Cleo

We carried our bags inside, where the familiar combination of sea grass and burnt driftwood tweaked my nostrils. I paused at a noticeboard covered with family photos. Wholesome, smiling faces celebrating Christmas at the lake. Every one of Philip’s family was handsome and tanned, with teeth so white they surely glowed in the dark. Apparently, there were no fat, scruffy, gay, dark-skinned or emotionally challenged people in their circle. Going by the photos, they were also all Olympic champions. Waterskiing, tennis, snow skiing, fishing were activities I’d never had the time or money, let alone the muscular coordination, to learn as a teenage mum.

Young women featured in the photos, too. Sleek, pretty bikini-clad girls, who were probably studying law or dentistry. So these must be the ticks-in-the-right-boxes girls, I thought. The type Philip and his two brothers were expected to marry. And why not? Every one of the smiling young women was prime breeding stock. But when I asked about them, Philip dismissed them as boring.

“Please use only a small piece of toilet paper,” instructed a notice in the loo. I wasn’t sure the kids and I could qualify as small toilet paper people.

“How about a swim?” Philip called to Rob.

“It’s raining.”

“I could help you get out the kayak if you like.” The man was nothing if not persistent.

“Too cold.”

“Bunks! It’s got bunks!” Lydia called. I went into the bunk room, where Rob was roosting inside his sleeping bag on an upper bunk. Lydia bounced up and down on the lower bunk’s mattress, circling her chubby arms in the air.

The lake stretched out like a wrinkled sheet of tinfoil. Drops of condensation raced down the inside of windows. Philip crouched over the fireplace and crunched newspapers into balls. After a few false starts the kindling flared and the room crackled to life. Cleo pounced on a spider in the woodpile and munched on its legs with the thoughtful appreciation of a connoisseur, before taking up her usual position in front of the flames. Gazing up at me through half-closed eyes she yawned and seemed to say, This is how it’s meant to be. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.

“Back in a minute,” Philip said.

Gathering Lydia onto my lap to read her favorite story about the elephant and the bad baby, I surreptitiously wiped her fingers. Even though the cottage exuded rustic simplicity it obviously hadn’t been tainted by preschool fingers for decades. I’d hate us to be accused of leaving sticky fingerprints on the furniture.

Philip tapped on the window and beckoned us outside. The rain had eased. I slid Lydia into her gumboots. She scooped Cleo up and carried her upside down (a position Cleo had become nonchalant about since Lydia learned to walk). We opened the flyscreen to a gift more magnificent than a room full of diamonds: Philip had latched a rope around one of the higher branches of the silver birch and threaded an old tire through it.

“Wow! A tree swing!” cried Lydia.

She spent the rest of the day begging to be pushed on the swing—lying on her tummy with her legs flying out the back; sitting with her legs forward through the center of the tire; standing inside the rim and clinging to the rope. I’d never seen a man demonstrate so much patience with a child who wasn’t his own. Still, something held me back. Even if this wonderful man was everything he seemed, with a soul deeper than the lake itself, the prospect of encompassing all three of us and a cat was surely too much for him.

As night enveloped the cottage, the rain eased enough for Philip to grill sausages on a brick barbecue nestled into a hedge. It was too wet for us to eat outside, so I set the Formica table. We shared the meal under the inquisitive glare of a lightbulb.

“How would you like to go for a bike ride tomorrow?” Philip asked Rob. “There are some great tracks up in the hills.”

“No.”

“We could hit a tennis ball around…”

Rob studied the tomato sauce on his plate. An experienced parent, worn by countless battles of will, would stop at this inter-section, turn back and opt for a change of subject. I was hoping for all our sakes that Philip would do so now.

“How about taking the kayak out in the morning? I’ll put the life jacket out for you.”

“It’s all very well for you!” Rob exploded at Philip. “You didn’t see your brother killed on the road!”

The teenager scraped back his chair and stomped off to the bunk room, leaving us in a bubble of stunned silence at the table.