She is in a deep sleep when her phone rings. She grabs it, her eyes still shut, dragging herself back to now.
“Hello?” She opens her eyes to check the number. No number, just the word “call.” And no voice either, at the other end.
“Hello?” She tries again and waits, and listens. They listen to each other, neither saying a word: he doesn’t need to, she knows who he is. He is waiting for her. He doesn’t say it, but she can feel it.
29
… It was the sort of day where, if you weren’t careful, you could get very badly burnt. The sun was strong, but a thin layer of cloud masked its ferocity, and the cooling wind lulled the ignorant into exposing their skin without protection. Charlotte was not ignorant. She had covered her own body in protective oil and was now rubbing cream into her little boy. He made quite a song and dance of it, they both did: Charlotte demonstrating what a conscientious mother she was, and her son, Noah, resisting his mother’s hands and complaining that the cream was stinging his eyes.
His shrieks were particularly grating that day, because Charlotte had a hangover. She knew she was rubbing harder than she needed to, irritated by her son’s willfulness and wanting to force him to her own. He had sand on his body, so it was as if she was stripping him down with sandpaper, and she was careless too with his face, cream catching on the eyelashes of one eye. She dabbed at it with a towel, but he was crying now and she felt like crying too. She just wanted him to go away. She wished she could enjoy just one day, this last day, in the sunlight, with her lover.
John was still asleep in his hotel room, his cheap hotel. It had been five in the morning when he’d returned there after being with Charlotte in her five-star luxury. They had made love all night, her son asleep in the next-door room. The little boy hadn’t heard his mother’s sighs as her young lover pleasured her; he hadn’t heard the clink of their glasses as they drank together, and then made love over and over.
So while Charlotte wrestled with sun cream on the beach, John slept in. He slept well, like an adolescent. At nineteen, he hadn’t quite stopped growing, still exhausted by the demands of his own body, and by those that had been made on it the night before. Charlotte couldn’t get enough of him, she’d worked him hard. She knew her time was running out and though she had persuaded him not to go to Tangiers, she would soon be flying home to her husband. She made the most of him that night, and she anticipated more the following, their last together.
She tried to play her part of mother, but her performance that morning was lacklustre. She lay on her stomach trying to sleep while Noah dug with his spade. He chiselled away at the beach, but the wind, along with his excavations, sent gritty sand into Charlotte’s face. Enough, she thought, and finally said:
“Ice cream?”
Noah stopped digging. “Yep, yep,” he yapped, and Charlotte slipped her cotton dress over her bikini, put a T-shirt on Noah, and, hand in hand, they left the beach.
As they climbed the steps towards the shops, John walked towards them. They passed each other, these lovers, and no one would have known they had ever met. His stomach slid with excitement, and hers with desire at the sight of his sleepy eyes and bedded hair. They almost touched they were so close, they could smell each other and she breathed him in and then smiled, but not at John. She was cleverer than that. She directed the smile meant for John at Noah. But John knew it was for him and Noah was taken in, pleased to see that Mummy was happy, and he smiled back, the little innocent. He was so grateful for that gift which wasn’t even intended for him.
John recognised Charlotte’s towel and placed his a few feet away, as usual, making sure there were other bodies between him and them. Far enough away so Noah wouldn’t register him, but close enough so he and Charlotte could look at each other. Since that first day in the café, they had been careful about Noah. She didn’t want him to recognise John, she didn’t want Noah to get friendly with him, “in case he takes to you,” she’d said, and she couldn’t have that. She couldn’t have Noah mentioning anything to his father about the nice man they met on holiday, Mummy’s new friend.
John, eyes closed, head down, heard them arriving back on the beach before he saw them. Noah was chatting away at the top of his voice, thrilled about something, so John sneaked a look, intrigued. Noah was pulling an inflatable dinghy behind him, bouncing it along the sand by a rope. He’d been asking his mother for days for a blow-up toy, nagging, and this their last day on the beach was the day she chose to indulge him. Any inflatable toy would have done, but she chose the yellow and red dinghy, using her charm to persuade the man in the shop to empty his lungs and blow it up. She didn’t have the puff, she’d said and smiled. She’d used up so much of her “puff” the night before.
The dinghy was a gift for Charlotte as much as Noah. It would distract her son, she hoped, keep him entertained so she could relax with her book, with her thoughts. Noah wasn’t very good at amusing himself, but this red and yellow plastic boat seemed to do the trick. For the first time in the holiday, he seemed happy in his own company, lost in his own little world. He sat in it on the sand, chatting to himself, and his mother stretched out on her front and turned her head to face her lover. John mirrored her, turning his head to her, their eyes locking. There were people between them, but they didn’t notice them, so absorbed were they in studying each other. She devoured him and he her. Her red bikini, only just covering the parts of her body he had come to know so well. He could visualise every part without even trying. It was as if she lay there naked. Her breasts, her buttocks, her pubic bone. He imagined her smell too, from where he lay, and his erection pressed into the sand.
He was desperate to touch her, desperate to slide under her and into her. And she knew that, she could see it on his face, in his eyes, and she turned on her side, her breasts moving inside her bikini, pushing against her arm as she leant on it, and she parted her lips and smiled. Then she reached for her book and pretended to read, but really she was posing for him, her lover. Teasing him.
Her arm must have ached after a while, and she sat up. She was restless, bored. She looked at her son, but he was happy, he didn’t need her to entertain him now he was captain of his own ship. She looked up and caught the eye of the mother of the family next to her. Her children were older, adolescents. Charlotte had noticed her smiling at Noah and now Charlotte smiled at her.
“Do you speak English?” she asked.
The woman shrugged and said, “A little.” Then Charlotte mimed a charade of the woman watching Noah while she went to the loo. The mother of the two adolescents was all too pleased to keep an eye on the sweet little English boy. Charlotte was so grateful, she gave the woman her best smile and leaned over to Noah and told him she would be gone for only a moment. She needed the loo. She worried he might need it too, or make a fuss about her going, but he didn’t. He was as good as gold. He didn’t even watch as she slipped on her sandals, thin-strapped silver, flat, a thong between her elegant toes, and walked to the toilets. John was watching though. He watched her as she walked towards the toilets at the back of the beach, her hips swaying. He wanted to follow, but he had to wait, make himself decent, so he focused on a leathery-skinned woman, topless, buttocks withering from her thong, until his erection subsided.