her friend’s wife
On the jetty, on the lake, Ivana lies back with her eyes closed and allows the sun to wash over her. She can hear the gentle lapping of water, the sound of a child laughing. A man’s steady voice, in the distance. And this: thewhack, pause,whack, pause,whackof arrows thudding into wood. She props herself up on her elbows, wipes her brow. Sweat pools in the dimple of her brown belly, on the crest of her top lip. She squints over the water, towards the treeline.
‘Is she old enough to be using weapons?’ Ivana asks.
Clara, lying on her front across the jetty, doesn’t open her eyes. She waves a nonchalant hand. ‘Don’t question it,’ she says. ‘If they’re busy, they’re not bothering us.’
Ren, who has been seemingly asleep under a heavy pair of sunglasses, sits up a little and smiles. ‘Listen to you,’ she says to Ivana. ‘Always the lawyer.’
Ivana elbows her wife, then kisses her, and they melt back down on to the wood beneath them. The late-summer getaway had been Clara’s idea. The location, Ivana’s. She’d suggested a cabin on the Plitvice Lakes, in her home country. At first, it was to be the four of them. Then Ren had ventured inviting Maisieand family, and the numbers had swelled to eight. The ninth name was put forward by Nora, and Clara hadn’t protested.
‘Who the hell is Seb?’ Ivana had asked.
Ren had found this hilarious. ‘How long have you got?’
So many names. So much baggage. Ivana wonders if love is simply messier when you’re no longer young, when you’ve collected years of make-ups and break-ups and you’re all tangled up in them. A spider’s web of broken hearts and hungry eyes – and at the centre of it all, this guy, who was apparently once an actor, with his matinee-idol face and his brooding stare. They’d all arrived at the cabin earlier that day, bags hoisted over sweaty shoulders, Maisie wrangling an overtired Priya, Nora and Finn bouncing ahead of them in search of their room and the bunkbeds they’d been promised. Nora had picked Clara’s room. Then she’d picked Seb’s, its door directly opposite. Ivana has kept her promise to Ren, which was an extension of Ren’s promise to Clara: they will not ask what’s going on between the two of them.
Now Seb stands in the woods with Finn and Nora, shooting handmade arrows at the stump of an old tree. In the swampy sun, Ivana feels as if she’s expiring. While Maisie lies under a parasol and keeps Priya occupied with the occasional spurt of a bubble gun, Nimesh swims lengths of the lake.
‘Does he ever stop moving?’ Ren asks.
‘Seb says he hates going on holiday with Nimesh because he can’t just lie on a sunbed,’ Clara says. ‘He has to be hiking or running or blending up smoothies.’
Maisie can’t resist. ‘Seb says that, does he?’
Clara bites her tongue.
‘Seb made the bow?’ Ivana asks.
‘The arrows, too,’ Clara says. ‘Reclaimed wood from the bar.’
‘That’s sweet,’ says Ren.
‘It’s psychotic,’ says Clara.
Maisie nods. ‘He could have made drumsticks.’
‘He’s good with his hands, then?’ says Ivana.
Maisie snorts, and Clara tells her to shut up.
‘Jesus was a carpenter,’ Ren says.
Clara looks between the three of them. ‘If you’re going to do this all week, I’m drowning you in the lake.’
Nimesh swims over to Seb and the kids, beckons them in. They scream and splash, and then they’re swimming towards the jetty, Seb cutting a path through the still water with Nora hanging off his broad shoulders. When they reach the ladder, he deposits her on to the wood above, then emerges himself, dripping wet and bare-chested, running his fingers over his shorn head as rivulets of water travel the length of his arms, his tattooed chest, his tanned belly. Clara can’t keep her eyes off him. Ivana, Ren and Maisie can’t keep their eyes off Clara, though they break away briefly to share a look. Then Seb stubs his toe on a splintered rung, and his Mr Darcy moment is broken as he windmills his arms and crashes backwards into the water. Maisie bursts into laughter, and the baby in her lap chuckles along with her. Nora runs to the edge in panic, but starts giggling when she sees that Seb is alright. Clara makes no sound at all. She’s staring at Seb, running her fingers over the seersucker fabric of her swimsuit, lost in her own train of thought.
‘Nice trip?’ Ren asks Seb.
He whips her with his towel. Clara manages to capture Nora for just long enough to reapply her suncream, rigging her up with a network of armbands and rubber rings. Then the girl is plunging back into the lake, Nimesh taking lifeguard duty. Seb sits beside Clara for a moment. Then, he lies beside Clara.
Time passes. In the water, Nora and Finn shriek with delight. Maisie sits cross-legged and feeds Priya, running a finger through her dark, curly hair. The trees at the edge of the lake sway lazily as if slow-dancing with one another.
Ivana doesn’t notice the moment when Clara shifts so that she’s lying with her head in Seb’s lap. She’s not sure Seb or Clara notice, either. It’s like these things just happen, with them. Now she’s propping herself on one elbow, tracing the tattoos on Seb’s bare arms and torso with a slender finger, taking extra care over the ones she doesn’t recognise. A new date, beneath a pre-existing canine scribble. A tombstone on his chest, with words inside.Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.
‘Mum!’ Nora calls, and Clara knows her time is up. ‘And Seb,’ Nora adds.
Clara rises, pads slowly to the end of the jetty. Ivana watches Seb’s eyes travel just as slowly up the backs of her pale legs, coming to rest on the window of bare skin cut out of the back of her swimsuit. Clara turns, does not seem surprised to find him looking. She runs her fingers through hair that is tangled, salty with sweat. She smiles at him.
