by T. M. Logan
“How are you, Kate?”
“Great. Lovely.”
Izzy grinned playfully.
“Big first night last night, was it?”
“Not really.”
“You look exhausted, woman.”
I shook my head, smiling in spite of myself. Izzy had always been one to call a spade a spade.
“Thanks,” I said. “You always know how to lift my spirits.”
“Just saying, that’s all. Concerned for you.”
“I do feel exhausted, actually, didn’t sleep that well.” I reached for a convincing lie—one with a kernel of truth. “I’m actually a bit worried about Lucy.”
In broad brushstrokes, I told them how my daughter had been more withdrawn recently, her mood swings more pronounced with the pressure of the looming GCSE results. And how I had failed to notice the signs until last night.
Jennifer had joined us and was nodding along in sympathy.
“It’s understandable,” she said. “It’s a tough gig that you’ve set for yourself.”
I shrugged. “No tougher than anyone else has got it.”
“But it can’t be easy for you, keeping on top of everything with all of your … commitments.”
“How do you mean?”
“You know,” she said. “Your career.”
I felt my hackles rising. “What about it?”
“It must be hard, doing the mom thing and working full time as well.”
“No,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “That’s not it. Not at all.”
“I mean, it’s great and everything, but it can’t be easy fitting it all in. I don’t know how you guys do it.”
Maybe it was lack of sleep, but I sensed a certain tone in her voice that I didn’t like. Rowan seemed to sense it, too, jumping in before we slid into a full-blown argument.
“Hey, Jennifer?” Rowan said. “I promised Odette I’d bring you down to the pool this morning to watch her doggy paddle—do you want to come now?”
“Sure,” Jennifer said, following her out of the kitchen.
Izzy and I exchanged glances after they’d left the room, both smiling and shaking our heads as if to say: a classic Jennifer comment. We went out onto the balcony and sat down at the end of the table, in the shade of a large umbrella.
“How are you finding it,” I said, “being back in Europe?”
“Like I never bloody left,” she said with a small smile. “Same as it ever was. So how are you really, Kate? Honestly? Now it’s just the two of us, you can tell me.”
“Me? I’m fine.” I shrugged, smiled back. “Same as I ever was.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely. It’s just Lucy, like I said.”
She took a sip of coffee and studied me for a moment. She had always been the most perceptive one of us, the most likely to see what was hidden. And she never held back, never left things unsaid—even if it meant a difficult conversation.
“You just look a little bit … I don’t know. Not quite yourself.”
“Busy day yesterday, you know. Travel day’s always a bit of a slog, isn’t it?”
“That just means you’re not traveling enough, woman. You need more practice.”
Izzy had spent much of her late twenties and thirties traveling and working overseas, teaching English as a foreign language, first in sub-Saharan Africa, then in Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia and other parts of Southeast Asia. Some years ago, on one of her extended stays in Tibet, she had become a Buddhist and it seemed to have made her calmer, happier, less bothered about all the things that most people spent so long worrying about.
She was from the same part of Limerick as Sean, and had been indirectly responsible for us getting together at university. As soon as she introduced him to our little group, I was instantly smitten by this broad-shouldered Irishman who was always smiling, who could talk to anyone, who danced like a fool, and whose heart beat so hard the first time we kissed that I thought it would burst out of his chest. He looked at me the way boys had never done before. Really looked at me. I had been amazed when he’d first asked me out. I’d always felt like he was out of my league—he could have had the pick of the girls.
My Sean.
He and Izzy had never been an item, but he had once told me—after a considerable amount of Guinness and red wine—that they had made a pact at the age of sixteen. That if they were both still single at forty—and Sean had not yet “made his first million”—they would get married. One of those jokey, teenage agreements that was done tongue in cheek—but maybe meant more to one of them than they were willing to admit.
They had always kept in touch—even while she was working abroad. They would exchange jokey texts about shared interests, about sports, films, and hometown reminiscences, that I was only ever on the periphery of, never really involved in.
Izzy had ended up getting engaged to Sean’s best friend, Mark. But the marriage had never happened—and I didn’t want to think about that, about what had happened to him. Not now.
I sipped my coffee.
“So,” I said, “what made you come back?”
Izzy shrugged, gave me a smile.
“I think maybe it’s time I finally put down some roots.”
“You seeing anyone?”
“It’s still the early stages.”
“You’re being very cryptic about it.”
She waved a hand, colored bangles jangling and clinking together on her wrist.
“Don’t want to curse it.”
“When do we get to meet him, this new chap?”
“Not for a bit.” She gave me a wink, her eyes twinkling. “It’s complicated.”
“There you go, being cryptic again.”
She fingered her necklace, a cloudy green stone surrounded by a crescent moon, rolling the slim leather cord between her fingers.
“It’s just going to need some careful handling, that’s all.”
“Is he the shy, retiring type?”
“Not exactly. There aren’t many of them from my hometown.”
“From Limerick?”
She nodded. “Spooky, isn’t it? How things turn out? Spend half your life abroad and end up seeing someone who grew up a mile from your house.”
I suddenly realized what she meant, my heart dropping into my shoes. Surely she couldn’t possibly be so brazen about it, could she? In front of me, talking to me? But that was Izzy all over—it always had been. She had always been a straight talker, never sugarcoated anything, never compromised, never took the easy path. There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting. That was her way, her Buddhist faith.
And that’s why she can’t keep a man, Russ had once said in an unkind moment.
I tried to smile along. Just keep smiling. “Oh my God, Izzy.”
“What?”
Keeping my voice level, I said, “He’s married, isn’t he?”
Izzy raised an eyebrow, fixing me with a weird look. “I couldn’t possibly comment.”
“But is he?”
“What makes you think it’s even a he?”
“Well, your previous boyfriends, for one thing.”
“This is true.”
“So: married?”
“Are you asking that question as an officer of the law?”
“Of course not. And us analysts are civilians, anyway. I’m asking as your friend.”
“Can’t tell you yet. Soon.”
The question that she had never really answered came back to me, pushing its way to the front of my mind.
Why did you come back to the UK, Izzy? Why now?
All of a sudden I was seeing that question in a whole new light.
Before I could decide what to think about Izzy’s revelation, Odette marched up to us with a look of utter determination on her face. She was in a pink sparkly swimsuit, with pink armbands, pink goggles on her head, a pink inflatable ring around her midriff, and a blow-up dolphin under h
er arm. Also pink.
She planted her feet apart, fists on her hips.
“Right,” she said, her high voice cutting across our conversation, “who wants to go to the beach?”
14
The beach at Cap d’Agde was crowded.
The Mediterranean was a brilliant, sparkling blue, small waves whipped up by a gentle onshore breeze that brought a note of coolness to the merciless midday sunshine. Our little group was subdued after last night, our towels grouped around a pair of large parasols, bags and books and a big blue cooler piled at the center of our encampment. The smell of suntan lotion mingled with a salty breeze off the sea and cigarette smoke drifting over us from a French couple nearby. I rubbed suntan lotion into Lucy’s back and shoulders as she held her long blond hair out of the way with one hand, thumb-typing on her phone with her other. I was glad to be here, glad to be distracted—in the thick of things—rather than back at the villa, letting my mind wander to dark places. I felt as though I were living in some TV drama, and everywhere I looked a camera was zooming on each of my best friends’ faces, shouted accusations coming one after another.
Is it you? Or you, or you?
Sean had been more attentive than usual, carrying bags, setting up umbrellas, fetching chilled water and snacks for me and the kids. Was he trying extra hard because of what he’d done? What he was still doing?
Jennifer was beside me on a large straw mat, propped up on her elbows, surveying the packed beach around us. A serious-looking paperback—The Optimistic Child: A Revolutionary Approach to Raising Resilient Children—lay untouched on the sand next to her. She had been a star athlete when we met, playing tennis and hockey in the national university leagues. At five feet ten, she was the tallest of the four of us and had managed to maintain a lean, strong physique with a weekly routine of tennis, Pilates, and jogging. There had been a time when I didn’t particularly enjoy being next to her on the beach, or at the pool, or anywhere in a swimsuit. I was the pale Englishwoman, always trying—and never quite succeeding—to get back to my wedding-day weight, next to this toned, tanned Californian who never appeared to put on a pound.
I thought I had got over that particular insecurity. Maybe not. It seemed to have returned with a vengeance today.
“We seem to have chosen the wrong day to come to the beach,” I said. “It’s like half of Béziers is here.”
“Isn’t Cap d’Agde supposed to be a nudist beach?”
I pointed up the coast, where the sandy beach curved into the distance. “That’s around the headland, a bit further up. Why, do you fancy it?”
Jennifer laughed. “Are you kidding me? Lots of old guys with their junk hanging out? Ee-yew.”
“Better a busy beach than a naked beach, then?”
“For sure. The boys like it, too.” She indicated a small inlet where Jake and Ethan were busy digging in the sand. “It’s so lovely to see them playing for once, properly playing, like they used to. Like children should play. Rather than sitting in a dark room staring at a screen.”
I finished rubbing lotion into Lucy’s back. She smiled a thank-you and lay facedown on her towel, her skin glistening in the sun. Neither of us had mentioned our conversation last night, but she seemed a bit better today, a bit calmer. She was getting on well with Jake and Ethan, which I was pleased about. Something to take her mind off things, keep her from brooding so much.
“Sometimes I forget that your boys are only just in their teens,” I said. “Since they got so tall.”
“Jake’s already bigger than Alistair, you know,” Jennifer said. “Won’t be long until Ethan gets there, too. It feels so strange to suddenly become the smallest one in the family.”
Sean had taken Daniel to the beach café for an ice cream. Russ lay flat on his back in the shade of a big beach umbrella, straw hat over his face, pure brandy sweating out of his pores. I’d never thought you could actually smell the alcohol coming off someone’s sweat, but today I could. It was coming off him in waves, a sickly sweet odor that hung around him and snatched at your nostrils when you got too close.
Jennifer sat up, resting her chin on her knees. “I’m sorry about earlier,” she said to me. “Sometimes I just … I don’t know, open my mouth without thinking, I guess.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “I know what you were trying to say.”
She smiled, staring across the sand toward her boys. “Can you imagine life without them?” she said quietly.
“Who?”
“Your children.”
“Not really.”
“Seems impossible, doesn’t it, that once upon a time we were just us? Alone, I mean. Flying solo, no kids, no husbands.”
Izzy spoke up without opening her eyes. “Some of us still are.”
Jennifer gave a little start of surprise. “Oh! I thought you were asleep. Sorry, Izzy, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Izzy smiled and turned over onto her front. “It’s fine. Flying solo has its advantages.”
Jennifer smiled, embarrassed. “When we first met,” she said, “it seems like another life, a different lifetime. Do you think it’s changed us?”
I shrugged. “Of course. It’s inevitable, isn’t it? If we were still the same now as we were twenty years ago, that would be … weird. Life shapes us, doesn’t it?”
In good ways and bad, I thought, trying to work out where Jennifer was heading with this.
“I mean it changes everything.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Still feel like who I was back then. Just a bit more skeptical.”
“I remember when Jakey was tiny, probably six months or something, and I was already just pregnant with Ethan. The three of us went to Cromer for a week, to be by the sea. And while we were there we went out on a boat trip along the coastline, just for an hour or so. I was holding Jakey in my arms, and I looked at Alistair and knew, with absolute certainty in that moment, that if the boat went down and there weren’t enough life jackets—and I could only save one of them—I would save Jake without even a second’s hesitation. Not even a second. I would watch my husband drown if it meant saving my baby. It was like a scientific fact, like gravity; you couldn’t argue with it or deny it. And before I knew what I was doing, I could hear myself telling him this—I just came straight out and said it, without really realizing I was saying it. I felt awful. But it was true.”
She fell silent for a moment, the breeze coming off the sea ruffling her blond hair.
I said, “That’s natural, I suppose. A mother’s instinct.”
“Yes, but do you know what Alistair said? He said he was just thinking the same thing. That he would save Jake if he could only save one of us.” She was smiling a little now, shaking her head. “At that moment, sitting on that boat and feeling a bit seasick in Cromer harbor, it felt that something changed between me and Alistair. Changed from it being about me and him, into something else. Like it was the end of one chapter in my life and the start of another.”
I didn’t know what to say in response. Since seeing the messages on Sean’s phone, I’d felt that a chapter in my life was about to end, too. Rolling grains of sand between my thumb and forefinger, I wondered if Jennifer would be the cause. Tall, beautiful Jennifer, who’d turned Sean’s head when we first met as teenagers. Tense, worried Jennifer, who’d given off an air of brittle unease since we arrived in France.
She asked, “Have you ever thought that, too? About Sean?”
I shrugged, staring out at the ruined fort that occupied a tiny island in the bay. “Not in so many words. But I suppose we’d all say the same thing, wouldn’t we? We all put our kids first: it’s what we’re programmed to do.”
“It’s just that I worry about them so much,” Jennifer said. “All the time. I can’t switch it off. I’ve tried to, but I can’t.”
“Same here. But Lucy and your boys will be at a point soon where they’re big enough to look after themselves.”
“Can’t imagine that. They’ll always
be my boys. Always.”
I looked around briefly to see who might be listening in. Izzy seemed to be dozing again. Russ was dead to the world, face covered by his hat. Alistair had wandered off somewhere to take pictures. The others, including Lucy, had gone to get an ice cream and find out about renting a paddleboat.
A little way out to sea, flying low and slow, a small plane trailed a long banner advertising Luna Park fairground.
Leaning closer to Jennifer and lowering my voice, I said, “Is everything … all right?”
She looked up. “Of course. Everything’s fine. What do you mean?”
“You just seemed a little, I don’t know … What you said about life changing people. Sounded as if you had something on your mind.”
Jennifer looked away then, her mouth set in a hard, straight line. She turned back and seemed about to answer when Ethan wandered up, his hairy legs covered in a layer of sand.
“Is there anything to eat, Mum? I’m starving.”
Jennifer reached into the cooler and held out an apple to her younger son.
He frowned. “Is there anything else? Any cookies?”
“Just fruit and water.” She leaned forward and put the apple in his hand.
Rowan returned from the café, holding three Popsicles in their wrappers. She looked around. “Where’s Odette? Was she playing with you and your brother?”
“Nope. Not seen her.”
“I thought she was with you.”
