The Going and the Rise by F.G. Cottam

Author:F.G. Cottam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Agora Books

Three

The improvement in Molly’s health was pretty much immediate. The perfect weather held until the end of July and showed no sign of breaking as the beginning of August approached. People who’d lived through it began to compare that summer to the summer of 1976, which had been the hottest and driest for 500 years and had seen a Minister for Weather appointed by the British government and forest and grass fires burn out of control on the Sussex Downs. Sharks had played in the tepid sea under the iron pillars supporting Brighton Pier.

Forty years on from that, despite the heat, I considered the shark-risk off Ventnor Beach remote. Always supervised by one of her parents and under the vigilant watch of the lifeguards, Molly swam every day. She got stronger and her skin, despite the sun-cream, gained a tawny hue that made her firming physique look much healthier.

‘She’s a different girl,’ Katie said, on our balcony one early August evening. She reached across from where she sat and kissed me, ‘and my husband is a genius.’

I was looking at Molly. She had reclined on her sun chair and fallen asleep under the tented book she’d been reading when drowsiness had overcome her. It was about 8.30, I wasn’t wearing my watch, but this was becoming our pattern, Molly slipping off to sleep after an action-packed day and me carrying her to bed for a peaceful night of slumber. The book had fallen to the floor and I studied my daughter’s profile and my wife watched me do it, I could sense the scrutiny.

‘Her lower jaw is growing,’ I said. ‘I thought it was just the attitude of her head, the angle, but it isn’t. There’s actual growth.’

‘It’s a miracle,’ Katie said, quietly, in a tone that told me I’d been slow to observe something my wife had already become aware of.

‘The diagnosis can’t have been wrong,’ I said. ‘She’s got JIA, which is sometimes called Still’s Disease and it’s caused a deformity.’

Katie didn’t answer for a moment. I became aware of the ambient noises beyond where we sat, the gulls crying in the sky, the surf distant on the shingle. She said, ‘It’s this place, Michael. She’s blossoming here. She’s never once complained about her knees and they’ve stopped swelling despite all the walking and climbing she’s doing. She’s stopped getting the headaches too.’

‘Her lower jaw can’t just start growing of its own accord,’ I said.

‘Why can’t it?’ Katie said. ‘The rest of her is.’

This was true. Molly hadn’t just developed better muscle-tone and a tan since their arrival. She seemed to be in the middle of a growth-spurt. She was almost ten and her mother was tall and long-limbed and that was just what happened and what would continue to happen until she reached maturity.

We did the Tennyson Trail. We visited Blackgang Chine and toured Osborne House and rented bicycles and biked the scenic coastal route to Freshwater Bay, where we picnicked. Ashdown Hall was open to the

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