Peter Lovesey - The House Sitter

Haley had found two other girls about her own age and was helping them dig a canal. She didn’t want the ice cream, or, more likely, didn’t want to eat it in front of her new-found friends.

“Shall I eat it for you?” Olga offered.

Haley nodded.

“You remember where we are? Near the lifeguards. The flags. Remember?”

Another nod.

Olga turned and made her way back more slowly, licking the sides of the icecream. The beach looked entirely different from this direction. The people, too, when you saw them feet first. She was surprised at where she’d left the flip-flops, much further to the right than she thought. She set a course for the flags above the lifeguard post, beginning to doubt if Haley would have the sense to do the same. Before spotting Mike, she passed the woman with the copper hair, now down to a white two-piece and spreading sunscreen on her middle. Their eyes met briefly. She had a nice smile.

“She all right?” Mike asked, propping himself on an elbow.

“She’s with some other girls, digging in the sand. Can you see?”

“What’s she wearing?”

Typical Mike, she thought. “Navy and white.”

“Right. I can see.” He lay back on the sand and closed his eyes.

Typical Mike.

Olga lifted the lid off her less-than-hot coffee, still watching her child. Bits of conversation were going on all around. A beach may be restful, but it’s not quiet.

“I didn’t fancy him,” one of the teenagers was saying. “He’s scary.”

“What do you mean-‘scary’? Just ’cos he didn’t have nothing to say to you. That’s not scary.”

“His eyes are. The way he looked at me, like he was stripping off my clothes.”

“You wish!”

The giggles broke out again.

Just ahead, a man in a black T-shirt crossed Olga’s line of vision. She could see his top half above the windbreak. He was talking to the copper-haired woman. From the tone of the conversation, they knew each other and he was laying on the charm and not getting the response he was trying for. To Olga’s eye, he wasn’t an out-and-out no-no. In fact, he was rather good-looking, broad-shouldered, with black, curly hair and the cast of face she thought of as rugged-that is to say strong-featured, with a confident personality defined by the creases a man in his thirties begins to acquire. He was saying something about coincidence. His voice was more audible than hers. “How does it go? Of all the gin-joints in all the towns in all the world… For that read ‘beaches’. What are you doing here?” She made some reply (probably “What does it look as if I’m doing?”) and he said, “OK, that was pretty dumb. It’s a nice surprise, that’s all. Can I get you an ice cream or something? Cold drink?” Obviously not, because he then said, “Later, then? You don’t mind if I join you for a bit?” Then: “Fair enough. Suit yourself. If that’s how you feel, I’ll leave you to it. I just thought-oh, what the fuck!” And he moved off, the smile gone, and didn’t look back.

Olga glanced towards Mike to see if he’d been listening. His eyes were still closed.

In another twenty minutes the tide was going out amazingly fast across the flats, transforming the scene. Haley hadn’t moved, but she was no longer at the place where the waves broke. She was at the edge of a broad, shallow pool of still water. A bar of sand had surfaced further out, and the waves were lapping at the far side. A child could easily become disorientated. The other girls were no longer with her.

“I think I’ll go and talk to her,” Olga said.

Mike murmured something about fussing.

She made the journey down the beach again, marvelling at the huge expanse now opened up. Men on skateboards were skimming along the wet sand, powered by kites as big as mattresses. A game of beach cricket was under way.

Haley looked up this time and waved.

After admiring the excavations in the sand, Olga asked if she was ready for some lunch. Hand in hand they started back. “I like it here,” Haley said.

“Isn’t it great? But it’s lunchtime. Now let’s see if we can find our way back to Daddy.”

“There.” The child pointed in precisely the right direction. Kids have more sense than adults think.

“Race you, then.” Enjoying the sight of her loose-limbed, agile child, she let Haley dash ahead and then jogged after her to make it seem like pursuit, until the risk of tripping over a sunbather forced her to slow to a walk. Already Haley had reached Mike and given him a shock by throwing herself on his back. Laughing, Olga picked her way through the maze of legs, towels and beachbags. The copper-haired woman, comfortable behind her windbreak, looked over her sunglasses, smiled again and spoke. “You’re a poor second.”

“Pathetic is a better word.”

“Wish I had her energy.”

“Me, too.”

Olga flopped down beside Mike and reached for the lunch bag.

Mike revived with some food inside him and actually began a conversation. “Amazing, really, all this free entertainment. Years ago, people would queue up and buy tickets to see a tattooed man. One walked by just now with hardly a patch of plain skin left on him. No one paid him any attention.”

“I wouldn’t call that entertainment.”

“Then there are the topless girls.”

“I haven’t noticed any,” Olga said.

“Over there, on the inflatable sunbeds.”

She took a quick glance. “Girls? They look middle-aged to me. Trust you to spot them.”

“I was talking about the way things have changed. Your dad and mine would have paid good money to watch a strip show.”

“Not mine.”

“Don’t you believe it. He was no saint, your old man. I could tell you things he said to me after a few beers. ”

Olga said, “Let’s talk about something else. When are we going for a swim?”

“Not now, for Christ’s sake. It’s miles out.”

Unexpectedly, Haley asked, “Can I bury you, Daddy?”

“What?”

“I want to bury you in the sand.”

“No chance.”

“Please. The girls I was playing with buried their daddy and it was really funny. All you could see was his head.”

“No, thanks.”

“You can bury me, then.”

“I’m not going to bury anyone.”

“ Please .”

“Later, maybe.”

Haley sighed and went down the beach to look for her new friends. Olga, reassured that the child wouldn’t get lost, opened a paperback. Mike lit a cigarette and took a leisurely look around him to see if there was more entertainment on view.

The afternoon passed agreeably, more agreeably for Olga when the topless women turned on their fronts.

“A bit creepy, I thought, the kid wanting to bury me,” Mike said after a long silence.

“There’s nothing creepy about it. It’s something children like to do. It’s comical, seeing someone’s head above the sand and nothing else, specially if it’s their own dad.”

“If you say so.”

“Well, you’ve got to have a sense of humour.”

“There’s enough death on a beach without having your own child wanting to bury you.”

“I don’t know what you’re on about.”

“You only have to take a walk along the shoreline. You’ll see fish half-eaten by gulls, bits of crabs, smashed shells. Nothing is growing. It’s a desert, just stones and sand.”

“Cheerful!”

“You asked.”

Olga may have slept for a while after that. She felt a prod in her back and seemed to snap out of a dream of some sort. The paperback lay closed beside her.

“Time to face it,” Mike said. “The tide’s turned.”

Olga heaved herself onto her elbows and saw what he meant. That big expanse of sand had disappeared. “Oh, my God. Where’s-”