Summerwater Sarah Moss (microsoft ebook reader txt) 📖

both children, which is an efficient use of space and/or a recipe for fights. If you really pay attention, you can build a farm on which Izzie can take the cows in for milking or – the new favourite – borrow the wolf from the zoo to run amok while Pat presses the buttons that make the brown cows moo in spectral tones. She’d thought they might see real Highland cows this week, maybe standing in the water the way they do in all those postcards and jigsaw puzzles, but if there are any they have sensibly been inside all week. Izzie, she says, shall we build a farm? She carries Pat over to the toybox and kneels down, tries not to let herself think that all they’ve achieved by spending so much money to be away from home for two weeks is to deprive themselves of the usual resources for passing the time: resources such as the swimming pool, which is hellish while you’re doing it but worth it afterwards when the kids are exhausted and most of the day has gone by the time you’ve reached it on the bus with the buggy and got both of them and yourself changed and put things in lockers and let Izzie have the key pinned on her costume and taken her to pee and inflated all the armbands and helped both of them into the water and played at mummy and baby seals or water pixies or whatever and praised Izzie’s doggy-paddle and applauded when Pat propels himself half a metre and remembered how you used to swim miles, up and down, tumble turns as you’d learnt at school, twice a week before work, just silent swimming with other silent swimmers, and lifted them both out of the water which is tricky, like that puzzle with the chicken and the fox in the boat, and gone back to the changing room and through the shower and put them into dry clothes and then sorted yourself, double quick, don’t really bother drying because it’s while you’re vulnerable without your knickers or your glasses that one of them’s going to go drown itself, and then persuaded or wrestled Pat back into the pushchair and swept the area for toys and stray hairbands and flaccid armbands and walked back towards the bus, both children now whiney, needing biscuits you packed earlier and patience and tact while you pray that there isn’t already a buggy on the bus, kept them occupied while you waited, nursery rhymes and good cheer, and more on the bus, singing very quietly the wheels on the bus go round and round, lurching through the same old streets, round and round, round and round. And here, she thinks, setting out the plastic fences, we must make our own fun. She must make their own fun.

Claire, says Jon, Claire, what if I take them out for a bit, he might sleep in the pushchair and if he doesn’t at least it’s some fresh air and a change of scene, and Izzie’s got her boots and puddle suit. She looks up at him. It’s pouring, she says. He shrugs. We’ve got coats. They can jump in the bath when we get back. It couldn’t be for long, anyway, but you’d like an hour to yourself, wouldn’t you? Have your own bath. Worse come to the worst I can take them to the pub for juice, it’s not the end of the world. No, she says, no, I know, but it’s meant to be a holiday for you too. Jon smiles at Izzie, who beams back. It is a holiday for me, he says, I don’t see much of them, during term. What do you say, Iz, shall we go jump in puddles? You can even paddle a bit, in your wellies. Yay, says Izzie, raising her arms, yay paddling. Pat, Claire knows, won’t like it, doesn’t have wellies, can’t balance on the stony beach, he’ll want out of the pushchair and then Jon will need two hands for him and two more to be able to catch Izzie or rescue her if she falls, but it’s not as if she hasn’t dealt with these things often enough this last year and Jon is, after all, a teacher, albeit teenagers not toddlers, has more training than she does in doing stuff with kids. I could get this place properly clean, she thinks, I could, indeed, have a bath, maybe we could have a nice dinner after the kids are in bed, or if not exactly nice at least different from theirs, didn’t I see a candle in that cupboard for all there are the signs about open flames and fire risk? A bath, she thinks, and later a candlelit dinner, and no marking for Jon to do, almost like a real holiday. We could talk, about something or other, not the children, and then maybe later— You sure, she says, and Jon says, yes, of course I’m sure, it’s an hour, babe, have a nap or a bath or paint your toenails, whatever you want. Go to the pub for the wifi, if you like. Have a drink. He grins. Have a cocktail with a sparkler in it.

She used to like cocktails, once, that woman in the dry-clean-only jackets and the high heels. She used to redo her make-up in the office loos and go straight on to a bar. Sometimes, on Fridays, several bars.

Come on, Izzie, Jon says, see if you can put on your puddle suit and wellies before I get Pat into the pushchair.

There’s a flurry of boots and waterproofs, a fresh nappy for Pat, a pot of breadsticks in case he needs distraction in the pushchair, Jon’s implausibly large waterproof trousers, a tussle with Izzie who wants to take her purple umbrella and is adamant that she doesn’t need to pee until she changes her mind after the puddle suit is zipped up, and then they are gone.

She closes