The Ladies' Midnight Swimming Club(68)

She’d had her rows, of course. She’d had a real scuffle with old Eric O’Shea, but he deserved everything he got. The village might remember her as outspoken, but mostly they would remember her as pioneering one good cause after another – or at least, that was as much as she could hope for now.

The carriage clock, a wedding present that lasted longer than her marriage, chimed out to tell her that it was too early to rise just yet. She turned over and closed her eyes again, lingering on the edge of sleep and dreams of throwing herself into the velvety Atlantic waters – it was only nine hours away. All she had to do now was rest and then with a little luck she’d go for what she knew was probably going to be her final midnight swim.





29


Lucy


They were lucky it had been the hottest August day on record in fifty years. It was one of those days when even resting your foot on the sun-burned path left you feeling as if you were risking scorch marks to the soles of your feet. Lucy had looked out at the shimmering tarmac on the road outside the surgery at lunchtime and it felt as if the whole village had retreated from the overwhelming heat. Even so, Lucy worried that it would be too cold for Jo, but at the same time, she knew she couldn’t stop her mother. Honestly, she suspected a team of charging rhinoceroses couldn’t keep her off that beach if they tried. Just after she finished lunch, she heard a light tap on the door and when she went to check she found Dan standing there with a silly grin on his face and parked outside a cross-country scrambler thing, which was somewhere between being a motorbike and a tractor.

‘I thought this might come in handy,’ he said and then angled his head to see past Lucy. ‘Is Jo still intent on going down to the shore?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I’d be surprised if she wasn’t.’ He laughed. ‘So, I thought, maybe you could bring her down on this. I borrowed it for the afternoon,’ he supplied helpfully.

‘Me, drive that? I don’t know if I can.’

‘Sure, you can,’ he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her along the garden path behind him. ‘Come on, I only learned myself earlier. I can teach you though, nothing to it.’ His enthusiasm was infectious.

‘I really don’t know about this.’ She halted at the gate.

‘What’s to know? She can’t walk all the way down there and I’m certainly not going down in the middle of a couple of dozen naked women – the whole village would have me down as a peeping Tom for the rest of my days.’

‘I suppose, there is that.’ She tried to sound serious, but then they both started to laugh. ‘Okay, let’s see if I can get the hang of it.’

‘The trick is, to go slow…’ he said starting the ignition.

‘Like everything in life,’ she murmured, and then he looked at her, caught her eye for a moment too long. She hadn’t meant anything by it, but oh God, suddenly, she realised he probably thought she was flirting with him. ‘Come on, let’s get this show on the road.’ She laughed, but it was a nervous sound and she wasn’t fooling anyone.

‘Right.’ He smiled and started the engine. He drove them along the beach, shouting and pointing towards the controls as they went. When he cooled down the engine he was still shouting, until he realised that they were almost in silence. ‘So, it’s just like driving a car, only a lot more basic. You can do that, can’t you?’

‘I suppose so,’ she said although she’d never admit to anyone that even driving her own modest Mini made her feel a little nervous. She hopped across into the driver’s seat gamely and had a go. And it was not too bad at all. So, she started and stopped a few times, but Dan was kind enough to put her conking out down to an airlock in the diesel pipes – or something along those lines.

‘So, what do you think?’ he asked as she parked it outside the cottage again.

‘Thank you,’ she said simply, because it was probably the most thoughtful thing anyone could have organised for Jo.

‘Stop it. I just thought, she might not be fit to walk all the way down to the cove and I spotted this rambling about the hills one day. The farmer was happy enough to lend it to me for a few hours; people are lovely here like that, aren’t they?’

‘They are,’ she said smiling and then, she dropped her voice a little. ‘It’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to stay on…’

‘You’re staying?’ he asked and then she saw something else: he blushed. ‘I’m so glad… for you and for Elizabeth.’

‘If you’re planning on staying too, that’ll be two new faces at the Christmas fair,’ she joked.

‘My family in London think I’m mad to want to stay here.’ He smiled now. ‘We’ll have to see what Tuesday brings,’ he said a little nervously. She had almost forgotten about his arrangement to meet the old nun the following week.

‘It’s going to be fine; Mother Agatha is nothing like Sister Berthilde,’ Lucy said as reassuringly as she could manage.

As night drew in the village had an almost carnival feel to it, as though something exciting was about to take place. It was almost as if the whole sea was holding its breath. The waves, instead of crashing tonight, slipped in gently, icing the sand with a damp velvety coating. The local men’s group had dotted lanterns along the sand and they burned a bright and almost hedonistic path to the cove. Jo loved it all and Lucy caught a tear falling from her eyes when they stood looking at it from their front door.