Alone, the young man floats in water, his body still on this summer night, long platinum hair flowing around his head. The pool is heated. The water is warm. He wears only a multicoloured swimming suit and four large rings on his fingers.
A gentle mist rises from the water into the dark air.
It is approaching midnight; moths fuss around the blaring bulbs that light the way to his home, a red-tiled sixteenth-century farmhouse that squats like a toad crouching in the rolling hills on the edges of the Weald. The garden is lush, though a little unkempt now. The high hedges need cutting; the shrubs have outgrown their beds.
This is the house of a rich young man; a rock star.
A trail of wet footprints leads along the stone path towards the building. Through an open bedroom window on the first floor, comes the sound of a telephone. The metallic trill is interrupted by a woman’s voice; ‘Hello? Oh hi. No. I don’t know where Brian is. Brian?’
It is his young pretty girlfriend. She calls from the room above. There is no answer.
‘He’s in the pool, I think. Yeah. I’m fine. Just hanging around, you know?’ A sing-song voice with a slight Swedish accent. ‘Brian? He’s kind of stoned, I guess. Am I stoned? A little bit.’ A giggle.
Another woman, blonde, emerges from the house while the other still talks. She is beautiful too, because this is a house where lovely women come and go. Even though the star is fading for the man in the pool, the women still come. He is a rock guitarist. Right now, there is nothing cooler. Often there are parties and loud music played on reel-to-reel tape recorders through massive loudspeakers.
The neighbours who live in the lanes around here are nervous; they are trying to keep up with the times, to be tolerant of the youngsters who arrive in cars and taxis, in Bentleys and on motorbikes, but these rich young people are changing their quiet hillside. On the nights where the music and shouting and revving engines continue late into the night, the locals lie awake in bed unable to sleep.
Tonight, though, is quiet. The rock star has been drinking and taking pills. No more than usual. Less, probably, in fact. He is tired and worn, weary of everything. The buttons of his shirts strain at the belly; his trousers are too tight. His band don’t want him any more. Sometimes he cries and hugs the women who come here.
Though there is a Rolls-Royce sitting in the garage, undriven for weeks, he has spent all his money. He’s never been sure where it all came from; now he doesn’t understand where it’s all gone. The building work on the second living room is unfinished and the builders are asking for payment.
The woman approaches the pool looking for towels. Men just leave them lying anywhere. They expect the women to clear up after them. It’s not fair.
She can hear the rock star’s girlfriend upstairs, still talking on the phone. For a second, she wonders where the young man who owns the house has gone. She looks around. The pool is so silent; the water is still, lights from the house moving gently across the surface.
Besides a discarded towel and the empty glass of brandy sitting by the side of the pool, the place seems deserted. She picks up the towel and looks around again.
And sees him.
Under the water, he hangs, arms splayed out, inches from the bottom of the pool. He is like a diver in mid arc, except he is still, and beneath the surface, not above it. She looks harder. At first she thinks he’s playing, but the water is too still.
Time seems to slow.
She runs back up the path and shouts and screams below the open bedroom window. It seems so long before anyone hears her.
And so much longer before the police finally arrive and see the body, skin like white rubber, pale and cooling, laid on the limestone paving at the pool’s side.
‘Bloody hell,’ says a sergeant, tired at the end of his shift. It will be a long night.
Neighbours sit up in bed, unable to sleep again for the noise. But it will be much quieter here now, at least.