Her Last Summer by Nina Manning

Author:Nina Manning [Manning, Nina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books
Published: 2024-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

17

NOW

I put one toe in the pool and took a deep breath. The water was beautifully warm and inviting. No public pool facilities here. It felt like an indulgence I was ready to accept. I had swum several lengths back in Camden, and although it was a different pool, a different location, I was sure I could do this. The Smith family had kept me distracted with their stories, I was sure if I tried to summon them, they would be here for me now.

I was ready to lower myself in when my phone rang. Anticipating a call from Sylvie checking in on me, I felt a wave of calmness wash over me. I was protected out here – not just by those that were here but by my team back home.

I looked at who was calling. This time it wouldn’t just be for a chat and catch up and to air her stresses at me.

I allowed myself to reach my guilt default setting as I answered the call.

‘Hi, Mum.’

There were no words, just tears. I listened to her cry for a few seconds. I thought about what I always did, my life so far removed from the life I’d had as a child. I was about to shoot a film with one of the most well-known actors right now and it should have been the first thing we discussed. Like mother and daughter. But she wouldn’t mention anything. She would skirt around it, even when I made reference to elements of my life which incorporated my work. It had always been the way since I landed my first role. She had brushed over it as though I had told her I had taken a job as a filing assistant. All it did was bring back memories of the way she could manage to pretend things weren’t happening when we were young. Instead, she found her answer in the bottom of a margarita glass.

I thought about the mother I knew when I was a child. I’d stopped knowing her when I was almost seventeen – when I left Corsica, and she didn’t. I thought how angry that had made me at the time, how desperately I wanted her to come back to England and be with us. To be with me. I had needed her but she had chosen one child over two. And not just one child, but one missing child. But even then, I knew it was more than just about Franny going missing. It was my mother’s way of escaping. She had always wanted out. I knew that she had tried to be a mother, a wife, but it never came naturally to her.

Franny disappearing was her get-out clause in a way. Finally, she was free of the shackles of domesticity. She didn’t need to pretend any more. Before Franny went, when it was it still the five of us, I had heard her cry many times behind the door of her bedroom, always when my father was away, her never thinking or perhaps believing that we might be able to hear her.

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