Free Love Falls by Esther Freud Page A

swimming pool, their feet in the water, drinking cold beer, smoking Marlboro, flicking ash from their cigarettes into the roses behind.
    Lulu talked. She looked even more beautiful, if that were possible, than she had in her bikini. Her low-cut top showed up the flawless beauty of her skin, her chest and neck so smoothly gold it looked as if she had sat with a copper plate in her lap to reflect the sun. Her arms hung cool and luscious and her legs, bare from the knee down, were golden too. She talked and the others listened, aware that next year she would be gone. She was only an honorary teenager, just gracing them with her company, playing with the small fry before she jumped. She told them about Los Angeles, about the actors she’d met, about the film she had a part in, about the classes she’d taken and what had been said about her talent. Occasionally she brushed her hand against Kip’s leg as she stretched and flexed her body and Lara noticed with surprise that he didn’t take any of the opportunities she gave him to respond.
    Lara sat on his other side. She could feel the tension of his shoulder, the heat of his leg. Once, when Lulu momentarily leant against him, he turned and caught Lara looking, and she had to cough to cover the sound of her nervous gulp.
    ‘So Kip’ – Piers sounded earnest – ‘what are you going to do now you’re set to fail so spectacularly in your A levels?’
    Kip shifted uneasily. ‘Same as I was going to do before. Nothing.’ And he raised his eyebrows and smiled.
    ‘What about your guitar?’ May coaxed him. ‘If you keep practising?’
    ‘And what about you? What are you planning to do?’ he said accusingly.
    ‘I’m getting married, you know that.’ She looked quickly at Piers. ‘There’s lots to arrange.’
    ‘Well, maybe I’ll do that too’ – he shrugged – ‘get married.’
    Just as Lara was about to cough again, someone crept up from behind and pushed her into the pool. She flew in sideways, awkward, her mouth open in a scream, so that with a throat full of water she plunged down towards the bottom, and she couldn’t somehow find the strength to propel herself back up. She was choking, struggling, and then as if a tide was turning, she started to rise back up.
    ‘You bastard,’ she spluttered when she finally surfaced, looking along the row of grinning faces. ‘You bastard!’
    She settled on Roland, who had squeezed in between Lulu and Kip and was grinning at her even more widely than the others. She threw the stub end of her cigarette at him, the one she was still holding, and then seeing she wasn’t expected to be angry she tried to smile as she swam to the side. She climbed out and with her back to them she began to wring out her wet clothes.
    ‘I’m soaking,’ she moaned, to give herself more time, and she began to twist the water out of her shirt, which had become transparent, sticking to her body, outlining her breasts, clinging to the dark points of her nipples.
    She stood there, mortified, refusing to give Roland the pleasure of seeing her turn round, until eventually May took pity and brought over a towel.
    ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, and seeing that she was shivering she offered to lend her some dry clothes.
    ‘Thank you.’ Lara tried to keep the tremble from her voice, and with the towel held around her she followed May into the house.
    ‘Why did he do that?’ she asked pointlessly, and May laughed.
    ‘Oh, he’s always like that. Don’t take it personally. It’s nothing to do with you.’
    They padded with wet feet along a path lined with lavender and then up a flight of old stone steps.
    ‘This building used to be home to a family of sixteen,’ she said, and they stepped into a high-ceilinged room with several doors leading off it. May opened one on to a room filled almost entirely with a high wooden bed. ‘This is where I sleep.’
    There were two dark-wood cupboards bulging with clothes, drawers and hangers dense with