And then, from nowhere, my brain makes sense of the movement of her mouth, and I turn away from the boat, lifting myself high in the water with eggbeater kicks right at the point when a wave lifts me up, to have the best chance to get my bearings. I’m scanning the water for the one thing that might save my life, the thing that Georgie was trying to tell me: the buoy. The buoy in the middle of the cove. If I can see the buoy, if I can grab hold of the buoy, then I have a chance. Unless I’ve already been swept past it . . . It has a light on it at night; I remember that. Is that—yes, it’s there! It’s farther out toward the cove mouth than I am; I shall have to aim inland of it to take account of the current. I start to swim, and as I do, I realize that the boat has switched course: it’s fore of me, rather than aft. Hope throws a shaft of light through me: has Lissa come to her senses? Are they circling round to pick me up? I stick my head up again, using the eggbeater to lift myself. But no, that light is just as quickly snuffed out: they’re not looking in my direction, not even Georgie. I can see Lissa at the wheel, and as I watch, Georgie suddenly flings herself at her, both arms wrapping round Lissa. For a moment they hover improbably, somehow balanced together on the top of the gunwale, and I strain to watch over the waves as they continue to teeter there—but I know that their small moment of equilibrium cannot last; they have to fall one side or the other. And then they topple together over the side of the gunwale into the sea.
And I think: Well, we’re all in the same boat now.
TWENTY-TWO
GEORGIE
I know now. I know how you kill your best friend. You have to go down with her; there isn’t any other way.
We hit the water together, one of my arms wrapped tight around her from the side, her frantic breaststroke kick tangling in my own legs as we sink beneath the surface. Then I have the presence of mind to release her, and I pull down and kick hard for the surface, emerging to find that the rain hitting my face is colder than the sea that envelops me. I scan around quickly, trying to get my bearings: we’re already meters away from the boat, which, absent a driver, is pitching crazily in the storm-whipped waves. Then I spot her, only meters away, at a forty-five-degree angle on her back with her feet drawn up and her hands busy: she’s trying to take off her boots. Smart. It prompts me to duck under the water to pull my dress over my head and discard it, and my bra, too, as the padding in it allows it to fill and flap, though I know none of it will help; not me, not Lissa. Neither of us is strong enough to withstand this. When I come up again, I can’t immediately see her, but then a wave lifts me high and I spot her again, farther away from me this time; simply a featureless, pale face-shape against the dark ocean. For a second I think she might be trying to shout something to me. But it’s too late. We’re too far apart. I can’t hear.
I tread water, keeping only the minimum of my head above water, obeying the number one rule—don’t fight a rip—whilst I consider my options. I know I won’t survive this, but I have to at least try. I owe it to—well, to whom? Really, to whom do I owe anything in life, in a world where Lissa doesn’t exist? But still. I have to try. The problem isn’t being in water, or the storm, or even the cold—even at this sea temperature, hypothermia will set in eventually—but getting onto dry land. I know I can float or tread water a lot longer than the average person, but I can’t do it indefinitely. What we thought had happened to Lissa, when she was the Lissa in the red swimsuit, caught in the riptide, swept into that vast expanse of ocean with no land for hundreds of miles, thousands even; what we thought had happened to her is about to actually happen to me. All those years of open water swimming experience, and look where it has got me.
Adam might find me. It’s a small chance, but it’s possible. He and Steve might bring the boat round and somehow spot me. But it’s more likely that they’ll be able to help Bron, if she’s managed to grab the buoy—I use urgent eggbeater kicks to raise myself up and look for it, but I’m sure I’ve already been swept past it—though I don’t think she heard me, so there’s only the very slimmest of chances. Sod’s Law suggests the only person they will rescue is Lissa. In my experience, the universe has exactly that kind of sense of humor.
Where is Lissa? She will fight; I know it. Perhaps she will fight more than me. Which of us, really, is the stronger? I’m not sure I’ve ever known the answer to that. I have a better swimming pedigree, but survival here is not going to hinge purely on that. Lissa will fight tooth and nail, to the bitter end. I’d better start figuring out how to do that myself.
I lift myself up with eggbeater for a count of five, ignoring the odd grinding in my bad knee as I do so, trying to assess my surroundings. I don’t really know where I am, given how dark and wild it is—and then suddenly I realize that I can make out certain outlines, changes in darkness. Is that the cliff face? It could be. And the water hitting my face might actually be sea spray rather than rain now. One shouldn’t fight a rip, but one can swim sideways within it, and try to break out of it that way. So I have perhaps two opportunities. One is to move sideways out of the rip and reach land before I’m swept out of the mouth of the cove into the open sea. The other is to reach the shore of the nature reserve before I’m swept past the tip of it. How far is it? Four miles? Five? I’ve swum farther, no question. Though not in storm conditions in the dark, with a wicked current, no goggles, and no support boat . . . I’d need to manage my energy for a sustained hard effort. I try to make sense of which way I’m moving, but the tumbling and churning of the waves isn’t helping much, so I turn to face what I’m guessing is the mouth of the cove, where I can possibly detect a certain dark grayness rather than the pitch black of the cliffs. I’m closer to land on my left, I think. I’m not sure of it, but I think so. I start to move that way. I will do one hundred strokes, I decide. One hundred strokes in that direction. Surely the rip can’t be wider than one hundred strokes. One hundred strokes, and then we’ll see.
I start to swim and count. One, two, three, four, five, six . . . I quickly realize I can’t breathe to my left—the waves hit me in the face every time, choking off the chance to drag in air, whereas perhaps one in three breaths to the right results in the same. So I breathe on every second stroke, to the right, and I decide that I will sight every ten strokes, to make sure I’m still heading for the cliffs, roughly perpendicular to the flow of the rip. But it’s so very hard to sight; I can’t see well enough with my salty, bleary eyes, through the sea spray and the darkness. I renege on my own deal after sixty strokes, switching to eggbeater to lift myself up on the surge of a wave to try and get a better idea of where I might be.
It’s already too late. The storm must be abating; there’s intermittent moonlight now, enough for me to see, during a fortuitous cloud-break, that I’m almost at the mouth of the cove, and there’s no way I can reach the cliffs in time. There’s no point in even trying; I need to preserve my energy now. I’m going to be in the water for a long, long time. Maybe forever.
So, plan B. Except really, it’s plan C, since plan A was to topple Lissa overboard and take control of the boat, then pick up Bron and, hopefully, a far less murderous Lissa, too; a long shot, for sure, but what else was I supposed to do? Sit meekly in the boat and let Lissa drop me off somewhere nice and safe, whilst Bron thrashed and flailed in the water until exhaustion overtook her and she slipped silently beneath the waves forever? Yes. That’s surely what anybody else would have done. And then, with an odd pang: That’s what Adam would have wanted me to do. Too late now.
Plan C, then. I briefly consider whether I can fight my way out of the current eastward to get back to the resort, or at least the same island as the resort, but then I remember the shape of the coastline on the map. Horseshoe Bay, then a headland, then the narrow tongue that is Kanu Cove, then another headland, and then a bay with a small town, where many of the staff come from; and then after that, the land starts to fall sharply away, curving round because that’s the northern end of the island. The current betw
een here and the nature reserve flows west-northwest; I could use up all my energy fighting to get back east and simply find myself too far north with the land receding away from me. Better to go mainly with the flow but try to direct myself farther westward, to hit the nature reserve before I run out of island to land on. Which is all well and good, but how the hell am I supposed to navigate? Bron would be all over the velocity vectors; she’d have the math done in a trice—If the current is moving four miles an hour west-northwest, and Georgie is moving two miles an hour westward, exactly how fucked is Georgie? Give your answer to two decimal places—but even she would struggle without a fixed point to orient herself.
Bron. God, I hope she found that buoy. That’s her only hope now. I don’t want to think of Kitty’s little face, pinched with misery; I don’t want to think of Rob, broken. And all of it my fault. If I had realized what was happening to Lissa, if I had found a way to stop her mad descent . . .
I need to move. Every moment that I’m not traveling west increases the likelihood that I’ll overshoot the island. I need to move, but I need to get it right; the combination is paralyzing. I can’t do this. Even were it daylight, this is too much to attempt. The waves are too massive, now that I’m out of any protection of the cove; I’ve never swum in conditions as wild as this. The waves have a strength that simply can’t be fought, or tricked, or reasoned with; they’re inexorably bearing down on me, again and again and again. Panic is building up inside me, threatening to steal my breath, threatening to flood through all my systems, to put me back on the sandy ground, my arms bound tight by my attacker; threatening to put me back in Jem’s villa, hemmed in against the cupboard. Only if I let it take me this time, I will die.
I will not die without a fight. Lissa will be fighting. I am going to fight.
I flip onto my back and breathe. Three long breaths, in and out; as a calming exercise, it’s hampered by a particularly ferocious wave smacking against my face, but I try three more, looking up at the sky. And suddenly I realize I can see stars—not just one or two, but lots. Not the whole sky, to be sure, but still . . . The visibility must be markedly improved. And if the visibility is improved, I ought to be able to see the lights of the hotel. Or if not, perhaps of the small town. If those are behind me, if they’re visible on my left side when I breathe, then I must be cutting hard enough left. I’m lifting up to look now, and immediately I spot the town. It’s terrifying how far north I’ve drifted already. I need to start swimming.
So I do. Stroke after stroke after stroke. I’m not in the least bit sure I’m making any progress at all, but I keep the town’s lights behind me, on my left side. They don’t seem to get any farther away. I keep the tempo as high as I think I can manage for, say, a two-hour swim, though this will likely end up a lot longer than that; I’m not wearing a watch, so I have absolutely no way of judging the time. My arms pull through the darkness beneath me, my hands disappearing in the gloom to reappear again at the start of their next stroke. Stroke after stroke after stroke. Check for the lights under my left arm: still there. Stroke after stroke after stroke. I resist the urge to look ahead. There’s a long way to go before there will be any point in doing that.
Time passes, punctuated only by strokes and breaths and glimpses of lights. Sometimes I think I’m simply swimming on the spot, being washed back by the waves. At other times it feels like I’m swimming up a wave only to crash into open air from its crest. My arms already ache, but there is nothing to be done but to keep on turning them over. The irregularity of the waves makes it hard to get into a rhythm, but eventually it comes. My brain, though, won’t allow itself to be scrubbed clean. The abject panic, hovering just in the periphery, prevents it. I wonder how Lissa is doing. I wonder if she’s made the same calculations that I have. She hates night swimming; is she panicked? Of course she’s panicked. But, more than that, I bet she’s furious with me, for what I’ve done to her. What I’ve done to us both. This isn’t how this was supposed to play out. She was supposed to have her level playing field now, all proportionate vengeance neatly ticked off.
Proportionate vengeance. It sits in my mind for stroke after stroke after stroke. I don’t know what counts as proportionate vengeance. I wonder if she even knows, or if she’s still too blinded by the horror of losing Graeme. I thought she was pulling herself out of it—marrying Jem, making a life out here—but instead she was burrowing into it. How could I have missed the fact that she was planning this all along?
The lights, when I look under my left arm on a breath, are farther away; I’m sure of it. I finally allow myself to lift my head and look forward on a stroke. All I can see are waves. I break my stroke and tread water instead, my legs moving into eggbeater automatically, though my bad knee isn’t really taking its fair share of the load. There is a long, low, dark shape on the horizon. It’s very, very far away. I twist my head to look back at the lights. They seem closer. I’m not even halfway. Probably not even a third. I am never, ever going make it. The despair isn’t particularly devastating. I always knew I wasn’t going to make it.
I hope Lissa isn’t panicking.
I stick my head down and start swimming again.
I hope Bron found the buoy.
I keep swimming. My eyes aren’t open, except when I breathe on the left side, to check for the lights. I think the waves may be subsiding. Perhaps they died down a while ago. Time is as liquid as the ocean; it seems to both ebb and flow. Am I swimming forward, cutting through the water, or is the water rushing backward around me? Which way am I moving through time? I see people and events from the past—or is it the future? I see Lissa and me, in a bar, in a café, in a pool, waking up together in a bed somewhere. I see Maddy, as a toddler, holding out her arms to be picked up, her face ecstatic with joy at seeing me. I see Bron, holding a tiny newborn Kitty, her face somehow immeasurably changed, though I couldn’t say how. Sometimes I see a dark shape slipping sinuously through the depths beneath me, and I keep seeing Maddy floating some meters below, only occasionally I can’t tell if she’s Lissa. There’s the same slightness of build, the same blond hair floating and billowing around a face with features that aren’t filled in enough for a definitive identification, exactly like the portrait. Whoever it is, they don’t speak to me—but why would they? There’s no point.
I keep swimming.
At some point it occurs to me I ought to check my bearings again. I can see the outline of the nature reserve far ahead of me, just a low humped shape that’s darker than the sky. It drops away into the ocean on my right; I’m going to overshoot. Nothing but a monumental, impossible effort can get me there, and I don’t have a monumental effort left in me.
I keep swimming.
I see the dark, sinuous shape again, so alien in its effortless movements, undulating through the water as if merely air. It’s the serpent, the Kanu serpent; I see that now, but it doesn’t scare me. It edges left in my field of underwater vision, and I follow it, entranced. It comes closer to me now: I can see overlapping scales on its skin, like a snake. It’s not black, exactly, or if it is, it’s a kind of black with patterns within it, some kind of elegant mottling that I could never describe, that seems to change from moment to moment. It’s so long that I can’t see its head or its tail. It’s always moving to my left, sometimes coiling itself right round to return when I am very slow, but even then I can’t see the head or tail. It’s endless, I think. Endless and timeless, and extraordinarily alien in its beauty. Gradually it dawns on me that it means for me to follow it, that there’s an urgency to the way in which it repeatedly moves ahead and returns. It wants me to speed up, too, I think. It seems like I ought to obey. I don’t have any energy in my arms—my right one is barely clearing the water on its recovery—but I start to at least kick harder, which in turn increases the cadence of my strokes. There’s no Maddy or Lissa now: I’ve left them behind, or ahead; anyway, I’ve left them. Or they’ve left me.
I
keep swimming, harder, with all that I have left, because Kanu wants me to and that seems to make sense.
I keep swimming.
TWENTY-THREE
BRONWYN
The buoy is not just a buoy; it’s so much more than that. It’s a goal, something to focus on; it allows for planning and strategy; it wards off the panic. Not completely; nothing could do that, as the situation is too manifestly dire for there to be no panic. But with the buoy to focus on, I can squash that panic down so that it doesn’t erupt into the gut-wrenching sobs and gasps that linger, dangerously close to breaking through.
The serpent. No, I won’t think about that.
But seeing the buoy and reaching it are two very different things. For one thing, the buoy is dwarfed by the waves, and I can only see it when the relative positions of it and myself—both being constantly either raised up or abruptly dropped down by the swell of the ocean—are exactly right. For another, I know that the current here is fast, so fast that I must aim significantly closer inland than its actual position to have a chance of reaching the buoy, but I can’t tell where I am in relation to it. And the third, completely unexpected hazard, is the boat. I can see it, in the intermittent moonlight, and occasionally hear it, too. Lissa couldn’t have been wearing the kill cord: the engine is still running, but without anyone to control it, it’s entirely at the mercy of the waves, jerking and twitching randomly with no sense to its course. If I stick my head down and swim, I’m liable to be run over. I’ll have to swim water polo–style—head-up front crawl—which is more tiring, but much better for visibility. But which direction?
How to Kill Your Best Friend Page 27