Breathing Underwater

by Julia Green

  ‘Close that door, Freya!’ Evie calls, but she comes to stand beside me in the open doorway and puts her arms round my shoulders. We watch the rain together. A flurry of wind shakes the tree and a shower of tiny green apples fall on the grass.

  ‘It’s been a strange sort of day,’ she says. ‘Gramps says the rain will blow out to sea again tonight and it’ll be fine again by the weekend.’

  He’s usually right, is Gramps. Fine weather for the holiday weekend, then, and for Dad’s journey over, and Izzy’s return.

  ‘I’ll run you a bath, if you like,’ Evie says. ‘You look tired out. Too much sitting around doing nothing!’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  I think of last night, swimming. If she knew!

  Upstairs, getting into bed after my bath, I slide out my phone from where I left it under my notebook. There’s a message. Two messages, in fact.

  Message 1. Sorry I was out. See you soon? Missing you. Love Mum xx

  She still hasn’t got the hang of texting. She spends ages spelling out the words and putting in punctuation and everything.

  Message 2 is from Miranda. RU OK? Lv M

  Nothing from Sam, then.

  I stare at the black letters on the little screen, as if they might suddenly all jumble up and rearrange themselves into a different message, from someone else.

  I feel strangely flat. Disappointed, I suppose.

  So that’s that, then? The End.

  Huw was right. Sam’s not going to help. Even if I phoned again, got to talk to her, there wouldn’t be any point. I finally get it: what could she possibly tell me that would make any difference, now?

  Wind batters a wet branch of climbing rose against the window glass. In the distance the black rocks of the Bird islands are silhouetted against the dark grey sky. The Bird islands are where Joe’s body finally washed up, smashed against the rocks. I make myself think about it. Face it. His skull was cracked, the autopsy report said, but that might have happened long before he reached the rocks. It’s just possible he hit his head on the boom as it swung round when the dinghy hit the full force of the wind out in the bay, and the blow was enough to knock him unconscious, so he couldn’t swim when the boat capsized.

  The islands are uninhabited except by hundreds of sea-birds: gannets and skuas and guillemots, even puffins, some years. You can take a boat trip out to see them after the nesting season is over. To begin with, I couldn’t bear to think about it: his limp body turned over and over by the waves, smashing up against the rock face. But it was just his body, like a hollow shell; the real Joe wasn’t there any more. The real Joe had broken free, like one of the sea-birds wheeling high in the wind.

  Twenty-six

  ‘There’s a letter for you, Freya.’

  Evie has propped it up against the honey pot on the kitchen table. We both recognise the writing on the envelope.

  I take a mug of tea and Mum’s letter out into the garden. The rain’s stopped but the grass is still sodden, so I go into the greenhouse and drink my tea there, sip by slow sip, among the tomato plants and the red peppers. I can’t remember the last time Mum wrote to me. It makes me nervous, seeing the small neat writing in black ink across thick white paper. Has she something she wants to tell me, that she didn’t dare say out loud, on the phone? Hands trembling, I pull the pages out of the envelope.

  Dear Freya

  It was lovely to get your postcard. I’m so proud of you, getting on with island life this summer by yourself. Evie tells me bits and pieces when she phones. I was sorry to hear about Gramps being ill. How is he now? Evie says you are making all the difference to them, being there.

  It has been very strange in this rented house with just your dad and me. Lots of time for thinking and talking. We haven’t even unpacked all the boxes. It all feels very temporary. I’ve been to see a possible house for us to buy: smaller than our old one, but with lovely views and a big garden (all a mess, and the house needs lots of work, of course!) and only a walk from the city centre, which you would like. We are both going to see it again tomorrow, I hope. I think it will be a new start for us all. A different house, without all the sadness of our old one.

  This next bit is hard to say. Here goes.

  I know the way I’ve been so wrapped up in my own grieving for Joe has been very difficult for everybody, especially you. I’m so sorry I’ve not been able to help you more, Freya. So very sorry. It’s like I’ve been in the bottom of this deep black well. I’m slowly climbing back out of all that now, bit by bit. It takes a long time, doesn’t it? But moving out of the old house seems to have helped me take the first few steps. I have decided to go back to work in September, part-time to begin with, which has pleased your dad no end.

  I am missing you so much! We think it would be a good idea for both of us to come over for the holiday weekend. Evie seems to think so, too. So I will see you soon, darling. I thought we might do something to remember Joe, together, on the day. August 25th. As a family. What do you think? I can hardly believe it’s been a whole year.

  Sometimes it’s easier to write things down. I know you’ll understand that, my dear, brave daughter.

  Dad sends lots of love (he’s sitting here in the kitchen with me, having coffee, though he’s supposed to be working).

  With all my love, Mum

  I read the letter over at least three times. It makes my eyes sting with tears, and my heart aches, reading her words, but I can’t help but see all the times she writes that tiny word we: Dad and her, together. They are going to look at a house together. They are coming here, both of them. Right then, when she was writing to me, they were sitting together in the kitchen, having coffee.

  So much has happened in a few weeks. It’s happening for me, here on the island, my heart beginning to mend, and it seems as if it’s happening for them, too.

  My hand trembles when I finally get down to writing back. I practise in my notebook first, so I don’t make mistakes. It seems important to find exactly the right words, but it’s so difficult.

  Sometimes it feels as if Joe is right beside me. I hear his voice, or I catch sight of him on the rocks below as I go across the cliffs at Wind Down. I dream about him night after night. He is everywhere on the island, because this is a place where he was happy, and felt like he belonged, and that’s why it will be good for you and Dad to come here too.

  I think about him all the time, but new things happen too. Good things. I’ve made some new friends, really special friends . . .

  If we do something for Joe (What? Say poems? Talk about him? Best memories? Funny memories? Float candles on the water?), I think we should do it in a way that’s quiet but not sad. Not too sad, anyway. Nothing complicated: just remembering the real Joe.

  But I don’t send it. The words stay in my notebook.

  Twenty-seven

  Friday morning. Danny and I are sitting cross-legged on the grass near his tent, helping his little sister and Rosie and other kids from the campsite make paper lanterns, ready for the party tomorrow night. Sally calls it Lantern Night: she does it every year, in late August, and everyone from the island joins in. People make food, and bring drink, and there’s a procession across the island from the campsite to Beady Pool, with everyone carrying lanterns: hand-made, old-fashioned lanterns with real candles in them, hung from hooks on sticks.

  So here we are, Danny and me, trying to bend wire into spiral lantern shapes, only it’s much more difficult than it looks and most of ours are a bit wonky. Maddie and Lisa’s are much neater. We help tear the sheets of coloured tissue paper to stick over the wire. Where you overlap layers of paper you get different colours: that’s the idea, anyway. In reality everyone gets glue all over them, and the tissue sticks in all the wrong places, and gets torn, and we keep losing bits as the wind blows, so that the field is littered with coloured paper. Hattie and Rosie have soon had enough. We send them off to pick up the litter, but they don’t want to do that either, so Danny and me end up doing everything.r />
  Afterwards, we help Lisa and Maddie carry the finished lanterns up to the farm to keep them safe.

  ‘They look beautiful!’ Sally beams. ‘Stick them in the barn till tomorrow. I’ve put the box of nightlights in there, ready.’

  ‘Seen Matt?’ Lisa asks me, as we troop back down to the field.

  I shake my head. I haven’t seen him for days. I’ve been keeping my distance. It’s easier like that.

  ‘Izzy will be back this afternoon,’ I say. ‘Perhaps he’s gone to meet her.’

  Danny and I walk across Wind Down to the maze carved into the turf on the clifftop. He waits while I run round it, clockwise, to the middle and then back again, like I used to do with Joe. Together we climb up the huge outcrop of wind-carved boulders at the far end of the downs, till we are way up high. We look back across the island towards the Sound.

  ‘No sign yet,’ I say.

  The wind buffets us. We lean into it, to see if it can hold us up. The crossing will be rough again today.

  ‘We could go and wait on the wall,’ I say.

  ‘If you want. When’s it due?’

  ‘Who knows? The ferry’s always late when the weather’s like this.’

  ‘Or we could fish?’ Danny looks vaguely hopeful.

  ‘You can. Not me.’

  I hop down, boulder by boulder, and Danny follows.

  We pick blackberries from the hedges round the small fields in the middle of the island. They’ve plumped out after all the rain, sweet and glossy.

  Above the jetty, we sit on the wall to wait for the Spirit to come back from Main Island.

  ‘This is where I first saw Samphire,’ I tell Danny.

  I’ve told him lots, the last few days. I even told him about me swimming that night, by myself: everything except about Joe swimming with me, holding me up when I was too tired to swim any more. He was cross for ages. ‘It’s too dangerous,’ he said. ‘How could you? Imagine if something had happened to you.’

  ‘Are you still worried about your mum and dad?’ he asks.

  ‘Not so much now, not after the letter. But it will be a bit weird, seeing them again.’

  ‘I can’t imagine it,’ Danny says.

  ‘You don’t need to. Your parents are, like, rock solid. Anyone can see that.’

  ‘We haven’t had anything . . . anything really bad happen, though, in our family. Like you, I mean. You don’t know what would happen, then,’ Danny says.

  ‘I reckon they’d still be rock solid. They care too much about you and Hattie. It’s obvious.’

  ‘Your parents care about you, Freya! The two things don’t go together, silly!’

  ‘It was the silences I couldn’t stand,’ I say. ‘The not knowing.’

  ‘Maybe they didn’t know either. Maybe there wasn’t anything they could tell you, before.’

  I slide off the wall and hunt around for an old can or something for us to aim at, like we always used to do, last summer, waiting here. We each collect a pile of stones.

  Danny’s first shot goes way off.

  ‘Rubbish throw!’

  ‘You do better, then.’

  My stone falls short. I try again, a near miss. I’ve got better at aiming, since last year. Next go, though, Danny hits the can clean off the rock. He goes over to put it back.

  ‘Hey! Boat’s coming,’ he calls back.

  My belly gives a lurch. Any minute now.

  The farm tractor-trailer trundles down the lane towards the jetty, Huw at the wheel, ready to take bags and gear back to the farm. He doesn’t seem to notice us.

  ‘Can you see them yet?’ Danny says.

  The Spirit chugs across the grey-blue water of the Sound, leaving a spiral of white wake and a cloud of gulls behind.

  I’ve a lump in my throat.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Danny says. ‘You won’t want me hanging around.’

  Dear, thoughtful Danny. How could I ever have thought he looked so much like Joe? OK, he’s got the same sort of hair, same sort of clothes, but that’s about it. Now I’ve got to know him, I can see how different to Joe he really is. How much he is himself.

  I hang back, waiting for everyone to get off the boat, and for Huw and Matt to load the bags on to the trailers. Izzy sees me and waves. Mum and Dad are the last to get off. They carry their own small bags. They stand on the steps where the boat has tied up, waiting. Huw and Matt change places: Huw goes down into the boat to help Dave, and Matt climbs up into the driver’s seat on the tractor. Izzy squashes in next to him, already laughing. Matt starts the tractor engine. Huw and Dave untie the boat and cast off, chugging away again over the water.

  I watch it all unfolding, waiting for the moment when everyone will have gone but us.

  Every arrival on the island is like a kind of new beginning.

  Mum and Dad, side by side, stand on an empty quay.

  I walk slowly down to meet them.

  Gramps comes downstairs for supper. There’s roast lamb, and summer pudding made with raspberries and redcurrants from the garden and the handfuls of blackberries we picked from the hedge next to the lighthouse garden, on our way back from the jetty. It’s a family meal, a kind of muted celebration.

  We talk about what to do, for Joe’s day. One year since his accident. We are beginning to talk about him, all of us, at last.

  ‘What about something in the church?’ Evie says, as she passes round the potatoes. ‘Not religious, but a sort of gathering where we can have readings, and talk about our memories, and have flowers and music.’

  ‘Too like a funeral,’ Mum says. ‘We don’t want all that again.’

  Gramps and Dad are quiet while Mum and Evie bat ideas back and forth.

  ‘No fussing,’ Gramps says, eventually. His hand shakes, spilling peas from his fork on to the tablecloth. ‘No arrangements and busyness.’

  ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t do anything, after all,’ Mum says. ‘Joe’s in our hearts all the time, anyway. We think about him every day, all of us. It’s not as if we need anything special to remind us of him.’

  ‘Sometimes it helps,’ Evie says, ‘to mark the stages. The passing of time.’

  ‘I think it should be outside,’ I say. ‘At the beach. Candles, floating out on the sea, and we each just think about Joe, in our own way.’

  Mum nods, and then Evie.

  ‘Sounds lovely. Simple.’

  ‘That’s decided, then.’

  The house feels full again. Mum and Dad tramp up and downstairs. They put their bags and coats and shoes in Joe’s room. From the doorway I see Evie has moved things round: there’s a cream cover on the bed; the shells and things have been cleared off the shelf. It smells different, already.

  Later, Mum comes and sits on the edge of my bed. I’ve been lying there, writing in my notebook about the day. It’s just beginning to get dark.

  ‘Don’t you want the light on?’ she says.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You look amazing, you know?’ she says. ‘I can’t stop looking at you! You’ve grown up, these few weeks of summer.’

  She fiddles with the edge of my blue skirt. ‘Where did this come from? It’s so pretty. It’s not one of Evie’s, is it?’

  ‘No. Izzy gave me a pile of clothes she didn’t want any more. But this is the only thing I really like.’

  ‘Izzy who we met earlier, on the boat?’

  ‘Her. Yes.’

  I show Mum the other clothes, hanging on the hook on the back of my door. Mum takes the orangey-pink dress off its hanger and holds it against herself. Her face is pale above the bright colour, her hair a faded brown, shorter than before.

  ‘Have it,’ I say. ‘It looks nice. They are magic clothes, anyway. You should see what happens if you put it on.’

  Mum smiles. ‘What kind of magic?’ she asks. ‘I thought you’d grown out of all that sort of thing, these days.’

  ‘Change and transformation. That kind of magic.’

  ‘Did you get my letter?’ Mum asks. �
��I thought you might write back.’

  ‘I tried. I couldn’t get the words right. But I liked getting yours.’

  ‘Good.’

  We’re both quiet.

  ‘Were you writing, when I came in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your notebook? With the blue cover?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you write about Joe, ever?’

  ‘Sometimes. This summer, last summer.’

  ‘Will you show me?’

  ‘Sometime. Perhaps.’

  The soft light outside fades to dusk.

  ‘It’ll be better, from now on,’ Mum says. She reaches out, takes my hand in hers, holds it tight.

  We sit close together like that in the darkening room. I lean into her, rest my head against her. She strokes my hair, over and over, gentle as breathing.

  Twenty-eight

  A small procession of children winds its way down the narrow path to the beach. Above them paper lanterns in all different colours bob and sway on sticks held by each child. The lanterns glow like coloured moons: pink and orange and turquoise and purple.

  I’ve seen it every year since I was small, but still my heart beats a little faster when I see the dancing lights against the dark hillside. Hattie and Rosie are at the front, small figures in pale dresses like people from a long time ago, from a painting.