Chapter 12

Melissa was waiting for us at the bus stop, right by the harbour.

She was wearing a red wrap dress, low-cut and gathered with a ribbon at her waist. She had large breasts, a generous figure, not at all like mine. She was leaning on the railings gazing out onto the sea, which looked flat like a sheet of plastic. She offered to help us with our bags but we said we’d carry them ourselves and she shrugged. The skin on her nose was peeling. She looked pretty.

When we got to the house, the dog ran outside and started yelping and jumping up on its back feet like a little circus animal.

Melissa ignored that and opened the gate. The house had a huge stonework façade, with blue-painted shutters on the windows and white stairs running up to the front door. Inside, everything was pristinely tidy and smelled faintly of cleaning agents and suncream. The walls were papered with a pattern of sailboats, and I saw the shelves were full of French-language novels. Our rooms were downstairs, on the basement floor: Bobbi’s looked out over the yard, while mine faced the sea. We left our luggage inside and Melissa said the others were having breakfast out the back.

In the garden, they had a large white tent covering a table and chairs, with the canvas doors rolled up and tied with ribbon. The dog followed at my ankles and shrieked for my attention. Melissa introduced us to her friends, a couple called Evelyn and Derek.

They looked the same age Melissa did, or maybe a little older.

They were laying out cutlery on the table. The dog barked at me again and Melissa said: oh, she must like you. You know she needs a passport to travel overseas? It’s like having a toddler. I laughed at nothing, while the dog butted her head against my shins and whimpered.

Nick came out of the house, carrying plates. I felt myself swallow, hard. He looked thin and very tired. The sun was in his

eyes and he squinted over at us as if he hadn’t seen that we’d arrived. Then he did see us. He said, oh hi, how was the trip? He glanced away from me and the dog howled. Uneventful, said Bobbi. Nick put the plates down and wiped his hand against his forehead as if it was wet, though it didn’t look to be.

Were you always this skinny? Bobbi said. I remembered you bigger.

He’s been sick, said Derek. He had bronchitis, he’s very sensitive about it.

It was pneumonia, Nick said.

Are you okay now? I asked.

Nick looked in the direction of my shoes and nodded. He said Yeah, sure, I’m fine. He did look different, his face was thinner and he had damp circles below his eyes. He said he’d finished the antibiotics. I pinched hard on my earlobe to distract myself.

Melissa laid the table and I sat beside Bobbi, who said funny things and laughed a lot. Everyone seemed charmed by her.

There was a plastic, slightly sticky tablecloth covering the table, and lots of fresh croissants and various preserves and hot coffee. I could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t make me feel unwelcome. I stayed quiet and refilled my coffee cup three times.

In a small bowl next to my elbow was a stack of glittering white sugar cubes, which I sank into my cup and stirred one by one.

At one point, Bobbi said something about Dublin airport, and Derek said: ah, Nick’s old haunt.

Do you have a particular love of the airport? Bobbi said.

He’s a jetsetter, said Evelyn. He practically lives there.

He’s even had a wild affair with a stewardess, Derek said.

My chest tightened but I didn’t look up. Though my coffee was already too sweet, I lifted another sugar cube and placed it on my saucer.

She wasn’t a stewardess, said Melissa. She worked in the Starbucks.

Stop that, Nick said. They’re going to think you’re serious.

What was her name again? said Evelyn. Lola?

Louisa, Nick said.

Finally I looked at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was smiling with one half of his mouth.

Nick went on a date with a girl he met in the airport, Evelyn said to us.

Unwittingly, said Nick.

Well, a bit wittingly, Derek said.

Nick looked at Bobbi then, with an expression of feigned exasperation, like: okay, here we go. But truly he didn’t seem to mind telling the story.

This is like three years ago, said Nick. I was in the airport constantly at the time, so I knew this girl to see, we sometimes talked while I was waiting for my order. Anyway one week she asked me to meet her for coffee in town. I thought …

At this, the others all started talking again, laughing and making remarks all at once.

I thought, Nick repeated, that she actually just wanted coffee.

What happened? said Bobbi.

Well, when I got there, I realised it was supposed to be a date, Nick said. And I completely panicked, I felt terrible.

The others started to interject again, Evelyn laughing, Derek saying he doubted Nick felt all that terrible. Without looking up from her plate, Melissa said something I couldn’t hear.

So I told her I was married, Nick said.

You must have known at some level, said Derek. What she was after.

Honestly, Nick said. People have coffee together all the time, it just didn’t occur to me.

It’s a great cover story, Evelyn said. If you did have an affair with her.

Was she attractive? said Bobbi.

Nick laughed and lifted a hand palm-up like, what do you think?

Ravishingly, he said.

Melissa laughed at that and he smiled down at his lap, like he was pleased with himself for making her laugh. Under the table I stepped on my own toes with the heel of my sandal.

And she was stupidly young, wasn’t she? said Derek. Twenty-three or something.

Maybe she knew you were married, Evelyn said. Some women like married men, it’s a challenge.

I stepped on my foot so hard the pain shot up my leg and I had to bite down on my lip to stay quiet. Releasing my heel, I could feel my toes throbbing.

I don’t really believe that, said Nick. She also seemed pretty disappointed when I mentioned it.

Evelyn and Derek went down to the beach after breakfast, while Bobbi and I stayed to unpack our things. We could hear Melissa and Nick talking upstairs, but only the cadence of their voices, not the actual words. A bumblebee flew through the open window and cast a comma of shadow on the wallpaper before flying out again. When I finished unpacking I showered and changed into a sleeveless grey cotton dress, listening to Bobbi singing a Françoise Hardy song in the next room.

It was two or three o’clock when we all left the house together.

The route to the beach was down a little paved hill, past two white houses, and then a zig-zag of steps set into the cliff rock. The beach was full of young families lying out on coloured towels, applying sun lotion on each other’s backs. The tide had receded out past a crust of dried green seaweed and a group of teenagers were playing volleyball down by the rocks. We could hear them shouting in foreign accents. The sun was beating onto the sand and I was starting to sweat. We saw Evelyn and Derek waving to us, Evelyn in a brown one-piece swimsuit, her thighs pocked like the texture of whipped cream.

We laid our towels out and Melissa put some sun lotion on the back of Bobbi’s neck. Derek told Nick the water was ‘refreshing’.

The smell of salt stung my throat. Bobbi undressed down to her bikini. I averted my eyes from Nick and Melissa while they undressed together. She asked him something and I heard him say: no, I’m fine. Evelyn said, you’ll burn.

Aren’t you getting in the water, Frances? Derek said.

Everyone turned to look at me then. I touched the side of my sunglasses and lifted one shoulder, not even a full shrug.

I’d rather lie in the sun, I said.

The truth was that I didn’t want to change into my swimsuit in front of them. I felt I owed it to my own body not to. Nobody minded, they left me where I was. When they were gone I took off my sunglasses to make sure I didn’t get tan lines on my face.

There were children playing with plastic toys nearby and yelling at one another in French, which sounded urbane and sophisticated to me because I couldn’t understand it. I was lying on my front, so I couldn’t see the children’s faces, but occasionally in my peripheral vision I caught a blur of primary colour, a spade or bucket, or a flash of ankle. A weight had settled in my joints like sand. I thought about the heat on the bus that morning.

After I turned to lie on my back, Bobbi came up from the water, shivering and looking very white. She wrapped herself in a huge beach towel, with another light blue towel draped over her head like the Virgin Mary.

It’s Baltic, she said. I thought I was going to go into cardiac arrest.

You should have stayed here. I’m a little too warm if anything.

She removed the towel from her head and shook her hair like a dog, until a shower of droplets hit my bare skin and I swore. You deserved it, she said. She sat down then and opened up her book, her body still swaddled in the big towel, which had a picture of Super Mario on it.

On the way down to the water everyone was talking about you, she said.

What?

Yeah, there was a little group conversation about you.

Apparently you’re very impressive. It’s news to me, obviously.

Who says so? I said.

Can we smoke on the beach or not?

I told her I didn’t think we were allowed to smoke on the beach.

She sighed performatively and squeezed out some remaining seawater from her hair. Because Bobbi would not tell me who had complimented me, I felt certain it had actually been Bobbi herself.

Nick didn’t really say anything, she said. About whether you’re impressive. I was watching him, though, he seemed very awkward.

Maybe because you were watching him.

Or maybe because Melissa was.

I coughed and said nothing. Bobbi took a cereal bar out of the bottom of her handbag and started chewing on it.

So how bad is this crush, from one to ten? she said. Ten being the kind of crush you had on me in school.

And one being a really serious crush?

She laughed, even though her mouth was full of cereal bar.

Whatever, she said. Is it like, you have fun talking to him online, or like, you want to tear him open and drink his blood?

I don’t want to drink his blood.

I landed a little heavily on the final word of this sentence without meaning to, which made Bobbi snort. I’m not ready to think about what else you want to drink, she said. That’s fucked up. I thought about telling her what had happened between me and Nick then, because it could be framed in the format of a joke, and anyway it was over now. For some reason though, I didn’t say anything, and she just said: sex with men, how weird.