Page 105

Seated on one of the sun loungers, I watched her swim. She swam like she was born in the water, gliding effortlessly from one end to the other with hardly a splash. I realized she must have been one of the sporty girls at school, always on the first team of everything—sporty and beautiful.

“Come on in, Emily,” she squealed.

Reluctantly, I peeled off my T-shirt and took off my shoes. I ambled to the shallow end of the pool and walked tentatively down the tiled underwater steps. The water was warm, no doubt heated by the glaring summer sun.

I grinned. “It’s lovely.”

Lulu swam up to me. “You should smile more often, Emily,” she murmured. “You have a beautiful smile.”

Embarrassed and irritated by her kind compliment—I don’t really have much to smile about at the moment, Lulu—I launched myself into the pool, swimming a length of breaststroke, and then I dived beneath the surface. The water was crystal clear, and light danced off the mosaic of tiny pale-blue, royal-blue, and turquoise tiles. Underwater I could see from one end to the other.

Suddenly, Dylan dived in close to me and surfaced as I did.

“What do you think?” he asked as he blinked water from his pale-blue eyes.

“It’s lovely, Dylan. You’re a lucky man.” And I dived beneath the surface again, swam to the shallow end, and clambered out.

Lulu was laid out on a sunbed, her eyes closed, studiously ignoring Dylan. I lay next to her wondering when they would declare a truce.

Dylan swam length after length in quick time. I closed my eyes against the glare of the sun and drifted.

Surely they would start talking soon.

“You’re going to burn.” Dylan stood beside me in the path of the sun, putting my face in shadow. He was dripping cold water on me, deliberately, I suspected.

“Dylan! You’re dripping on me! Ugh. It’s cold.”

He laughed as I sat up and tried to shoo him away.

“Get out of the sun or put some sunblock on. Please. Sun cream is on the table over there.”

I scowled at him but got up and pulled the sun bed under one of the umbrellas.

“I need a shade lounger,” I muttered, and he grinned.

I lay back down and closed my eyes. My body felt like jelly—so relaxed, my bones warmed and softened by the sun. We had woken early this morning to catch the train to the airport. Hmmm… This is really restful.

Something nagged at me from my memory—my memory of before, before all the awfulness, when I was still whole. I tried to remember.

“Dylan!” Lulu screamed.

“Are you still ignoring me?” He was trailing his wet hair all over her back.

She squirmed and turned over. I watched them through half-closed eyes. “You… Ugh! Stop!”

Her eyes blazed with fury, and she tried to push him away, but he trailed his wet hair over her flat, tan belly. She squealed then began to giggle as he sat on the side of her sun bed. He leaned down and kissed her gently.

I closed my eyes and turned my head in the other direction.

Good. It looked like whatever row they’d had, they were making up, and for some reason, this cheered me up and I drifted.

Billy is running into the pool, dive-bombing my mother who is swimming but trying not to get her hair wet. She laughs and splashes him when he surfaces. He swims over to her, then dives beneath the water and comes up on the other side. He has swum between her legs. She holds him close, and he curls his arms around her neck. She blows a loud, wet raspberry on his cheek, and he howls with laughter, making my mother laugh. Then she throws him into the deep end, and he comes up coughing and spluttering and giggling.

I woke with a start. Dylan was ruffling my hair. “Hey, sleepy head. It’s lunchtime.” He was sitting at the end of the lounger.

“Mum and Billy were here? When?”

Dylan’s expression changed from summer to winter, and he tensed before he nodded. “They came for a long weekend in May. You were studying for your exams and your dad stayed with you.”