Swimming Home by Deborah Levy Read Free Book Online

them to contradict her. The truth was her husband had the final word because he wrote words and then he put full stops at the end of them. She knew this, but what did his wife know?
    Kitty leapt out of the water and walked to the edge of the pool, picking bay leaves off a small tree that grew in a pot by the shallow end. Isabel got out too and sat on the edge of a white recliner. The journalist wife was lighting a cigarette absent-mindedly, as if she was thinking about something more important than what was happening now. She must have seen the battered A4 envelope Kitty had left propped against the bedroom door.
     
     
    Swimming Home
    by
    Kitty Finch
     
     
    She did not tell Isabel that she was feeling hot and her vision was blurred. Her skin was itching and she thought her tongue might be swollen too. Nor did she tell her about the spectral boy who had walked out of the wall to greet her when she woke up. He had stolen some of her plants, because when he walked back into the wall he had a bundle of them in his arms. She thought he might be searching for ways to die. The words she heard him say were words she heard in her head and not with her ears. He was waving as if to greet her, but now she thought he might have been saying goodbye.
     
     
    ‘So did you come here because you’re a fan of Jozef’s poetry?’
    Kitty chewed slowly on a silver bay leaf until she could mask the anxiety in her voice. ‘I suppose I am a fan. Though I don’t see it like that.’
    She paused, waiting for her voice to steady itself. ‘Joe’s poetry is more like a conversation with me than anything else. He writes about things I often think. We are in nerve contact.’
    She turned round to see Isabel stub out her cigarette with her bare foot. Kitty gasped.
    ‘Didn’t that hurt?’
    If Isabel had burned herself she seemed not to care.
    ‘What does “nerve contact” with Jozef mean?’
    ‘It doesn’t mean anything. I just thought of it now.’
    Kitty noticed how Isabel Jacobs always used her husband’s full name. As if she alone owned the part of him that was secret and mysterious, the part of him that wrote things. How could she tell her that she and Joe were transmitting messages to each other when she didn’t understand it herself? This was something she would discuss with Jurgen. He would explain that she had extra senses because she was a poet and then he would say words to her in German that she knew were love words. It was always tricky to get away from him at night, so she was grateful to have the spare room to escape to. Yes, in a way she was grateful to Isabel for saving her from Jurgen’s love.
    ‘What’s your poem about?’
    Kitty studied the bay leaf, her fingertips tracing the outline of its silver veins.
    ‘I can’t remember.’
    Isabel laughed. This was offensive. Kitty was offended. No longer grateful, she glared at the woman who had offered her the spare room but had not bothered to provide sheets or pillows or notice the windows did not open and the floor was covered in mouse droppings. The journalist was asking her questions as if she was about to file her copy. She was curvaceous and tall, her black hair dark as an Indian woman’s, and she wore a gold band on her left hand to show she was married. Her fingers were long and smooth, like she’d never scrubbed a pot clean or poked her fingers into the earth. She had not even bothered to offer her guest a few clothes hangers. Nina had had to bring down an armful from her own cupboard. Nevertheless Isabel Jacobs was still asking questions, because she wanted to be in control.
    ‘You said you know the owner of this villa?’
    ‘Yeah. She’s a shrink called Rita Dwighter and she’s a friend of my mother’s. She’s got houses everywhere. In fact she’s got twelve properties in London alone worth about two million each. She probably asks her patients if they’ve got a mortgage.’
    Isabel laughed and this time Kitty laughed too.
    ‘Thank you for letting