There was a time when Kate thought she would stay in the city forever. Although it took her a while to settle in when she first moved there after university, she found her place as soon as she realised the trick about London: that, really, it’s not one city at all but a patchwork of neighbourhoods stitched together by bus routes and Underground lines. Once she realised that she didn’t need to feel at home in the whole city, just her little bit of it, things became much easier. And she loved it. The vibrant colours and smells on Electric Avenue where she did her shopping, her favourite cocktail bar in Brixton Village, the undercover market filled with places to eat, Brockwell Park that felt like a green oasis but with the jagged London skylinegiving her a feeling of excitement and possibility. And her local lido, the place she went whenever she needed to switch off.
But things changed when she and Jay started talking about a baby. It had come on quite suddenly, a feeling that she could only describe as broodiness but that felt like an aching hunger, akin to homesickness, except for a home that didn’t exist yet. A sense that her life that had felt so full up until that moment was suddenly missing something. Everywhere she went, she began noticing babies. It was as though they were following her, with their cute chubby cheeks and wide eyes, and the way they stared up at their parents with such adoration and the parents looked down at them as though they were the only people in the world, even if they were packed in a busy Tube during rush hour. Kate’s heart tightened every time she spotted a family, which, in a city home to close to nine million people, meant that her heart received quite the workout.
It wasn’t just the babies that she started to spot, though. She began to notice dangers everywhere that she had previously overlooked. The pleasant buzz of traffic became an incessant symbol of pollution and danger. She started googling local crime statistics.
And deep in her gut, she felt a tug back to the Somerset countryside where she’d grown up, recalling memories of a slower pace of life that had seemed so boring when she was a teenager but took on a new appeal once she reached her thirties. It would be nice to live somewhere they wouldn’t have to carry a pram down a steep flight of steps every day, where she could hang her washing out to dry instead of having it fill theirtiny flat, getting everything damp, where it didn’t take an hour to get anywhere on the Tube. Where she didn’t have to get on the Tube at all.
It makes her feel old to realise how much her priorities have changed over the last few years. But her prioritieshavechanged. And she has changed too. More than she can get her head around recently.
‘I haven’t really had a chance to meet anyone local yet,’ she explains to Lydia. ‘But my mum and sister have both been over a lot. They’re coming over later, actually. They live nearby.’
Because that was the biggest thing that pulled Kate and Jay away from London in the end. Even though Jay’s parents lived near their place in Brixton, Kate just knew that as soon as the baby arrived she would need her own mum nearby. Thankfully, Jay had been understanding, especially once he realised how much more they could get for their money outside of London. They fell in love with the Old Post Office as soon as they saw it, the little cottage with the postbox in the front wall. When Jay saw the outbuilding that could become the photography studio that he wanted to set up to supplement his job as a freelance photographer, the deal was done.
Lydia’s face lights up. ‘I used to live in London. Tulse Hill. Where were you?’
‘That’s so funny, isn’t it, Kate?’ chips in Jay. ‘We were practically neighbours; we were down in Brixton, not far from Brockwell Park.’
The memories come back in a visceral rush. The cosy, ramshackle second-hand bookshop run by her friends Frank and Jermaine, their dog Sprout presiding over things from herbasket in the window. Kate’s favourite bench at the top of the hill in the park where she went whenever she needed to think.
‘Oh, Brockwell Park is so nice. Did you ever go to the lido there?’ Lydia asks. ‘I’d left before it all happened, but I hear it nearly closed down a few years ago. It would have been a massive shame if it had gone – I loved going there in the summer. It was like going to the beach, but without the travel.’
Kate closes her eyes briefly and can see glittering turquoise water and a smiling woman swimming beside her with white hair and eyes as blue as the lido itself, the smell of chlorine like perfume on her own skin, the feeling of ease spreading across her body as she slipped from the steps into the cool water.
When she opens her eyes, Jay and Lydia are looking at her expectantly and Rosie is still twisting in her arms. It feels like just yesterday that she was swimming at the lido every morning. And yet, despite how easily she can picture it all, there’s a disconnect, as though she has fallen into another person’s dream.
When Kate fails to say anything, Jay answers for her, flashing her a warm smile. ‘Kate was one of the people who campaigned to keep the lido open. It’s how we met, actually. Kate and I both covered the story at the newspaper we used to work at. She wrote the story and I took the photos. But it became more than a story for you, didn’t it, Kate? In the end, she was basically spearheading the whole thing.’
Is it just Kate’s imagination or does Lydia look at her a little differently? Assessing whether this woman with the unwashed hair and faint aroma of stale milk could really have once been a headstrong campaigner.
Kate doesn’t blame her. She hardly believes it either.
‘Well, it wasn’t just me.’ The face of that same woman with the sparkling blue eyes surrounded by smile lines pops into her head again, although this time she is holding a placard and raising her voice in a rallying cry.Rosemary. Even after all these years, Kate still misses her. To many outsiders, their friendship might have seemed an unconventional one, with forty years between them. But somehow that didn’t seem to matter. Their friendship had changed Kate. She liked to think it changed them both.
Her attention darts to a framed photo on the mantlepiece of her and Rosemary standing on the poolside on the day that they found out the lido would remain open. They are beaming at one another, arms around each other’s shoulders, and their joyful expressions sum up the happiness of that entire summer. The whole of Brixton seemed to turn up after that, as if everyone had needed the nudge of potential loss to remind them of what they had on their doorstep. Kate and Rosemary kept to their morning swims, going early before the crowds descended and before Kate headed to work. Until, suddenly, Kate was left swimming alone.
‘Still, what a great thing to have been involved with,’ says Lydia, and Kate blinks quickly, tilting her face down towards Rosie and quietly using the same breathing technique she used down by the river this morning.
It’s because of the lido that she’s been so drawn to the river. She swam at the lido through her pregnancy, right up until their move from London to Somerset the month before Kate’s due date. There was no time for swimming after that, what withdesperately trying to get the cottage ready for the baby’s arrival. And since then … Well, there hasn’t been time for anything.
She’d seen photos online of the popular local river swimming spot before they moved – it’s one of the things that drew her to this village in the first place. If moving to a village with a lido wasn’t an option (and goodness, she had tried), then at the very least she needed to have water nearby. She loved the look of the buzzing atmosphere on that particular stretch of river.
As yet, she hasn’t had a chance to visit in normal daylight hours, or found the confidence to actually go swimming on any of her secret early-morning visits. The river seems a very different beast to her beloved lido with its regimented lanes and clear blue water. And she’d even been nervous the first time she swamthere. Although, back then, she wasn’t swimming alone. She had Rosemary as her guide.
‘Anyway, I’ll leave you three to it now,’ says Lydia, picking up her bag. ‘But do make sure you keep in touch with your friends, Kate, and maybe you could try to make some here too? There are lots of mum and baby groups in the area that you might like to try. It can be overwhelming being a new mother and it’s important to stay connected.’
Jay nods eagerly.
‘Thanks, I’ll think about it,’ says Kate.
Rosie has started to cry again, but Kate does her best to smile, shifting her arms to try to find a position that feels more natural. It’s only when Jay shows Lydia out that Kate lets the frozen smile melt away from her face. She only realises the effort it had been taking when she doesn’t have to do it anymore.
CHAPTER 6
Just one more appointment. One more appointment of being Nurse Harrison before she can collapse into being just Phoebe again. For now, she is parked at the top of a hill, taking a quick break before heading to her last appointment. She knows the roads around here intimately and has her own mental map of the places that make good spots for a quiet moment, just like when she worked on the psychiatry ward and she knew all the nearby supply closets and toilets where she could rush to for five minutes during particularly difficult shifts.
The motorbike is parked in the lay-by and she is perched on the top of a gate that looks down over the valley, the river just visible at the bottom, winding its way across the countryside. It’s a bright afternoon and she closes her eyes for a second, gripping the gate beneath her and feeling the sun warm her face.
Her phone rings in her pocket, breaking the silence. A flash of guilt jabs her as she spots her mum’s name.
