‘Thanks,’ Sam said, accepting the oar with his chin tucked into his chest. Jake thought the boy might cry. Ella floated out near the pair of kayaks, watching Sam like a hawk, or a leopard seal. Take your pick.
‘I was giving him lessons with the oars, Ella,’ Ollie said. ‘I showed him like Jake showed me. I made sure about the life-jackets.’
‘He shouldn’t have gone in without me here, Ollie. Sam knows that.’
‘I’m not a baby. I know how to do it.’ Sam demonstrated by pushing his oar in the water, taking a few strokes, then cutting the oar across his front and changing to stroke on the other side. Not without a wobble, it had to be said. ‘See?’ Sam pleaded.
He might have imagined it, but Jake thought the set of Ella’s neck and shoulders relaxed, just a bit. A miniscule bit, but it was there.
Ella might be embarrassed too, about her overreaction— because surely now she could see that’s what it was—and he needed to find a way to ease the situation.
‘Hey, you lot out there.’ Jake cupped his hands to his mouth, calling across the dam, and three faces turned his way. ‘How about you boys race Ella back here. Kids in kayaks get a head start.’
‘Yay. You’re on!’ Ollie said, driving his oar into the water and surging forward.
Sam copied him, and out in the water, Ella sent Jake a wave. Just two fingers, flicked together sideways above the water, but he’d take it that she was grateful.
‘Okay, swimmers are go,’ Jake yelled. ‘Go, Ella!’
‘Oh, crap,’ Ollie said, digging his oar through the water faster.
‘You better move it,’ Sam said, trying to spike the water with the same skill as Ollie, but giving up when the kayak lurched. ‘Mum was in the Olympics. Well nearly.’
‘Coming, ready or not,’ Ella called.
Jake watched her dive once and come up, but not like before. Last time she’d put her head down and gone for it. This time she swam freestyle with her head above water, checking the two kids on kayaks were okay, slow enough that she stayed in Sam’s wake the entire journey. It was Ollie who let out a victory whoop when his kayak hit the bank first.
* * *
‘Ella?’ Jake said later, as they sat on the gazebo deckchairs, Ella wrapped in a blue-green sarong that Nita had found among his mother’s clothes. Her hands were curled around a chicken and salad roll that Nita had made and packed for them in a picnic basket. Jake had already finished his roll.
Her eyes met his.
‘You’ve got to teach swimming lessons. You’ve at least got to get them started, even if you hand it all over to someone else when it’s all up and running. Seeing you out there just now, it’s convinced me. We’ve got to get the town pool open again. You’re a natural. I’ve never seen anything like the way you swam out there today.’
‘I don’t know.’ Ella dropped her gaze to stare instead at the two boys doing bombies off the shallow side of the jetty. ‘Maybe.’
Jake had already watched her check whether Sam could touch the bottom and even then, she eyeballed the boy’s every jump and her shoulders only relaxed when Sam’s head popped up from the water and he’d thrash across to get a hold on the ladder.
Both boys still wore the lifejackets, and Sam and Ollie had changed their shorts for swimming boardies.
After they’d got the kids out of the kayaks and off the dam, Jake had sent Ollie and Sam up to the house for towels and dry clothes. He’d left his t-shirt for Ella, then rode the quad bike up to the house to give her some privacy, even though he’d been busting to see her emerge from the dam in that black bra, water streaming … every man’s wet dream, but definitely his.
Now her shorts, bra and knickers hung drying over the side of the jetty deck along with Sam’s shorts and shirt, Ella’s blue blouse, her sandals and a laundromat of beach towels. The day was so hot her hair already had dried enough to wisp around her face.
‘Boys? There’s lunch up here when you’re ready,’ Ella called.
A chorus of ‘okay’ and ‘thanks’ floated from the water and Jake judged Ella had relaxed enough for him to ask the questions that kept getting jammed in his head.
‘How did it feel to dive in the water just now?’ he asked quietly, and she stopped chewing. He pressed on, speaking fast. ‘The other night at your place you said you hadn’t been swimming since the last day you climbed out of the pool.’
She took a sip of water before she answered, and her gaze rolled to Sam, who was climbing up the ladder. Ollie took a flying leap and bombed. His splash soaked the jetty and made Sam laugh.
‘It felt good,’ she said. ‘It felt really good.’
‘Then maybe it’s time you got back in the water. If you enjoyed it.’
She shivered like the day wasn’t forty degrees, but all she said was, ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Then help me work it out. You panicked before, Ella. Really panicked. I’ve never seen you like that.’
‘It’s my fault Sam can’t swim. I should have taught him. I didn’t want him to go in the water … I didn’t want to be reminded …’
He had to press her. ‘Reminded of what?’
‘Of all sorts of things,’ she said, way too vaguely for his liking. ‘What it felt like to swim fast. What I’d given up.’ She contemplated the chicken roll for what felt like an hour. Then she put the half-eaten roll on her chair and tucked her hands under her thighs. ‘I never wanted Sam to think I regretted giving up swimming to have him. I didn’t want him to think I resented him for making me stop, for missing the Olympics. I never wanted him to think he came second to a
