Swimming at Night: A Novel

by Lucy Clarke

  She looked so young: like the Mia of his teenage years who had waited outside his math class to tell him her BMX had been stolen. He remembered that day. She’d been so distraught that after school he’d gone to the junkyard, found an old shopper bike with a bent wheel arch, and spent the weekend fixing it up. He’d shaved off rust, replaced the brake clamps, and repainted it sky blue—her favorite color. When he wheeled it around to her on Sunday evening, she had grinned so hard that her eyes watered. He had loved being able to fix the problem, but he had no idea how to fix this.

  “Did you see him? Did he say anything to you?”

  It was the small note of hope in her voice that scratched at his heart. But what should he tell her? That Noah had happened to come into the kitchen when he was making coffee, and mentioned they were flying out to Bali? Should he tell her that it was he who’d asked, “Does Mia know?” and Noah who’d replied, “I couldn’t find her. Let her know for me?”

  The guy’s offhandedness was an insult. Finn couldn’t relay that. So instead he answered, “Sorry, I haven’t seen him, either.”

  Her gaze fell to the floor.

  He saw the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose brought out by the sun. He ached to wrap her in his arms, but he knew it wasn’t him she wanted.

  “He left for the surf.”

  He saw her biting down on her bottom lip. He couldn’t bear it if she cried.

  “He should’ve told me. I can’t believe he’d do this.”

  Neither can I, Finn thought.

  They’d been traveling the same route as Noah for weeks and Finn had watched from the sidelines as their romance played out. At night he’d lie awake in their dorm listening to the other travelers moving about as he waited for Mia. He’d hear the door click open, see a triangle of light spill into the room, then hear the soft pad of her feet across the linoleum. He’d watch the silhouette of her shape climb up the ladder into her bunk and hear her shifting above him, moving the pillows and sheet until she was settled. Each night she returned to their dorm he wondered, How could Noah let her go?

  He’d distracted himself by picking up with a group of Europeans who were spending a season in Margaret River. He joined them for a week of grape picking at a local vineyard and doubled his cash playing poker with them in the evenings. It wasn’t hard to avoid Noah—the man spent all day on the water and didn’t leave the beach much before dusk.

  One afternoon, Finn had been hiking and paused on a headland to watch the huge breakers peeling off the point break. A van had pulled up and Noah got out. He acknowledged Finn with a nod, then took his board and scrambled down the headland and into the surf. Finn watched for a few minutes. Noah’s talent on the waves was clear, but what marked him out as exceptional was his fearlessness. Finn admired him for that, but, as he watched Noah catch wave after wave, he knew he could never like him. It wasn’t simply that Noah was Mia’s lover, it was because he didn’t cherish her. When he paddled in and found Mia waiting on the shore, her arms hooked over her tanned knees, grinning at him, he didn’t see he was the luckiest man on earth. When he entered a room and she looked up, he didn’t kiss her or slip his hand around hers. When he packed up his board and flew out to Bali, Noah didn’t even realize what he was leaving behind.

  *

  Lying on her stomach on the top bunk, Mia wrote:

  Six days. Still no word. We’re flying to New Zealand tomorrow. Part of me is desperate to leave—but the other part wants to stay because the pathetic truth is, I want to be here in case he comes back.

  Another couple have moved into room 4. The man hangs his tasteless shorts over the balcony rail where Noah’s rash vest used to dry, and I want to rip them down and grind them into the dust. I resent his girlfriend more: she gets to lie in the double bed now and feel the creak and stretch of the springs beneath her as she’s made love to. I want to throw her out, seal up the room, stop them from trampling my memories.

  Perhaps it is time for New Zealand.

  She closed the journal and pushed it under her pillow, then lay back, staring at the cracked paint on the ceiling. When she was seven, Mia had lain on Katie’s bottom bunk with its shimmering canopy, trying to imagine that she was a princess. But it never felt real to her. She couldn’t picture the graceful steps, or the prim curtseys, or the pretty gowns, so she had clambered back up the ladder to her lair, content to be an explorer with a ceiling of stars to navigate.

  The door clicked open. She heard the cheerful slap of flip-flops, then the creak of the bed frame as Finn climbed two rungs of the ladder. His head poked over the side of the bunk. His eyes were bright and he was grinning. “I’ve got a plan.”

  She blinked, taking only a moment to remember the expected response: “What do I need?”

  “Just your sleeping bag.”

  She took a deep breath and then sat up.

  “You want to do this?”

  “Yes,” she said, shaking herself into action. She climbed down and pulled her sleeping bag with her.

  They left the hostel and struck out in the direction of Reds, Finn leading. She felt the breeze on her skin and the relief of being outdoors. Crickets sang in the bushes and the air smelled of eucalyptus. By the time they reached the rocks, night had fallen and they picked their path by flashlight, her bare feet clinging to the chalky curves of the rocks.

  The wind blew onshore and her sundress curled around her thighs. She untied a sweater from her waist and pulled it on. They continued until Finn chose a rock wide enough to lay both sleeping bags on. “We haven’t stargazed yet in Australia. As it’s our last night, I thought we should rectify that.”

  “Good plan,” she said, settling herself on top of the sleeping bag.

  From his backpack, Finn pulled out a bottle of rum and set it down with a clink.

  “Very good plan.”

  They listened to the boom of waves breaking at sea as they drank, occasionally gazing up at a wide sky filled with stars. She was grateful for the way the sweet, dark liquid ran down her throat, washing away the edges of her sadness.

  Later, she lay back on the rocks, her rib cage expanding as she made a pillow of her arms. Above, the stars winked and glittered. “How many do you think there are?”

  Finn took another swig of rum and then lay beside her. “I read somewhere that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on earth.”

  “I never noticed them in London.” They were faded by streetlights, car headlamps, over-illuminated office buildings, and the glow of millions of homes. She thought of her sister somewhere in the city. It would be morning and Mia imagined her at her desk, leaning close to a computer screen, her face serious. “I wish Katie could see this.”

  Finn raised himself onto his elbows. “You miss her?”

  “Sometimes,” she said, surprised by the tug to her heart.

  “Are you going to talk to her about Harley?”

  She shook her head, realizing how dizzy the rum had made her. “I don’t want her to know we’re half sisters.”

  “Why?”

  “It dilutes us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Alcohol had always found a way of working into the closed channel of her emotions, allowing her feelings to flow more easily into words. “Mum had an affair. Do you think Katie would want to hear that? It means we’ve got different fathers. It stretches apart what’s left of our family.” She sighed. “And she’d want to know all about Harley.”

  “So?”

  “So I’d have to tell her everything—that he drank and took drugs, that he could be insular sometimes and wildly out of control at others, that his friends and family eventually lost faith in him. And the whole time, she’d be matching parts of him to me.”

  “You need to let this go, Mia. You’re nothing like Harley.”

  “Aren’t I?” she said, thinking of the other dark similarity they shared. “Harley had an affair with his brother’s wife.”

  “Exactly! You—”

/>   “I had sex with Ed.”

  “What?” he said, sitting up. “When?”

  “A month or so before we left.”

  “Did you … do you care about each—”

  “No!”

  “Does Katie know?”

  She shook her head.

  “Will you tell her?”

  Mia sat up, too, and her head spun. She pressed a hand to her forehead as if to hold her thoughts still. “She loves him.”

  A pause. “So why did you do it?”

  “I was angry.”

  “Angry?”

  “At Katie. At you.”

  “Why, Mia?”

  She could feel the anger simmering inside her, bubbling into her throat. “Do you know what it is like having Katie as an older sister? It’s like you’re always standing in the shade. Every guy in school was in love with her. She was the popular one, the smart one, the one who made the right choices.”

  “Come on, that’s not—”

  “Do you remember Mark Hayes from school? He was two years ahead of us and got the sports scholarship to Ranford Manor?”

  “Yes.”

  “He went out with me for four weeks just so he could come around to our house to gawk at Katie. And I let him.”

  Finn said nothing.

  “You were the only one who looked at me first when you entered a room.” The wind snaked in from the sea and lifted the ends of her hair. “And then suddenly you were with Katie.”

  He looked down at his hands.

  “You are my best friend. She’s my sister. But neither of you told me. Not for a month.”

  “I’m sorry, we didn’t—”

  “I hated her for it. That’s the truth.”

  She remembered sitting on the plaid sofa in their family home after learning their mother had cancer. Katie was crying heavy tears that soaked through the packet of tissues she carried in her handbag. Mia’s eyes remained dry. When Finn arrived, he stood by the wood burner, the third corner of their awkward triangle, his foot jigging up and down as he listened to the prognosis. There was a moment when everything fell silent and his eyes flicked between them, not knowing who to comfort first: Katie, with her tearstained face, or Mia with her flint-hard stare.

  In the end he didn’t have to choose: Mia had left the house, slamming the door so hard that the paintings rattled in their frames.

  Now, Finn turned towards her. “Mia, when I walk into a room, it’s always you I see first.”

  She could tell from the seriousness of his tone that he meant it. Meant something far more than she’d let herself see.

  It wasn’t Katie he saw first. It was her. Finn had always seen her, she realized.

  Looking into his eyes she felt a dizzying rush of nostalgia, as if she were standing on the edge of their childhood and she could reach out and touch it—run her fingers through years of shared memories, feel that easy happiness.

  She could hear the waves breaking, see the glitter of the stars. The world was spinning and sliding away and she reached her hand to his arm, holding on to what was solid and firm. Then she leaned towards him and placed her lips to his.

  “Mia … ”

  She heard it in his voice—he wanted this, had imagined it before. She kissed him again, deeply this time, as if she’d know herself better by sinking into him.

  They lowered themselves onto his sleeping bag, the stars on her back. Her hair fell over her shoulders, brushing his face. She ran a hand towards the waist of his shorts and Finn caught it, lacing his fingers with hers. “No, Mia. Not if you’re unsure.”

  There was rum warm in her stomach—she knew that—but there was something between them, too. She didn’t know what it was, she just knew she wanted it.

  17

  Katie

  (Western Australia, June)

  Katie read with her head bent over the journal, her right hand pressed to her mouth and her left hand gripping the table. She read what happened between Mia and Finn on a smooth, red rock where the waves growled through the night and the stars hung like golden orbs overhead. She read of an intimacy shared on a single sleeping bag that changed the shape of a friendship.

  When she glanced up, she saw that the café was empty save for a waitress checking her phone with a private smile. Katie reached for her cappuccino: cold. Up at the counter, a coffee machine with gleaming silver knobs had stopped whirring and beyond the café window the rush of traffic had slowed, and everything seemed changed. She looked back at the journal and understood now the depth of Mia’s anger at her. But she couldn’t regret what had happened between her and Finn. Not when those few months with him were among the happiest of her life.

  Katie leaned back in her chair, wondering, Was I that happy with Ed? He had returned to England three weeks ago, calling her several times a day to leave apologetic voice mails. Twice she had found herself dialing his number, lonely enough to want him back, but both times she had made herself ring Jess instead, who didn’t hesitate in reminding her why the engagement was off.

  Katie thought she’d been in love with Ed, but now she wondered whether what she had loved was actually the idea of their relationship. Ed was intelligent, charming, and successful, but he had never surprised or challenged her. He’d never stayed up talking with her through the night. He’d never made her laugh so hard that her stomach ached.

  She realized there was only one person who had.

  Reading Mia’s intimate journal entry about Finn had pried open Katie’s own memories, which she wore pressed to her heart like a locket. Now she found herself slipping back in time as she let herself remember …

  *

  Katie opened the lid of the cooling barbeque, then juggled the charred tinfoil packages onto a spare plate. Peeling back an edge, she saw that the glossy kernels of corn had turned a rich gold. She offered one to her mother.

  “I couldn’t,” her mother said, placing the flat of her hand to her stomach.

  “Mia?”

  Mia shook her head as she sat cross-legged, dark glasses shading her eyes from the sun, hands wrapped around a mug of tea. The tea bothered Katie. Their garden table was still filled with homemade chilli burgers, chicken and cherry-tomato kebabs, crisped rosemary potatoes, and half a jug of Pimm’s. Their mother had spent the morning cooking to celebrate having both her daughters home for the weekend. If she was disappointed that Mia hadn’t changed out of her pajamas, she didn’t show it.

  Katie spread a knob of butter over one of the corncobs and bit into it, her mouth filling with the sweet, nutty taste.

  “How is your head?” their mother asked Mia.

  “Still there.”

  “Where were you and Finn?”

  “At the old quarry. Cliff party.”

  “Ah,” their mother said, nodding, for cliff parties were known to involve a few hundred people, generators and decks, beer by the crate, and a beach stroll home at dawn. “I wish my headache was because of a cliff party, but I think I must be fighting off a bug. I’m going to lie down.”

  Katie only managed half the corncob and then wiped the butter from her lips with a napkin.

  Mia reached across the table and took Katie’s left hand, pulling it towards her to inspect her nails. “Have you had a manicure?”

  “I was given a voucher.”

  “It suits you,” she said, and Katie couldn’t see her expression beneath her sunglasses.

  Mia uncrossed her legs, rolled up her pajama bottoms, and stretched her long legs across the picnic bench. “God, it’s good to feel the sun at last.”

  Katie had a sudden desire to strip down to her underwear and lie in the spring sunshine with her sister, getting giddy on cocktails. It felt as though it had been months since they’d found the time to talk.

  She fetched a picnic blanket from the porch and put it down on the grass. “Why don’t I make us mojitos? Mum’s got a bottle of white rum and there’s fresh mint in the fridge.”

  “I’ve got to drive back to school soon.”
>
  “You’re going? You only arrived last night. It’s a holiday tomorrow. I thought you were staying for the whole weekend.”

  “I’ve got finals.”

  “You’re going back to study? On a Sunday night?”

  “I’m going back for a gig.”

  Disappointed, Katie began clearing the plates, scraping the leftovers into a bowl, and piling the cutlery on top.

  The noise and activity seemed to aggravate Mia, who slipped from the table onto the freshly laid blanket. She rolled up her T-shirt and flung her arms out at her sides.

  “It’d be nice if you helped clear up.”

  “I’ll dry later.”

  “You’ll be gone later.”

  “Before I go.”

  “No, Mia. Now.”

  She sat up. “What is your problem?”

  “Mum’s been cooking all morning when she’s not feeling—”

  “I didn’t ask her to.”

  “It would be nice if you offered to help occasionally.”

  “I can get you a badge that says PERFECT DAUGHTER. Will that help?”

  “Maybe you’ll get a discount if you order yourself SHIT SISTER.”

  They glared at each other. Then Katie noticed Mia’s lips turn up at the corners. “You’ve got corn in your teeth,” Mia said, and they both laughed.

  Katie put down the plates and moved over to the blanket. Mia scooted over and they lay together. Katie could smell wool and damp earth. Rolling onto her side, she bared her teeth: “Gone?”

  “Gone.”

  Clouds were starting to break up the wide expanse of blue and she imagined that in another hour the sun would be swallowed. “Are you coming home for the summer, after finals?”

  “My housemates are doing their master’s. I may stay on, too.”

  “To do what?”

  “Drugs. Prostitution. Theft.” She sighed. “I don’t know, Katie. There is no grand master plan.” She ran her fingers through her hair and Katie caught the smell of woodsmoke in it.

  “If you want me to look for vacancies on our system, I can do. They’d be in the city, though.”