The Swimming Pool Read Free Page B

come.
    I
remember exactly how I felt as we strolled home from the lido that day, a restless blend of exhilaration and frustration that struck me as overdue, even inevitable. I remember thinking how effortlessly I could predict the unfolding of the day and how it might be more interesting if, for once, I could not. Molly would arrive back from tennis and hole up in her room – she had the larger of the two bedrooms: we’d recently swapped after she’d accused us of never using the superior square footage while conscious, which was more or less true – or at the kitchen table where the laptop and other electronic devices lived. (None was allowed in her bedroom, a child internet-safety rule and school recommendation we obeyed religiously.) Later, she’d hang out with a local friend, probably at the friend’s since that was more likely to be a house with a garden, siblings and pets, amenities we couldn’t offer.
    Meanwhile, Ed had year-ten exam papers to mark, and I, having risen early to take care of next week’s lessons preparation, thought I might steal a march on the laundry (racy stuff). Later, I would pay a call on our upstairs neighbour Sarah, whose recovery from hip-replacement surgery was proving slower than hoped. Ed and I often ran errands for her or popped in for a cup of tea. Homework and chores being duly completed, we would then slide pizzas into the oven (nutritionally supplemented with broccoli spears or sliced peppers) and gather as a three to watch TV or a film. Ed and I would share a bottle of red and Molly
would have a fizzy drink of her choice. It was that kind of life: casual on the surface but orderly, strictly managed. Rules were in force, standards upheld.
    ‘Is it me or does it feel very small in here today?’ I said, as I plucked back the curtains to expose the very edges of the windowpanes. Our flat, on the first floor of a 1980s block in a quiet lane off the high street, was north-facing and, though it was bright outside, the light in the living room was indirect and dreary. Even our furniture felt wintry: the indestructible Indonesian wood that had been in vogue twenty years ago and never replaced (a victim of its own success); the brown leather sofa that had looked so stylish in the store but leached the light like a plug hole sucked bathwater; the glass vases that held fresh flowers far less frequently than had originally been intended.
    ‘It
is
small,’ Ed said, ‘but there are plenty of migrants who’d consider it palatial.’
    I’d noticed before that this was a difference between us – he always compared down, I up – but today it felt defining. It felt problematic.
    The flat had been ours long enough for us to feel as if we owned it, though it was in fact a housing association sub-let, the reason we could continue to afford to live in a suburb like Elm Hill since an upgrade of the overland line had caused both house prices and private rents to rocket. These days, when people remarked on how the place must have tripled in value since we’d bought it, I simply nodded, weary of explaining again our tragic missteps in the London
property dance. At the beginning, we’d saved and sacrificed like normal couples, had been mere months from having the deposit for the modest terrace of our ambitions, when all at once prices had begun to race out of reach. It was no more than a fever, we told each other: best to keep our cool and wait it out. By now, of course, the deposit that might once have bought a terrace was barely sufficient for a one-bed. We’d still look at the property websites sometimes, watch the numbers rise and rise. It was like hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, we would say.
    But we were not the only ones in this situation, and if you were in the mood to count your blessings you could find plenty of them. There was the relatively modest rent, of course, which had saved us thousands of pounds over the years; the park was a ten-minute stroll away; Molly took the bus