Summerwater by Sarah Moss (best novels to read to improve english txt) 📗

for me now, you can reach, it’s only the lower bits that need doing, she says. There’s a reason, sweetie, why it’s the part you can reach that needs cleaning, she doesn’t say. Izzie shakes her head. Make Patrick do it, she says. Patrick can’t stand up and hold something at the same time, says Claire, and anyway he’s going to sleep, though the last is patently untrue because Patrick is very audibly awake and it’s been a good twenty minutes since Jon took him through. It’s too early for him to drop his nap, she can’t be doing with a fifteen-month-old who doesn’t give her a lunch break, and he ought to be tired, all of them kept awake half the night by the Romanians next door and their loud music. Working at the hotel, probably, getting together at the end of a shift. It’s not that she minds people having the occasional party, we were all young once – not that the woman who seems to be staying there looks any younger than Claire – but there’s no sound insulation in these cabins and why would anyone come all the way up here if not for the quiet, couldn’t they have gone to Newcastle or wherever it is people go for clubbing and gigs these days if they want that kind of thing? And with the little girl, too, Claire saw her still running around dressed like a little – well, inappropriately dressed – long after midnight. She hopes there’s someone with her in the evenings, that she’s not being left to fend for herself while her mum’s behind the bar. Safe enough here, no doubt, not as if there’s much worry about strangers and plenty of folk she could ask for help. Claire heard her playing with those other kids down on the beach earlier today though the boy was pretending to have a gun and it didn’t sound very nice, if it hadn’t been raining so hard she might have strolled down there just to cast an eye over whatever was going on. You never know what will cross kids’ minds to try, those S2s at Jon’s last school who spent the lunchtime after their Physics lesson on electricity seeing if they could hack the safety features on a socket. She should pop over maybe, just to say they are neighbours after all and if the little girl ever needs anything while her mum’s at work, though maybe they’d take that the wrong way, interfering and passing judgement. Which she is, really. Not that kids don’t die for lack of interference and passing judgement, all those cases where decent folk minded their own business while the neighbours beat and starved their children behind the net curtains. Quite ordinary people, sometimes. It takes a village to raise a child, isn’t that what they say? Someone has to be the village, to say what’s normal.

Mummy, Izzie’s saying, Mummy, that boy was almost falling over, he nearly dropped his boat, look. Oh well, Claire says, he’s back home now, with his mum. What will it be like, having the children leave and return, use their keys in the door and come in from the street bearing their own lives like ordinary people? Well, but they’ll be different children by then, won’t they, different people. Her too, probably, and Jon, coming up fifty. Fifty! Assuming we’re all still here by then, assuming no demented President has pressed his big red button and there is still air to breathe and water to drink. It was inexcusable, really, to have children, the way things are, the way they’re going to be. Iz, she says, give Mummy a hug, and Izzie eyes her, sizing up the damage she’s being asked to repair, and Claire drops to her knees so the hug is where she needs it, on her chest, against her heart. She squeezes until Izzie’s ribcage flexes. There, says Izzie, all better, and she pats Claire’s shoulder and returns to the window, as if there’s something out there for her.

Claire goes back to the sink. The half-hearted job Izzie would make of the glass isn’t worth the argument. The cabin was supposed to have been cleaned before they arrived and goodness knows they’ve paid enough for it, it’s really not on, cleaners who don’t do behind the taps, you don’t expect to have to spend your holiday cleaning. She’s going to have a proper go at the cupboard doors too, there’ve been sticky fingers there, not to mention the handle of the grill, and if there’s time the light switches as well, lots of people don’t clean them at all though everyone’s touching them all the time. She’ll be more relaxed, once she knows it’s all clean, or at least that the dirt is theirs.

The wailing hiccups and stops. Jon’s coming through, Patrick in his arms reaching out to Claire with tears still on his red face. Sorry, says Jon, nothing’s working, he just doesn’t seem sleepy. Mummy, says Patrick, Mummy, and Claire rinses her hands and takes him. He clenches his legs on her hip and touches her face with a sad sticky finger; Jon’s right, if he were really tired he’d be lying on her shoulder and probably kneading her boob. It was just feeling mean, Jon says, keeping him in the cot when he didn’t want to be there. Lots of parenting, Claire thinks, feels mean, that’s why adults have to do it, prioritising long-term outcomes over the emotions of the moment. Prioritising long-term outcomes, there’s a phrase she hasn’t used in nearly five years. Does that woman still exist, the one who wore dry-clean-only clothes and put together presentations? The software will have changed since then, not to mention the clothes. Claire strokes Patrick’s hair. Come on then, she says, are you not a sleepy bunny? Shall we find the farm?

She brought a whole plastic storage box of toys from home, trying to choose those of interest to