The first time Lola brought him back to introduce him to her father, a couple of weeks after they started dating, Mathéo was nervous. He expected Jerry to be very protective of his only daughter. And he was, in a way. But he approved of his daughter’s first serious boyfriend, Mathéo could tell. Jerry was friendly and took an interest in Mathéo’s diving, right from the start. Even now, even though his training usually gets in the way, they always make an effort to include him. Mathéo shouldn’t feel envious. And yet sometimes, watching them together creates an ache inside him.
2
After parting company with Lola and Jerry at the end of their street, it takes Mathéo less than ten minutes to walk the nine blocks home. Hawthorne Avenue, otherwise known as Millionaires’ Drive, always seems especially austere after the cosy little street of small terraced houses where Lola lives. Everything about the avenue seems twice the size: the wide, residential road is lined with people-carriers and four-by-fours, interspersed with the odd sports car or motorbike. The trees here are thin and tall, their topmost branches level with the roofs of the identical four-storey houses with their painted white exteriors and shiny black doors. Passing the neighbouring houses, where crystal chandeliers catch the afternoon rays behind the windows, he turns between the pillars outside number twenty-nine and climbs the five steep steps, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans for his key. Pushing open the heavy front door, he steps into the silent hallway. Virtually everything inside the house is white or cream, from the heavy marble tiles downstairs to the thick carpets that muffle every footstep on the upper three floors. Each room is painted white – it makes your eyes ache after a while. The ground floor is open plan: the hall leads to the living room, which in turn opens out into the dining room and then the kitchen. The size of all the rooms is further magnified by the sparse furniture, mostly black or silver – even the light fittings are made of brushed aluminium. The kitchen holds only the essentials: white-topped surfaces, a silver heavy-duty fridge-freezer, eye-level cupboards and a long breakfast bar separating it from the living area. This then contains a black leather sofa with matching armchairs, a glass coffee table, floor lighting, a sound system built into one wall and a flat-screen TV built into another. To the right of the hallway a spiral staircase, still in white marble, leads to the first floor: a second living room, rarely used, a guest room and a bathroom. The second floor belongs to his parents: their bedroom, ensuite of course, his father’s study, and the spare room that no one seems to know what to do with – empty save for a broken exercise bike and some weights. The top floor is the one his parents still refer to as ‘the children’s floor’. First, a spacious bathroom, and next to that a large room that until recently was Loïc’s playroom. Now it’s more of a games room, with a television, a computer, a variety of games consoles, a football table and mini pool table. Across the landing, the two bedrooms are more or less identical: kingsized beds, built-in closets and French windows that open onto balconies overlooking the garden. This is quite large by London standards, about the size of a swimming pool, and consists of a patio strip, followed by a long stretch of closely cropped grass, mowed weekly by the gardener. There are few plants or flowers – the brick walls are free of weeds and vines. Mathéo can’t remember the last occasion he spent any time out there. Even in the summer the garden remains largely unused except for parties. The conservatory doors open straight out onto it, and at the far end of the lawn a small black iron door leads out onto a narrow footpath that runs along the backs of all the gardens and opens onto the street – a useful short cut or escape route when his parents are entertaining.
Back on the top floor, posters of any description are strictly prohibited. The cleaner makes the beds and picks up after them daily, so every evening Mathéo comes home to find his scattered books neatly stacked against the wall, his laptop closed and his desk bearing the telltale smears of a polishing cloth. The discarded clothes have vanished from the floor and the crumpled bedsheet has been replaced by a fresh one. However messy and lived-in Mathéo tries to make his room, by the time he gets back it has always reverted to its customary clinical neatness. It never used to bother him before; in fact, he’d always thought it perfectly normal. It was the only home he’d ever known and his friends’ houses were much the same – although perhaps not quite as large. Until he met Lola. Until he met Jerry and started hanging out at theirs more and more. At first he’d been astounded by the clutter, the lack of a dishwasher, the breakfast things still sitting casually in the sink when they got back from school. The mosaic of photos and sketches and postcards on the fridge door. Dog hair everywhere, crumbs littering the kitchen table. But he soon found out that it was the clutter, the lived-in feel that made it one of the few places he could be completely at ease. One of the few places he could relax, prop his feet up on the furniture, fall asleep on the couch.
Glancing into his own kitchen, Mathéo notices that the dirty plates and bowls and half-drunk mugs of coffee have vanished off the counter, as if breakfast were no more than a figment of his imagination. Loïc is doing his homework with the new nanny, Consuela, at the dining-room table. She is younger than the previous ones: petite and sinewy, with pointy features and a kind of nervous energy.
Loïc looks bored and fed up, blond head resting against his outstretched arm, picking at the end of his pencil, while Consuela tries, in broken English, to explain a comprehension question to him. He looks round hopefully as the front door slams, and Mathéo sees the disappointment in his eyes. ‘What time is Maman coming home?’
‘Hello to you too. I don’t know. Hey, Consuela.’
‘Mathéo, I try to call you. Your mother, she ask me for making chicken but this morning when I come there is only steak, so I defrost steak, but I thinking now maybe I should buy chicken?’ She is very shrill and her words pelt out rapid-fire in a strong Portuguese accent that makes them hard to understand.
‘No, really, I’m sure steak will do fine—’
‘But what about chicken? Should I buy chicken?’
Oh Lord. Only her second day here and she is already a nervous wreck.
‘No, I’m sure Mum will be fine with steak,’ he tries to reassure her. ‘Do you want me to put it on? Have you started dinner?’
‘No, no, I start dinner.’
He hesitates, confused by her use of tenses. ‘Do you want me to help Loïc while you sort out dinner?’
She appears appalled by the suggestion. ‘No, no! Mathéo, you do homework now?’
‘My last exam was yesterday. I don’t have any homework.’
‘You have training then? You do training now?’
‘Yes.’ Her way of telling him what to do by phrasing everything as a question is already getting on his nerves, so he turns towards the basement stairs. ‘I’m just saying – if you need help with anything just give me a shout.’
‘You change for training now, yes?’
‘Yes,’ he responds wearily without turning, beginning his trudge downstairs.
‘Mattie?’ Loïc’s voice is quiet but plaintive.
Mathéo stops a few steps down and looks back up at him. He can tell Loïc wants him to stay, but . . . Soon his parents will be back, arguing about whose day has been the more stressful; Consuela will be in a flap, with his mother quizzing her about Loïc’s homework; and his father will be demanding to discuss Mathéo’s training for this weekend’s competition.
‘Can you help me?’ Loïc gives him a mournful look. ‘Consuela doesn’t understand English.’
Mathéo feels himself cringe. ‘Loïc, don’t be so rude, of course Consuela—’
‘I understand, I understand!’ she shrills at him. ‘Loïc, your brother must do his training now. I explain to you again. Listen—’
‘But what time’s Mummy coming back?’ Loïc tries to ignore her, still looking at him with that frustratingly plaintive look of his. Mathéo never knows what his eight-year-old brother wants from him – only that whatever it is, he never seems able to
provide it.
‘Really soon. That’s why you’ve got to get a move on. We’re all having dinner together this evening.’ He gives Loïc what he hopes is a reassuring smile.
‘Is she going to put me to bed tonight?’ Loïc looks hopeful for a moment.
‘Yes!’ He nods enthusiastically.
‘And read me a story?’
‘Yes! But only if you do your homework now, OK?’
Loïc eyes him doubtfully for a moment, as if trying to gauge whether Mathéo is telling the truth or just telling him what he wants to hear in order to get away.
‘Are you going to the pool?’
‘No. Just the workout room.’
‘Will you come back to the kitchen when you’ve finished?’
‘Yes,’ he replies, safe in the knowledge that his parents will be home before it comes to that.
In the basement is the home gym that his father put in when Mathéo started winning medals at national level. He is the only one to use it – his parents prefer to work out at their country club – and so it is purpose-designed for his diving needs: the size of the whole basement, with wall-to-wall mirrors, sprung foam flooring, a tumbling harness, large trampoline for practising flips and somersaults, a running machine, rowing machine, and various bits of apparatus designed to stretch or strengthen different muscles. He is supposed to use it for an hour a day when he has diving or gym training, and for two hours if he is recovering from injury, recuperating after a bug, and on Sundays, his only day off. He is usually pretty good at sticking to the schedule, but as his parents never come down here and it has its own exit into the garden, it has become a useful place to retire to in order to sneak out to see Lola.
As he enters, the lights come on automatically and the air conditioning starts to hum. Mathéo crosses over to the music player and, fiddling with the remote, kicks off his shoes and sheds his uniform, pulling on a pair of grey jogging bottoms and a blue T-shirt from the closet of workout clothes he keeps down here. After the mandatory hour of stretches, weights and floor tumbling to the blast of Eminem, Mathéo removes his socks and trainers and climbs up onto the trampoline. It is Olympic-sized and set beside the main gym in a purpose-built space that runs up the side of the house so that the ceiling is almost four storeys high. As he begins to bounce, gazing out of the glass panelling at the gathering dusk in the garden, the lights coming on around the lawn, he allows gravity to do most of the work, shaking out his tired muscles and tilting his head from side to side. He slowly allows himself to gather height until he reaches the marker on the opposite wall, and then he begins to flip. Front somersault in the tucked position, bounce twice and repeat. He goes through a set of ten before switching to a front somersault in the straight position, his body held as taut as a board, twirling through the air. A set of these, then somersaults in the piked position: legs straight and toes pointed, ankles gripped, his head almost touching his knees. Whenever he even slightly loses his form in the air, or lands more than a few centimetres away from the cross in the centre of the trampoline, he does the set again. Only a perfect set will do – there is no point in cheating: he will only pay the price when he has to perform these same twists and somersaults diving from the ten-metre board, and a bad landing headfirst into water from such a height is far more painful than landing wide of the cross in the centre of the trampoline. He repeats the sets in the same order, with the same positions, but this time somersaulting backwards, before finishing with a series of combinations: double somersaults and twists. As he pushes himself further and further, he begins to make mistakes – landing on the side of his foot, missing his landing altogether, crashing down on his shoulder – and he stops, goes back to warm-up bounces, refocuses his mind, tempers his breathing . . . before going for it again. He has passed the two-hour mark and knows he should stop now, so he sets himself a final target: five ‘full outs’ and he’s done. Five, but in a row. He can do it. He just needs to believe he can do it . . .
Stepping out of the scalding shower at the top of the house, Mathéo enters the hush of his white-walled room, pulls on jeans and a T-shirt and, his hair still dripping, flops down on the bed, staring up at the opaque glass light-fitting hanging from the ceiling. The room is violently bright, and there is a sinking feeling inside his chest at the prospect of the evening ahead. Dinner with his parents is always an ordeal and he feels sleepy suddenly. Like most days, he has been up since five and diving at the Aqua Centre from six till eight, before catching the bus straight to school. The last couple of weeks have been rough, with A-level exams almost every day and last-minute cramming at weekends, and he is exhausted. But although there are still two weeks before term officially ends, school is now a mere formality. Several big names in some of the most popular fields of work – law, medicine, politics, science – have been drafted in to give talks; a lot of career counselling is still going on, as well as all the other end-of-year stuff. A big cricket tournament led by Hugo, which he foolishly agreed to help organize and referee, despite not being able to take part for fear of injury. A musical in the lower school that Lola is masochistically directing. Sports Day, which the sixth-formers must help organize, and things like yearbooks to sign, an auction for Save the Children, and of course the Leavers’ Ball on Saturday night, which he will no doubt have to help set up as Lola is on the committee, but will miss completely as it coincides with the National Championships in Brighton. All very tedious.
Rolling onto one side, he removes his mobile from the pocket of his trousers in an effort to get more comfortable, and the familiar sight of an origami crane, made out of notebook paper, flutters down onto the duvet beside him. Settling himself back against the pillows, he picks it up and opens out its wings with a smile. Lola and her cranes . . . Somehow, she constantly manages to sneak them into his pocket, his school bag, once even into his shoe. She started doing it shortly after they first got together, when he had to take a whole week off school to compete in the Worlds in Hong Kong. She had stashed seven in his bag, with strict instructions to only open one each day. It had been a little like an advent calendar and, jet-lagged and nervy and so far from home, he had felt strangely comforted.
This one reads:
Good luck at dinner tonight. Hope your dad sees sense about the holiday. But don’t worry if he doesn’t – we’ll find a way of kidnapping you!
P.S. I’m missing you right now. xxx
With a smile, Mathéo folds the bird’s wings closed again and slides it under his pillow. Lola rarely comes to the house because his parents have made no secret of the fact that they don’t approve of her. Partly because they are snobs, partly because they think she gets in the way of his training. So coming back to his sterile house to find one of Lola’s cranes always makes him feel as if he has brought a little piece of her, a little part of her essence, back home with him.
He must have dozed off: when he hears the dinner gong, time seems to have escaped him. Dazed, still riding fluorescent dreams, he opens his eyes to find the light in the room has changed. The colours of evening fall like dust across his bed and a bluish haze fills the still room like water. Outside the window the garden trees are melting into dusk. The air has turned cold and smells of pine; a breeze enters the room through the gap left between the French windows, sending the curtains into an unchoreographed dance. He runs his tongue over his chapped lips and sits up slowly, his head filled with a heavy fog. Outside, lights are coming on in the living rooms where other families like theirs are gathering, fitting their day inside a single dinner hour before retreating for the evening, so much left unsaid.
Mathéo reaches for the switch by his bed, and at once the room plunges into a harsh brightness, obliterating the world behind the window. He gets up and crosses the landing to the bathroom, skating in his socks over the polished floor, the tiles cool against his soles. After going to the loo, he splashes cold water against his face. A moth blunders in through the window and ricochets back from the mirror. Following its trajectory, he brief
ly inspects his reflection: his face looks flushed with sleep, the imprint of his pillow still fresh on his cheek. His shaggy fair hair is badly in need of a cut. He has inherited his father’s blue-eyed stare, although Mathéo’s eyes are larger, giving him a slightly startled look. His skin is almost translucent – pale threads of blue visible on his temples. He reaches up to touch the hot ridges in his skin. According to Lola, his greatest assets are his lopsided smile and his dimples. Although on the skinny side, years of intense training have given him a well-defined body.
He is rubbing ineffectively at an ink stain on the hem of his T-shirt when the gong sounds again, alerting him to the fact that he is only postponing the inevitable. It is rare for them all to have dinner as a family. Over the Easter holidays he ate at the Baumanns’ almost every evening, and on days when his parents were likely to show up early, he managed to keep the peace by having dinner with Loïc and his nanny. But the last nanny was older, more relaxed and, having worked for his parents for the last three years, relatively unafraid and willing to cover for him. He has a feeling that Consuela is not going to be so accommodating; he will have to try to win her over.
As he hurries downstairs, he senses his parents’ presence before actually setting eyes on them. He smells his mother’s perfume, his father’s aftershave. Their suit jackets both hang in the hallway, waiting to be put away. His can hear his mother in the kitchen, already castigating poor Consuela. Tall, slim and blonde, his mother has never, in all the years she has been in England, managed to shed her strong Parisian accent. Impeccably dressed at all times, never leaving the house without full make-up, she is regularly told she looks far too young to be the mother of a teenage son. Tonight she is still in her office clothes: silk blouse and tight pencil skirt slit at the side, high-heels increasing her stature by a good three inches so that she positively towers over the diminutive Consuela. Loïc circles round them like a cat, meowing for attention, trying to show his mother some wooden object he made at school. His father is already seated in his usual chair at the head of the table, his tie slung over the armrest, nursing a Scotch and leafing through Sports Illustrated. He too is tall – broad-shouldered and athletic, a keen golfer with a year-round tan and closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair.