Love Falls Read Online Free PDF Page B

his shoulders heavy with a sort of down, his legs comically white, and there on the back of his head, she’d never noticed it before, a distinct hollow in the thick grey of his hair.
    She shouldn’t be watching, she told herself, but the shock of seeing him, unimaginably out of his dark suit, made it impossible to look away. Where, she wondered, did he get those swimming trunks, did he get any swimming trunks at all? But these were tight, electric-blue, a pair of Speedo trunks. She was cringing. She caught herself. She was cringing at her father! She had to tear herself away, but just then he raised his arms and made a perfect dive into the pool. Lara looked back at her room. It was spare and plain. A bed, a chest of drawers, a table with a lamp. She couldn’t stay in here for ever, and so wrapping herself in the largest towel she could find she made her way downstairs.
    By the time she reached the pool Lambert was sitting, dripping, on a lounger, and before he’d had time to look up she’d dropped her towel and plunged in. The water closed around her, contracting every pore of her body, sending each tiny hair rigid with shock. Down she went, grasping with her feet for tiles, keeping herself under, the water, already warming, holding her body, easing out the kinks and aches in her bones. She opened her eyes, swam along the blue surface of the bottom, marvelled at the strange amphibious nature of her legs, and when she could hold her breath no longer she burst up to the surface, and lay with her eyes shut against the glare. She lay still as a starfish, legs and arms outstretched, and forced herself to see how long she could last. The sun beat through her eyelids, whisked over her nose and cheeks, scorched the white caps of her knees until she was forced to roll over and swim to the side.
    Lambert was still there, reading now, making occasional notes in the margins of his book. She watched him for a while and then, pushing off with her feet, she swam, thrashing back and forth across the pool in breast stroke, pausing at each side to catch her breath.
    Lambert put down his book. ‘Who taught you to swim?’
    ‘No one.’ She’d swallowed some water and had to cough for several minutes before she could go on. ‘I just learnt.’
    ‘Hmmm.’ Lambert was appraising her.
    ‘We had a lake . . .’ But she didn’t go on.
    Every year, on those rare hot Scottish days that smelt of raspberries and heather, they’d walk down the hill to the lake. It lay in a dip of land, far enough off the road to be invisible, shielded on one side by Christmas trees, surrounded on the other by fields full of rabbit droppings and mole hills. It was their lake. That’s how they thought of it, although occasionally others would join them there, farmers’ sons, and later, Buddhist families who’d come to the valley to be near to Samye Ling. They’d bring bedspreads and batches of home-made scones, hunks of cheese and slippery green apples, and they’d spend whole days ducking and splashing and daring each other to go in. But even on the hottest days the lake was still so cold it paralysed you, cut a ring of ice across your scalp, so that once you were in there was never time to do anything more graceful than beat your arms and legs in a frantic effort to keep warm.
    ‘You’re putting too much work in,’ Lambert advised, and he got up and came and sat on the side of the pool. He placed his hands together, pointed like two leaves, and then, his muscles taut, he pushed his arms away.
    Lara did the same, almost sinking as she forgot to use her legs, and when she came up she found he’d climbed into the pool beside her.
    ‘Keep your hands together, then only at the last minute turn them, and push the water away.’
    ‘Right.’ She put her hands into position and placing her nose in the water like an arrow she kicked away with her legs.
    ‘Slowly,’ Lambert called, and as she floundered he waded after her and slipped one hand under her