That Summer: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

petticoats, she lifted her face to the watery spring sun, breathing deep of the familiar salt-stained air. Soon she would have a new home, a new garden, a new family.
    “Come with us to Herne Hill,” she said, holding out her hands to her father, “and you’ll see how happy we can be.”
    Herne Hill, 2009
    Herne Hill, it turned out, was indeed a hill. A very steep one.
    Julia lugged her bags from the train station, sweating in the June heat. Too much to hope that Aunt Regina’s house would have air-conditioning? Probably. The wheels of Julia’s suitcase scraped against the pavement, and the strap of her computer bag dug into her shoulder. She could feel the sweat creeping down under her shirt, long sleeved, button-down. Heat rose off the red and black graveled road in waves, adding the stench of tar to the strong scent of overripe foliage.
    For some reason, she had assumed England would be chilly.
    To be fair, she hadn’t really given it much thought. She had deliberately avoided thinking of it as she went through the motions of subletting her apartment, packing her things, meeting with various friends for good-bye drinks before she left for the summer. Just for the summer. That was what she kept repeating to everyone. Her apartment was rented out through the middle of September.
    It was, when she looked back on it, a little unsettling how easy it had been to pack up her life in New York, her entire existence post-college reduced to a suitcase and a sublet. Her work friendships had disappeared along with her job; sure, they’d all pledged to stay in touch, to meet for drinks, but they had quickly scattered, absorbed into their own private lives without the physical confines of the office to hold them together. Her apartment had been easy enough to clear out for a tenant. Books and clothes and mementos had been bundled into boxes at the back of the bedroom closet. The books mostly dated back to college; ditto for the pictures.
    Shouldn’t she have something more than that to show for the past eight years?
    The one person she would really miss in the city was Lexie, her college roommate—but even there they saw each other, what? Once every month? If that. Lexie was a fifth-year associate at a firm, with two children under the age of four. Somehow, she’d managed to do what Julia hadn’t. Lexie had built something real and solid for herself. Julia was beginning to suspect that everything with which she’d surrounded herself had been nothing more than a cardboard stage set, convincing until you gave it a shove and watched it all topple over.
    She didn’t really miss her job—financial analysis had never really floated her boat—but she missed what it represented.
    Okay. That was enough of that. Julia gave her suitcase a wrench as it caught in a crack. That was jet lag talking. Or maybe the heat. She’d been in transit since ten o’clock New York time last night, which made this the technical equivalent of an all-nighter, thanks to a seatmate with particularly sharp elbows and strong perfume. Julia had dozed a little on the plane, but they had been strange, unsettling dreams. She was following her mother through a garden, but the garden was tangled and overgrown, thorns ripping at Julia’s clothes, catching in her hair. Somewhere, through the foliage, she could see the gleam of water; somewhere, just past the thicket, dragonflies skimmed over the surface of the lake and butterflies danced on brilliantly yellow blossoms; somewhere, her mother had a picnic laid out for her by a gazebo gleaming with white paint; Julia could hear her laughing, somewhere, just out of reach, but the thicket held her fast.
    She had woken with a pounding headache and the cloying scent of flowers in her nostrils, thinking very nasty thoughts about people without the common courtesy to go light on the perfume before a seven-hour flight. It was no wonder she had dreamed of gardens. Of gardens and of thorns.
    Julia paused, swiping the sweat