Penny Smith - Summer Holiday

Alex merely grinned and carried on massaging Miranda. ‘How’s that?’ he asked.

‘Me love you long time, meester,’ she responded, in a higher voice than she’d meant to use, actually feeling rather hot and bothered and trying hard not to be turned on.

Will’s Land Rover pulled up, drowning Alex’s response, but it appeared to signal the end of his ministrations and they got to work soon after.

It was a beautiful day and Miranda stood up frequently to stretch and look about her. On the canal, a shimmering drake was bothering a drab duck in an area of dark, still water. She knew she should be appalled by the huge expanse of green duckweed and algae bloom, but it was the most brilliant colour. It made the bank on the other side look positively dull.

She had stuck her hair into a large clasp at the back of her head, but red-gold curls had escaped and had glued themselves to her face by the time the call for lunch went up. ‘Phew,’ she said, as they walked back to the meeting area. ‘It’s awfully hot and sticky.’

‘Maybe you should wash it,’ said Alex, as he went past.

She snorted.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said apologetically. ‘Something a friend of mine used to say every time I said it was hot and sticky. Reflex action. Really. Sorry.’ He did look a little pink around the ears.

‘It’s fine. Honestly. Don’t worry about it. I’ve heard worse. Much worse. And I definitely could do with a freshen-up.’ She grinned. And now she was embarrassed. ‘A freshen-up.’ That was so bloody Surrey.

It was peculiar how, even at her age, she reverted to being a teenager, given half a chance and a following wind.

After lunch, they worked with fewer breaks to clear the last stretch of towpath they were dealing with that weekend. Miranda wondered whether she would do the volunteering thing again. It had been a nice idea, but apart from Alex, she didn’t like the others much. They were all a bit holier-than-thou, with bad skin and terrible hair. She smiled at that. Hers had gone mad with the combination of heat and sweat. She took off her glove and wiped her brow with the back of her hand. Her nails were filthy, even though she hadn’t done anything without gloves on. Yuk. That must be from the inside of the gloves. Someone else’s body detritus.

By five o’clock, it was all done. The team gathered gratefully in the shade of a tree – now shorn of its lower branches – and drank bottles of water. Will thanked them all for their hard work and said that anyone who wanted to see the job through to the end was welcome to come again. Everyone except Miranda intimated that they’d be doing just that.

She couldn’t decide. On the one hand, it would be a waste of the wicking shirt and the trousers if she didn’t. On the other, she might just go and get a job.

She got into the Jaguar and was sitting with her eyes closed, anticipating the drive home, when she was startled by a knock on the window. ‘Alex. You gave me a fright,’ she said, her heart beating unnecessarily fast.

‘Sorry.’ He smiled. ‘Again.’ He leant his forearm on the car roof. ‘I’m sorry for my very poor attempt at humour earlier. Can I take you for a drink to make up for it?’ He hastened on before she had a chance to speak. ‘There’s a really pretty little pub about a mile away. It’s on your way home. They do coffee. Or … erm … other things, if you don’t want a drink of an alcoholic nature?’ he ended, raising his eyebrows hopefully.

‘How could I possibly say no?’ she answered. ‘A nice glass of something sounds just the job. Only the one, mind you, since I do have to drive home.’

Alex began to explain where the pub was, but saw that she had lost him beyond turning left on to the main road. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you follow me?’

‘Much easier,’ she agreed.

It was a relief to get the air-conditioning going in the car. She tuned in to Radio 2 and jigged along to ‘Honky Tonk Woman’, singing the few words she knew and humming the rest. She was going to a pub with a dreadlocked eco-warrior. Not that he was a warrior, but it was a very sexy word redolent of a bygone age when men were men and women wandered about in long skirts applying harts-horn and experimenting with plaits.

‘Whoa, lady,’ she said aloud, running her hand along the nape of her neck and lifting her hair to get a bit of ventilation.

The verges were verdant with flowers, trees and bushes, all bursting into life. It was like a scene from a 1950s film with euphemisms for sex. Peonies exploding. Pods popping. Stamens thrusting. Miranda felt an excitement she hadn’t experienced since the very first blind date after her divorce, when she’d thought that she was going to be properly pillaged. How misplaced that had been.

The photograph of Marc – that was his name – had shown a stocky man with close-cut hair in the Russell Crowe mould, standing by a stallion with muscular nostrils and a look in its eye. She had spent about three hours getting ready – even bought new clothes and underwear to emphasise the new leaf she was turning over.

And then she had met him. She would literally have preferred to have had dinner with his horse.

His wallet had been bursting with platinum credit cards and fifty-pound notes – he had made sure she noticed them when he took out a picture of his new Labrador. But he had been an unreconstructed bore who could barely wait for her to finish a sentence before he was leaping in with long, tedious stories, all of which he started, ‘I must tell you about this funny thing that happened to me …’

Under her breath, she replied, ‘No, you don’t have to tell me and it won’t be funny.’

Her mobile phone startled her by ringing very loudly where it nestled in her crotch. She put the hands-free earphones in and answered.

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Oh, hello, Lucy. Listen, I’m driving so I might lose you if I go into an iffy patch. How are you?’

‘Fine. How are you?’

‘Feeling pretty good, actually. Everything okay, or were you after something?’ She might as well cut to the chase, since Lucy generally only phoned to lecture her about splitting up the family or how she should invest her cash.

‘Hmm. I saw Dad yesterday and he said you still had some of his books, which you said you were going to give him back. I thought I’d save you a trip by picking them up from you this week.’

Miranda bristled. She consciously kept her voice light. ‘I wonder which ones they are. He did take the couple he’d read, and the yard of books he bought at Sotheby’s to put on his office bookshelves,’ she said sweetly. ‘Sorry. You’re going to have to tell him to give me a ring and let me know what he’s talking about.’ He wouldn’t because he was a coward and that was why he had drafted in Lucy to ask her.

‘Leatherbound books, he said,’ Lucy countered, obviously having been briefed by Nigel.

‘Yes. The ones he bought by the yard, as I said. No doubt he’s finished reading them all and is desperate for the sequels,’ she said bitchily. Nigel read the Financial Times, the Telegraph and some magazine called Square Mile, which she’d once read in the bath in the absence of anything racier.

‘He says you know which books he’s talking about. Apparently you claimed they were yours, but Gran says they were definitely hers and she gave them to Dad.’

‘Well, I’ve no idea what you, he and she are talking about,’ she said waspishly.

‘Do you think you could check when you get home, though?’ asked Lucy, relentlessly.

‘Not tonight. I’m on my way to a …’ She paused, unwilling to get into a conversation about where she was going and with whom ‘… friend’s house. For dinner. I’ll be late.’

‘Oh.’ Lucy sounded put out. ‘Well, I’ll tell Dad you’ll do it in the morning, then.’