He throws her his oh, poor baby look, the one he used to give her after he’d hurt her.
‘How much?’ he says, and he’s already twisting in his seat to locate his wallet in his back pocket.
‘A hundred and ten euros,’ she says, her voice catching slightly.
She watches him peeling off the notes. He folds them in half and passes them to her. ‘There,’ he says. ‘And a little extra. Maybe for a haircut for my boy.’ He scruffs Marco’s hair again. ‘And maybe you too.’ And it’s there, when he glances at her hair, that terrible dark look of disappointment. You’ve let yourself go. You’re not trying hard enough. How can I love you when. You. Don’t. Make. Any. Fucking. Effort.
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