Read Online Summer on the River by Marcia Willett - Free Book Online

might lead to depression or an outburst against something or somebody, but Dad looks OK, not too twitchy. Mikey gives an inward sigh of relief.
    â€˜Can I go out?’ he asks. He can hardly bear to sit still knowing all that is happening just beyond the door.
    â€˜We’ll go together,’ Dad says, which is a bit disappointing; Mikey really liked being in the town by himself but he doesn’t argue.
    Dad goes into the kitchen to fetch his rucksack. These days he never goes anywhere without his rucksack and his bottle of water tucked in its front pocket. The rucksack and the bottle are new; since Mikey got back from school for the summer holidays. Dad says he has this problem with a dry mouth and throat and needs frequent little sips, but he’ll never let Mikey touch the bottle.
    â€˜Don’t want you catching anything,’ he says. ‘You can never tell with throats.’
    Mikey can hear water running, so he’s probably topping it up, and then Dad comes out and grins at him and it’s such a relief that he’s OK that Mikey feels a happiness that he’s almost forgotten about. He feels guilty, too, because it seems terrible to be happy with Mum dead, but just this minute he can’t help it.
    â€˜Ready?’ Dad asks, and Mikey nods and leads the way downstairs.
    Evie sees them walking towards her as she makes her way home. Instinctively she hesitates, recognizing her watcher, and then stares curiously at the striking-looking boy beside him. He looks up at the thin fair man beside him and then turns away, laughing, and pointing at something out on the river. That little streak of memory she experienced with Claude shifts slightly and she is thrust back thirty years or more to a crowded study in a different town and Russell Dean laughing and gesticulating at something beyond the window.
    Russ: how she loved Russ. He was one of the first of the ‘history men’; those forerunners of Schama and his like, striding across our television screens, talking on hilltops, expounding at gravesides, theorizing on cliffs. Russ had won hearts and minds. He was exciting, amusing, intelligent and he put sex into dull old history. The nation loved him.
    He and Evie worked together at the university, sharing their passion for that particular period of English history: the Civil War. They’d talk for hours, laugh together, as Russ put forward ideas to encourage the great British public to love Cromwell, warts and all.
    Half hidden behind a newly erected stall, Evie stares at the boy, seeing Russ in the shape of his brow and the set of his eyes. Then she looks at the man. There is another tug of memory, a twinge of guilt, reminding her of Russ’s wife, suffering from MS, already confined to a wheelchair. Pat was a pretty, pale woman; slightly whiny, her suffering so nobly borne that it was rather like another person in the room. She adored the boy, her hand always reaching to smooth his head where he stood beside her chair; a small, watchful, wary boy of seven or eight. What was his name? James? Jake? Jason, that was it. She called him Jay and he’d nestle into her, his pale eyes – his mother’s eyes – fixed mistrustfully on Evie.
    Jason and his son are coming closer. Abruptly Evie turns and walks away, but the past goes with her. She remembers Russ’s study, the piles and shelves of books, half-folded maps, the smell of his Gauloise cigarettes and the scent of his aftershave. Their shared passion drove the relationship forward. He loved Pat, made sure she was looked after, watched over Jason – but his vitality, his energy, was always seeking after something new and exciting. For a short while Evie fitted into that space. They snatched opportunities to be alone together, precious moments to make love in her small room, and now, as she walks quickly through the streets, she feels guilt that she allowed it to happen; that back then she didn’t think much about