‘Come back, Charlie!’ I roar. Then: ‘Frank! Bring him out. This is scaring me …’ I wade into the sea in my T-shirt and shorts. ‘Charlie!’ I bellow, ‘if you don’t get out of that sea right now we’re going back to the villa and you’re going straight to bed!’
‘Lighten up!’ Frank yells. ‘We’re on holiday in case you hadn’t noticed. We’re having fun. Remember that?’
‘There are rip tides,’ I call out, tears springing into my eyes, mixing with the salty spray. But the two of them are too far out to hear me and I watch them, telling myself that surely I can trust Frank to keep Charlie safe. After all, it’s what the guidebooks recommend, isn’t it? Let your child go swimming off one of Mexico’s most dangerous beaches, with a drunk man?
First Frank disappears, then Charlie. A wave has crashed over them, huge and powerful. They both reappear briefly as flailing shapes, then go under again, out of sight. I’m probably screaming. I don’t know. What I do know is that, although I’m a strong swimmer, there’s no chance of getting out there to both of them. So I focus on Charlie, who reappears again – just a flash of his terrified face, then a skinny arm waving. I plough out through the pounding waves and somehow I manage to grab at hisarm, pull him tight to my body and swim with him back to the shore.
He’s clinging to me with great sobs as we collapse together on the sand. ‘What happened, Mummy?’
‘It’s okay, love. It’s okay.’ I’m gasping for breath, flooded with relief that he’s here with me.
‘Where’s Daddy? What’s happened to Dad?’
I don’t know and I can’t bear to look. But I had to choose Charlie; there was nothing else I could do. He’s just a child – my baby. I hold him tight to my chest, his heart thumping hard against me, the hot sun bearing down upon us.
It’s one of the naked sunbathers who has a surfboard and paddles out to rescue Frank. He brings him back to shore, spluttering, obviously in shock. ‘You are so fucking lucky, mate,’ I hear the guy yelling with an Australian twang. ‘Idiot. What the hell were you thinking, going out there?’
I try to thank him but he shakes his head as if I am an idiot too. ‘Letting your little boy swim here,’ he says with disdain. He glares at the three of us, pushes his matted wet blond hair from his tanned face and marches off, back to his friends, still cursing us.
‘Idiots … could’ve drowned. What kind of parents are they?’
It seems inconceivable that, so little time before, it had been all jollity and sausage jokes.
Next day a hungover and fragile Frank insists that I’d ‘over-reacted’, that they’d been perfectly safe and look what I’ve done now. Charlie is terrified of the sea! ‘You’ve ruined it for him,’ Frank declares. ‘He loved the ocean and now he hates it and it’s all your fault. You do realise he’ll never swim again?’
*
Frank was right, and I haven’t pushed it, even though I’d have loved Charlie to swim with me in Corsica over subsequent summers. Of course now he’d be appalled by the idea of us swimming together anyway. How embarrassing, being in the sea with your mum! Far better to cover yourself in a towel and be stung by wasps …
I get up at seven and stuff a swimsuit into my suitcase. Yes, it’ll be freezing in Cornwall at this time of year. But Kim’s always raving about the joys of cold-water swimming and, who knows, maybe I’ll try it? Anything feels possible on this trip.
An hour or so later I remind Charlie yet again that, unless he can find a carrier pigeon, I’ll be uncontactable while I’m away. ‘Mum, I know. You’ve said, alotof times now …’ He’s smiling, propped up in bed. Maybe he’s delighted at the prospect of having me out of his hair for a few days.
I leave him be and pace around the house, running through a mental list of what I’ve packed, in case I’ve forgotten anything. After all, there are no shops near the cottage. I check the time, figuring that James will be setting off soon. I’m aware of a flurry of butterflies as I pick up my phone, poised to suggest that he brings swimming shorts too in case we’re crazy enough to jump into the freezing sea. But just as I start the message, my phone rings. It’s James.
Five months, we’ve been together. It’s not terribly long, but long enough for me to have let down all those barriers and allow someone new into my life. Someone I love and trust and thought I might have a future with.
It’s also been long enough for me to know, instantly, that James isn’t calling with good news. There’s a catch in his voice, like something stretched taut, as he says, ‘Lauren, I don’t know how to tell you this. I’m so, so sorry. But I can’t come to Cornwall with you.’
PART FOUR
Just Desserts
When you think the meal is over, there’s always room for a little sweet surprise
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
LAUREN
‘Are we nearly there yet?’
A long time ago, when Charlie was around five, we were driving to the south coast for the day, just the two of us.
Frank was right. Charlie used to adore the sea, tearing off his T-shirt and shorts before I’d even spread out a towel to set up our base for the day. And of course I’d have charged in after him, sometimes before I’d had time to strip off to my swimsuit myself. But I loved Charlie’s exuberance and determination that no one was going to stop him plunging in.
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ It was just the two of us that day as Frank had been ‘too tired’ to come with us. Hungover, more like. And actually I was glad because hungover Frank was like a grumpy bear, unable to settle and prone to growling at us. I looked over at Charlie as I drove and laughed. He knew he was driving me mad with the repeated question, and to get him to stop we struck a deal. He knew I’d buy him an ice cream at the little kiosk on the beach. But if he managed not to askme again for the rest of the journey, he could have adoublecone – two flavours. And a Flake stuck in it.
‘So, Mum,’ Charlie says now, glancing at me from the passenger seat, ‘are we talking double cone and Flake when we get there?’
