Saskia Sarginson was awarded a distinction in her MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway after a BA in English Literature from Cambridge University and a BA in Fashion Design & Communications. Before becoming a full-time author, Saskia’s writing experience included being a health and beauty editor on women’s magazines, a ghost writer for the BBC and Harper Collins, copy-writing and script editing. Saskia lives in south London with her partner and four children.

  Visit Saskia online:

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  By Saskia Sarginson

  The Twins

  Without You

  The Other Me

  The Stranger

  How It Ends

  The Bench

  The Central Line

  Seven Months of Summer

  Copyright

  Published by Piatkus

  ISBN: 978-0-349-42873-4

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Saskia Sarginson, 2023

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Piatkus

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Saskia Sarginson

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  January

  Chapter 1: Summer

  Chapter 2: Kit

  Chapter 3: Summer

  Chapter 4: Kit

  Chapter 5: Summer

  Chapter 6: Kit

  Chapter 7: Summer

  Chapter 8: Kit

  Chapter 9: Summer

  Chapter 10: Kit

  February

  Chapter 11: Kit

  Chapter 12: Summer

  Chapter 13: Kit

  Chapter 14: Summer

  Chapter 15: Summer

  Chapter 16: Summer

  Chapter 17: Summer

  March

  Chapter 18: Kit

  Chapter 19: Summer

  Chapter 20: Kit

  Chapter 21: Summer

  Chapter 22: Kit

  Chapter 23: Summer

  Chapter 24: Kit

  Chapter 25: Summer

  Chapter 26: Kit

  April

  Chapter 27: Summer

  Chapter 28: Kit

  Chapter 29: Summer

  Chapter 30: Kit

  Chapter 31: Summer

  May

  Chapter 32: Summer

  Chapter 33: Kit

  Chapter 34: Summer

  Chapter 35: Kit

  Chapter 36: Summer

  Chapter 37: Kit

  Chapter 38: Summer

  June

  Chapter 39: Summer

  Chapter 40: Kit

  Chapter 41: Summer

  Chapter 42: Kit

  Chapter 43: Summer

  Chapter 44: Kit

  Chapter 45: Summer

  Chapter 46: Kit

  Chapter 47: Summer

  Chapter 48: Kit

  July

  Chapter 49: Kit

  Chapter 50: Summer

  Chapter 51: Kit

  Chapter 52: Summer

  Chapter 53: Kit

  Chapter 54: Summer

  Chapter 55: Kit

  Chapter 56: Kit

  Chapter 57: Summer

  Chapter 58: Kit

  Chapter 59: Summer

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  TO CASSIDY JACKSON JESSIMAN.

  WHO CAME INTO THE WORLD AT

  THE SAME TIME AS THIS BOOK.

  It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

  Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

  I sow’d the seeds of love

  Folk song (1689)

  PROLOGUE

  Kerala, India

  15 January 1993

  Kit wobbles on his bicycle, just missing a deep pothole, and puts his foot down to look at the road ahead. It’s a busy highway, full of lorries and SUVs. A motorbike swerves around him, beeping. There are two children crammed onto the seat behind the driver, a length of scarlet fabric fluttering like a red flag.

  He grimaces, knowing that Summer imagined the way to the next village would be a quiet back road winding along by the sea, not this congested route dense with fumes and the sound of blaring horns and revving engines. The guy hiring out the bikes at the hotel said it was a thirty-minute ride. Don’t be a wuss, he tells himself, it’s not much worse than cycling around Marble Arch at rush-hour. He pedals off, keeping his head down, looking for the next pothole or stray rock. An elaborately painted lorry roars past, wheels so close he sees the tread-pattern on the tyres; he steadies the bike and curses as the backdraught pushes him off balance. He keeps going, one foot after the other, damp hands slipping on the handlebars.

  He tastes sweat and dust on his lips, the acrid stink of diesel. The sun throbs, a pulsing ball of energy. His legs are heavy. It’s not just the heat, he realises. His whole body is weighted down with a sense of wrongness. Every time he pushes on the pedals it takes him further from her. He stops again, putting his foot on the tarmac, and glances behind at the road that leads back to Summer. Being with her is more important than getting paid for a few sketches. This is a mistake. He’s going to turn around.

  It takes him a while to get to the other side of the road. He has to grab his chance when he sees a gap between two lorries. He dashes across as they bear down on him, horns sounding wildly. Trembling on the verge, he pauses to take a water bottle from his bag, downing it in one long drink. He wipes his face on his arm, smearing sweat and water into his stinging eyes.

  He imagines how horrified she’ll be when he describes this crazy road. She’ll be glad that he’s returned safely to her, secretly pleased he didn’t go to the dance festival. They can spend the afternoon on the bed, talking. There’s so much more he wants to know about her. It’s the first time in his life he’s had someone he wants to take care of, tell his thoughts to, share the details of his day with. He needs to understand everything that matters to her. Later, maybe they’ll take a wander along the cliff path as the sun goes down. He noticed a pretty necklace in one of the shops, a delicate rope of twisted silver with tiny green stones hanging from it. It will go with the colour of her eyes, match her earrings.

  They can call in at their favourite café and sit at the little table overlooking the ocean. They’ll order an extravagant supper. Other girlfriends have picked at salads, pretending they’re not hungry, all the time eyeing his meal with wistful expressions. Summer will happily take mouthfuls from his plate as well as her own, gesturing for him to help himself to her food too.

  He can’t wait to go through the door into the shuttered cool of their room and find her asleep on the bed. He’ll wake her with a kiss.

  He’s cycling under the shade of banana trees as a scooter accelerates past. It pulls ahead, and he glimpses the man driving, sees a woman in a fluttering sari sitting side-saddle, a large basket clasped on her lap. He wonders how she can sit like that, calm and balanced, while the scooter dodges left and right. She’s not even holding on. He feels a nervous admiration. A single-decker bus sways around the corner towards them, and at the same time he hears the grate of gears behind him, recognising the rumble of a diesel engine, signalling a lorry close on his heels.

  He holds the handlebars steady and braces himself for the ordeal of it overtaking. The scooter is just up ahead. The woman’s sari is blue. She turns and smiles over her shoulder. Up ahead, something leaves the shadows of the banana plantation and his pulse accelerates as his brain catches up with his eyes – it’s a dog, trotting straight into the traffic.

  The scooter swerves sharply to avoid the animal. The woman tumbles back, falling as if in slow motion, the basket bouncing away, her sari an unfurling sweep of sky.

  He’s trying to stop, his fingers jamming around the brakes.

  The woman is stretched out on the road. The scooter and its driver are still attached to each other but moving on their sides as if being dragged along by a giant toddler. The scooter and driver slide straight into the path of the oncoming bus. The bus gobbles them up, machine and man churning under its wheels; the bus swings across Kit’s path, the side of it rearing like a wall. Faces stare out of windows. Terrified eyes. Open mouths. He hears nothing, not even the lorry as it goes past him, headlong into the oncoming metal and glass. He is caught inside the dusty hot breath of heavy things in motion. His fingers are rigid around the brakes, his back wheel going from under him. He hits the road, sliding across asphalt. He sees his hand before him, reaching through space.

  A white stillness holds him at its
centre.

  He thinks of Summer, of her sleeping face.

  The bubble bursts and there is the high-pitched screaming of living creatures, and the other kind of scream when metal clashes with metal and windscreens shatter into fragments.

  Pain explodes inside him.

  He sees the liquid gleam of something dark, and the darkness pulls him into itself like a friend pulling him from the sea.

  Kerala, India

  15 January 1993

  Summer checks the silver men’s watch she’s wearing. It’s too big for her and slips around her wrist bone. She twists the face upwards and catches her breath. He’s been gone ages. She remembers him confessing his habit of missing appointments and deadlines. As he said it, he’d rolled his eyes, poking fun at himself. She’d thought his inability to keep track of time was endearing, part of his artistic, easy-going nature. But not now, not when she needs him.

  It’s claustrophobic in their little hut at the top of the cliff, but as she steps out into the dazzle of light, she feels her skin sizzle. The plastic of her sunglasses leaves a rim of sweat on her cheekbones. Beads of perspiration prickle her forehead. She sits on a stone wall next to a dried-up ornamental pond, flapping the neck of her shirt to try and catch a breeze, her suitcase by her feet. Every time the door to the reception opens, she looks up expectantly. But it’s never him.

  The minutes tick on, and there’s a tightness at the back of her throat as she understands that she’ll have to leave without seeing him. She can’t wait any longer. She could die if she doesn’t get to the hospital. In a sudden panic, she grips the handle of her suitcase and stands up. Immediately, the world sparks and rushes away from her, so that she has to sit back down with a bump to stop herself from falling. She puts a hand to her head, waiting for the dizzy spell to pass.

  In the air-conditioned cool of the reception, she asks for some paper and a pen. It’ll take her a while to sort things out, she might be there for hours. She writes: Kit, I can’t wait any longer. I have to go. Please come and find me at the airport. I’ll be trying to get on the first available flight home.

  She shoves the paper across the desk at the receptionist. ‘Can you give this to Kit Appleby? I need a taxi please. It’s urgent.’

  The driver is a young man. He gets out of his Padmini to open the door for her, and she notices he wears no shoes. ‘I need to get to Cochin International fast,’ she tells him.

  ‘Ah, I am very sorry, but we will have to take small roads,’ he says. ‘The main road is closed. But don’t worry,’ he adds quickly. ‘You will be there in a lamb’s tail. No doubt about it. I am the fastest driver in Varkala.’

  She slides onto the back seat, and the car pulls away. She stares out of the window, not seeing the painted lorries rumbling past, the darting motorbikes, the elephant on the back of a truck. She’s imagining the spires of Cambridge, the cold of an English winter, and a hospital where they’re waiting for her.

  JANUARY

  One month of Summer

  1

  Summer

  Seven days earlier …

  Even before breakfast, the hotel barometer measures eighty-two degrees Fahrenheit. But it’ll take more than the heat to get Summer onto an air-conditioned bus with the rest of the Trojan Tours group. As of this morning, she’s free. No list of tourist sites to visit or schedule to keep to. She sets off alone along a dusty road in Fort Kochi, plaits bouncing over her shoulders, red flip-flops slapping the ground, a rush of joy bubbling inside her chest. This is how she imagined she’d feel, all those months ago when she opened the envelope Dad gave her for her twenty-sixth birthday.

  It had been an unassuming rectangle of beige, the kind usually containing dull, official letters. The first thing that fell out was a plane ticket to Madras. Dad laughed, delighted by Summer’s confusion. ‘You deserve it,’ he said. ‘I know how hard things have been – how much you’ve had to give up.’

  Summer was booked onto The Majesty of Southern India, by Trojan Tours. Part of the itinerary included visiting two national parks, where elephants, bison, whistling dogs, leopards and tigers lived. She imagined watching a herd of elephants at sunset by a watering hole, her camera to her eye. Perhaps if she was very lucky, she’d spot a solitary tiger.

  Emerging out of arrivals in Madras, there’d been a skirmish and clamour of people grasping at her luggage and shouting over each other for her attention, the honking of taxi horns, the stink of burning rubbish and, beyond everything, the velvety ink of the night, deeper and wider than any she’d known before. ‘I’m here,’ she’d whispered, a shock of dusty air blow-torching her lungs, as she’d grabbed the skin on her wrist between finger and thumb, and pinched.

  But the national parks had been disappointing. No tigers. No leopards. A glimpse of a tusker behind fronds of green. The tour guide, Tony, hurried them through every attraction, as if they were late for a train. Everybody in the group had a camera, and the sound of clicking erupted whenever the bus stopped. It felt as if they were watching a film, rather than having an experience. Parting ways with Tony and Trojan Tours was the best decision she’d made since arriving.

  Fort Kochi seems a laid-back town, full of cafés and groups of young Europeans with guitars on their backs. Houses shimmer in blues and yellows; lush vines sprout against walls in more kinds of green than she’d thought possible. She pauses under a wide-spreading banyan tree. She loves the way that a single street can accommodate a Hindu temple and mosque. That in another heartbeat there will be a white stone Catholic church, and then a Jain temple, where doves rise at the sound of each tolling prayer bell.

  She squats in the dust to watch a common langur monkey at the side of the road. It turns its intelligent face to observe her, elegant hands dissecting a rotten mango. She brings the camera up, holds her breath. Light shimmers on the pale sable of the animal’s coat as her finger squeezes the shutter release.

  Further down the road, a goat sleeps on the foot pad of a parked scooter. Smiling, she swings her camera up and snaps twice. Tuk-tuks bounce past, tourists crammed onto the back seats.

  Stopping to check the map, she realises she’s wandered onto Vasco Da Gama Square. She gazes at the water and the famous Chinese fishing nets. The square is bustling with activity. Stalls sell fish that come straight from the nets, and people gather to barter, slender cats threading in and out of legs, eyes glittering with desire. Summer sniffs the mix of brine, smoke and charred fish, and her mouth waters. Three or four young waiters compete with each other, trying to corral her into a seat at one of the little alfresco cafés. She allows herself to be escorted to an empty table by the least pushy one. Moments later, a plate of catch, hot from the flames, arrives with a glass of lime soda.

  She sips her drink, looking around the bustling square. Out of habit, she touches her earrings. Tiny silver hares dangle from her lobes. She takes three postcards from a paper bag and composes one to her best friend Laura: Wish you were here – we’d have so much fun! One to home: Kochi is amazing, pink dust, burning sky – so much to photograph! and then, biting the end of her pen, starts another to Adam. Except she can’t think what to say. He’d loved her. Then, without warning, it was over. He’d slept with another girl. ‘Thing is, I’m not ready to settle down,’ he’d said, and it was as if he’d landed a punch in her heart. ‘I still care about you, Summer, but … we’re too young.’ They’d been together for five years, and he’d let go of her so easily.

  She’d bumped into him before leaving for India – that was the problem with living in the same town. At least he hadn’t been with his girlfriend. ‘Send me a postcard,’ he’d said, as if he hadn’t broken her heart. And she’d agreed, just to escape. She taps her pen on the table, frowning. She and Adam split up three years ago. She should be over it by now, and yet, there’s been nobody since him, no one important.

  Two stray dogs hover, gazing at her hopefully. One of them has lost half an ear. Summer thinks of the dogs in Cambridge with their designer collars and expensive haircuts and wishes she could scoop up these feral creatures and give them a bath and a proper meal. They pad closer, noses sniffing. She drops pieces of fish on the ground. The dogs pounce. She can see their ribs through their dusty coats. The one missing an ear sidles forwards. She puts her hand out. ‘Go on then, boy,’ she murmurs, ‘take it. You look like you need it more than me.’