The China Garden by Kristina Olsson

Author:Kristina Olsson [Olsson, Kristina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction/General
ISBN: 9780702247149
Publisher: The China Garden
Published: 2009-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Sunday

The sign near the lifeguard’s tower said STRONG RIPS. The beach was closed and empty. Disappointed, Laura stood on the soft sand and stared out over the surface of the waves, looking for the current’s telltale signs, a subtle difference in colour where the water pulled and sucked. Perhaps it was the ambiguous light left by a shower, but she couldn’t read any danger there. It all seemed innocuous. Just the occasional thump of a heavy wave, harder and louder than the others. But the sign was unequivocal: BEACH CLOSED. Laura turned towards the rock pool below the headland, where a man with silver hair moved in a slow backstroke and a woman in a bathing cap swam sedately up and down.

She dived without hesitation. The water felt like a second skin. Her body slipped into it and through it, the movement so fluid she might have had fins. She’d done four laps before she had to think about breathing. But her eyes soon began to sting without goggles and she flipped onto her back, kicking, floating, inching up and down the pool. She closed her eyes to the sun. The stiffness in her arms from several hours of window-cleaning ebbed slowly away.

She’d washed the glass the way Angela always had: with vinegar and newspaper. But it wasn’t how she’d intended to spend the morning. There were shoeboxes and books and cupboards to be opened, things to be sorted. And she wanted to sort them: it was all information, potential clues, pieces of the puzzle. Get started, she’d said to herself. But then, standing with a mug of tea and looking out to the garden, she’d noticed that the windows of the parlour were almost opaque with grime. She’d begun on them immediately.

And immediately felt awake, alive. It was the rhythm of washing, the circular process of it. Her muscles leapt to the task, their taut reflection emerging as the glass smudged and cleared. Kate would have laughed: It’s your smudgy thoughts you’re clearing, she would have said. You clean to clear your mind.

Now, idling through the still water, Laura thought of what Kate had said a couple of days before, hearing one phrase echo back from the sandy bottom. Surely it would have broken her heart. Broken her heart. Surely. Her heart. She reached the deep end of the pool again and stopped. Leaned back into the water and pinched her nose, so her hair streamed away from her face, then pushed herself up and out. As she towelled off, she watched the woman in the bathing cap. She was still swimming, her arms arching and reaching, arching and reaching, her rhythm barely broken when she reached each end, stopped and turned, and slid once more into the stroke. Her face, when it surfaced briefly, was leathery brown and thin. Laura wondered how old she was. What shape her heart was in.

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