Summer With My Sister by Lucy Diamond Read Free Book Online Page B

and a fake-fur hem. Leila had burst out laughing when she’d opened it this morning; it was about as far removed from her tomboyish style as it was possible to get. Polly might well splash the cash – Clare had once looked up the price of another outfit she’d sent, to see that the dress alone had cost over three hundred pounds (think what you could buy with that in Primark!), but she wasn’t so good on the actual aunty stuff. There would be no phone call from her, no actual personal contact involved, you could bet the matching Cavalli beaded pumps on it.
    ‘Hi, Dad,’ she heard Leila say and looked over to see her daughter’s face wreathed in smiles. ‘Thanks. We’re just having the cake.’
    Clare felt a bitter-sweet ache inside. She still missed having her husband around, however much she tried to tough it out alone. On days like this, especially, she would have loved him to be there too, to share his daughter’s special celebration. It broke her heart that he could have rejected all of this to go off with bloody Denise. She picked up her cake and then put it down again. Suddenly she’d lost her appetite.
    Still, Leila was smiling. Steve had remembered to phone. That was what mattered, wasn’t it?

    Saturday began as usual with the children’s swimming lessons in Amberley. Clare had ‘history’ with Amberley Leisure Centre and could never walk into its hot, chlorine-tangy reception without a flashback to her youth. She’d been a good swimmer from the word go – it was the one and only talent she had that her brother and sister couldn’t beat her on. When you were the third and youngest child in a family, such things were important.
    She’d joined the Junior Dolphins club at Amberley, had trained and raced there four nights a week between the ages of nine and fourteen, perfecting her technique, steadily improving her personal-best times. She learned how to control her breathing, how to execute the perfect butterfly stroke, how to tumble-turn, how to dive. By the age of eleven she was representing the club in county trials, and was picked for the county squad when she was thirteen. There had been talk of special coaching, and vague, optimistic mentions of international championships, the Olympics even.
    Then Michael had died, and everything changed. She’d never swum again, apart from one single emergency, which had caused her life to swerve in a whole new direction.
    ‘Two for lessons, please,’ she said, flashing their passes as they went past the doughy-faced woman on reception who was on the phone.
    She helped Leila and Alex change and handed them over to their teacher, then wandered up to the spectator area to watch them. Leila was a confident, easy swimmer. She was fast and clean in the water, and her technique was naturally good. Her teacher, Ben, had suggested that she join the Junior Dolphins club (they still called it that, twenty years later), but so far Clare had put off making a decision. Maybe when Leila’s ten, she’d been telling herself for the last year. She‘d have to come up with a new excuse now.
    Alex wasn’t as competent as his sister in the water. He tended to panic and flail about nervously whenever he was out of his depth, legs churning, his pale, skinny body wrestling to stay afloat. Clare found herself watching him like a hawk, ready to yell out to the lifeguard that he needed help at any given moment. He was doing all right today, though, she noted thankfully.
    It was through swimming that she’d met Steve in the first place, that fateful holiday in Gran Canaria with the girls. They’d been just twenty then, her, Debbie and Maria, and it was Debbie’s first trip away from little Lydia, who was having a holiday of her own with Debbie’s parents in Bournemouth. The three mates had jetted off with their bikinis, clubbing outfits and high heels, then proceeded to large it up good and proper in the Old Town every evening, drinking sangria cocktails and dancing