Summer With My Sister (7 page)

‘And how much is this going to cost me?’ Clare asked, folding her arms across her chest, leaning against the doorjamb. Knowing Jay, he wasn’t doing this out of the goodness of his heart.

He shrugged. ‘Fifty quid? Forty-five, if you help clean it up.’

Clare hesitated. Forty-five pounds was going to be a stretch. ‘Forty?’ she tried.

He thrust his hand towards her all too keenly; she immediately wished she’d started the bargaining at ten pounds lower. ‘Done,’ he said, pumping her hand up and down. The porch light was reflected in his dark eyes, like sparkles. He was good-looking, Jay, if you liked that sort of thing. Clare didn’t. He was too rough and ready for her, too unshaven and scruffy, with black wavy hair that was well overdue a cut, and a hole in his jeans. ‘Are you going to let me in then, or are you going to leave me standing out here all night?’

She laughed. Four years older than her, Jay was a charmer, and she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, but you couldn’t help liking him all the same. ‘Go round the back,’ she said. ‘I’m not having this muddy thing wheeled through the house.’

‘Got it,’ he said, vanishing into the shadows.

She let him in through the back door, and they propped the bike against the kitchen table while they scrubbed the frame and Jay pumped up the tyres.

‘How’s your sister?’ he asked after a few minutes of companionable silence. Hilarious as it might seem now, back in the sixth form Polly and Jay had been boyfriend and girlfriend, for almost a year. A more incongruous pairing you couldn’t imagine these days, of course. She could just picture the look of disdain on Polly’s face if she clapped eyes on Jay now – hilarious.

‘She’s all right,’ Clare said dismissively. ‘Making squillions of pounds in the Big Smoke. Haven’t seen her for months; last time was Christmas, when she just bored on about her job and annoyed Mum by making so-called important calls all the way through
Gavin & Stacey
.’

Jay shook his head, looking amused. ‘True Londoner now, isn’t she?’

‘You can say that again,’ Clare replied. ‘Turns her nose up at us bumpkins big-time.’

The bike was cleaning up nicely. The grips on the handlebars had been grimy and greying, but were becoming brighter and whiter as she set about them with a scrubbing brush. The wheels spun easily, once Jay had oiled them. The leather saddle, however, was cracked and old, and looked beyond repair. ‘Hmmm, I wonder . . .’ Clare murmured, rocking back on her heels and thinking. She had an ancient lilac fake-fur bag upstairs that she’d been meaning to customize for Leila. If she cut it up instead, the fabric would make a perfect seat-cover for the bike. ‘Back in a sec,’ she said, hurrying out of the room.

It was gone ten o’clock by the time they’d finished painting and primping the bike. Its frame now gleamed metallic lilac, the tyres were pumped up, and Clare had made a furry cover for the old saddle. ‘It’ll need new tyres before too long,’ Jay said, peering at them closely. ‘This front one is pretty shot, but it’ll do for a while. I’ll keep an eye out for you.’

‘Cheers,’ Clare replied. She could have hugged him. Instead she took two twenty-pound notes from her purse and handed them over. ‘You saved the day,’ she said.

By morning the paint was dry, and Leila’s scream of excitement echoed around the house when she saw it there in the kitchen. ‘Oh, wow! What a cool bike,’ she said. ‘What a cool . . . um . . . weird sort of bike,’ she added as she drew nearer it, her eye taking in the distinctive chopper frame and the furry saddle. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

So yes, Clare thought, passing her daughter a slice of birthday cake, it had turned out all right in the end. She’d pulled off another budget birthday somehow, without anyone feeling hard done by, even if some of the ‘presents’ Leila had unwrapped had been promises Clare had written out and wrapped in sparkly paper and tinsel.

I promise . . . to take you for the longest bike ride ever, with a huuuge picnic at the end of it! I promise . . . you can invite THREE friends round for a sleepover next weekend. Pizza and DVD included!

She’d found a couple of pony books in mint condition in the charity shop in Amberley, and a pretty charm bracelet for only two pounds from the same place. She’d spun out the presents by making them part of a treasure hunt around the house, and Leila had loved solving the clues and rushing to the next hiding place, still in pyjamas and dressing gown. You didn’t have to spend a fortune to make things feel special.

The phone rang just as she was about to bite into her cake. ‘Do you want to get that, birthday girl?’ Clare asked.

Leila jumped up. ‘I bet it’s Dad,’ she said. ‘Or Aunty Polly.’

Clare and her mum exchanged glances. ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ Clare muttered as Leila ran to grab the phone. Polly had come up trumps this time on the present front, with a Roberto Cavalli pink silk dress complete with ruffles, an enormous sash and a fake-fur hem. Leila had burst out laughing when she’d opened it this morning; it was about as far removed from her tomboyish style as it was possible to get. Polly might well splash the cash – Clare had once looked up the price of another outfit she’d sent, to see that the dress alone had cost over three hundred pounds (think what you could buy with that in Primark!), but she wasn’t so good on the actual aunty stuff. There would be no phone call from her, no actual personal contact involved, you could bet the matching Cavalli beaded pumps on it.

‘Hi, Dad,’ she heard Leila say and looked over to see her daughter’s face wreathed in smiles. ‘Thanks. We’re just having the cake.’

Clare felt a bitter-sweet ache inside. She still missed having her husband around, however much she tried to tough it out alone. On days like this, especially, she would have loved him to be there too, to share his daughter’s special celebration. It broke her heart that he could have rejected all of this to go off with bloody Denise. She picked up her cake and then put it down again. Suddenly she’d lost her appetite.

Still, Leila was smiling. Steve had remembered to phone. That was what mattered, wasn’t it?

Saturday began as usual with the children’s swimming lessons in Amberley. Clare had ‘history’ with Amberley Leisure Centre and could never walk into its hot, chlorine-tangy reception without a flashback to her youth. She’d been a good swimmer from the word go – it was the one and only talent she had that her brother and sister couldn’t beat her on. When you were the third and youngest child in a family, such things were important.

She’d joined the Junior Dolphins club at Amberley, had trained and raced there four nights a week between the ages of nine and fourteen, perfecting her technique, steadily improving her personal-best times. She learned how to control her breathing, how to execute the perfect butterfly stroke, how to tumble-turn, how to dive. By the age of eleven she was representing the club in county trials, and was picked for the county squad when she was thirteen. There had been talk of special coaching, and vague, optimistic mentions of international championships, the Olympics even.

Then Michael had died, and everything changed. She’d never swum again, apart from one single emergency, which had caused her life to swerve in a whole new direction.

‘Two for lessons, please,’ she said, flashing their passes as they went past the doughy-faced woman on reception who was on the phone.

She helped Leila and Alex change and handed them over to their teacher, then wandered up to the spectator area to watch them. Leila was a confident, easy swimmer. She was fast and clean in the water, and her technique was naturally good. Her teacher, Ben, had suggested that she join the Junior Dolphins club (they still called it that, twenty years later), but so far Clare had put off making a decision. Maybe when Leila’s ten, she’d been telling herself for the last year. She‘d have to come up with a new excuse now.

Alex wasn’t as competent as his sister in the water. He tended to panic and flail about nervously whenever he was out of his depth, legs churning, his pale, skinny body wrestling to stay afloat. Clare found herself watching him like a hawk, ready to yell out to the lifeguard that he needed help at any given moment. He was doing all right today, though, she noted thankfully.

It was through swimming that she’d met Steve in the first place, that fateful holiday in Gran Canaria with the girls. They’d been just twenty then, her, Debbie and Maria, and it was Debbie’s first trip away from little Lydia, who was having a holiday of her own with Debbie’s parents in Bournemouth. The three mates had jetted off with their bikinis, clubbing outfits and high heels, then proceeded to large it up good and proper in the Old Town every evening, drinking sangria cocktails and dancing flirtatiously with the swarthy Spaniards and the drunk, sunburned Brits. Clare had had her eye on a dark-haired Mancunian bloke in particular – they’d snogged for hours in a corner of the sweaty, pulsing club one night, and she was hoping for a rematch.

The following evening she and the girls were on their way out to their favourite nightclub, their heels clicking through the stone paths of the pool complex, the air still warm and scented with almond blossom. Then Clare spotted the body in the water.

It was about nine at night and the pool area was deserted by then, the white plastic sun loungers stacked up at one side to await tomorrow’s scantily clad bodies, a lone orange armband bobbing in the children’s pool, the rushing waterfall slide silenced and still. And there he was, a limp figure in the main pool, face-downwards.

‘Shit!’ Clare exclaimed, adrenalin pumping through her when she saw him. A single heartbeat later, she’d kicked off her shoes and instinctively dived in.

It was the first time she’d swum in six years, but her body remembered what to do. With three swift strokes she’d reached him and tried to flip him over, so that his head was out of the water. The man was a dead weight, fully dressed, unmoving, but the shock of the freezing water and the enormity of the situation lent her strength. She dimly registered Debbie and Maria screaming for help and then, after several increasingly desperate attempts, Clare managed to haul him over so that he was lying on his back. His eyes were shut; she couldn’t tell if he was breathing. And oh, he was so bloody heavy.

She towed him to the side, keeping his head above the water. His body was inert and his weight dragged her down. No way, something inside her said grimly; we are both getting out of this pool, and that’s that.

People came running to help, thank God. Diners from the restaurant, a waiter, some other men. They helped Clare heave him out onto the spongy green AstroTurf, and the waiter crouched down and tipped the man’s head back to administer CPR. Black spots were dancing before Clare’s eyes now; she was on the verge of a panic attack and her breath felt shallow. In the nick of time, a pair of strong hands grabbed her beneath her armpits and pulled her out, shivering and dripping wet onto the side of the pool, her silky black minidress clinging to her like a second skin. It had cost a bomb in River Island too, that dress, she remembered thinking at the time. Then someone put a blanket around her and she passed out.

The man survived, thanks to Clare’s instinctive bravery. It turned out he’d been drinking all day and had decided to take an impromptu dip, unknown to his mates. ‘You saved my life,’ he said shakily to Clare when she saw him later on in hospital. ‘You’ve got to let me take you out for dinner sometime, it’s the least I can do. I’m Steve, by the way.’

‘Clare,’ she’d replied.

You could look at his rescue as some kind of atonement for what had happened to Michael – that was what Debbie and Maria kept saying. Clare didn’t see it like that, though. One right didn’t cancel out a wrong. Didn’t come close.

Nonetheless, it was strange how fate brought people together. There had been hundreds of holidaymakers staying at the hotel that week – maybe even a thousand. Clare might never have met Steve if they hadn’t taken that particular route through the hotel that night; if Maria hadn’t done one of her last-minute outfit changes, making them ten minutes later than usual; if . . . if . . .

It could have turned out so differently. She might have hooked up with the Mancunian and be living up north with him and a clutch of flat-vowelled dark-haired children by now. She might even have fallen for one of the locals (that heroic waiter perhaps) and decided to settle in Gran Canaria for the rest of her life. But then of course she’d never have had Leila and Alex, and they were worth any amount of marital disappointment that she’d suffered with Steve.

She was grateful to him for them, at least. Overwhelmingly grateful to have them, to love them, to be their mum. All the same, if she ever came across her ex-husband in a drowning situation again, next time she might be tempted to carry on walking.