The Summer Without You

  For Ollie.

  You’re golden. My son and my sun.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Acknowledgements

  Prima Donna

  Players

  Christmas at Tiffany’s

  The Perfect Present

  Christmas at Claridge’s

  About the Author

  Also by Karen Swan

  Chapter One

  ‘We are not breaking up.’

  ‘No? What else do you call disappearing halfway round the world for half a year without the person you’ve spent nearly half your life with?’ Rowena Tipton did her best not to let the tears drop from her lashes, but her voice sliding up to soprano was just as telling.

  ‘Not a half-measure?’ Matt tried joking, before seeing the look he knew all too well that told him now wasn’t the time. He rubbed her hands which always felt so small in his. ‘I call it a new beginning.’

  ‘But why do we need a new beginning? We had one eleven years ago. I like our middle.’ She hiccupped, letting her hair blow in front of her face as she stared back at him with her soulful dark brown eyes – ‘doe eyes’, he’d always said – willing him to see reason. But the omens weren’t good. It would be so much easier to talk him out of this notion under a whimsical blue sky, clouds frolicking in the wind above them and daisy chains round their wrists – it would mean her cleavage was out for a start. He could never get his way against that. But she was wrapped and swaddled, and the weather was as bleak as his words, the sky as grey as an old towel, the ancient oaks that stood around them like elders still bare and budless. Everything seemed lifeless and spent. She strained to hear the first birds of spring on their return migration, scanned the clodded ground for flowers, but the daffodils had made a poor showing this year, the bluebells not yet pushing their sharp green tips above the earth. It was mid March but nature seemed suspended. The dormancy had a scattering effect every bit as effective as a gunshot and the park was deserted, driving families inside to huddle round the last of the winter fires and leaving the unseen sun to slip from the sky for another day.

  Matt tucked her hair behind her ear, his hand cupping her head so that she could rest her cheek against his palm. His tone, when he spoke, was calming, his eyes steady upon hers. ‘Because our middle is flabby. We’re in a rut, baby. We need to freshen things up.’

  ‘Which is code for “see other people”, you mean?’

  ‘No, that is not what I mean. This is not a break-up, Ro.’

  ‘What is it, then? You have to call it something. It’s not something without a name. Nothing’s anything without a name. I mean, how will I explain to peo—’

  ‘It’s a pause.’

  She blinked at him, her lashes dewy with poised tears. ‘A pause?’

  ‘Before we commit to each other for the rest of our lives, it’s a pause, an opportunity for us both to be selfish for the last time.’

  ‘But I like being unselfish!’ she wailed.

  Matt nodded, as though he’d predicted every one of her responses. ‘I know you do; it’s one of the things I’ll miss about you. But I also want to miss you, Ro. I want to feel that –’ he shrugged, reaching for the word ‘– I don’t know, that yearning for you again, and I can’t if we’re lying together in the same bed every night and sitting on the same park bench in the same park every Sunday morning.’

  ‘So you have got tired of me.’ The wail was replaced with a wobble.

  ‘No!’ he laughed, exasperated. His hand dropped from her cheek and he sat back, draping his arms over the bench and looking out over the Ham corner of Windsor Great Park. The wind blew Ro’s tangled not-brown, not-blonde hair across her face again as she studied his profile; it was a face she knew almost better than her own, the one that had excited her when she’d seen it for the first time among the university library stacks, the one that had soothed her when she hadn’t got the 2.1 she’d craved (and needed) to win a scholarship on the post-graduate photography course that was otherwise financially out of reach, the one that made her laugh with its impressive eyebrow flexibility . . . How could she not see this face – those blue eyes with the halo of fire round the pupils, the crooked smile that veered left, the cleft chin she could almost rest her thumb in, and that thatch of almost-black hair – for six months?

  He looked back at her and for the first time what she saw in that familiar face frightened her: certainty. He was going to do this. He was going to go.

  ‘I could never tire of you. I’ve just tired of our routine. We’ve been doing this for too long already and we’re only just thirty. We’ve been together since uni and I don’t really know life without you. I don’t know who I am without you. You’re the love of my life, Ro, but we met too young.’ He stroked her cheek tenderly. ‘I need to do this. I want to be away from you specifically so that I get to come back to you. I want us to fall in love all over again – do you see?’ His eyes searched hers, trying to see if she did, but it was hard to see anything behind the tears. Panic was overriding everything.

  ‘No, I don’t see! I don’t understand why you want to go back to the “getting there” phase when I already love you.’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re not hearing me, baby. I want us to fall again, get back that feeling of running off a cliff and realizing we can fly! I fell in love with you eleven years ago, and I am deeply in love with you now, but everything’s too . . . cosy. I want us to shake everything up, refresh the page, come back to each other with passion. I mean, who said you can only fall in love with someone once?’

  ‘Because that’s how it works. Nobody falls in love twice.’

  He dropped his dimpled chin. ‘Is there a law against it?’

  She knew he was taking the mickey out of her, puncturing her earnest words with a faintly mocking, bemused smile. ‘There’ll be some law of chemistry or something that says once a chemical reaction has occurred, it can’t be repeated. It either mutates into something else or just . . . dies.’

  They stared at each other. Neither one of them had taken chemistry beyond GCSE.

  ‘And what if you meet someone else?’ Her voice sounded hollow and small, scarcely up to the task of articulating such an apocalyptic thought.

  ‘That’s not going to happen. The whole point of this, Ro, is that I’m wanting to rediscover you again.’

  ‘But what if you change while we’re apart? Or I do? Or we both do?’

  ‘We’ve been together our entire adult lives already. You really think that much can happen in six months?’

  ‘Famous last words,’ she muttered, watching a red deer graze nearby. She felt Matt take her hands in
his again. She looked back at him.

  ‘Ro, I don’t want that to happen, and I don’t think it will – on my life I don’t – but if we’re meant to spend our lives together, we’ll pull through this.’

  ‘So you’re saying it will be difficult.’

  He rewarded her with a crooked smile. He’d never won an argument against her yet. ‘I’m saying it’s not going to be easy. The reality is, I’m not going to be able to call regularly, maybe sometimes for a few weeks at a time.’

  ‘A few weeks?’ she spluttered.

  ‘I don’t think mobile reception is all that great in Cambodia. Anyway, that could be a good thing! We speak probably twenty times a day, but when did you last feel excited to see that it was me on the line? Or actually not hear what I was saying because you were listening to the sound of my voice? You always used to do that, but now we just talk about cleaning the fish tank or covering the bay trees before the frost. I want you to be desperate to get my call, like you used to be. I want you to blush when I see you naked, just like you did first time round.’ She saw a small light ignite in his eyes at the memory. ‘We can get all that back, Ro. This six months is just an adventure that’s going to bring it all back.’ He winked at her. ‘It’s sexy, I reckon.’

  Ro blinked at him in disbelief. ‘Six months’ enforced chastity is sexy? Are you mad?’

  ‘Just think how mad for it you’re going to be when I get back.’ He smiled. ‘You’ll be ripping my clothes off.’

  She pouted, but her eyes were dancing. ‘You could just play a little harder to get. You don’t actually need to fly all the way to Cambodia to force me into making the first move.’

  ‘You know I can never turn you down,’ he said, his finger tracing down her nose to the tip. His eyes locked on hers. ‘I want you disoriented and desperate without me.’ She saw the smile twitching on his lips, the look of conspiracy in his eyes. He was joking and yet she could see that the idea of her unsated lust appealed to him.

  ‘I already am.’

  ‘Now multiply it by six months.’

  She swallowed. The thought of even a weekend without him was unbearable.

  ‘And then when I’m back . . . straight to Happy Ever After.’

  Ro looked away. His words hurt to hear – he knew the weight they carried. He knew he was all she had – her family, her love, her best friend. But he was going anyway. He cupped her cheek with his palm again and made her look back at him.

  ‘That’s a promise, Ro. This isn’t just about six months off from the rat race. I’m going to take this time and think of a way of asking you that shows you exactly what you mean to me. You deserve more than just a bended knee.’

  ‘A bended knee would do me fine.’ After eleven years, frankly a plastic ring and a train ticket to Gretna Green would pass muster.

  He shook his head. ‘Think bigger. Let’s not settle for this.’ He gestured to the park around them, distant cars stopping for the occupants to take photographs of the herds of deer grazing by the road, the tower blocks of Roehampton peeping through the tumbling grey clouds. ‘I’ve got grand plans for us, Ro. I don’t want there to be anything humdrum about our lives. Let’s take this six months to stretch and really wake up. You’ve got that wedding in New York in a few weeks, anyway. It’s your first overseas commission. You never know – it could be the start of you taking the company international! Or transatlantic at least. Why not? Think big.’

  Ro rolled her eyes and huffed crossly. He wouldn’t be saying this if he’d met the bride. He’d never leave SW14 again if he met her.

  He hooked his finger under her chin and made her look back at him. ‘I know that look. Stop being so stubborn. You need to set up the company properly. The website’s too slow, for a start. This is your chance to really focus on getting everything just the way you want it. By the time I come back, you could have the company in a completely different place. I’ll be refreshed, and we’ll both have our eyes wide open again. We’ll be unstoppable.’

  Ro had lost. She knew she couldn’t talk him out of this. He had played his trump card – promising to propose – and what was she going to do, anyway? Not wait for him? As if.

  Slowly she gave a small shrug. What else could she do? ‘Well, it doesn’t look like I’ve got much choice, does it?’

  He swooped down and kissed her gratefully, his fingers winding through her hair as jubilation slowly began to give way to lust.

  ‘Let’s go home,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Already? But I thought we were having brunch at—’

  ‘I fly out on Tuesday, Ro.’

  Ro felt her stomach lurch. This Tuesday?

  ‘Shh, shh. I didn’t want to upset you even a week longer than I had to. But six months off from this body is going to drive me almost out of my mind,’ he murmured, running his hands up her waist. It was true. What she lacked in height or athletic prowess, she made up for with a naturally curvy, soft pin-up figure. It was camouflaged in her signature boyfriend jeans, but gave a knockout punch in dresses at the almost constant stream of friends’ weddings. Even now, after over a decade together, when their sex life had cooled to several degrees below simmering and could justifiably be called ‘regular’, Matt couldn’t walk past her in just her underwear. Could he really do without her for all that time?

  She saw the same doubt in his eyes as his hands traced the contours he knew so well. Muscle memory alone led him around her, knowing exactly where to skim and where to pause and explore.

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her up to standing, kissing her more passionately now. When he pulled back, Ro felt her stomach flip to see his eyes so clouded with desire. ‘Home. Now. I’ve got forty-eight hours to stock up on six months’ worth of you.’

  Ro giggled delightedly as he suddenly pulled her into a fast run back towards the shiny red Polo parked at the bottom of the hill. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was working already. If they were missing each other before they were even apart, this could be the making of them after all. Six months from now, she’d be Mrs Rowena Martin and they’d both have what they wanted: Matt his bright new beginning, her the happy ending.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Look at me, please . . . And just one more,’ Ro said from behind the camera, her right hand making tiny micro-adjustments on the lens until she found the pin-sharp focus she was looking for on the bride’s face. Not that this bride lacked focus. This was a million-dollar wedding if it was a cent, and Ro had several times glimpsed the veins of steel that had bagged this bride her groom – most recently, dressing down her own father through gritted, whitened teeth for standing on the hem of her dress.

  Outwardly, everything was as perfect as a Martha Stewart set: the twelve bridesmaids were all dressed in blue-sky silk columns and pearl chokers, with buffed shoulders and upswept hair; the huge potted blossom trees were in full bloom, the aisle densely carpeted with pink petals; and the guests had, thankfully, all honoured the cream dress code. Ro had been grateful to have the camera to hide behind as she’d snapped away in the bridal suite before the ceremony, shocked and embarrassed by the no-knickers (full Hollywood) look the bride was working under her modest tiered silk mousseline dress by Vera Wang. Personally, Ro gave them eight months. She didn’t see this couple getting to a year, not judging by the way the groom kept looking over at the maid of honour.

  She walked slowly round the Waldorf Astoria ballroom, her camera dropped by her side as she watched the guests; some were still seated at their tables, but most were beginning to get up and mingle again, and the room was starting to throng. She guessed they were mostly around her age, possibly slightly younger – late twenties, rather than early thirties. There wasn’t a baby to be seen anywhere, though they may have been banned – probably had been: this bride didn’t do ‘messy’ or ‘unscheduled’ – but she had clocked a few bumps. They were likely all still in the throes of wedding fever, that time in their lives when they went to five or six weddings a year as friends and acquaintances jumpe
d on the merry-go-round and life seemed like one long party lived out in a marquee and pretty dresses.

  It was interesting seeing the differences to the British weddings she usually covered. She’d never photographed an American wedding before. The commission for this had come through the bride’s sister, who’d been a bridesmaid at a wedding Ro had covered in Dorset ten months earlier. She’d taken Ro’s card after seeing her signature colour-saturated filters, which lent each image a dreamy, nostalgic vibe. The most obvious difference between the Atlantic cousins was the men all wearing dinner suits rather than morning suits – the strong black and white stamping effect looked great through the lens – and the bridesmaids all looked a lot more sorted, professional even, than their British counterparts. None of them was drunk yet, for a start. The speeches had been a lot more corporate too, and obviously the couple had written their own vows – something that hadn’t really taken flight back home, where it was considered more proper to go along with the traditional King James version and have a reading of ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’.

  Yes, it was interesting, all this – but not diverting. It didn’t matter that she was in the ballroom of the famous Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan, 3,500 miles from home. That only told her that she was even further away from where Matt was, now nearly 9,000 miles away in fact. The distance between them had never been greater, and they’d spoken only three times in the three weeks since he’d gone (and one of those had been as he’d boarded the plane).

  ‘Not going to be easy’ – his phrase – wasn’t even close to covering it. ‘Devastating’ was closer to the truth. It had been one thing accepting the sentiment behind his grand plans in theory, but returning home from the airport to a house full of his absence – his clothes strewn across the floor, his electric toothbrush wet next to hers (‘There won’t be any electrical points where I’m going’), his pillow still indented with the shape of his head – had poleaxed her. She’d barely told anyone he’d left, and she wasn’t sure the milkman counted, anyway. Matt had kept his plans a secret from everyone, not just her – knowing they’d try to talk him out of it, question why he was really leaving her behind – so the phone had sat quietly on its cradle, no offers of rallying drinks at the pub or Indian takeaways or shopping trips to boost her spirits. She’d spent the first week dressed almost entirely in his clothes and spraying herself with his deodorant, and the house was so quiet that one evening in the kitchen, she’d actually convinced herself she could hear Shady, their long-crested goldfish, moving through the cloudy water of the fish tank.