The Summer Without You by Karen Swan Page B

pine wardrobe in the far left corner, with a matching chest of drawers with
heart-shaped handles and two bedside tables.
    Strictly speaking, the decor wasn’t Ro’s thing. She liked twenty shades of taupe and reindeer-hide rugs – at least, that was what she’d been planning for the sitting room
before Matt had interrupted her with his ‘pause’ – but even so, the room had warmth and a personality to it that she liked. Hump had said this was his grandfather’s house,
but she was pretty sure this room had a woman’s touch.
    Ro had slept with the windows open – more by accident than design – and she swung her legs out of bed, crossing the floor in a curious jog as every floorboard she touched creaked.
She pulled the curtains back – which rattled like cargo trains on a track – and leaned on the sill. The sky looked as bleary as she felt – pasty white with just a hint of colour
– still shrouded by a thick sea mist that wasn’t yet on the retreat; the grass on Egypt Green opposite was beaded with dewdrops and glistened like it had been threaded with crystals in
the night; small brown-tummied birds she couldn’t identify pecked at the ground for worms; a battered white pickup truck drove slowly past with a posse of Hispanic labourers wedged inside,
all wearing baseball caps, their brown arms hanging out of the cab. She watched as they hooked a left and then a right past the junction and motored towards the standalone grand building
she’d passed yesterday. Through the trees on the opposite side of the street, she could just make out the form of the vast neighbouring house – grey-cedared, white-windowed, a turquoise
pool unwrinkled by the breeze.
    Looking left and right at her own house, she saw that her room was in the middle of the row of three dormers, the other guest rooms presumably either side of hers. She vaguely wondered at what
time Bobbi and Greg were arriving and how it would be seeing Bobbi again. Things had felt so easy with Hump last night, but Bobbi was more intense, demanding. More New York. Ro yawned and
stretched. Right now, she was feeling very Barnes.
    She turned away from the window with a shiver. It was chilly at this hour and she was in just her knickers: she had been too sleepy last night even to think of bringing her bag upstairs. She
eyed yesterday’s clothes with disdain – they had dried stiff with salt, and the cargoes had tide marks on them from the seawater. Every time she looked at them she was reminded of the
horror on the beach. She had to get some fresh clothes from her bag.
    Pulling the eiderdown from the bed, Ro wrapped it around her shoulders, opened her door tentatively and peered out. The landing area was square, with the staircase rising from a void in the
centre, and was framed with balustrading all the way round. Again the floor was wooden, with a couple of lamps standing on small tables and various stippled oil paintings on the walls – all
of them seascapes, clearly worked by the same hand. It was apparent no designer had ever been let near the place, yet it had a look of substance about it, that the person who’d arranged it
last may not have known about trends, but had known their own mind.
    On the far side of the staircase, a door opposite – Hump’s room, she assumed – was closed, as was a door to the right; she vaguely recalled Hump saying his room was ensuite. To
the left, she could see through the gap, was a bathroom. Ro tiptoed across, tripping on the corner of the eiderdown as she approached and falling forwards with her arms outstretched so that the
door banged loudly against the bathroom wall.
    ‘Dammit,’ she muttered, using the facilities as quietly as she could, even putting a flannel beneath the water from the tap so that it didn’t make a noise hitting the porcelain
bowl. The last thing Hump needed was to be disturbed by his jet-lagged lodger.
    She crept down the stairs, her body hunched beneath the quilt, grimacing