Chapter Seven
July 2008
‘Do you realise we’ve been dating for nine months and I haven’t even met your dad yet.’ Lydia lay on the sunbed beside the outside pool of the holiday house in the Cotswolds, an annexe of a bigger main house owned by a lovely couple who rented this smaller property out for extra income. Her eyes were protected with sunglasses, skin covered in a layer of factor thirty.
‘Look at you trying to get a tan.’ Theo was at the end of the pool and resting his elbows on the concrete surround, puffing from the thirty odd lengths he’d belted out and letting his shoulders and upper back absorb some of the sun’s rays.
She propped herself up on her elbows and pulled her glasses down her nose so she could look over the top of them at her boyfriend. ‘For your information I’m just relaxing, not sunbathing. Once I’m dry I’ll put a T-shirt on, don’t want to end up like a shrivelled old prune.’
‘Definitely not. You’ll be looking like Leanne by the time you’re forty.’
Lydia stifled a giggle. Theo had come to watch her at dance class last week – she’d nagged him that while she’d seen plenty of his rugby training sessions and a few matches, he’d never seen the contemporary dance she lost herself in and that had rescued her from the stress of finals last month – and as they arrived, out of the tanning salon next door had emerged a woman named Leanne who went to the dance studios regularly. She’d just celebrated her birthday and told them there would be celebratory cake after the class today. When they’d followed her inside the studios and seen all the balloons with forty emblazoned on them, Lydia knew she and Theo weren’t the only ones surprised at her age. Her skin looked as though it had been put through the wringer, more than once, and although dancing apparently kept youth on your side, it seemed constant sunbed use had done the opposite. The second time Theo had been to watch a class it had been obvious Leanne was quite taken with him. She’d touched his arm as she spoke to him, giggled coquettishly at anything he said – even when it wasn’t really funny at all – and he’d begun to look scared of her advances.
‘So you’ll dump me if I get a few wrinkles?’ she asked Theo now.
‘Don’t be daft.’ He splashed water up at her and enjoyed making her squeal. ‘But I’m only watching another class if I know she won’t be there.’
‘Deal,’ said Lydia. She moved to the side of the pool and sat on the concrete, legs dangling in the water. The July sunshine was a belter and the coolness welcoming. ‘So are you going to answer my question?’
He stayed in the water and wrapped his hands around her waist. ‘What question?’
‘Well, I don’t suppose it was a question, more of a statement really, about your dad.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Yes, that.’ She mimicked his voice.
His hands fell back into the pool and he floated on his back. ‘He’s emigrating.’
‘Where to?’
‘New Zealand.’
‘Were you going to tell me? I don’t know, Theo. Sometimes I wonder if you’re ashamed of me.’
He swam back towards her. ‘Whatever makes you think that?’
‘Because you never suggest we see him. You’ve been up to Cambridge once since I’ve known you and I’ve let it go until now. So, what’s the deal Theo Morgan?’
‘I love it when you use my last name.’ He grinned. ‘You go all schoolmarm-like. Quite a turn-on as it happens.’
Lydia huffed, stood up and shook off the excess water from her legs. She grabbed a T-shirt from the sunbed and tugged it on, then plonked the straw cowgirl hat on her head and grabbed the paperback she’d started reading earlier that morning.
It took Theo all of two minutes to get out of the pool and dry himself off with a towel, before sitting on the edge of Lydia’s sunbed.
‘Let’s just say I don’t have the best relationship with my dad,’ he told her.
It was the most he’d ever said about the man who’d been around until his parents divorced three years ago and apart from a single photo she’d seen of him, she knew nothing about Graham. ‘So tell me about it.’ She slipped the bookmark back in between the pages and put her book down beneath the sunbed where it was dry.
‘I told you my parents split up. He’s moved on and I’m not sure I’m all that happy about it.’
‘Who’s he with now?’
‘Natasha, a New Zealander.’
He wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information so Lydia tried again. ‘Is there something in particular you don’t like about her?’
He shook his head. ‘Imagine if your parents divorced, how you’d feel about someone new coming on the scene.’
Lydia stayed calm because even after only nine months, she knew Theo and she knew he was lying. Or if not lying exactly, at least concealing part of the truth. But when he dived back in the deep end and ploughed out another few laps, this time finishing at the opposite end of the pool, she knew the conversation was over.
Later that evening Lydia tried again. They barbecued out back on the patio and Theo was using tongs to flip burgers and sausages as she opened two bottles of beer and handed one to him.
‘This is the life.’ He clinked his bottle gently against hers and took a sip of his beer. ‘The taste of summer.’
‘It sure is.’ She hugged him from behind, inhaling his familiar smell mixed with the scent of the food circling in the air. ‘When does your dad leave for New Zealand?’
Theo stepped closer to the barbecue and turned the food again even though it didn’t need it, and Lydia sat down on the chair beside the pool. ‘Next month. Hats off to him for choice of location, I have to say.’ His bravado wasn’t fooling Lydia for a second. ‘The land of bungee jumping, jetboating, skydiving. He may be in his early fifties, but he’ll be doing most of it I’m sure.’
Theo had brightened at the normality of talking about his dad, at discussing the things he admired and liked about him rather than the negatives, how the man had walked away from his family. Lydia wanted to make the moment last longer, see if he opened up to her more. ‘You have a lot in common with him. You’ve been skydiving already, haven’t you?’
‘Dad took me indoor skydiving at first, to get a feel for it, but I couldn’t wait for the real thing so we went up to Scotland and I did a tandem skydive. Biggest thrill ever.’
‘Did your dad jump too?’
‘Yep. He’d qualified to do a solo jump and I watched him. I saw his face when he was on the ground, it was like nothing I’ve ever seen or felt before. For both of us, that feeling of free-falling thousands of feet above the earth and having a whole new perspective of the world. There’s nothing like it.’
‘Weren’t you scared?’
He waved the smoke in front of his face away and then put a hand against his chest. ‘Me? Scared?’ He grinned. ‘A bit, at first, but the thrill was worth it. I felt alive, free. A bit like you feel when you dance.’
Lydia burst out laughing. ‘Hey, my feet are firmly on the ground, at least most of the time.’
‘But it’s the same concept, it’s that feeling of doing something you’re so immersed in you forget everything else. It’s the way you express yourself.’
‘So you express yourself by risking your life?’
He shook his head. ‘I know you’re not like me and I’d never expect you to be, but adrenalin, skydiving, rafting, skiing down black runs, all of it. It’s me, Lydia. And I couldn’t imagine a life without it. Could you imagine if one day you were told you’d never be able to dance again?’
‘No, I really couldn’t.’
Theo began taking each piece of meat off the barbecue and placing it into a tray waiting at the side. ‘He’s getting married, you know.’
‘Your dad?’
‘He had an engagement party the time I went up to see him in Cambridge a while back.’ He harrumphed at the end of the sentence.
Lydia moved so she could see his face, waited for him to look at her. ‘Why didn’t you take me with you? I would’ve liked to meet him.’
‘Because I didn’t know they were doing it, did I?’ He took the tray over to the table where there was a salad waiting, an assortment of condiments, two more beers for when they’d finished the first. ‘Come on, let’s eat.’ He began piling lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes onto his plate and doused them in a good dose of balsamic glaze before loading up the meat.
Lydia stood beside him, her plate still empty.
‘Here, take this one.’ He pushed the plate towards her and she took it, simultaneously handing him the empty one that he went on to pile up much like the first.
‘Theo, stop. Talk to me.’
‘Nothing to talk about.’
‘Theo.’ She took the second plate and placed them both on the table before taking his hands. ‘Please talk to me,’ she said again.
He picked up his beer and flopped into one of the plastic chairs and pulled her onto his lap. ‘He made something up about needing to see me, said he missed me, said he couldn’t bear losing his whole family, and I don’t know, I felt sorry for him I suppose. But he blindsided me with the engagement.’
‘That must’ve hurt.’
‘It did.’ He kissed Lydia on the lips and didn’t pull away until he’d done so enough for her to almost lose her trail of thought. ‘Now can we eat? I’m starving. I’ve swum more lengths than an Olympic swimmer today.’
And that was that. His dad was a closed subject that didn’t play a part in their romantic getaway, their celebration at finishing their finals with their fate firmly in the hands of the examiners.