‘I’m sorry about the other night. I was quite drunk when I was saying all that.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You can tell me anything.’ She doesn’t add that she reserves the right to agonize about some of those things for hours. For days. She wants him to be honest with her. She can’t make him afraid to tell her the truth.
‘We went to the pub the night before last. I didn’t even have to bring it up. She’d obviously been thinking the same. She put it on the table.’
Becky shuts her eyes and allows this information to sink through her, like a stone dropped into dark water and landing in mud, a slower sinking for the final inch towards burial.
‘She said she had feelings for me,’ he says.
‘Oh yes, what kind of feelings? Tired feelings, hungry feelings, sad feelings?’ She doesn’t open her eyes because she fears that if he sees them, they will betray her.
There is a long and heavy silence, during which Becky makes a wish of her own. Can she please find a way to connect with him, one last time before Kate is confirmed as a thing in his life, one last time before they can never go back to the way they were before? Can she make him promise not to leave them, even if he’s going to leave her?
‘So what did you say to that?’ says Becky, quietly, opening her eyes again.
‘Well, do you want to know what she said first?’
‘Not really,’ Becky laughs.
‘I’ll tell you anyway. It needs that context. She said she had feelings for me. She said she’s been in love with me for about a year.’
‘That was around the time you got those new skinny indigo jeans, wasn’t it?’
‘We always knew those jeans had power. You said it at the time.’
‘So when’s the wedding?’
‘It was actually a very hard conversation.’
‘It’s a big decision. Vegas or Clapham?’
‘Please. Becks. I’m trying to tell you this.’ She glances down as she feels his hand touch her. Feels the warmth and insistence that transmits itself through skin and flesh and blood on its journey to her heart. She dares herself to look up at him and fails the challenge. ‘I told her that I didn’t feel the same way. I’d thought I might feel the same way, but I realized it was more like I was willing it to happen, if that makes sense.’
‘It makes sense.’
‘I don’t love her.’
‘Good.’
‘What does that mean?’ he asks, after falling silent for a moment.
‘I don’t know,’ says Becky.
‘Do you really not know?’
But Adam’s words are carried up through the peppermint-scented steam puffing from an open steam-room door, interrupted by the gleeful laughs coming from the swimming pool and finally forgotten as Becky turns her attention to what is playing out in front of her: Maisie and the boy, who is now by her side in the pool, both leaning on their forearms, speaking into the tiles before turning to face each other. Laughing again.
‘If you’re thinking of getting a cocktail, I’m in,’ she says, not taking her eyes off this scene. As if she might miss something crucial if she did.
Adam looks at her for a moment, then lets his head drop a little, disheartened perhaps. ‘What’s your poison?’
Their laughter is getting louder. The boy is leaning in further to show Maisie something on his arm and Becky cranes to see what. Then Adam lightly touches the top of Becky’s wrist to get her attention and she leaps out of her skin.
‘Woah,’ he says. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to …’ She looks at him like he’s just appeared. ‘I just wanted to know what you’d like to drink?’
‘I don’t know, nothing, I don’t want anything.’
‘Right, I’ll just get the one.’ He pauses. ‘Becks? They’re just talking.’ The pool water splashes over the edge as one of them showers the other in a playful game. ‘Let her have her fun before you send in the lifeguards.’
She blushes, looking over to Maisie, feeling caught in idiocy.
She waits for Adam to depart for the bar before she stands up. She can see the alchemy happening between boy and girl in a swimming pool, the magical violet and emerald and silver mist passing between their lips, swirling in a vortex around their two bodies, the Wizard of Oz twister that takes away the house. There is no time to waste, she must interrupt now, and break the spell before it is complete.
Becky stands at the pool’s edge. ‘Come on, Mais, we’re going for an early dinner.’
Maisie keeps her eyes fixed on the pool tiles. ‘What? It’s not even five. Can I meet you later? I’m kind of having a nice time swimming.’
‘Sorry, chick. We’re going now, and you’re coming with us.’ Becky tries so hard to sound light and casual, but she is declaring a done deal. Maisie will hate her, but the alternative is worse: giving her trust to someone who will steal from her. ‘We’re going to have fish and chips in Dungeness.’
‘You can go. I could just stay. I’m not even that hungry.’
Becky squints at the boy in the pool, and he takes her steely gaze as his cue to swim away.
‘Here, I’ll give you a pull-up,’ says Becky.
‘Jesus, Mum …’ Maisie hisses at her like an aggravated snake as she pulls herself out of the pool, spurning the offer. ‘Could you be any more annoying?’
The boy wades into the shallow end and emerges slowly out of the water like he thinks he’s in an aftershave advert. He is a few years older than her daughter. Eighteen, perhaps. He is wearing red swimming trunks that fit well around his slim waist. It is clear that he cares about his body, that he runs or lifts weights or something.
‘Maisie?’ he says. He holds himself well: his face shines with health, his hands rest on slim hips and his smile is easy. ‘I’m heading down
