Chapter Seven
July 2008
‘Do you realise we’ve been dating for nine months and I haven’t even met your dad yet.’ Lydia lay on the sunbed beside the outside pool of the holiday house in the Cotswolds, an annexe of a bigger main house owned by a lovely couple who rented this smaller property out for extra income. Her eyes were protected with sunglasses, skin covered in a layer of factor thirty.
‘Look at you trying to get a tan.’ Theo was at the end of the pool and resting his elbows on the concrete surround, puffing from the thirty odd lengths he’d belted out and letting his shoulders and upper back absorb some of the sun’s rays.
She propped herself up on her elbows and pulled her glasses down her nose so she could look over the top of them at her boyfriend. ‘For your information I’m just relaxing, not sunbathing. Once I’m dry I’ll put a T-shirt on, don’t want to end up like a shrivelled old prune.’
‘Definitely not. You’ll be looking like Leanne by the time you’re forty.’
Lydia stifled a giggle. Theo had come to watch her at dance class last week – she’d nagged him that while she’d seen plenty of his rugby training sessions and a few matches, he’d never seen the contemporary dance she lost herself in and that had rescued her from the stress of finals last month – and as they arrived, out of the tanning salon next door had emerged a woman named Leanne who went to the dance studios regularly. She’d just celebrated her birthday and told them there would be celebratory cake after the class today. When they’d followed her inside the studios and seen all the balloons with forty emblazoned on them, Lydia knew she and Theo weren’t the only ones surprised at her age. Her skin looked as though it had been put through the wringer, more than once, and although dancing apparently kept youth on your side, it seemed constant sunbed use had done the opposite. The second time Theo had been to watch a class it had been obvious Leanne was quite taken with him. She’d touched his arm as she spoke to him, giggled coquettishly at anything he said – even when it wasn’t really funny at all – and he’d begun to look scared of her advances.
‘So you’ll dump me if I get a few wrinkles?’ she asked Theo now.
‘Don’t be daft.’ He splashed water up at her and enjoyed making her squeal. ‘But I’m only watching another class if I know she won’t be there.’
‘Deal,’ said Lydia. She moved to the side of the pool and sat on the concrete, legs dangling in the water. The July sunshine was a belter and the coolness welcoming. ‘So are you going to answer my question?’
He stayed in the water and wrapped his hands around her waist. ‘What question?’
‘Well, I don’t suppose it was a question, more of a statement really, about your dad.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Yes,that.’ She mimicked his voice.
His hands fell back into the pool and he floated on his back. ‘He’s emigrating.’
‘Where to?’
‘New Zealand.’
‘Were you going to tell me? I don’t know, Theo. Sometimes I wonder if you’re ashamed of me.’
He swam back towards her. ‘Whatever makes you think that?’
‘Because you never suggest we see him. You’ve been up to Cambridge once since I’ve known you and I’ve let it go until now. So, what’s the deal Theo Morgan?’
‘I love it when you use my last name.’ He grinned. ‘You go all schoolmarm-like. Quite a turn-on as it happens.’
Lydia huffed, stood up and shook off the excess water from her legs. She grabbed a T-shirt from the sunbed and tugged it on, then plonked the straw cowgirl hat on her head and grabbed the paperback she’d started reading earlier that morning.
It took Theo all of two minutes to get out of the pool and dry himself off with a towel, before sitting on the edge of Lydia’s sunbed.
‘Let’s just say I don’t have the best relationship with my dad,’ he told her.
It was the most he’d ever said about the man who’d been around until his parents divorced three years ago and apart from a single photo she’d seen of him, she knew nothing about Graham. ‘So tell me about it.’ She slipped the bookmark back in between the pages and put her book down beneath the sunbed where it was dry.
‘I told you my parents split up. He’s moved on and I’m not sure I’m all that happy about it.’
‘Who’s he with now?’
‘Natasha, a New Zealander.’
He wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information so Lydia tried again. ‘Is there something in particular you don’t like about her?’
He shook his head. ‘Imagine if your parents divorced, how you’d feel about someone new coming on the scene.’
