The Girl in the Mirror(17)

“It’s hard to leave so many good mates behind in Thailand.” Summer sighs as I eat. “But I know we’ll make new friends wherever we go. It’s hard to believe that I used to be not-so-keen on the yachting life. Another thing I have you to thank for, Iris. You opened my eyes to the magic of life on board, and now I can’t imagine not living on Bathsheba. My life is paradise.”

The land has disappeared in our wake now, and Bathsheba, despite her swift motion, is poised in the exact center of a circle of perfect blue. Summer seems remarkably at ease. Neither of us suffers from seasickness, but she always used to be frightened of the open sea.

“But you can’t afford to live on board forever, can you?” I ask. “Adam has to go back to work sometime?”

Summer gave up nursing when she married Adam, taking over the care of Tarquin. They could afford it, and they can afford a very long holiday, leaving the travel agency in Adam’s parents’ hands, but their money won’t last forever.

Summer jerks her eyes away. “This . . . this is what I was trying to explain last night,” she says. “It didn’t seem fair to set off on a serious passage like this without telling you all the facts, but I didn’t realize how tired you were. You fell asleep in the middle of our conversation.”

By now I’d almost convinced myself that Summer’s porno talk last night was a jet-lag-induced nightmare, but her coy blush tells me not only that it was real, but that she’s about to start up again.

“The thing is,” she says, “I know I’ve had a lot of boyfriends, maybe even more than you, but I wasn’t getting out of it what everybody probably assumed. It’s not that I’m frigid, more what you might call slow to warm up. To be honest, most of my boyfriends, I didn’t even sleep with them. I could tell it wasn’t going to happen, if you know what I mean.”

Prissy little Summer. It’s like I already knew this. Nobody can be as virtuous as Summer has always seemed without really being a bit of a prude.

Now it feels as though she’s undressing in front of me, but who am I to interrupt? I push another mouthful of blueberries between my lips and close them. I’m a bit grossed out, but I have to find out where this is going.

“Even when I first married Adam . . . Don’t get me wrong, we were in love, but things still didn’t . . . move quickly. He was very patient. He’s a lovely man.”

There’s nothing I can say at this point. I can’t agree. This is a side to Adam’s loveliness that I can know nothing about.

“It was when we came to the tropics that everything changed,” she continues. She shifts in her seat, pulling her sarong away from the backs of her thighs, where it clings to her skin. “The warm nights, the ocean, the way Adam smells, even when he sweats, they set me on fire. We weren’t expecting it, but suddenly we were so hungry for each other, it’s like we went crazy. We’d have to rush back to the boat and put Tarquin in his crib. We could hardly wait for him to fall asleep, we could hardly keep quiet.”

Summer breaks off. She’s staring past me out the pilothouse window, with an expression so intent, so focused, that I feel as if a great ship is bearing down on us on a collision course, but for some reason my sister won’t warn me, and I can’t bring myself to look. I can’t take my eyes off her face, off her little rosebud mouth, even though I have a feeling it’s about to pronounce my doom.

That’s when she says it.

“So, there was this one time, about two weeks ago, and you know I don’t drink much, but Adam had bought this bottle of rosé bubbles because, you know, he loves to buy me anything to do with roses. So we’re in this little bay off the coast, and sitting on the foredeck where it’s a little cooler, where there’s a little breeze and a little bit of swell from the south, and Bathsheba’s rocking a little.”

Every time she says little, Summer presses her finger against her thigh. Her sarong has fallen open, and I can see the long scar, the elongated S, leading upward. It still looks like a fresh wound after all these years; Summer has mentioned that it reopened recently, as coral cuts tend to do. I wonder if it will ever fade, if it will ever heal properly.

“And Tarquin was asleep, thank goodness, because I start thinking about Adam, about his body, and it’s like my pussy takes over my brain.”

I’ve never heard Summer say pussy before. It’s like she’s purring; the word breathes across the space between us, tickling the air.

“My whole body was throbbing. I could feel my blood rushing to my skin, rushing to my breasts, and there was a sort of pulsing deep down inside. Now I understand why people go mad for sex, Iris. I had to have him, right then, right there on the foredeck. There was a bunch of hooligans partying on the next boat, not far away, and the sun was still high, it was daytime, but I didn’t care. I ripped off all my clothes and pushed him onto the deck and climbed onto him. His big, hard—God, it felt good. We made love right there, bruising ourselves on the deck, and we were so noisy, I swear half Phuket heard us, and I didn’t care, I didn’t care if I died.”

And now she looks me in the eye. “I guess you’ve figured out what I’m trying to say.”

So this isn’t the whole story. There’s more. It’s going to get worse.

“I want you to know that we didn’t plan this,” Summer says. “Adam’s good about contraception, but I jumped him. We didn’t have any condoms on board. I had them on my shopping list for the next day. I want you to know it was only that one time, and it was an accident. Because I never wanted to do this, Iris—I never wanted it to be this way between us.”