Ro sat on the porch, an untouched beer in her hand and an ache in her bones, her hair finally washed and wrapped in a wobbly towel turban. She hadn’t stopped all day. Hump had been out doing his beach runs since 9 a.m., giving her time alone in the studio to finish setting up. All the portraits were hanging now, and she had finally managed to get the brackets up for the small TV screens – although not without quarrying a few holes in the walls first, which meant they were hanging slightly lower than she’d originally intended. She’d also found a good-sized square table at an antiques store further up the road that Hump had sweetly collected for her – making a small diversion via the studio on one of his runs to Indian Wells Beach and strapping it to the roof bars – and which now stood centrally in the room, stacked with the oversized album books and a potted blue hydrangea.
After all that activity in the morning, things had been rather quieter after lunch – no one had stopped by, although she’d seen a few women darting into the spa – but she was grateful for that today. As if the 4 a.m. start wasn’t bad enough, her body was still lingering in Greenwich Mean Time and since 5 p.m. had been ordering her to go to bed.
She’d closed up on the dot of five and Hump had given her a ride home, where she’d wallowed in the bath for an hour while he’d caught up with the latest bids for tomorrow’s advertising board, before sitting cross-legged on the bed and trying to Skype Matt. She’d calculated the time difference between here and Cambodia was twelve hours, which in a way was almost an easier, cleaner time-cut to navigate than back in London, where the seven-hour lag was more inconvenient and meant he was always out by the time she woke up and in bed by the time she got back.
She looked up, hearing the agricultural rumble of the Landy long before she could see it – Hump had gone to collect Bobbi from the Jitney stop on Main Street – and Ro unfurled her legs from beneath her, taking a nervous breath as she waited to see Bobbi again.
She couldn’t help but smile as the cheery yellow car rounded the corner, up the drive, and she saw Hump talking away as Bobbi looked about her dubiously in the basic cab. A Merc it wasn’t. The passenger door opened and Bobbi slid out – sliding was all she could do from that height, in such a tight skirt.
Ro stood up. ‘Hi!’
‘Hey! How are ya?’ Bobbi called back, striding towards her and leaving Hump to get her bags from the back. She enveloped Ro in a fierce hug, pulling back to study her face, and Ro wondered whether Bobbi had forgotten what she looked like during the six-week gap between their two meetings.
‘Weird seeing you without a patch,’ Bobbi said. ‘Your eye OK now?’
‘Oh yes, totally. I’d forgotten all about it,’ Ro said, waving away her concerns with the beer bottle. ‘Want one?’
‘Sure,’ Bobbi replied. ‘Only, let me just change quickly. I can’t bear wearing black out here.’ She gestured to her skin-pinching black skirt suit, which Ro thought would fit her right leg. ‘You gonna give me the tour, Hump?’
Ro sat back in the chair as the two of them disappeared inside, occasional words floating out to her: ‘Ercol? Hump, are you serious . . . ?’
They emerged several minutes later, Bobbi looking refreshed and unnaturally colourful in an almost-neon-peach skinny-knit top, thong sandals and white shorts. Her legs were even better than her pencil skirts had let on – slim, toned, brown – and Ro felt instantly dowdy in her rolled-up navy chinos and Matt’s ancient school rugby shirt. (She was beginning to wonder if she’d gone overboard packing half his clothes to wear over here. The view in the mirror at the Golden Pear hadn’t been pretty.)
‘I mean, I heard people used to have avocado baths, but . . . I thought they were suburban myths, you know?’ Bobbi was saying as they stepped back onto the porch. She clasped his arm intently. ‘Hey, listen, I say this with love, OK? All I’m saying is I’ve got contacts. Use ’em.’
Hump nodded obediently. ‘Will do, Mom.’ His eyes met Ro’s and she swallowed down the giggle tickling at her throat. ‘Now have a beer.’
‘Cheers!’ Ro said brightly, and all three clinked their bottles together. Ro took a tiny sip, hoping no one would notice. She’d never acquired a taste for beer. ‘Here’s to summer.’
‘So when’s Mystery Greg getting here?’ Bobbi asked, settling herself on the other end of the swing love seat to Ro, her long legs folded like a flamingo’s. ‘Did anyone else manage to get a response from him? He didn’t respond to any of my pokes.’
Ro shook her head.
‘He’ll be here soon, I’m hoping. But you never can tell – he can work pretty crazy hours,’ Hump said.
‘Not as crazy as me, I’ll bet,’ Bobbi replied competitively.
‘He passed the foam-party test too, then?’ Ro asked.
Hump laughed out loud at that. ‘Ha! He’s so not the foam type. I’m helping him out, actually. He needed a place to stay and he’s a friend of my brother, Sam. They were at Penn together.’
‘Yeah? I was at Penn. What did he do?’ Bobbi asked, interested.
‘Law.’
Bobbi wrinkled her nose, losing interest again. Clearly if he wasn’t in architecture . . .
‘So, what about you? Who do you work for?’ Ro asked, even though she didn’t know the name of a single architect in New York, but as she well remembered Bobbi saying that night in the bathroom, ‘Know me, know my career.’ If they were going to get off on the right foot . . .
‘Brew Eastman Schwarz Associates, Seventh Avenue.’
Ro nodded as though the name meant something to her. ‘Oh yeah, right . . . Enjoying it there?’
Bobbi looked surprised by the question. ‘Enjoying it is irrelevant. They’re a name you’ve got to have on your résumé if you want to work in an inter-disciplinary consultancy which I do because that’s the future, I’ll tell ya that for free. Once I make partner –’ She whistled and Ro could only surmise that she was suggesting she’d be home free.
‘Of course, yeah. Totally . . .’ Ro trailed off.
‘How about you? Hump said you and he are sharing a studio.’
‘Yes, it’s great. So pretty and such a great location. I think we’re going to do really well there.’
‘Busy today?’
‘Today? Uh, no, not so much, but I expect most people were travelling down after work this afternoon, like you. I’m bracing myself for a rush tomorrow. It’ll have to be early to bed for me tonight.’ The thought of bed reminded her body how tired it was and an entirely unsuppressable yawn bubbled up.
Bobbi nodded. ‘And how’s your boyfriend? Still gone?’
Ro felt a flash of annoyance at Bobbi’s choice of words. She made it sound like he was gone and not coming back, which was categorically not the case. Why didn’t anyone believe they were just on a pause? ‘Matt? Yes, yes, he’s on an expedition to some lost city they just found outside Angkor Wat last year. They found it from laser-mapping or something and he wanted to see it for himself. There’s twelve of them doing it. He’s having a ball,’ she said carelessly. In truth, she didn’t know exactly where Matt was. He had told her but all the names were so long and unintelligible that his itinerary had long since slipped from her mind and she didn’t want to admit to Bobbi that all she really knew – right here, right now – was that her beloved boyfriend was somewhere in Cambodia.
Bobbi watched her for a beat and Ro felt herself grow even more agitated in her studied silence than her careless words. ‘Well, at least you’re out here now and having your own fun back. You can show him what he’s missing . . .’ Bobbi drawled. ‘Hey, there’s an idea! Quick, snuggle up to me,’ Bobbi said, grabbing Hump and Ro each by the wrist and pulling them in to her on the swing seat. ‘Now look seductive,’ she ordered, angling her phone to face them all and clicking the button before Ro could pull her features into any considered expression at all. ‘That’ll do,’ she murmured, before nodding and pressing ‘send’.
‘Where did you send that to?’ Ro asked, aghast to see she’d been caught mid-blink beside candy-coloured Bobbi, who was pouting up a storm.
‘Facebook. I’ll tag you. He’s friends with you, right?’
‘Of course.’ Oh God, how many people would see that photo of her?
‘So now you can show him just how much fun you’re having. We’ll take a shot a day. You never know, he might get so jealous he comes back early.’ Bobbi winked.
Not with her looking like that he wouldn’t, Ro thought miserably as the towel on her head finally collapsed like a soufflé and wet hair dripped on her shoulders. He might never come back if he kept seeing her looking like that!
She checked her watch. Half eight. That meant it was half past eight in the morning over there. Her earlier calls had rung off, but surely now would be a good time? Another yawn caught her unawares and she covered her mouth with her hand. ‘Mmmghm. Guys, I’m so sorry, but I think I’m going to have to hit the hay.’
‘But I only just got here!’ Bobbi protested. ‘I thought we had reservations at Nick & Toni’s tonight?’
‘We do.’ Hump shrugged.
‘I know, and I’m so sorry to flake, but I’ve still got evil jet lag.’
‘You shouldn’t go to bed so early. You know what’ll happen,’ Hump said, watching her as she stood up.
‘Given what happened this morning after a late night, I think I’ll take my chances, thanks.’
Hump grinned. ‘You can’t wait up to meet Greg?’
Ro shook her head. ‘I really can’t. I consider it a personal achievement to have managed to greet Bobbi. I promise I’ll be more sociable tomorrow.’
Hump shrugged. ‘You want me to drop you at the studio in the morning? I’ll be leaving at ten to nine.’
‘Thanks, but I can’t keep relying on you for lifts all summer. Is there a bus? I should learn to be independent out here.’
‘What you need is a bike,’ Bobbi said. ‘Everyone has them here. I get one every summer. Amazing. So easy. I’m getting mine in the morning if you want to come along.’
Ro considered for a moment. She’d seen the wide cycle lanes here; they looked safe enough. ‘OK, yeah, perhaps I should do that. Thanks.’
‘Tell you what, you can come with me to my yoga class beforehand.’
‘Uh, no . . .’
‘Yes! Don’t give up, there’s still time for you to get toned.’
Ro frowned. What? ‘No, I mean, I’ve never done yoga before.’
Bobbi waved a nonchalant hand at her. ‘You’ll pick it up, no problem – my girl’s the best. Everyone does yoga in the Hamptons – seven o’clock tomorrow morning, the entire East End will be chanting to “Om Na Shivaya” salutations.’ She looked across at Hump, who shrugged and nodded obediently. ‘Besides, I’ve got a guest pass for tomorrow as it’s the first class of the season. I’ll wake you in the morning,’ Bobbi continued magnanimously.
‘Oh . . . OK,’ Ro replied nervously. She supposed bonding with Bobbi was never going to be a stress-free affair.
‘Sleep well,’ Hump grinned. ‘You’d better rest while you can.’
Ro walked away, puzzled. What did that mean? Yoga was just heavy breathing and stretching. Right?
Ro tried again. It was her seventh attempt at getting into a headstand and she wasn’t going to give up. Or rather, the teacher wasn’t going to let her. Everyone was watching now.
‘Just think about creating a triangle with your head and your arms,’ the teacher intoned, as though her request was perfectly reasonable. But since when did people start creating geometry with their bodies? That was what Ro wanted to know. She’d never been triangular in her life. Round, maybe.
She put her head back down to the ground and kicked her right leg into the air, closely followed by the left, both legs vaguely assuming an upright position just long enough for Matt’s khaki gym T-shirt to come untucked from her waistband and the whole heavy thing tumbled around her upside-down ears. A collective intake of breath swept round the room like a wind as everyone took in her bosom resting on her chin.
‘Well . . . I think we can say that was a . . . good start,’ the teacher nodded, clearly equally as startled by the vision and eager not to repeat the process.
Bobbi, sitting cross-legged beside Ro in honeycomb-blond leggings and a white vest, reached over and patted her on the shoulder. ‘Just try to engage your core. That’s what I always focus on when I’m kicking up.’
Engage your what? Ro nodded, mute with shame as she tucked the T-shirt back into her tracksuit bottoms. Everything about this was wrong. The fact that the room temperature was 110 degrees – on purpose! – was wrong. The fact that the class had started at 7 a.m. was wrong. The fact that no one else in here was wearing – or needed to wear – a bra was wrong. The fact that they were all wearing second-skin kit and had the tight, sinewy bodies of lizards was wrong, and as for wearing a tracksuit in here . . . well, she wouldn’t have looked any less incongruous had she come dressed as Buzz Lightyear.
Thankfully, everyone was sitting cross-legged on the ground now, doing lots of breathing. This, at least, she could do, she told herself, as she settled into the cross-legged pose she’d last assumed, aged fourteen, in class assembly. As she’d told Hump yesterday, she excelled at any exercise done sitting down (or rather, lying down, wink, wink, as Matt always said), and she had actually been breathing all her life. She’d be a natural at this bit.
Beside her, Bobbi – eyes closed – was exhaling incredibly quickly through her nose, like a dog panting on a hot day, only with its mouth closed. It looked easy enough. Ro copied her, managing to keep up for at least ten seconds before she was left behind as her body – becoming gradually more keen on the idea of a really big inhale instead – became confused and she actually forgot how to breathe properly.
‘Unbelievable,’ Ro muttered to herself, opening one eye and looking quickly around the room. Everyone was still exhaling away in unison, the collective huffing beginning to get louder from the effort of sustaining the rapid breathing, so that it sounded more like a steam engine than a yoga class.
She closed her eye and tried again, but goddammit! – her nose just wouldn’t play ball. Within fifteen seconds, reflex won out over control and she found herself inhaling and gulping down air rapidly, instead of expelling it. Seconds later, she hiccupped loudly.
She opened one again and saw the instructor frowning at her, as though she was being disruptive on purpose.
She tried again. Breathe out, out, out, she told herself, trying to keep up with Bobbi’s frankly spectacular breath sprints. She was doing it! She was doing it! At least half a minute had passed and she was still breathing out, out, out— Oh!
‘Was that . . . ?’ Bobbi asked.
‘No,’ Ro replied quickly, her hands cupped over most of her face in absolute horror – too horrified to sniff – both women’s eyes locked on each other. Ro blinked, wishing time travel was real, wishing she had never gone to that stupid party, wishing she’d never tried to match Matt on his thirst for adventure and knowing she couldn’t keep her hands up for much longer. She couldn’t even get up to standing without putting one hand on the floor, so she couldn’t make an escape that way. Bobbi looked away, more scared than revolted, and Ro quickly, inevitably gave the giant sniff that immediately confirmed her housemate’s fear that actually, yes, she had heard what she’d thought she’d heard.
Ro closed her eyes – even she was disgusted with herself – and, as best she could, got up and tiptoed out of the room. As she closed the door, she saw a look of relief cross the teacher’s face and everyone began to chant in fluent Om.
She leaned against the wall of the corridor, tears of humiliation pricking her eyes. Tomorrow, she didn’t care what anybody said, she was damned well sleeping in.
‘And how was that?’ Hump asked, as she walked into the studio an hour later, only slightly less apple-cheeked, thanks to the cold shower she’d stood beneath for half an hour. ‘Feeling zen?’
‘Hump, I could not even breathe.’
Hump laughed, thinking she was joking.
‘No. Seriously,’ she said. What would he do if he heard she’d blown her nose over her own face? No one would hear about it from her lips, that was for sure, but what about Bobbi? Was it going to be turned into a house-share anecdote, wheeled out over every breakfast? Or worse, a Hamptons myth talked about at smart Manhattan cocktail parties, thirty storeys high in the sky? Why had she even gone along with it? From the moment she’d fallen out of the hire car, dressed in Matt’s clothes, it had been abundantly clear she would never be like these glossy spa people who all seemed so in control of their lives when she couldn’t even control her own hair. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be driving?’
Hump checked his watch quickly, before resuming rifling through the papers on his desk. ‘I’ve still got ten minutes.’
Ro dumped her bag down despondently on the counter and logged on to the computer.
‘Hey, you OK?’
She looked across at her languid landlord and gave a shrug. ‘Sure.’
There was a pause. ‘It’s Matt, right? You’re missing him.’
Her heart pounded at the very sound of his name. ‘A little, maybe,’ she replied, her voice tremulous suddenly.
‘Did you speak to him last night?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s out of contact almost all the time at the moment. He did warn me we wouldn’t be able to talk much, but . . . when you’ve spent eleven years talking to someone twenty times a day, it’s a bit of a shock to go down to once a fortnight.’
Hump frowned. ‘You’re a very tolerant girlfriend, I’ll give you that. I don’t think I know any woman who’d give her man permission to just take off round the world for a year.’
‘Half a year,’ she corrected him, slightly too sharply. ‘And I don’t see why everyone makes it out to be such a big deal. We trust each other. Why shouldn’t he have a few months to himself before we settle down? We’ve been together a long time.’
‘I just don’t get why he didn’t ask you to go with him, that’s all.’
She looked down, stung by the brittle simplicity in his words. ‘He knows temples and sleeping bags aren’t my thing.’
They lapsed into silence, her tapping away primly on the keyboard, Hump sipping a takeaway coffee, his feet on his desk, intermittently reading incoming emails and watching her. Ro opened up her email inbox – it was depressingly empty, with more spam than personal correspondence, and nothing at all from Matt. A client she’d done a wedding film for, back in Richmond, wanted her to do a life-story film of her grandfather who’d flown as part of the Fighter Command of the RAF during the Battle of Britain. He’d been presented with a Distinguished Flying Cross, and was due to celebrate his ninety-sixth birthday in November. Ro chewed her lip. November? Still six months away. Who was it who’d said he wouldn’t be buying green bananas at his age?
‘Oh! I got something that’ll cheer you up,’ Hump said suddenly, swinging his legs off the desk and crossing the room in a couple of strides. He produced a small plastic card with a flourish from his back pocket. ‘Been missing this?’
Ro took it from him. ‘My Visa? But where—’
‘Long Story brought it in,’ Hump grinned.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Your beach assailant.’
Ro shot him a sharp look for giving the man such a flippant nickname, although she shouldn’t have been surprised. Hump had been delighted by her story as she’d recounted it to him over breakfast in the Golden Pear yesterday morning, seemingly understanding none of the horror and shame that had accompanied it.
‘He’s surprisingly good-looking – if you go for preppy.’ He shrugged. ‘Funny you never mentioned that. It puts an entirely different slant on the story.’
Ro scowled at him. ‘How? How does it? The man assaulted me. Are you saying what he did doesn’t matter because he’s good-looking?’
Hump put up his hands. ‘Whoa! No! I’m just saying some women might have found it exciting to have a tall, dark, handsome stranger wade into the ocean with them.’
Ro’s mouth moved several times, but nothing would come out – at first. ‘Have you lost your bloody mind?’ she cried eventually. ‘He was going to throw me in and destroy my camera, my livelihood, Hump! The man is a sociopath. It is completely irrelevant that he’s a good-looking sociopath.’
‘Ah, so you did notice, then?’
‘What? No!’ Ro stared down at the plastic card in his hand. ‘How did he even get hold of this, anyway? I didn’t know I’d even lost it.’
‘He said you left it behind in the hardware store yesterday morning.’
Ro looked up at him in alarm. ‘And how did he know where to find me?’
‘Apparently, you told Bob you had the studio here for the summer.’
Ro thought back to her conversation with the hardware-store owner and relaxed a little. She had told him that, and he had suggested she advertised in his window.
‘Oh. Right. Thanks,’ she said, taking it from him.
‘Hey, don’t thank me,’ Hump said, stuffing his hands into his shorts. ‘Long Story’s the one who went out of his way to return it to you.’ He wandered back to his corner of the studio. ‘He was here for quite a while, actually. He really liked that photo of those two kids there,’ he said, jerking his chin towards the portrait of the two small brothers. ‘I kinda got the feeling he was hoping you’d turn up. Who knows . . . maybe he wanted to apologize?’
‘I sincerely doubt that,’ Ro sniffed, remembering with a new burst of fury how he’d called her ‘a sport’.
‘Yeah? Well, it’s a good thing he brought it back. We’re all going out to Navy Beach tonight and my card’s already in overdraft.’
‘Hump, how can you be overdrawn? I, alone, am paying you a small fortune!’
‘You know as well as I do that being an entrepreneur basically means being broke until you hit the jackpot.’
‘I guess so,’ Ro agreed. She’d been overdrawn since university and didn’t see a time she would ever climb her way out. Maintaining her current level of debt was the best she could seem to manage. She sat down on the stool and replaced the credit card in her purse. ‘So, did you all go out for dinner last night? I’m sorry I couldn’t wait up to meet Greg. I was beyond shattered.’
‘It was as well you didn’t. Something came up at the last minute and he had to stay in the office. He’s coming out this afternoon instead.’
‘Really? Is it worth coming all that way just for a day?’
‘I guess it is to him,’ Hump replied. ‘Did you get the bikes sorted?’ Hump had started reading from his screen, his eyes moving side to side rapidly.
‘Yes, they’re brilliant. Real old boneshakers, but so pretty! Bobbi’s is green. Mine’s yellow – like the Humper!’
He looked up at her and winked. ‘Careful, I might brand you. You’ve got that beachy vibe going on already.’
I do? Ro thought to herself, smiling and looking out through the open doors. Sharp sunlight cast crisp shadows on the grass and she could see some shoppers sipping on frappés and browsing in the expensive interiors boutique on the opposite side of the square. ‘Please come over. Oh, please come over,’ a voice in her head pleaded as she watched them examine some cushions and switch on a lamp.
‘What’s Bobbi up to today?’
‘She said something about hooking up with some friends on Main Beach. Red umbrella, if you need her.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Hump looked over at her, his eyes taking in her (well, Matt’s) navy chinos, tightly belted and bunched at the waist, her ankles peeping beneath the roll-ups, her white linen shirt pushed up her forearms and her hair pulled into a scruffy topknot. ‘You going to the beach later?’
‘No. I’ve got to work. I must start as I mean to go on. I can’t spend my summer on the beach, tempting though it is,’ she mumbled, her heart sinking as she saw the customers in the homewares store wander back out onto the pavement. Damn.
Bobbi’s yoga class on the other side of town had been heaving this morning, and it had taken her and Bobbi almost twenty minutes to be served their coffees after getting the bikes, yet the studio was empty.
She filled the small watering can in the bathroom off the back of the unit and watered the hydrangea on her new table, before going outside and doing the same to the flower boxes on the deck. Next door, in the yoga studio, she heard soporific chanting and she wandered over, peering through the windows at the still but seemingly alert bodies lying in the dark room. Unlike the almost ecstatic shouts in Bobbi’s class, this had a different quality to it altogether – it sounded almost monastic, Asiatic somehow – and she closed her eyes for a moment, letting the sound wrap round her like a shroud and take her to a different place, somewhere far away from here, the land of big trucks and good teeth. In the darkness of her own head – these sounds – she could let go of her sensory anchors and she felt herself transported to somewhere dark and ancient, the place where Matt was hidden from her view for the first time in over a decade, and she sensed somehow – though it was elusive as an angel’s kiss – his presence, as if he was right behind her.
But he wasn’t. It was Hump, on another coffee run.
‘Filter?’ he called out, running across the grass before his next shift.
She nodded and wandered back into the studio, replacing the watering can on the table. And taking a seat at her high stool, she waited for the customers to come.