Swimming Lessons(40)

She’d forgotten about the drawing. Flora went to the water and was in up to her thighs before she turned to look back. Richard had come to the edge, his jeans rolled up, his feet lapped by waves.

“It’s freezing,” he called.

“Don’t be such a baby.” She took a lungful of breath and launched herself out. Like always, the coldness of the water shocked her, but within two strokes or three, the rest of the world was forgotten and she was transformed from a person who breathed air to a thing of the sea, an underwater creature—everything was the smooth action of bone, muscle, and moving forwards. Flora opened her eyes. The water was the colour of mint tea, and sometimes if she listened hard enough, her mother’s voice sounded amidst the swish of the weed and the tumble of the sand, telling her to straighten her legs, to keep her lead hand in motion, to swim against the current so that it was always easy to return, even when tired. She dived to where the waves churned the bottom, aware of her arms and thighs, the bubble of air she held inside her. She touched the seabed and surfaced with a fistful of sand: a good-luck charm. When she glanced towards the beach, Richard was still standing, watching for her. Flora turned away and moved into a front crawl, her arms slicing through the water, her hips, shoulders, and head rotating as she lifted her mouth above the chop. She glanced up at the buoy in the distance, her usual sight, and swam straight for it. The swell tossed her but she found its rhythm, breathing in the dips, pushing through the waves. She kept her head low so her bottom and legs rose, and let her body work with the water’s flow. When the tips of her outstretched fingers touched the buoy, she pulled up her legs, flipped, and pushed off with the balls of her feet, hearing the heavy underwater yaw and slap, and headed back to the beach.

When she was within her depth, Flora stood and waded. Richard was on his towel again.

“Impressive,” he said.

“Mum taught me how to swim.” She flopped down beside him, chest heaving. “It was about the only thing we could do together without arguing.” She wrung out her hair and wrapped her towel around her.

“Was she a good swimmer too?”

“Very. She could go a long way beyond the buoy. It’s farther than it looks.”

“I’m sure.”

“I know everyone thinks she drowned. That’s what the police and the journalists and everybody assumed. I found an old newspaper cutting once. The headline was something like ‘X-rated novelist’s wife drowns off Dorset beach.’ They didn’t even bother to name her; she was just a wife.”

“She wasn’t a writer. It wouldn’t have even made the papers if she hadn’t been married to Gil Coleman.”

Flora knew that her story, or rather, her mother’s story, trailed along behind her family like a second shadow, reminding the people who saw it to repeat what they knew to the people who didn’t. Once, when she was eleven, Flora had been choosing an ice cream in the village shop when she overheard a woman, a tourist, say to her husband, “Wasn’t it one of the beaches here where that Swedish girl drowned? Didn’t she put stones in her pockets or something, or am I getting muddled? You know, that famous author—or was it his wife?” Flora had lifted her head from the chest freezer and seen Mrs. Bankes, the shopkeeper, frown and shake her head. The husband had paid for the newspaper and hurried his wife away.

Flora had wanted to shout “Norwegian!” after them, but instead she had licked the tips of her fingers and pressed her skin against the icy inside of the cabinet.

“Are you going to ask your father who he thinks he saw in Hadleigh?” Richard said.

“No.”

“Really? Aren’t you curious?”

“We don’t talk about that stuff. It’s not what we do.” She rubbed the tops of her arms with the towel.

“Your father thinks he saw his dead wife, your mother, and you’re not going to ask him?” Richard was incredulous.

“I told you, she’s not dead.” Flora’s voice rose. Ingrid turned again from the front door of the Swimming Pavilion, the towel over her arm, the dress showing off the pale skin of her neck and shoulders. Flora probed the memory like a tongue poking at a bloody gap left by an extracted tooth. When the skin healed over and the remaining teeth moved together to fill the hole, she was still aware of what was missing.

“OK, OK.” Richard held his hands up, palms flat towards her, as if she were attacking him.

“If you’re so interested, ask Daddy yourself. You seem to be very pally even though you’ve known him for all of two minutes.” Flora yanked her shirt over her head, her damp arms sticking in the sleeves. “Richard, remind me again why you’re still here?”

“Gil asked me to stay. I like to think I might be able to help.”

“With what, exactly?”

Richard looked disconcerted. “With everything that’s going on.”

“And what do you think is going on?” Flora rubbed her goose-pimpled legs with the towel and stared at the sea. The waves were getting bigger, cresting and foaming, slapping onto the beach and racing back. A mother called her child in from the water.

“Flora, I know this is difficult for you—your dad’s . . .” he stopped. “All those memories of your mum that must be resurfacing—I know you haven’t had the easiest time, but why are you trying to push me away?” He put a hand on one of her chilly knees. “Why do you do that? Really, I only want to help you—all of you.”