I watched them climb over, one by one, into the pool. Both Ben and Lucy could swim reasonably well, but little Sarah could barely keep her chin above the waterline. ‘Are you OK, little one?’ I asked her.
‘Yes, I’m swimming!’ she said, moving her arms in a breaststroke action as she walked on tiptoes across the width of the pool.
‘You are!’ I said, turning my attention to my phone, which had finally started up. But of course it was useless here. I’d hoped that its ability to find a signal would be proportional to my need for it to do so, but no matter what fiddling around I did with the settings, choosing the network manually, or switching on or off 4G, it stubbornly refused to work.
‘Um, kids!’ I called out, standing. ‘You’ll have to go back in the little pool for a bit. I need to go down the track to use my phone.’
Lucy and Ben protested, but then Heather’s voice rang out from the doorway. ‘I’ll swim with them,’ she said. ‘Go, phone.’
I sat in the same spot as before, and it struck me as ironic to be feeling shaky and anxious where only yesterday I’d been centred and calm. I checked my voicemail first, but there were no messages, so, after a forced breath, I called Amy. Her phone rang for a while before switching to voicemail, which at least meant that wherever she was, she had coverage.
‘Amy,’ I said. ‘It’s me. Things are . . . a bit crazy here. I don’t know what’s going on. Just call me, OK?’
I stared at the phone for a few seconds, chewing my lip, then called back again. The fact that this time the call went straight to voicemail reassured me. It meant that she was almost certainly listening to my voicemail.
A text message appeared. ‘I’ll call you later,’ it said. ‘I can’t talk right now.’
‘And why might that be?’ I asked.
‘I need to think,’ she replied.
‘Think!’ I said out loud, outraged. ‘Think? Think about what?’
‘Call me now,’ I texted. Then, ‘Call me right NOW, please.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she replied.
I tried her number again then, but she didn’t pick up, and I just about managed to refrain from leaving an incendiary voicemail.
‘Heather says . . .’ I started to type. But I couldn’t think how to complete the sentence. ‘Heather’s saying some pretty . . .’ I started over, only to delete what I’d written all over again. ‘I just need to know if what Heather’s saying is true,’ I finally typed. My finger hesitated over the button for a moment before, with a shrug, I clicked send.
I waited for her reply. I decided I would make myself wait. I would not send anything else until she’d replied. But then I saw my fingers type, ‘Did you do what she says you did? Are you with that wanker now?’
I chewed my lip and wiggled the phone so that it tapped between the fingers of my left hand while I waited for her reply. It vibrated to announce the arrival of another message.
‘I’m sorry,’ it read, again.
‘Fuck it!’ I mumbled, tapping the phone gently against my forehead. A wave of anger rolled through me and I whacked my head harder with the phone, until it hurt. Why? I thought. The guy’s such a loser anyway. It was the first time I’d let any negative thoughts about Anthony crystallise, but now it had happened, I knew it to be true. The more I knew him, the less I liked him. I’d simply been trying not to acknowledge it.
I looked at the screen again, at Amy’s minimalist messages. I’m sorry, I thought, repeating the words in my mind. Because what sort of reply was that? What did it even mean? I’m sorry, but it’s true? Or Yes, it’s true, but I’m sorry it happened?
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry,’ I muttered. Then, ‘Yeah, I’m sorry too, baby.’
I clicked the screen in order to reply, but what did I want to say? If she was sorry, properly sorry, then there was hope, wasn’t there? They’d been drunk. And now she’d woken with a hangover next to that dickhead, and she was sorry. I was sorry. We were all sorry. Couples get over that kind of stuff, don’t they?
My phone buzzed again. ‘I’m really sorry, Joe,’ the new text message read.
I started to type my reply. ‘Yes, I got that,’ I wrote. ‘Now come . . .’ But before I could finish, the phone vibrated again with a new message: ‘I won’t be home tonight, so don’t wait.’ For a moment, I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
My anger rising, I called her back immediately, but once again she didn’t pick up. ‘Amy,’ I told her voicemail. ‘You’re losing it. I’m here with Ben, our son. Remember him? And we’re waiting. So just . . . get it together. And get your arse back here.’
I sat for a few minutes waiting for a reply and then, with an angry gasp, I stood and slipped the phone back into my pocket.
I paced up and down the track a few times, repeatedly checking my phone each time I reached the olive trees until, finally accepting that she wasn’t going to pick up or reply, I returned to the courtyard.
Heather, who had Sarah in her arms, climbed out of the pool immediately. She plopped Sarah down in the jacuzzi and circled the pool to join me.
‘So?’ she asked.
I shrugged and looked away.
‘Did you speak to her? You did, didn’t you?’
I shook my head ever so slightly and offered her the phone.
‘Um, the screen,’ she said, refusing to take it. ‘It’s locked. And my hands are wet.’
I unlocked my phone and swiped to the list of messages, before – telling her it was waterproof – I handed it back.
Ben appeared beside us, grasping the edge of the pool and looking up. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.
Yes, your
