In the Summertime Read Online Free PDF Page B

she’d half dreaded coming downstairs and seeing it sitting on the table when she’d walked in. Back at Clare’s flat, overlooking the Thames in Richmond, the urn had been kept on the table beside her bed. Amy, sounding nervous all the way from south-west France, had asked Miranda on the phone if she thought Clare actually slept with it, ‘like, under the duvet ?’ Miranda had told her not to be so ridiculous but, all the same, she’d slightly wondered too. Harriet had seen it one day when she and the footballer were on a weekend trip down to an away match and she and Miranda had gone toClare’s with food supplies that Miranda didn’t quite trust Clare to bother getting for herself.
    ‘Ugh! It’s completely gross !’ Harriet had said in her usual tactless way, shuddering over-dramatically.
    ‘It’s not gross, that’s your father,’ Clare had said simply, very quietly.
    Harriet had, for once, waited till she was out of range of Clare to mutter, ‘It’s just dust, not Dad,’ but there’d been tears in her eyes. Not so tough, that time.
    Perhaps, Miranda considered, Clare had taken the urn up to her room. She hoped not, because if she had it could be a sign that she wasn’t after all ready to say goodbye to Jack’s remains and they’d end up taking his ashes all the way back to London again at the end of the three weeks. Although she didn’t – and never could – take Harriet’s harsh line, it would surely be the right thing to do to dispose of the ashes exactly the way Jack had asked. That could be an emotional blackmail point, should the need arise.
    ‘I don’t mind what we do today, Silva, but I would like to look around the village a bit, see what’s changed. We could see if they still let visitors be holiday members at the sailing club, so you and Bo would have something to do. Back in the old days we used to have loads of good times down there. You might meet some people to hang out with.’
    ‘Uh? “Hang out”? Who says like, hang out ?’ Silva gaveher the utter-incomprehension look, though of course she knew perfectly well what it meant.
    ‘OK, OK, I give up. It’ll be just you and Bo on your own, then. Exclusively in each other’s company for three whole weeks. I’m sure you’ll manage to have a perfectly brilliant time, amusing yourselves, just the two of you. Together.’
    Ha, thought Miranda, seeing Silva’s eyes narrow – a clear sign that some cog-wheels were clunking around in her thought processes. That worked.
    There was such a lot of garden here to deal with, Clare thought as she took out a few well-grown stinkhorn weeds along the hydrangea-lined path on her way back from swimming in the cove. She remembered how Liz and Eliot’s gardener had always seemed to be around, pushing a wheelbarrow silently across the grass past where the rest of them were sitting on the terrace or by the pool with drinks. What a privileged and idle bunch they must have seemed to him, all the tedious domestic tidying being done for them while they lazed and sailed and were forever going out to eat at prices that would have kept the gardener’s family for a week. She stopped now by the pool and pulled fronds of goosegrass out from between the clumps of agapanthus. She didn’t have to, but when you saw something that needed doing there was no point in leaving it. Goosegrass was a bugger for strangling plants, clinging to them stickilyand dragging them down till they were covered over and smothered. She couldn’t bear to leave them to struggle when the stuff unravelled so easily with only a light tug. With a garden this size you’d need either nothing else to do with your time or a knowledgeable gardener – and more than just once a week for an hour or two. Outdoor space was only a good thing so long as it was manageable. One of her upstairs neighbours, after Jack had died, had said to her, ‘Well, at least you have your garden. It’ll be a comfort.’ What a stupid thing to say, she’d