I’m about to pull off my dress, when I realize that it can be a help rather a hindrance. I sink a couple of meters below the surface, to get out of the surface effects of the wind, and try to use it like a wind sock by judging which way the skirt is being dragged. It’s very clear. Now I have the equivalent of a compass: I know the direction of the rip, and from that I can work out the entire topography of the problem.
I can do this. This kind of challenge suits me. I don’t have Georgie’s stamina: she comes into her own after a couple of kilometers, and I couldn’t match her then even at my fittest, but I’ve always been able to smash out shorter efforts. I look for the boat, which is jinking around some four or five hundred meters from me, then scan for the buoy again, catching a quick wink of the light perhaps three hundred meters from me. I run a calculation in my head, trying to work out where I should aim given the relative angle of my trajectory to the current, and my speed, and the current speed, but I don’t have all the information. All I can do is a best guess and then adjust as I go on. I start, turning my arms over hard and fast, kicking strongly, my head held high. My dress is a hindrance, but I daren’t take it off in case I need it for a compass again. The kids and Rob try to nudge into my mind, but I can’t allow for that. I can’t focus on anything but the task at hand. And I’m gaining on the buoy; I can see that. Hope flares inside me, and I redouble my efforts just as I catch a glimpse of the speedboat out the corner of one eye. It’s heading straight toward me. For a moment I wonder if I can grab on to it, but sense prevails: I’ll probably end up cut to shreds by the propeller. I don’t break stroke; I swim on, hoping that it will be jerked off its current path by a large wave. If not, I can sink beneath it—though, will I be able to see well enough in the dark waters to come up in a safe area? It’s closer now, only twenty meters or so away. I stop swimming and tread water. It’s growing larger, taller, more menacing; on the crest of a wave it seems enormous, like facing off against a cruise liner. Part of me registers that the fact I can see it so clearly means that the cloud cover must be receding. Ten meters, and still coming. Oh Jesus. I’m going to have to duck.
I take a deep breath and duck-dive as fast as I can, pulling down strongly with my arms, farther and farther into the depths, until my ears are sore with the pressure—surely that’s deep enough? I scull to maintain my position, and I look up, starting to count. One, two, three . . . There’s nothing but blackness above me, though I can hear the metallic rhythm of the engine, distressingly loud for something I can’t see; surely it must be right above me? Though it would be loud even if it weren’t, sound travels so well through the water. Six, seven . . . I can already feel my lungs starting to buck at the lack of oxygen. How long can I stay here? Nine, ten, eleven . . . I start to rise, slowly, carefully. Then out of the corner of my eye, I see a faint sparkle of silver that when I turn my head to look resolves into a rush of moonlit bubbles that can only be caused by the propeller; I twist and dive down again, my lungs bursting, twisting onto my back after two strokes to look up. The bubbles are still there, but I desperately need to breathe. I start to swim laterally under the water, away from the bubbles: using three, four, five big breaststroke pulls, fighting the spasms in my chest. I’ll have to aim upward soon. I have no choice, propeller or no propeller. I have to breathe or I’ll pass out. And then something cold—what?—slithers against me, and conscious decision is slain: I shoot like an arrow for the surface, my arms above my head for protection.
I surface intact—yes!—with a huge gasping intake, looking frantically all around me for the boat and also frantically under me for any kind of creature, not sure if I should be readying myself to dive again or to swim. I see the boat immediately, only ten meters from me, but heading away from my position. I’m whimpering—I can hear it; it breaks through my panic somehow, and I force myself to lie back and breathe, filling my lungs again and again while the pulse hammering in my ears begins to slow, sense gradually catching up with me. It could have been anything that touched me. Seaweed, a plastic bag; anything. There’s no reason to assume it was the creature. Then the real danger strikes me again, and I come upright: the buoy. Where is the buoy? I can’t see it, I can’t see it anymore—and then I spot a flash of light. I’ve definitely lost ground on it. I quickly duck under, to test the current direction, and then start my head-up front crawl again, faster than ever—well, probably not, given how tired I am now, but at least with even more effort than ever before. At first I think I’m simply keeping myself stationary, as the buoy doesn’t seem to get any closer. And then a fortuitous wave picks me up, and I find I’m surging on it, clearly getting closer, and it gives me just that glimmer of hope that I need. I can do this. It’s getting closer. Perhaps thirty more strokes. I can do this. I can do this—and then suddenly I’m upon it, reaching out with grasping arms toward my floating savior, relief flooding through me.
But the buoy itself is clearly not designed for a swimmer to hang on to it. I try to wrap my arms around it, but it’s too large a sphere for them to reach easily around it—certainly I can’t link my hands—and it’s also covered in a sort of slimy algae that makes it extraordinarily slippery. I try to hold on, but lose my grip in the swash of a large wave; I have to fight hard to get back to it. Even the light on top has a smooth casing which offers no fingerholds. I feel down underneath it for its tether, hoping for a rope rather than a chain. I’m in luck: it is a rope. It has the circumference of one of my wrists, and it’s thick with slime, but I can get my hands around it easily. I wrap my legs around it, too, crossing them at the ankles, and I hold with arms outstretched, so that I can partially lie back and float. The strongest waves tug hard at me, and I get submerged from time to time, but I can hold on. For a very long time, I should think. Not forever, but for a very long time. Absent other factors, that is.
Other factors. I try to list them. The boat remains a risk; I should keep checking around for it. I suppose I could fall asleep and unconsciously let go, if I allow myself to close my eyes: no eye-closing allowed, then. There’s the cold, too: now that I’m stationary, I’m not keeping myself warm through moving, so hypothermia could set in, but in these sea temperatures that will take a long time. It will probably be daylight before that happens, and surely I’ll be spotted by then? Georgie said Adam and Steve would be bringing the boat. Surely they’ll find me long before morning?
The sea creature. Now that I’m not focused on a task, it’s nudging at my mind. The fear isn’t rational—I know that—but that doesn’t make it any less potent. Every single reasonable argument I can construct simply fails when faced with the pitch-black, bottomless depths below me and all the nameless terrors that are concealed within.
Think of something else. Rob, Kitty, Jack: but no, I can’t think of them, either. Not now. It’s too unforgivable: I’ve jeopardized my life with them, I’ve jeopardized their well-being—but no, I can’t think of that now. Not until I’m safe.
The sea creature—
Stop it. Keep your eyes open, look around and keep holding on. Just keep holding on.
Keep holding on.
TWENTY-FOUR
GEORGIE
Somebody is shaking me. I really wish they would stop. I’m far too tired; I want to sleep some more. But something very uncomfortable is being jammed into my side with every push. Come to that, everything I’m lying on is uncomfortable, and gritty, and . . . sand. I must be lying on sand. I’m lying on my back, though not on a flat surface. I’m sloping awkwardly to one side.
“Georgie. Georgie,” a voice keeps saying, along with the shoves, and I realize that it’s Adam. Why is Adam here? I start to open my eyes, but pain stabs through my left eye. I clap a hand up to it. For some reason that seems to elicit a cheer, though from whom I can’t tell. My tongue seems to be about the size of a whale, and desiccated, furry and cracked. I cautiously try to open my eyes again; the pain is still there, but less severe. It’s very bright, and Adam is grinning at m
e. I’ve never seen him with a smile so wide.
“Water,” I try to say, but it comes out as a grunt. He seems to understand anyway and brings a bottle to my lips; one of the glass reusable ones from the hotel. I move my head as he brings it to me, and it chinks against my teeth.
“Sorry,” he says. He’s hunkered down beside me. I’m still lying down, so half of the water splashes out of my mouth, running in rivulets down my cheeks. “Sorry,” he says again. Now he snakes an arm under my shoulders and brings me up to sitting. I see that I’m just under the shade of some foliage, not far from the waterline. Judging from the light, it must be almost midday. I realize that the cheers came from Steve and three of the hotel staff in the hotel speedboat that’s hovering nearby, as close as its draft will allow. I also realize that I’m only wearing teeny tiny knickers.
“Shirt,” I say, and this actually comes out sounding like I mean it to. Adam grins again and pulls his own shirt, a gray T-shirt advertising his bike shop, over his head, then sets about pulling it over mine and moving my arms around to get it on me, like one would with an infant. His nose is sunburned, I notice. It wasn’t yesterday. I take the water from him and drink again. I can almost feel it moving through my body, seeping into every space, invigorating the cells. My eyes are instantly less sore.
“Can you move?” asks Adam. “Are you hurt?”
“Don’t know.” I think about it. Then I give up for more pressing questions. “Lissa? Bron?”
“Bron’s fine.” Oh, thank God. “We found her last night, clinging on to the buoy.” I hadn’t thought she’d heard me. “She wasn’t actually in the water very long; maybe only three-quarters of an hour, tops. She said you saved her life, telling her to do that.”
“Lissa?”
He shakes his head grimly. “Not so far. Though if anyone finds her, I’ll kill her myself.”
Steve is coming across to us. I wonder if he was waiting until I was decently covered. “Can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you,” he says to me, pleasure beaming across his broad face. I try a smile back, but there’s a danger it might crack my lips. “Should have known that if anyone could survive that swim, it would be you.”
I didn’t expect to. And I almost didn’t. The horror of it is too near. I can’t smile back at that. “It was . . .” I don’t know how to describe it.
“Tell us later,” suggests Adam gently. “For now, let’s get you back to the hotel.”
“The flight?”
“We’ll miss it. It takes off in an hour. You couldn’t get on it anyway; the police need to speak to you. And Bron. She told us what happened.”
“Are you okay to walk, or shall we carry you?” asks Steve.
“I think I’m fine.” My body’s response to the water is nothing short of remarkable, like a desert responding to rain. I am blooming, I am an oasis, I have become verdant. I will never take fresh water for granted again. Together they help to lever me to my feet, and I find that I can indeed stand. I’m sore and I’m stiff, but not much more so than after any really long, hard swim. Adam runs his eyes over me as if he’s doing an inventory. “I’m fine, really. Ten fingers and ten toes.” I start to walk and have to put a hand out to grab him for support as my knee buckles. I look down at it; it’s definitely badly swollen. “And one dodgy knee.” I look at the boat, and beyond it, expecting to see a suggestion of land on the horizon behind, the island where the hotel is nestled, but there’s nothing but ocean. “Where are we, by the way?”
“The farthest tip of the nature reserve,” says Steve. He’s hovering on my other side, ready to lend support if I buckle again. He shakes his head. “If you hadn’t landed here—”
“Well, she did,” says Adam quickly. “She’s here.”
I’m here. How extraordinary. I’m here. I look out at the ocean, as if I might see the serpent there, but the water is clear and calm and blue. I have Kanu to thank for being here; I’m sure of it. There’s a haze around my memories, but I do remember that, at least. I would have never veered left enough; I would never have picked up the pace when I needed to—not without Kanu.
We’re sloshing into the water now. The waves are so meek and mild that I fancy they’re sheepish after their tantrum of last night. The salt stings on grazes I hadn’t realized I had. Some are in odd places, like my hips: that must be from dragging myself across the sand to get clear of the waterline. The speedboat looks impossibly high to get into, but the lads on board take an arm each and haul me straight up as if I’m a feather. Once we’re all on board, Adam tucks a towel around me and hands me a fresh bottle of water. “Do you have anything to eat?” I ask nobody in particular.
“Now that’s a good sign,” says Steve with a smile as he powers up the engine. Everyone and everything is smiling as we set off, moving slowly as we are technically in the area where speedboats aren’t permitted, though I suppose they would make an exception under these circumstances. The sun glints off the waves. The sky is scrubbed clean blue. One of the staff members hunts in a bag and hands me a packet of biscuits. They are manna from heaven; there is no better nutrition to be found in all the world.
One of the staff in the boat says something to Steve in the local language, grinning. “Really?” says Steve, and he looks across at me.
“What?” I manage.
“Joyo says his grandfather told him that we would find you.”
“His grandfather?”
The lad, who can’t be more than eighteen, says something more. Steve translates. “You met him, once, apparently? At Kanu.”
“Yes! I did. I remember.” He must mean the wizened old man with the rotten front teeth. Kanu takes who wants taken.
“He saw his grandfather when we refueled the boat. He says his grandfather said you are . . .” He turns back to Joyo, as if checking something. “Sorry, my translation skills aren’t brilliant, but the best I can do is: daughter of Kanu. Or maybe, daughter of serpent. Yes, that’s better.”
“Daughter of serpent.” I lean back against Adam. He loops an arm over my shoulder, across my torso. My shoulder groans at the weight, but I don’t complain. Everything hurts anyway. “I saw it, you know,” I say quietly to him, in between mouthfuls of biscuit.
“The serpent?”
“Yes.” How to explain what I saw, what I felt? I start another biscuit. I can feel Adam’s chin on my hair, and the press of his expectation, as he patiently waits for me to say more. But I can’t think of how to start. “I saw Maddy and Lissa, too, though, so . . .” I shrug.
“Maddy? Your sister?”
“Yes.” I wonder how he knows that. Perhaps my secrets haven’t been so perfectly cached after all.
“She—um, she died, right?” He’s feeling his way through this. It almost makes me want to hug him, the care he’s taking.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.” I nod, knowing he will feel the movement. “Quite a night, then,” he says dryly, but there’s a smile in his words, too.
“Quite a night.” I start on another biscuit. I might finish the packet, all by myself.
“Bron said something odd,” he says after a pause. There’s something in his tone that I can’t identify. “She said it looked like you went into the water on purpose. To take Lissa with you.” That press again, that weight. He wants something from me. “But she was in the water, herself; maybe she couldn’t see clearly,” he adds hopefully.
He wants me to say no, it wasn’t like that. But I’m done with that. No secrets. Not for anyone. “I knew it could have gone either way.”
He sighs, a long controlled sigh. He’s trying to tone it down, under the circumstances, to come across as exasperated rather than angry, but I know him now. He’s furious with me. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that if I could get control of the boat, I could pick up Bron. I tried to keep a hand on the windscreen strut, but
I couldn’t hold on. So I ended up going over with her.” It was always a Hail Mary play. I know he knows that. And I know he knows what I was prepared to do.
He sighs again. “For fuck’s sake, Georgie. You always find a way to make things impossible.”
“I know.” I eat another biscuit. I’m not entirely sure what he’s saying, but it doesn’t sound good. I don’t want to face that now. Right now, the world is smiling. “Maybe it’s because I’m the daughter of a serpent.”
He laughs, unwillingly, but he laughs. “You really are the most fucked-up person I know.”
“I know.”
TWENTY-FIVE
BRONWYN
I move to the front door with a smile when I hear the bell ring, but Kitty streaks past me, elbows out in her determination to be the first to greet our visitor. “Georgie! Georgie!” she clamors as she drags the heavy wooden door open. Georgie doesn’t disappoint: she opens her arms out wide and scoops up her little goddaughter, swinging her round and round while somehow managing to exclaim how she’s grown and tickle her all at the same time, and the little girl positively fizzes with the attention. Then there are new bedrooms to inspect, seeing as Georgie hasn’t seen the house before (Kitty is inordinately proud of her bunk beds, even if I won’t let her sleep on the top bunk yet), and Jack, solemn faced and suspicious with a thumb in his mouth, to be won over, and presents from Georgie to be opened; all in all, it’s a good twenty minutes before the two of us even manage to say a proper adult hello.
“This is a lovely space,” she says appreciatively, looking around as I lead her into the kitchen. “You suit it.” A typically Georgie backward way of putting it, as if I’m bending to the house rather than vice versa. Though maybe I am: to the house, and to this suburban life. I made it home from the trip in once piece, after all, so I’m doing what I promised: I am being the perfect boring housewife. I’m even on the parish council. Treasurer.
How to Kill Your Best Friend Page 28