Summer Loving by Wendy Clarke

I wanted to find the independent girl I once was. Instead, I found you . . .

ILET myself into the house and drop my rucksack on to the floor. It’s getting dark outside and the house looks different, as though it belongs to someone else.

“Welcome home, Livy,” I say under my breath.

There is no-one else to say it.

Everything is just as I left it before I went away: my slippers by the door; the newspaper on the arm of the chair, open at the television page.

The plate and mug I used for breakfast before I drove to the ferry port sit upturned on the drainer, waiting to be put away.

It’s too quiet. I want to be back on the beach, the waves teasing my bare feet and the sun bringing out the freckles on my arms.

I want to be back in the little Breton gîte with the green shutters and the tall cypress tree in the back garden.

Most of all, though, I want one last evening with you, lying on a rug beneath the stars, listening to the murmur of the sea and feeling your fingers entwined with mine.

“I don’t want this to end,” you said, but I didn’t believe you.

Walking to the window, I part the net curtains. Beside the zebra crossing, the yellow orb of the belisha beacon reminds me of the moon that looked down on us as we walked hand in hand by the water’s edge last night.

I was under no illusion that the gentle pressure of your arm across my shoulder, or the feel of your lips against my hair, meant anything more than the end of something beautiful.

My cat, Jessie, jumps on to the window-sill and rubs her head against my arm.

“Hello, you,” I say. “How have you been?”

Before I drop the curtain, the last thing I see is the neon sign of the fast food outlet across the road, shouting its invitation to buy fish and chips.

Could it only have been this morning we were sitting outside the Café de Flore?

We dipped croissants into our coffee and tried to speak to each other in French, laughing when we got it wrong.

I let you think I didn’t care that I was leaving.

“Why would I do anything else, Jessie?” I murmur, stroking her thick fur. “We both knew it was just a holiday romance. After all, it’s not as if I’m a teenager any more.”

I pick Jessie up and carry her over to the settee. As I sit down, I see my rucksack in the hallway.

I should unpack, but I know that once the clothes are washed and put away, it will be a signal to go back to my old life – the one without you in it.

Instead, I kick off my shoes and, as I do, I notice a shadow of sand on the carpet.

I brush it with my bare foot, the varnish on my nails as pale and pearlescent as the shells we collected from the shoreline.

As I look at them, the yellow grains begin to blur and my eyes fill with tears, and I realise this is because these specks are all I have of you.

The cat gazes at me reproachfully.

“Don’t look at me like that, Jessie. I didn’t give him my number because I knew he wouldn’t want it.

“By next week he will be in a different country, his eye on another girl, and I’ll be just a memory.”

I think of your unruly, sun-bleached hair and the lines at the corners of your eyes that hint at years of laughter.

You told me you’d taken a sabbatical from your job to travel around Europe.

You’d missed out on that when you were younger, going straight from school into work.

Now, though, with money in the bank, the time was right.

“It must have been right,” you said as you took out a penknife and whittled a piece of driftwood into the wings of a seagull. “Because you were here, too. I can hardly believe it.”

They were just platitudes though, easy to say to someone you were never going to see again.

So I made it easy for you. Said that we were both adults and could remember our week together for what it was – a summer romance.

And when you said we could meet when you got back to England, I told you no. Your smile faltered a little as I said it.

The Cote d’amour had sounded so romantic. Not that I was looking for love, after having just come out of a 10-year marriage.

I just wanted to prove that it was possible to holiday on my own and not be lonely.

To find the independent girl I once was, the one who backpacked across Australia without a second thought.

****

The room is almost in darkness now. I should go upstairs and get some sleep after my long drive, but instead I sit and wonder what you are doing.

Whether, without me there, you’ll still collect the secrets that the waves wash up on the beach and watch the moon shimmer on the water.

Or whether you’ll have left.

I miss you. There, I’ve said it. I miss the warmth of your hand and the touch of your lips.

I wish now I’d given you my number or my e-mail. I wish I hadn’t judged you.

I shiver. The house feels different, too. Colder.

Without switching on the light, I squeeze a

pouch of food into a bowl for Jessie, then pick up my rucksack and take it up to my room.

The bag is old and worn in places and is the same one I used when I was a teenager.

I could have taken a case to France, but I had liked the link it gave me to the carefree girl I once was.

As I unzip the outside pocket to find my washbag, instead of the soft material I’ve been expecting I touch something hard.

Reaching further inside, my fingers curl around the object, and when I pull it out I realise I am holding the twisted bleached wings of a seagull.

For a moment, I am sitting once more on the pale sand watching the muscles of your arm flex as you carve the driftwood. For a moment, I am happy again.

I run a finger along the wave-smoothed wood. You must have put the seagull in my rucksack when I was ordering the coffee this morning at the Café de Flore.

My heart clenches at the thought that I’ll never see you again and, all of a sudden, I realise why the house seemed different when I walked in, as though belonging to someone else.

It’s because it belonged to the person I was before I met you.

I put the seagull on the bedside table where it will be the first thing I see when I wake, and as I do, I notice amongst the knife-cut feathers other markings.

When I look closer, I see they are numbers, and that is when I understand. You never wanted me to leave.

My phone is next to me and I punch the numbers into it before I can change my mind.

You answer straight away and, as I hear your voice, the house becomes mine again.

“I hoped you’d ring,” you say. n