Kit was holding a swimming ring shaped like a yellow duck.
It was the first thing Coralie saw when she got out of Stellan’s car, and she was so relieved by its ridiculousness that she smiled before remembering to be nervous.
“Prize,” Kit said.
“For what?”
“Buying the wrong thing online. It looked larger in the picture.”
Bryony took it from him. “I said bring the float. He brought an argument.”
There was no room in the duck for an adult. Kit demonstrated by putting it around one arm, where it sat like an oversized yellow bracelet. Stellan laughed, and Bryony rolled her eyes with an affection that made Coralie want, suddenly, to put down everything she was carrying and stop trying so hard.
They found a patch of grass above the little shingle beach. The lake was gray under a pale sky, with sunlight lying on the opposite shore. A family farther along had erected a shelter that was attempting to escape. Somebody’s small dog was conducting a vigorous objection to the water.
“I thought we’d walk first,” Stellan said.
“I thought we’d swim,” Bryony said.
“Before lunch?”
“Yes, Dad. I’m not eight.”
Coralie set her bag down. “I brought a towel. I make no promises about using it.”
“That’s three of us, then,” Kit said.
Stellan looked mildly betrayed. “Nobody mentioned swimming.”
“Lake,” Bryony said, pointing.
He looked at Coralie, who was already taking off her shoes.
“You’ve been organized against,” she told him.
The stones were cold and uncomfortable underfoot. Coralie picked her way to the water with the ungainly concentration of somebody crossing broken crockery. Bryony passed her and went in to her knees without hesitation. Kit followed, inhaled sharply, and stopped.
“Oh, that’s poor,” he said.
Coralie’s first step made her entire body reconsider the afternoon. She took another because Bryony was watching, which was a stupid reason to do anything. The cold closed around her ankles and climbed her calves. She looked back at Stellan. He was sitting on the grass, taking off his boots very slowly.
“You don’t have to,” she called.
“Apparently I do.”
Bryony splashed water at Kit. He tried to retreat and caught his heel on a stone, windmilling before recovering. Coralie laughed, then lost her own footing on the smooth edge beneath the surface. She sat down hard enough to send a sheet of water over her lap.
For one startled second nobody moved.
Then Bryony said, “That counts.”
Coralie could not breathe for laughing and cold. Kit offered his hand; she took it and stood dripping, her pants clinging to her thighs. Stellan was halfway down the beach.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I have discovered the bottom.”
He stopped beside her, bare feet carefully placed. “Was it worth finding?”
“Not especially.”
Bryony went deeper, swimming a short distance parallel to the shore. Kit remained nearby, the duck abandoned on the grass. Coralie watched her return, hair slicked away from her face, wholly herself and very young in a way that had nothing to do with childishness. At the studio, she had seen a woman preparing to be looked at. Here Bryony snorted lake water and complained about the cold.
Stellan put his hand against the back of Coralie’s arm. It was not a secret touch. His daughter saw it, glanced away, and asked Kit where he had put her towel.
Nothing happened.
Coralie was surprised by how much effort it took not to watch for something happening.
They ate sitting on two blankets, with Coralie’s wet pants spread on a low bush and a large towel wrapped around her waist. She had brought a spare skirt, but changing beneath a towel while the others argued about the best place to walk had felt unnecessarily complicated. Eventually Bryony noticed and held another towel up without comment.
“I used to do this at swimming meets,” she said. “Dad never understood why I couldn’t just get dressed in the car.”
“There were doors,” Stellan said.
“And windows.”
Coralie stepped into the skirt. “Thank you. You can lower the drawbridge.”
Bryony folded the towel over her knees. “You’re welcome.”
It was a small exchange, neither affectionate nor hostile. Coralie liked it for that. She sat down and accepted a paper plate from Kit, who had begun describing a customer who insisted a noise disappeared whenever somebody qualified to hear it approached the vehicle.
“Was there a noise?” Coralie asked.
“Yes. His keys.”
Stellan laughed so abruptly that he almost dropped his sandwich. Kit’s smile appeared and vanished, as though he had not quite decided whether he meant to be funny.
Bryony nudged his knee. “See? Say that at the wedding.”
The smile disappeared completely.
“It’s a car story.”
“It’s a you story.”
“There’ll be people who don’t care about cars.”
“There’ll be me. I don’t care about cars. I still liked it.”
Stellan put down his plate. “You could start with something like that. Short story, then thank everyone. I’ve got the order written down somewhere if you want—”
“Dad.”
He stopped.
Bryony’s voice had sharpened. “We’ve got the order. We’ve got three orders. You’ve sent two of them.”
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant.”
Kit looked at the lake. Coralie looked at her plate, wishing she had not helped begin the conversation. A gull landed several feet away and considered them with open commercial interest.
Stellan drew breath. Coralie knew that breath now: the preparation for explaining his good intention until everybody accepted it. She felt herself brace, and then he released it without speaking.
“Sorry,” he said to Kit. “Do you want me to leave it?”
Kit took a moment. “Yes. Please.”
“All right.”
There was a pause, less comfortable than silence ought to be. Coralie almost offered a story about her own failed public speaking, something to make Kit feel less exposed. But he had asked for the subject to be left. She picked up her plate and asked whether anyone wanted the last of what she had brought.
The gull advanced. Bryony waved it away with enough force to make Kit laugh.
“You can address the wildlife,” he said. “I’ll do the people.”
“Deal.”
Stellan reached for Coralie’s hand on the blanket. She let her fingers settle through his. He did not look at her for approval, and she did not supply it.
After lunch, Kit wanted to follow the path around the small headland. Bryony wanted to stay near the water. For a moment they all made offers that meant nobody would get what they wanted. Then Stellan stood and said he would walk with Kit, and Coralie said she would stay.
The two men set off, Kit carrying the duck under his arm because he claimed it needed exercise. Coralie watched Stellan turn to listen as he spoke. She liked the uneven length of their strides, the absence of any attempt to make it a meaningful fatherly occasion.
“He’ll talk about work now,” Bryony said.
“Your dad?”
“Kit. That’s how you know he’s stopped worrying.”
She lay back on the blanket with her forearm over her eyes. Coralie leaned against the bag behind her, uncertain whether conversation was expected. The wind lifted the edge of the towel on the bush.
“Can I ask something?” Bryony said.
Coralie’s stomach tightened. “Yes.”
“Are you actually going to swim, or was falling over enough?”
The laugh escaped before she could stop it. “Falling over was quite a lot.”
“Fair.”
For a while they listened to the little dog, which had discovered a stick and transferred its objections to that. Coralie watched clouds close over the sunlight on the far shore. She had expected a difficult conversation, and the absence of one left her oddly exposed. She could not make a good answer to a question nobody asked.
Bryony lifted her arm. “You keep checking whether I’m all right.”
“Do I?”
“A bit.”
“Sorry.”
“You can stop. I can be in a mood without it being about you.”
Coralie winced. “That’s useful information.”
“I’m not in a mood now.”
“Also useful.”
Bryony sat up and pulled her damp hair loose. “I don’t know how to do this either.”
Coralie let that remain between them for a moment. “I keep thinking I’ll say the wrong thing.”
“You probably will. Dad does. I do. Kit once called my aunt by the dog’s name.”
“How did that go?”
“Better than you’d think. She liked the dog.”
They laughed, and this time the ease lasted beyond it.
Bryony asked about the blue dress. Stellan had mentioned she was making something for herself. Coralie described the first attempt without showing the picture, then gave in when Bryony asked. The younger woman studied the lump at the hip with professional seriousness she had plainly borrowed from months of fittings.
“That part’s wrong.”
“Thank you. I was waiting for an expert.”
“The blue will be nice.”
“Everyone keeps saying that. The fabric’s doing a great deal of work.”
Bryony handed back the phone. “I like that you make things before you’re sure.”
Coralie looked at her. “I’m usually sure about your things.”
“I didn’t mean I was worried.”
The distinction caught her out. She put the phone away and sat with it, feeling the urge to explain herself subside. Bryony was already looking toward the path for the two men.
They returned carrying a branch shaped vaguely like a bird. Kit had found it; Stellan disputed the species. The duck had acquired a leaf in its beak. Nobody mentioned speeches.
Kit set the branch on the blanket and asked them to vote. Bryony said it was plainly a broken branch. Coralie suggested a heron, which Stellan accepted with suspicious enthusiasm until she admitted she knew very few birds.
“It’s a dragon,” Kit said.
They all looked again. With the twig at one end serving as a tail, it was considerably more convincing.
“You said bird,” Stellan objected.
“You said bird. I let you.”
Bryony laughed and leaned into him. He rested his chin briefly on her head. Coralie looked away, not because the affection troubled her but because it felt like something she had been allowed to witness by accident. She took the towels down from the bush and folded the dry one.
Stellan sat beside her. He had brought back a tiny burr on the knee of his pants. She picked it off and flicked it into the grass.
“We saw a fish,” he said quietly.
“A bird fish or a dragon fish?”
“Actual fish. Quite big. Kit thinks he knows what it was.”
“Do you?”
“No. I let him tell me.”
She smiled. He took the towel from her and held its corners while she folded it again. Across the blanket, Bryony was trying to persuade Kit that taking the branch home would not improve their small apartment. He held it above his head, testing its appearance against the sky.
Coralie had pictured a successful afternoon as one in which she found the right things to say. Instead, for ten minutes, nobody needed her to say anything. She sat with Stellan’s knee warm against her own and watched a young couple negotiate the ownership of a piece of wood.
The rain arrived twenty minutes earlier than forecast, at first a fine drift across the lake and then large drops that darkened the blankets. Their leisurely packing became a muddle. Kit tried to shake one blanket while standing on its corner. Coralie rescued her pants from the bush. Bryony found the missing bottle beneath Stellan’s bag and held it up as though presenting evidence.
They reached the cars damp and laughing. Coralie had a stone inside one shoe and no patience left for removing it gracefully. She leaned against Stellan’s car, shook her foot, and sent the stone into a puddle.
“Elegant,” he said.
“You knew what you were getting.”
“I’m beginning to.”
His hand came to her cheek, brushing away a wet strand of hair. He kissed her quickly, without looking around first. She smiled against him.
Bryony called her name.
Coralie turned. The younger woman had one hand on Kit’s open car door. Rain shone on her shoulders, and she seemed suddenly less certain than she had all afternoon.
“I should have said this properly before. About the wedding.”
Coralie waited.
“Would you come? As a guest. I mean, I know we’ve arranged the dress help beforehand, but after that. With Dad, if you want. Or—anyway, I’d like you there.”
Stellan stood beside Coralie without answering for her.
“I’d like that,” she said.
“Good. Kit’s already put you on the list.”
Kit lifted a hand from inside the car. “Conditional pencil.”
Coralie could see the edge of a paper map sticking out of his glove compartment. Beside it lay the branch. Apparently the dragon had won its place in the apartment after all.
Bryony looked back at him. “You told me you’d use pen.”
“I was waiting for the answer.”
The exchange released something in Coralie’s chest that she had been holding since the morning. She thanked Bryony, then Kit, and received a slightly impatient smile from the bride, who was getting wetter by the second.
“Get in the car,” Bryony said. “We’ll talk about it when we can hear.”
Coralie did. Through the windscreen she watched the other car pull away, the yellow duck wedged between bags in the back seat.
Stellan started the engine. “All right?”
“Cold.”
He turned the heater toward her.
She took her phone from her pocket and sent Farah a message while they waited for a gap in the traffic. There was an occasion for the dress now. She typed that, erased it, and sent the photograph of her wet pants hanging from a bush instead.
Beside her, Stellan began to hum badly with the radio. Coralie joined in on the part she knew, which turned out not to be the part he was singing.