The Christmas Party

by Karen Swan

  ‘Pip?’ The voice was faraway and shocked, but familiar. So familiar. Willow?

  Pip tried to flash a smile in her general direction as she dared a glance over her bare shoulder. She was definitely drunk, she knew that – those shots had wiped the floor with her – but it was sheer desperation that was propelling her, not the booze. She could do this. She had to do it. Everything depended upon it.

  Sean, her portly, out-of-shape rival, was barely two strides behind, struggling with removing his shirt and having to rip it open to shrug it off. She stopped running abruptly and tucked down unsteadily, trying to pull off her jodhpur boots; it meant Sean overtook her and he laughed, waving his arms congratulatorily over his head as he sped past, but, like F1 cars couldn’t avoid pit-stops, she knew he’d need to take off his shoes too.

  The socks came off with her boots – her pet hate at any other time – but she was grateful for the efficiency now and she began sprinting immediately again, the soles of her bare feet almost tickled by the stiff blades of grass. The lake was a football-pitch length away and she pumped her arms as hard as she could, chasing Sean’s bulky silhouette down the lawn, oblivious to the freezing temperatures. He was bigger and stronger than her, but he was also heavier and out of shape. She had the edge on him fitness-wise, she knew it.

  She caught up with him at the water’s edge and she slipped off her jeans without even having to undo the zip, while he had to first take off his trainers – which were inconveniently double-knotted.

  ‘Pip!’

  Somewhere, far behind her, she could still hear her sister’s shouts but there was no time to stop and explain now. Too much was at stake. Her entire future was on the line.

  Without hesitation, she ran into the water first, her entire body immediately clenching with the utter shock of the freezing temperatures. It whipped the breath from her, the ground underwater stony and uneven and she stumbled, falling headlong into the lake.

  Everyone was cheering when she resurfaced again but she was splashing and spluttering so much herself, she couldn’t tell whether Sean was in the water now too. The cold was of a level she had never experienced before, her breath reflexively coming urgently, faster than she could count as her brain struggled to make sense of the immense physical shock.

  She could hardly see, much less think straight, but somehow she fixed her eyes upon the pontoon and began to move: the sooner she got to it, the sooner she could get out of here. Behind her, the cacophony only grew. Word must have spread through the party, a number of guests swelling the onlookers on the banks and raising the noise levels. She could hear her name being called, but Sean’s too. She swam with all her might, all her desperation, but was that even enough?

  She felt a slip of skin underwater on the sole of her foot and she realized he was right behind her again. He was a big unit, six-one at least, and she willed her arms to keep going to wheel faster, her legs to kick harder – perhaps she could splash him into retreat?

  Only, her limbs didn’t appear to be obeying the commands her brain was sending out. Faster. Faster, she was urging, but she was going slower and slower. It was becoming hard even to lift her arm out of the water, her legs not so much kicking now as fluttering.

  She felt a spike of panic. The bank had to be fifty metres or so behind her, Sean beginning to overtake in a flurry of thrashing white water. The pontoon was only another ten, maybe fifteen metres away but her breath was coming so quickly and her body wouldn’t obey . . . Her arms weren’t breaking the surface at all now, the cold feeling like a frozen iron stake that was tracking its way through her veins stiffening her into a spike.

  Sean pulled ahead, too hidden in his own splashes to even see her, and she felt another bullet, not just of panic but of fear now too. Her legs were dropping beneath her body; she was beginning to sink.

  She had to move. Why couldn’t she move? She was panting desperately, hyperventilating, trying not to swallow water, coughing. She couldn’t hear the crowd on the banks any more. Couldn’t see the pontoon. The waterline was beginning to creep over her jaw, up her face . . .

  Her brain screamed at her limbs to flail, strike, whip, wheel but she couldn’t even feel her hands now, the sensation blocked below her elbows and creeping upwards. Her legs hung below her like ribbons.

  Jesus, no. She couldn’t die. She couldn’t die just after they’d buried her father. Her poor mother. Willow. Ottie . . . Swim! But she couldn’t move, her body utterly inert and useless as the cold began to make her drop like a stone. The hyperventilation would drown her as the hypothermia kept her still, her body spasming for breath as, slowly, she slipped under the water . . .

  The last thing she saw before she dropped below the surface was the moon – dazzlingly bright and lusciously round, rising into the sky like a giant pearl. It was her last glimpse of light, the enveloping darkness complete under the water, all sound becoming muffled and indistinct.

  She blinked into the murk but there was nothing to see in the depths. No fish. No reeds. No Sean. No sound. No colour. Everything was closing down. She was losing her grip. Reality skewering into fantasy in the dimming of her consciousness, as she fought to hold her final breath against a frantically panicking heart.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t. Her lungs were screaming. Her brain telling her to do it: breathe. Open your mouth and take the breath. Open your mouth. Open your mouth.

  It was too much to deny. She opened her mouth, feeling the water flood her, claim her, rushing at her, explosions of colour in her mind as her screams found no purchase and the blackness grew deeper . . .

  Pain – sharp and excoriating – intruded on the fog, flooding her body. Her scalp felt like it was being torn, water rushing over her skin and then, suddenly, the whacking slap of air on her face. She surfaced but couldn’t gasp, her body limp as something grabbed at her, desperate and merciless, bruising her skin.

  Distantly, numbly, she felt herself leave the lake’s icy embrace and fall heavily onto a solid surface, moons crowding around her, crevices moving but no sound reaching her ear. Weight was applied to her useless form, the wind moving across her skin, the first twiggy tips of trees beginning to inch into her field of view. Her fixed gaze found the moon again but even that bright pearl could not win against the inexorable pull coming from deep within her body as she slid down, down, down again, into the dark.

  Warmth is a colour – the colour of fruits: peach, growing into nectarine, into blood oranges . . . She saw it blooming against her eyelids, spreading over her cheeks, around the back of her head, down her neck, over her shoulders . . .

  Sensation was growing, her block-of-ice hands and feet beginning to throb painfully, blood flow returning. Her body was stiff and stretched flat, like Gulliver pinned down by the Lilliputians, spasms wracking through her like electric currents she could neither control nor stop.

  Sound was returning too: the murmur of voices talking in urgent tones. Monitors beeping. A rushing depression of air. A rustling close to her ear.

  Heat was building fast, wrapping around her and making her stir. She turned her head but her eyes wouldn’t open. She was trapped inside her body, as clutched close to the heat as she had been the cold.

  A sound vibrated through her. Came from her.

  ‘Pip? Pip, can you hear me? . . .’ Pressure upon her shoulders, a squeeze of her hand.

  The voice was distant. Distorted.

  ‘. . . She’s coming round.’

  ‘Make sure that strap’s secure.’ Another voice. ‘. . . tremors are getting worse. We don’t want her striking out.’

  ‘She’s in deep hypothermia. How long till we get there?’

  ‘Three minutes. They’re on standby for us.’

  ‘Have they got venovenous haemofiltration available?’

  ‘I’ll page through and ask.’

  ‘Tell them she’s hypoxic. Oxygen saturation’s at fifty two. Acidosis is a risk.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Another sound came that vi
brated through her bones. ‘Pip? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Get another blanket on her.’

  Her body felt rigid and brittle. Uncontrollable. Detached from her own self, like Peter Pan’s shadow. She tried to open her eyes but the heat, the light . . .

  She sank back down into the darkness. The heaviness. The silence.

  ‘We’ve got to call Mam.’ Ottie’s voice was fearful. It had that shake in it, like jelly being wobbled.

  Willow looked up at her from her position on the other side of the bed. ‘No. Not yet. Give it a little longer. Let her sleep.’

  ‘But she needs to know!’ Ottie insisted.

  ‘And she will. But there’s nothing to be done right now.’ Her voice was flat and toneless. ‘Pip’s stable and being monitored; there’s no point in worrying Mam when the worst is passed and there’s nothing she can do here. It’s not yet six. Let her rest while she can; she’s going to need all her strength when she’s told what’s happened.’ Willow dropped her head wearily. She’d been awake all night.

  Ottie bit her lip, knowing all too well that another broken night wasn’t going to help their mother. ‘. . . Fine,’ she murmured, wondering how strange it was that she and her little sister seemed to have somehow switched roles again: Willow no longer the baby but the heir. And now the protector? It was the first time they’d seen each other since the reading of the will. Ottie had been avoiding her, not quite sure she could successfully mask her feelings about what had gone down that day. ‘Another hour then. For Mam’s sake.’

  ‘Another hour.’

  They both looked back at Pip, inert and pale in the bed, each of them holding her hands. It was a perverse sight, going against the natural order of things. No one had ever seen Pip knocked down before. She was always such a fighter – ferocious, indomitable . . . Reckless.

  ‘Why did she do it?’ Ottie whispered. ‘Who runs into a freezing-cold lake in the middle of the night three weeks before Christmas?’

  ‘She was off her head, knocking back shots with Sean Cuneen and all his mates.’

  ‘But surely . . . I mean, how drunk would you have to be to lose all sense of danger?’

  Willow gave a heavy sigh. ‘Well, apparently there was also a bet.’

  Ottie frowned. ‘What kind of bet?’

  ‘Not sure. I just heard some people in the crowd.’

  Ottie blinked at her. ‘She almost drowned herself on account of winning a bet?’

  Willow shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘But this’ll . . . this’ll break Mam’s heart – how could she have been so stupid? Putting us all through, after everything that’s just happened . . .’ Her rapidly rising voice split in half.

  ‘I know.’ Willow’s tired eyes rose to meet hers. ‘And we’ll kill her once she’s strong enough.’

  Ottie felt a small unexpected smile come in place of a sob as their father’s sense of humour came to the fore again – laughing at funerals, hospital beds . . . nowhere was safe, the more sacrosanct the better. ‘Exactly, yeah.’ She dabbed her eyes with her free hand. ‘Hear that, Pip? We’re going to kill you once you’re recovered from this.’

  A nurse came in and Ottie and Willow immediately stiffened. They watched as the nurse checked the monitors, and they both fell into obedient, apprehensive silence.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ Willow asked, as the nurse fiddled with some of the intravenous tubes, before clicking her heel down smartly on the bed leg brake and making to leave with their sister.

  ‘Pip is stable but I’m going to have to ask you to leave now. We’re taking her up for another bath to stabilize her temperature, then she’ll need to have some X-rays.’

  ‘X-rays? But she’s not broken anything, has she?’ Willow asked, surprised.

  ‘It’s standard procedure in cases like these. If she’s aspirated any water it could lead to a pulmonary oedema, which in turn could lead to respiratory distress, and even collapse.’

  ‘You mean, secondary drowning?’ Ottie said sharply. She had completed a lifeguarding course as a precaution, when they had first opened the campsite. Though she had no legal obligation to monitor the beach, it had seemed only prudent to know something of what to do should an emergency ever develop outside her window.

  ‘Yes. But she’s in good hands,’ the nurse simply said, noticing the exhaustion on both their faces. Ottie was still in her pyjamas, a coat thrown over the top and her feet in the rubber clogs she wore for traipsing the field, her strawberry-blonde hair hanging in straggly fronds. Compared to Willow – all in black, leather-clad, body-con silhouette, smoky make-up – they made quite the mismatched pair. ‘But we’ll be a while. Why don’t you try to get some rest?’

  Willow looked at her elder sister. ‘We could go get Mam now? With any luck, we can be back here by the time Pip’s down again.’

  Ottie nodded, allowing herself to be led away. She turned back once, flinching at the sight of her sister being wheeled out of the ward and down the corridor, tubes coming out of her, blankets atop her. She looked so pale, so quiet, fragile as a little bird. With her tufty, cropped hair and wild crop of freckles, she could have easily passed for a twelve-year-old boy.

  ‘Come on,’ Willow said, marching at a clip, no longer the baby. ‘This way.’

  Ottie glanced over at Willow as she drove them both back. Beneath the expertly applied make-up, her little sister looked pale and drawn. She had lost weight recently but, then, perhaps they all had. In spite of Mrs Mac’s best efforts, no one had much appetite.

  ‘So did you see it happen?’ she asked in a quiet voice, her fingers tightening around the wheel as she peered out into the darkness. The sun hadn’t yet risen and it could have as likely been midnight as six.

  Willow hesitated. ‘. . . Yes.’ She nodded and looked out of the window, her profile stoic but, in the reflection, Willow could see the tears shining in her eyes. ‘I was already outside when she ran past.’

  ‘You were outside?’ Ottie frowned. ‘But it was freezing. What were you . . .?’

  ‘I met a guy.’

  ‘Oh.’ The fact was presented with straightforward simplicity. Willow was nothing if not forthright about her love life these days: she liked guys, they liked her.

  Willow shook her head. ‘I should’ve been with her. I should have known she’d do some crazy thing.’

  Ottie glanced over again. ‘Don’t be crazy, you’re not her keeper. She’s twenty-four years old. You were at a party. It’s not your job to look out for her placing stupid bets and running into lakes.’

  ‘But I saw her doing the shots. I should’ve known she’d go too far.’

  ‘Willow, Pip’s an adult. She makes her own choices – bad though they may be.’

  Willow didn’t reply but looked out of the window again, her expression still riddled with guilt, and Ottie knew it didn’t matter what she said, she wouldn’t be able to persuade her otherwise.

  ‘So what was his name?’ Ottie asked, trying to change the subject instead. Dwelling on the disaster helped nobody. ‘This guy.’

  ‘Huh? Oh . . . Connor.’

  ‘Connor what?’

  ‘I don’t know. We didn’t get that far,’ Willow mumbled, looking harder out the window.

  Ottie grinned. ‘. . . Good-looking?’

  A little involuntary groan escaped Willow in reply.

  Ottie’s fingers gripped the wheel tighter. ‘Tell me more.’

  Willow hesitated, as though trying to resist falling back into the memories, as though it was better to hold on to the misery than the light. ‘. . . He’s about thirty, I’d say. English—’

  ‘With a name like Connor?’

  Willow frowned, as though trying to remember. ‘I think he might have mentioned an Irish grandfather?’

  ‘Passable then. And what does he do?’

  Willow squinted, trying to peer back into the pink-tinted shards of the night before. ‘He’s part of a consortium . . . I think?’ She shrugged. ‘I dunno, we weren’t really doin
g much talking.’

  ‘You’re outrageous,’ Ottie tutted.

  ‘Why am I? I’m twenty-two years old. I’m supposed to kiss strange men at parties.’

  Ottie shrugged her eyebrows, feeling prudish. She was the elder sister but she’d never kissed a strange man at a party. Bertie was her one and only. ‘So are you going to see him again?’

  Willow’s face fell. ‘I didn’t get his number. With everything that happened with Pip . . . I just left. One of Terry’s friends drove me to the hospital and I didn’t even think about it.’ She put up her elbow on the sill and bit down on her finger. ‘. . . It didn’t even cross my mind.’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t, let’s face it,’ Ottie said, trying not to imagine the scene Willow had been privy to: her sister almost drowning in the lake.

  They were both quiet for a moment, shaken by the image, the memory. ‘Yeah, but I never even thanked him. He was the one that pulled her out, you know.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘When I saw everyone running down the lawn after Pip and that fella, I realized what she was going to do. Connor helped me get the boat in the water and rowed us over to her.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Yeah. Fine thanks he got for all his trouble.’

  ‘He’ll understand, Will. Anyway, if you like him that much, just ask the Mullanes for his number. They invited him, right?’

  ‘Yeah, right, can you imagine? “I know my sister nearly drowned in your lake, but what’s the name of the hot guy I was snogging in the back garden?’’’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Ottie was quiet for a moment. It did seem inappropriate. ‘Did you like him?’

  Willow shifted in her seat. ‘. . . No, it’s fine. He was just a guy. A very pretty guy,’ she added ruefully. ‘But there’s thousands others out there.’ She looked out of the window again, her arm along the sill, biting on her index finger. ‘Pip’s okay, that’s the only thing that matters.’