by Karen Clarke
The slap was a shock, snapping my head round, sending fresh ripples of agony reeling through me. ‘It’s not true about Mike,’ she hissed, rattled for the first time. ‘And don’t talk about my mum. You know nothing.’
‘I know you’ve used my brother, used us all.’ Tears ran down my face. Water was around my throat like a soft pair of hands, waiting to strangle me. I braced my feet and tried to push myself upright, but Rosa gripped my shoulders, pressing me down, and I felt the strength in her arms. ‘What do you think’s going to happen when I’m dead?’ I cried. ‘My parents, Hayley, they’ll be devastated.’
‘Exactly.’ Rosa let go of me and straightened. She flicked her hair back, calm again. ‘And I’ll be there, to step in. Be the daughter they no longer have, be Aunty Rosa to little Hayley. Jamie’s not far off proposing, you know.’
I desperately wanted to stand up, even though I was terrified of toppling over and sinking under the water, but knew I mustn’t risk Rosa lashing out again. ‘You told me he was unhappy about your job.’
She gave a cruel laugh. ‘Just another lie to make you suspicious.’
Poor, poor Jamie. I’d suspected him, when all along it was Rosa I should have been scared of.
‘Please, Rosa, don’t do this.’ My voice cracked, my words slowing as my energy suddenly drained. The cold was creeping into me, making me want to sleep.
As if sensing I was slipping away, Rosa pulled something from a belt around her waist. She leaned over and yanked me forward, pushing my face closer to the water as she freed me from the wrist ties. My arms bobbed forward, hanging uselessly in the water. I could taste salt on my lips, felt water rippling around my chin.
‘Bye, Beth.’ Rosa’s voice was a distant echo all around me. ‘I’d like to say it’s been nice knowing you, but it wouldn’t be true.’
I opened my mouth to say something, but I didn’t know what.
‘Have a nice death.’
I heard splashing and opened my eyes, lifting my head with an effort. Rosa was swimming away, her powerful arms slicing through the water, her feet kicking, creating a surge that sent spray into my mouth.
I coughed, tried to stand up and realised I already was, the water black and swollen all around me. Understanding flared bright in my mind. This wasn’t a nightmare I could wake up from. It was real. I was going to drown and no one was coming to save me.
Chapter 32
Time seemed to shift and stretch. I held my arms out of the water, rubbing life back into them, shivering violently. I dipped my fingers in the water and skimmed the side of my head where Rosa had hit me. Pain rolled through my skull. My hair was matted, but at least the bleeding seemed to have stopped.
Not that it mattered. Whether I died of a head wound, hypothermia, or drowning, the outcome would be the same. I just hoped it would be over quickly.
Water dripped from the roof of the cave, rippling the sea around me. The boulder where Rosa had sat was now submerged. If the water rose any higher the entrance to the cave would be completely sealed off. How long before it closed over my head, filled my nostrils, dragged me out to sea?
Shoving my sodden hair off my face, I waded to the boulder, panting and whimpering with fear. I could cling to it if I had to, but for how long?
I tried to push further forward, but the weight of the sea pressed me back.
Maybe someone was out there now on the cliff path. It had to be six o’clock, maybe seven. I’d lost all track of time, had no idea where my phone was. Even if I had it, I couldn’t call anyone.
With a shock of vertigo, I remembered my keys; shoving them in my pocket with my phone when I left the cottage. I sank my hand into the water to pull them out of my pocket, overcome with a brief, giddy burst of excitement.
Don’t set it off by accident, Vic had said. It can be heard for miles.
My fingers were numb and I nearly dropped the keys, but finally found the activation switch on the alarm and pressed it hard. Nothing. I shook it and tried again. Still nothing. The battery must be dead. Maybe it had been all along.
My cry of frustration echoed back, ending on an agonised sob. I slapped at the water then wrapped my arms around my chest. I couldn’t feel my legs, and my sodden clothes were plastered to my skin. I tipped my head back and screamed until my throat was raw, the sound doubly shocking as it crashed against my ears. Tears coursed down my cheeks, mingling with the salt on my lips. No one was coming. And yet … I couldn’t give up.
I thought of Hayley, fixing her face in my mind. I’d promised I would read her six stories when I got home. I’d promised Katya – Katya, who’d thought I was in danger, not realising the source – I’d come back.
The sea was pushing more strongly now, a breeze causing little swells that threatened to heave me off my feet.
Vic would see that I wasn’t there; he’d come looking for me. I wished I hadn’t said I was going for a walk, not wanting him to worry. Would he worry anyway?
Fear crawled over me, hollowing me out, threatening to erupt in hysteria.
I couldn’t stay here, waiting. Waiting to die. The best chance I had of being seen was getting out of the cave and into the sea in the cove.
Pushing down the rising terror, I tried to remember everything I’d been told about swimming, about staying safe in the water; all the advice stored in my mind I’d been too frightened to put into practice.
Most people drown because they panic and tense up. Tense muscles use more oxygen. Stay calm. Tread water if you can. If not, get on your back and float.
With a great gasp, which was more like a screech of fear, I flipped round and launched onto my back, before I could think it through. The splash was terrifyingly loud in the tomb-like interior of the cave. Starfish your arms and legs. Dad’s voice. Gently move your arms to keep afloat. I tried to regulate my ragged, squeaking breaths. If I tensed, if I panicked, I’d go under. My hand touched something and I swallowed a shriek. It was only a plastic bottle, one of the pieces of litter brought up by the water, bobbing past my head.
Keeping my limbs floppy, I moved my arms, inhaling several deep, slow breaths, emptying my brain of everything but the rise and fall of my stomach and Hayley’s face, her smile, the sound of her pure, sweet laughter.
I was doing it. I was floating!
Water lapped around my ears, cradled my head, held my aching body in its chilly embrace as a gentle current swept me out of the cave. Suddenly, there was brightness all around and above me. Still breathing slowly – in, out, in, out – trying to slow my heartbeat in time with each breath, to not think how far below me the seabed was, I looked at the sky; a clear, true blue, like Hayley’s eyes. Matt’s eyes.
My body wanted to shiver, the water not yet warmed by the sun streaking across the horizon somewhere behind me. I tried to imagine I was in a heated pool, at a spa, in bed, underneath a puffy duvet with a hot water bottle, cuddled up with Hayley; anywhere but where I was.
I imagined the seal I’d seen earlier swimming up underneath me and whizzing me to safety, a school of dolphins transporting me on their backs.
As I breathed, I kept staring at the sky, blinking when water seeped into my eyes – or maybe they were tears, seeping out. Memories reeled through my head: climbing the tree in the back garden with Jamie and hiding there, giggling, while Mum and Dad pretended they couldn’t find us; Dad teaching us to ride our bikes – our best-ever present, we agreed; laughing behind our hands when we caught Mum and Dad slow-dancing in the kitchen one Sunday morning to a soppy song on the radio.
Other memories too. The first time I saw Matt in the pub, his tender expression the first time we kissed, the way he’d focused so carefully as we sliced the wedding cake his mum had baked for our wedding; the sound of our baby’s heartbeat on the ultrasound machine; Mum’s face when we broke the news that she was going to be a grandmother. Further back, to Emma laughing her outrageous laugh at college, head tipped back; dragging me to an awful party, doing a ridiculous jig until I joined in, helple
ss with giggles. Bella, my sweet-natured cat, who died the week after I went to college. The first painting I did that I was truly proud of, the one Mum hated.
Wasn’t your life supposed to flash before you when you were dying?
I dragged myself back to the moment, began singing softly, anything that came into my head – nursery rhymes, snatches of songs I’d heard Matt play on the guitar, our song ‘Paradise’ and ‘Let It Go’, Hayley’s favourite tune from Frozen, which seemed horribly apt.
My arms felt too hefty to move. My head tipped back too far, sending water up my nose. I coughed and felt like I was going to choke. I stopped singing as the urge to thrash and scream grew stronger. I must be far enough out now, visible to anyone looking in this direction. I tried to look at where I was, but my eyes were stinging, full of water.
The cold had numbed every part of me. I couldn’t keep going, I couldn’t—
Sounds reached my waterlogged ears. A shout. Seabirds overhead. And another sound, over the splashing of waves, like a motorbike. An engine, coming closer.
A powerful surge lifted me high and there was a commotion, a flash of orange – a lifeboat? Something bright was tossed into the water, there was a cry, then a splash that upturned me. I was under the foaming sea now, sinking lower, water in my throat and my chest; my eyes were burning.
It was happening all over again.
I felt resignation then, and a kind of grief came over me. As my lungs deflated, I began to rise, then suddenly there was another body in the water, a pair of strong hands beneath my armpits, lifting me up and up.
For a disoriented second, I thought the ghost of Mike was back to rescue me once more, but when we broke the surface it was my brother’s face I saw; my brother, holding me above the water. I kept blinking and gasping, and I thought I was dreaming because it couldn’t be Jamie and yet, somehow, it was.
‘Hold on,’ he said urgently. One arm around me, he reached for a rope that had been flung over the side of the boat. I was half aware of faces looking at me, flashes of orange waterproofs, large hands reaching out. ‘Grab hold,’ Jamie instructed, and I was being pulled effortlessly through the water and heaved over the side of the lifeboat and the crew were wrapping a silvery blanket around my shoulders. I collapsed in the bottom, suddenly weightless, crying and heaving while Jamie wrapped his arms around me from behind, pressing his face to my hair.
‘I’ve got you, Beth, it’s OK, you’re going to be OK, you’re safe now,’ he was saying.
I hugged his arms, shivering and crying and retching, and never wanted to let go.
Chapter 33
Things became blurry after that. I was whisked to hospital by a waiting ambulance and kept under observation for the rest of the day, covered in thermal blankets, the most obvious worry being hypothermia. Unbelievably, when I’d drifted out of the cave, I’d only been in the water for fifteen minutes. It had felt so much longer – a lifetime longer.
I’d done everything right, I was told. Floating, keeping myself awake by singing, not panicking. Luckily, the water was a couple of degrees warmer than it would have been further out, where my body temperature would have dropped even further. As it was, with the time I’d spent in the cave – I’d been unconscious for a while before I came round – I couldn’t have survived much longer. If there’d been a strong wind, I could have been thrown against rocks and it would have been much harder to stay afloat.
The main thing was, I hadn’t panicked. I’d hung on for Hayley, I told Jamie, when I was capable of speaking. ‘I couldn’t leave her.’
He’d been at my bedside after talking to the police, and was filling me in on what had happened. ‘I’d known something was off for ages, if I’m honest. When Rosa suggested we come down here for a holiday with the whole family.’ He was perched on the chair by the bed, elbows on knees, hands locked under his chin. His hair was still damp, curling around the collar of his polo shirt. He looked older under the stark hospital lighting, creases around his eyes and mouth, and his skin had a bleached appearance, in contrast to the bristle around his jaw. ‘She said she was trying to help, that confronting fear was the best way to overcome it.’
He shook his head and briefly closed his eyes. ‘She tried to hide how pissed off she was when I said it was a bad idea, but I could tell she didn’t like it. Then, suddenly, you were going anyway with Vic, and I just …’ He shrugged. ‘I had a feeling she was behind it, that she’d talked him into it. I know how persuasive she can be, but I didn’t know why.’ He paused, face working. ‘And there were silly things, like she wanted to have a look at your paintings at Mum and Dad’s a few weeks ago, and we said she should ask you first, but I caught her in the boot room after she’d supposedly been to the loo, and I got the impression she’d been in there anyway.’
With one of Jamie’s boots. I didn’t tell him. It was bad enough he now knew the full extent to which she’d used him to get to me. From the moment she’d joined the Devon and Cornwall Police and used the national database to find out my married name and where I lived before transferring to Oxford. Once settled there, she’d engineered meeting my brother, flooding her flat on purpose and making sure he knew how ‘grateful’ she was when he fixed it, her sole aim to put me in the water at Perran Cove so I would drown.
It was terrifying how close she’d come to making it happen.
The police had spoken to her at the cottage where she’d been staying, but she’d stuck to her story, that she’d been concerned about my mental state, had received some worrying calls from me, asking for help, begging her not to tell anyone. She’d come down alone, not wanting to worry my family, was planning to talk to me that day. She had no idea I’d gone to Perran Cove at dawn that morning – how could she?
She was clever, convincing. There was no evidence linking her to anything; the texts had gone from my phone and everything else could be explained away, or put down to paranoia. There was no proof of anything, nothing she could be arrested for – my word against hers. So what if she’d used her job to look me up, had ended up dating my brother, policing in the city where I lived? It was nothing more than coincidence – a pretty big one, yes, but her police record was exemplary. She put in more hours than anyone. No one could doubt she was a good officer. No one could prove she meant me any harm, other than what I told them she’d tried to do. Even the marks on my wrists weren’t proof of anything that could be linked to Rosa.
‘We know,’ Jamie said, voice rough with feeling. ‘But she’ll never be punished, never go to prison. Even if you’d died, she’d have got away with it; she made sure she would.’
It turned out that Vic had seen my note when he got up and came down to the cliff path, but even though he couldn’t be sure I was down there, he’d called the police station and spoke to PC Fellowes. The officer had told him what Rosa had said about me being fragile, possibly suicidal.
Vic knew it wasn’t true, guessed immediately that she was the one who’d sent me the texts on my birthday and must have deleted the messages. Once he’d convinced PC Fellowes, told them I could be in danger, they’d put out an alert to find me.
In the meantime, Jamie had notified the police too, after my selfie from Perran Cove landed on his phone at 5.30 a.m. and he realised where I was.
‘I was already in Cornwall,’ he said, ‘on a hunch that something was wrong.’ Rosa might have been too clever to leave a trail that would see her convicted, but she hadn’t factored in that Jamie had been watching her, looking for clues, certain she was having an affair. He’d checked the search history on his computer and when he discovered she’d looked up the tide times at Perran Cove, something had clicked into place.
‘I had no idea how or why she had it in for you, but it made sense of a few things, and explained why you’d accused me of wanting you dead.’ His gaze slid from mine. ‘She’d told me she was working a case and wouldn’t be home for a couple of nights. I didn’t question it because it had happened before, but I rang the station to check and t
hey said she’d taken a few days’ leave and wasn’t due in until Friday.’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘I knew she’d come here, but I couldn’t work it out.’
‘Thank God you did.’ When I told him her plan, he pressed his knuckles into his eyes and cried. ‘I’m so sorry, Beth.’
‘Jamie, don’t.’ I reached for him. ‘You saved my life.’
He pulled his fingers from mine. ‘I suppose it makes up for last time,’ he said, with a trace of old bitterness. I realised with a plunge of sadness that I still wasn’t forgiven.
‘Anyway, Matt called me on my way here.’ He wiped his face on his forearm. ‘Apparently, your friend Emma got in touch last night, said she was worried about you, she thought you were in danger and didn’t trust Vic, that he’d been using a different name.’
‘It’s a long story,’ I said, my insides twisting. ‘She was right about the danger, but not about Vic.’
Jamie nodded, apparently satisfied – or perhaps uncaring. ‘Matt told her he’d exchanged messages with you yesterday and you sounded fine and she called him all the names under the sun.’ I nearly smiled, imagining it. ‘She said it was because you didn’t want him thinking you were an unfit mother, but there was stuff going on that he didn’t know about. He said he was getting a plane home with Hayley.’
Tears flooded my eyes. All I wanted was to see my daughter, hear her voice, feel her arms hugging my neck. I was going to grab this chance with both hands I’d decided, even before I got in the ambulance, so grateful to be back on dry land I wanted to sink down and embrace it. My life had been saved twice now. I wasn’t going to waste a single second feeling guilty, or trying to justify my existence anymore. I was going to savour every moment, doing what I wanted and being with people I loved.
‘It’s just so sad,’ I said, adjusting the heap of blankets weighing me down, wincing at the throb in my head where I’d needed a few stitches. ‘Rosa thought my not being alive anymore was the only way she’d be happy.’ A shiver travelled through me as I recalled her saying, I’ll be there, to step in, become the loving daughter your parents no longer have, be Aunty Rosa to little Hayley. She’d wanted my family like some people craved fame and fortune. ‘She was doing a job most people can’t do,’ I went on, my mind swimming with the enormity of it. ‘She was already making a difference, had the respect of her colleagues, but it still wasn’t enough.’