to her computer screen. Lucy pretends that she is waiting for someone to join her from the beach, cupping her eyes with her hand and peering towards the horizon until the woman is distracted by a party of five people arriving for lunch.
‘Now,’ she hisses, ‘now.’
She collects the dog into her arms and pushes Stella ahead of her. Her heart races as she strides as nonchalantly as she can down the wooden platform that runs behind the restaurant towards the shower block. She looks straight ahead. ‘Keep moving,’ she hisses at Stella as she stops, inexplicably, halfway down. Then finally they are there, in the dank, humid gloom of the shower block.
‘Reserved exclusively for the use of patrons of le Beach Club Bleu et Blanc’, say numerous signs nailed to the wooden walls. The concrete floor is sandy and damp underfoot; the air is fusty. Lucy guides Stella to the right. If they can get through the wooden saloon doors to the showers without being spotted, then they will be fine.
And then they are in. The showers are empty. She and Marco strip off their clothes for the first time in nearly eight days. She finds a bin for her knickers. She never wants to wear them again. She pulls shampoo and conditioner from her rucksack, a bar of soap, a towel. She takes the dog in with her, massages shampoo all through his fur, under his tail, under his collar, behind his ears. He stands steady and still, almost as though he knows that this is needed. Then she passes him to Stella who is waiting outside. He shakes himself off and Stella giggles as she is splattered with droplets from his fur. And then Lucy stands under the flow of warm water and lets it run over her head, into her eyes and ears, under her arms, between her legs and toes, feels the hell of the past week start to dissolve along with the dust and the mud and the salt. She shampoos her hair, pulling her fingers through the length of it until it squeaks. Then she passes the bottle under the stall to Marco. She watches their combined suds meeting in the gap between them, the sad, grey tinge of it.
‘Really get into the hair at the back of your neck, Marco,’ she says. ‘It’s all clumpy there. And armpits. Really do your armpits.’
After, they sit side by side on a wooden bench, wrapped in towels. They can see people passing by on the other side through gaps in the wood, see slices of shimmering blue sky, smell sun-warmed wood and fried garlic. Lucy sighs. She feels unburdened, almost, but still not quite ready to do the next thing.
They put on clean clothes and deodorant and Lucy rubs moisturiser into her face and gives the children sun cream for theirs. She has a small bottle of perfume in the bottom of her toiletry bag which she sprays behind her ears and into her cleavage. She twists her damp hair into a roll at the back of her head and clips it with a plastic claw. She looks at herself in the mirror. Nearly forty years old. Homeless. Single. Penniless. Not even who she says she is. Even her name is fake. She is a ghost. A living, breathing ghost.
She puts on some mascara, some lip gloss, adjusts the pendant of her golden necklace so that it sits in her sun-burnished cleavage. She looks at her children: they are beautiful. The dog looks nice. Everyone smells good. They have eaten. This is as good as things have been in days.
‘Right,’ she says to Marco, shoving her dirty clothes back into her rucksack and pulling it closed. ‘Let’s go and see your dad.’
9
CHELSEA, 1988
I’d been watching from the stairs, so I already knew. A man with dark curls, a hat with a brim, a donkey jacket, tweed trousers tucked into big lace-up boots. Old suitcases that looked like props from an olden-days movie and a wickerwork cat box held together with a worn leather strap. And Birdie standing by his side, in a dress that looked like a nightie.
‘Darling!’ I heard my mother call out to my father. ‘Come and meet Justin!’
I watched my father appear from the drawing room. He had a cigar clenched between his teeth and was wearing a hairy green jumper.
‘So,’ he said, squeezing the man’s hand too hard, ‘you’re Birdie’s boyfriend?’
‘Partner,’ Birdie interjected. ‘Justin is my partner.’