap, shaking the droplets off her hands slowly. He knew about Melodie already?

  ‘Hump was dropped back in a police car,’ he elaborated. ‘I was sitting outside on the steps wondering where the hell you all were. He explained everything.’

  ‘Oh.’ She turned back to him, stubbing the floor with her toes. She couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t meet his eyes.

  Matt waited as she said nothing, his thighs beginning to jig from the frustration that she’d hidden so much, cut him out . . . ‘Well? You find out your friend killed a man, but that doesn’t warrant letting me know?’

  ‘Look, we found out last night – what did you expect me to do? And what could you have done?’ She saw his expression. ‘What? Don’t look at me like that. I’m not as helpless as you think. I’ve got my friends. We’ve been getting through it all together, OK?’

  ‘Oh, they were scalded in a random attack too, were they?’ he asked, the sarcasm out and proud now.

  ‘Trust me, everyone’s had something going on. Bobbi, Greg, Hump . . .’ Understatement of the century.

  They fell quiet, neither of them wanting to argue, both aware it was supposed to be a happy moment. She realized she hadn’t kissed him yet and she looked away again. It wasn’t the right time now. Or was it that it wasn’t . . . right?

  Matt rubbed his face in his hands. ‘Sorry, I . . . I’m shattered; I’ve barely slept in thirty-six hours.’

  ‘No,’ she sighed, relenting just as quickly. ‘So much has happened and I’m just thrown that you’re here, that’s all.’ She gave a small, dry laugh. ‘After all those weeks counting down the days and suddenly – bam! – here you are, before schedule. Didn’t see that coming.’ She shrugged. ‘I just can’t quite get my head round it yet. Shock. I guess.’

  Matt looked around the tatty old 1950s kitchen. ‘It’s nice here,’ he said after a while.

  ‘Thanks. I love it.’ She nodded, trying to see it through fresh eyes again, but it was impossible. It had become home now, as familiar as a favourite jumper. She watched him taking it in, trying to imagine the conversations she’d had in here, the hung-over breakfasts, the clamour in the mornings for the last of the marmalade . . .

  A thought occurred to her suddenly – she still had two weeks to run on her rental agreement. What happened now? Did Matt expect her to pack up and go home with him? Was he going to stay on here with her? She knew Hump wouldn’t refuse her request if she asked, but she couldn’t see it – life here with him. It was hers, sweet and precious to her, like a flame she’d kindled from a spark and that was finally giving out some heat. No, it didn’t fit. His return meant her summer was over. It was time to go back to real life.

  She thought of what she was leaving behind, who . . . and a shiver of tears caught her off guard. She turned quickly and filled the kettle, keeping her back to him as she imagined Ted waking to her text this morning. The very thought of it made her crumple and she knew that alone was proof that it was better this way. She had to go, and the sooner the better.

  She blinked the tears out of her eyes and turned. ‘Tea?’

  Matt was watching her. ‘I can’t believe how blonde you’ve gone. It suits you. And that haircut . . . How have I never noticed your neck before? I thought I knew all of you, every last bit.’

  She felt herself blush and tried to smile, tucking her hair self-consciously behind one ear.

  ‘You’ve lost weight too.’

  ‘Have I?’ She looked down at herself, still in yesterday’s clothes, her feet tanned and bare on the lino floor. She didn’t want his compliments or attentions. She was scared of the scrutiny, worried he could see . . . sense the betrayal, the real reason she was different.

  He got up and walked over to her, lacing his hands behind her back. ‘God, I missed you more than I thought humanly possible.’ He kissed her lightly on the lips, his eyes beginning to dance. ‘Want to show me your room?’

  ‘But . . .’ S
he looked up at him, startled, feeling actual panic trammel through her. ‘I mean . . . what about your tea? You’ve had a long journey.’

  ‘Tea?’ he laughed softly. ‘Trust me, it’s not tea that’s going to make me feel better.’ His hands began skimming up her and she gave a nervous laugh, wriggling out of his grip and almost running over to the tea caddy.

  ‘Well, I really need one. Badly,’ she said in the lightest tone she could muster, plunging her hand into the tin of teabags and hiding her face from view. ‘I think . . . I think last night’s revelations . . .’ She turned back to him, trying to smile. ‘You know?’

  Matt stood in the middle of the kitchen, his eyes watching her closely like he was examining her, pinpointing all the microscopic changes in her since they’d last met – not just the hair and tan and weight loss, the clothes and new muscle tone and good posture that came from a summer of yoga. There was more besides. ‘Ro?’

  Something was ringing out like a bell to him, soundless to her. He was guessing it, beginning to suspect, the questions he could feel in his heart starting to spread, like iodine in the blood, to his head.

  ‘Let’s go out!’ she blurted.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Yes, I . . . I want to show you around. We’ll go to the beach and then we can have brunch at Colette’s.’ They could not. She knew she couldn’t stomach a thing, but she had to get him out of here, stop the questions in their tracks. ‘They do amazing flagels.’

  He laughed. ‘What the hell is a flagel?’

  ‘Trust me,’ she said, grabbing her handbag from the table and pulling him along by the hand, anything to stop the scrutiny. ‘You’re going to love them.’

  She sat on the handlebars as Matt pedalled the bright yellow bike, Ro indicating for him when to turn left and right with her arms. She shrieked when he wobbled the bike deliberately on the lane, laughed when he rang the bell so that it vibrated against her bottom, but she felt like an actress playing a part in a film.