She takes the folded notes from his hand and feels the almost imperceptible tug as he grips them a little tighter, the hint of a nasty game of control and power. He smiles and loosens his grip. She puts the notes in her shoulder bag and says, ‘Thank you. I’m very grateful. I’ll get it back to you in a couple of weeks. I promise.’
‘No,’ he says, leaning back, spreading his legs a little, smiling darkly. ‘I don’t want it back. But …’
A trickle of coldness runs down Lucy’s spine.
‘Promise me one thing.’
Her smile freezes.
‘I’d love to see you. I mean, more of you. You and Marco. And you too of course.’ He switches his grim gaze to Stella, winking at her. ‘I’m here all summer. Until mid-September. Between jobs. You know.’
‘And your wife, is she …?’
‘Rachel had to go back. She has important business to attend to in the UK.’ He says this in a dismissive tone of voice. Rachel could be a brain surgeon or a politician for all Lucy knows, she might hold the lives of hundreds, thousands in her hands. But as far as Michael is concerned, anything that distracts a woman’s attention away from him for even a moment is some kind of pathetic joke. Including babies.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘That’s a shame.’
‘Not really,’ he says. ‘I needed some space. Because guess what I’m doing …?’
Lucy shakes her head briskly, and smiles.
‘I am writing a book. Or in fact, a memoir. Or possibly a blend of the two. A semi-autobiographical kind of thing. I don’t know yet.’
God, he looks so pleased with himself, Lucy thinks, like he wants her to say, Oh wow, Michael, that’s amazing, you are so clever. Instead she wants to laugh in his face and say, Ha, you, writing a book? Are you serious?
‘That’s great,’ she says. ‘How exciting.’
‘Should be, yes. Although quite a bit of downtime too, I shouldn’t wonder. So it would be just great to see more of you guys. Hang out a bit. Make some use of the pool.’
Lucy’s gaze follows his, towards the pool. She feels her breath catch hard, her lungs expand then shrink, her heart pound at the memory of her head under that perfect teal water, the pressure of his hands on her crown. Pushing her. Pushing her until her lungs nearly exploded. Then suddenly letting her bob to the top, choking, rasping, while he pulled himself from the pool, snatched a towel from a sun lounger, wrapped it around himself and strode back into the house without a backward glance.
‘I could have killed you,’ he said about it afterwards. ‘If I’d wanted. You know that, don’t you? I could have killed you.’
‘Why didn’t you?’ she’d asked.
‘Because I couldn’t be bothered.’
‘Well,’ she says now, ‘maybe. Though we’re pretty busy ourselves this summer.’
‘Yes,’ he says patronisingly. ‘I’m sure you are.’
‘You know,’ she says, turning to look at the house, ‘I always thought you must have sold this place. I’ve seen other people living here over the years.’
‘Holiday let,’ he says. And she can hear the shame in his voice, the idea of shiny, incredible, successful, wealthy Michael Rimmer having to stoop so low as to rent out his Antibes holiday home to strangers. ‘Seemed a shame’ – he rallies – ‘to have it sitting empty all the time. When other people could be enjoying it.’
She nods. Lets him hold on to his pathetic little lie. He hates ‘other people’. He will have had the place disinfected from top to bottom before he could have faced returning.
‘Well,’ she says, turning to smile at the children, ‘I think it’s probably time for us to hit the road.’
‘No,’ says Michael. ‘Stay a while! Why not? I can open a bottle of something. The kids can splash in the pool. It’ll be fun.’
‘The music shop will be shutting soon,’ she says, trying not to sound nervous. ‘I really need to pick up my fiddle now, so I can work tonight. But thank you. Thank you so much. What do you say, children?’
They say thank you and Michael beams at them. ‘Beautiful kids,’ he says, ‘really beautiful.’
He sees them to the front door. He looks like he wants to hug Lucy and she rapidly drops to her knees to rearrange the dog’s collar. Michael watches them from the doorway, across the bonnet of his ridiculous car, a smile still playing on his lips.
For a moment Lucy thinks she is going to be sick. She stops and breathes in hard. And then, as they are about to turn the corner, the dog suddenly squats and produces a small pile of crap up against the wall of Michael’s house, right in the path of the afternoon sun. Lucy reaches into her bag for a plastic bag to pick it up with. Then she stops. In an hour the shit will be baked and bubbling like a brie. It will be the first thing he sees next time he leaves his house. He might even step in it.