Shallow Breath

by Sara Foster

  The dinghy sits on the sand. They have already attached tanks to their BCDs – all they have to do is put them on and make sure the air supply is working. They haul them into the dinghy and both move to the front, ready to drag the boat towards the ocean. When Jackson is there with Maya he takes most of the burden, so Maya is expecting them to struggle. But Kate pulls it as though it weighs nothing, and Maya focuses all her energy on keeping up with her.

  Kate steadies the boat in the shallows while Maya gets in, and then climbs in herself. ‘We’ll row out,’ she says, ‘so the engine doesn’t wake anyone. We only need to go a little way.’

  Maya picks up an oar, throws a quick glance at Kate, but her half-sister stares grimly ahead. They have hardly spoken about their relationship to one another, but Maya cannot help analysing Kate’s features, comparing them with her own. She thinks she can detect similarities in the curve of their eyes, and would love to ask if Kate’s noticed too. But there is an unspoken agreement between them that there will be time for all that later. And now that Maya knows the plan, she understands.

  ‘Okay, this will be fine,’ Kate says, throwing her oar into the bottom of the boat. She leans over the side briefly, assessing the dark water. ‘Do you remember everything you need to do?’

  ‘Yes,’ Maya says. ‘Quiet entry into the water, and down as quickly as possible. Only use the torch while I cut the ropes. Make sure the rope drops, or pull it away until I’m certain the hole is big enough. Then return to the boat as fast as possible. Tank unstrapped, someone will pull me in … and we go.’

  ‘Exactly,’ says Kate. She indicates the tanks. ‘Both of these are for you. I’m not going in.’ She grabs a thick piece of rope, ties one end to the boat, throws the other end into the water. ‘So I want you to go down there, and bring me five cut pieces of rope. I’m going to time you. You’ve got two attempts.’

  ‘How fast do I need to be?’

  ‘The fastest you can go.’

  Maya looks at the opaque surface. She has done a few night dives with Jackson, but going down there on her own is a first. She thinks of sharks, considers Kate’s determined face and knows that if she even mentions them this is all over. So she pulls the tank up to the side, and Kate helps her strap it on, then gives her a hand with her fins. ‘Okay, we’ll help you this far,’ she says, ‘and after that you’re on your own. Are you ready? Go!’

  Maya lies on the side of the boat, grabs the rope and swings her legs over, lowering herself into the water as quietly as she can. Immediately, she lets the air out of her jacket and sinks down. She is submerged in freezing black water, which crackles and sloshes around her, and she hears her breathing quicken as she tries not to think about what might be close by. Her torch is clipped to her BCD, and she fumbles switching it on. The light doesn’t penetrate far at all, just makes an empty grey dome in front of her.

  She cannot find the rope. Shit, she thinks, swinging her torch around, losing her bearings. She shines the torch upwards to see where the dinghy is, then realises that was a bad move. However, she catches sight of the dark silhouette of the rope hanging down, and swims hard for it. She begins to saw at it with the knife. It is taking forever, but there’s no way she’s giving up.

  One by one, the pieces come free. By the time she’s on her fifth and final one, she’s fed up and jittery about meeting a shark on the prowl. As soon as she has finished, she heads to the surface, throws the pieces into the dinghy, unclips her jacket, and Kate hauls the tank out. Using all her strength, Maya pulls herself up, and with Kate’s help she slides into the bottom of the dinghy.

  ‘Fifteen minutes,’ Kate says, her expression grim as she stops her watch. ‘You need to do it in four. And your torch is waving all over the place.’

  Maya is still trying to catch her breath as she lies on the canvas when Kate says, ‘Are you ready to try again? If you can’t get under five, there’s no point.’

  Half-sister or not, Maya would like to punch her. She sits up, defeated, breathing deeply. Her wetsuit presses cold against her, leaving her shivering.

  ‘Why do you want to be part of this, Maya?’ Kate is watching her intently. The bright moon casts a spotlit path across the inky water, all the way to the boat. There is nowhere to hide.

  She remembers Luke’s story of Hayden and his friends jeering as they kicked the life out of a joey while filming it all for fun, and everything she’s witnessed since. She thinks of the way Luke spoke to her in the car, after she’d seen the first dead kangaroo. She sees the ugly scar on Caitlin’s leg, and her mother revving her engine and driving straight at Rick Carlisle.

  She stands up. ‘Give me the other tank. Let’s go.’

  Without a word, Kate helps her with the straps again. The second time around, once underwater, Maya’s senses are sharper. She orientates herself straight away, not even bothering with the torch. She pushes all her rage into each hack at the rope, and Kate ducks as she surfaces and throws the pieces into the boat. She waits patiently for Kate to take the tank before hauling herself over the side.

  ‘Six minutes,’ Kate announces. ‘Impressive.’

  ‘With a decent knife or some good bolt-cutters I could do it in three,’ Maya replies between pants.

  ‘I’m sure you could.’ Kate picks up the oars and starts to row. ‘Okay, you’re in. But time is our enemy now. How quickly can you find your passport?’

  39

  Desi

  By April 1993, Desi can no longer see her feet. She is astonished by the spectacular size of her stomach, and entranced by the independent life inside it, which wriggles and pushes and kicks and keeps her awake at night.

  Hester comes to spend time with Desi most days after she has collected Jackson from school. While her mother restocks cupboards and fusses around the house, Desi walks down to the beach with her exuberant brother, listening to the stories of his day. Sometimes they get into the water, and while Jackson swims Desi follows her midwife’s advice and floats in the shallows, enjoying a few exquisite moments of weightlessness. When they get out, Jackson always marvels at how fat she is becoming, baiting her with his impish grin, delighting in the fact she is too cumbersome to chase him.

  Pete comes up from the city most weekends, and he is her favourite companion. He is happy to sit quietly, watching the water with her from the verandah, or to tinker on small jobs around the house. Moreover, because he was the only one to know Connor and Desi in Monkey Mia, he recognises parts of her that the others don’t. Although he says little, he always manages to make her feel good about herself.

  In contrast, by the time Rebecca leaves, Desi is usually despondent. Rebecca and Theo had married over Christmas, and while Desi enjoys seeing her friend on this new high, a permanent shimmer to her eyes, she can’t help wondering if she’ll ever have that again. She is grateful when her old friend’s visits become increasingly infrequent, as Rebecca busies herself settling into her new home and helping Theo run the vet surgery.

  As Desi’s due date draws nearer, each morning swells like an ominous sea. She hasn’t confided to anyone how scared she is about giving birth. While the baby is cocooned inside her, she is confident of keeping it safe, but the more she reads about labour, the more it sounds like a risky ordeal for them both. She is already awash with sadness that her child will never know its father. What if something happens to her, too, and he or she is orphaned? Or, even worse, what if something happens to the baby, and she loses this precious gift forever, and along with it the final thread of Connor’s life?

  She follows all the advice. She takes regular walks. She gets rest. And she sits on the verandah, breathing in and out in time to the ocean’s steady ebb and flow, trying to focus on everything she’s able to do, rather than letting herself be caught in spiralling fears of failure.

  Once they start, her contractions go on for weeks. ‘Braxton Hicks,’ the midwife says, as Desi is weighed and hands in yet another pot of urine. ‘Your body is getting ready.’ But Desi grows so used to this i
nvoluntary flexing of her muscles that it becomes a habitual part of her days. Her mother begins to hover, finding excuses to stay for longer, causing Desi to shoo her out with promises that she will call when the main event begins.

  She is alone on the verandah as the sun is setting, half watching the ocean and half dozing, when she is sure she sees something break the surface in the distance. She looks closer. Could it have been a dolphin? The water has settled over it again; there’s nothing to see. Perhaps she was dreaming.

  Then she senses something wet beneath her. She jumps up to find she’s been sitting in a puddle. She stares at it for a second before she runs towards the phone.

  Before she can get there, pain overwhelms her, as though someone has run up behind her and slammed hot knives into her back. She almost collapses as she dials the number.

  ‘It’s happening!’ she yells into the phone. ‘Can you come?’

  ‘Is anyone with you?’ Pete’s voice is concerned, but calm and reassuring.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll be there as fast as I can,’ he says, ‘but I’m going to call an ambulance first, okay?’

  She is about to reply when her breath is taken from her by another hellish twist of those burning blades. She drops the phone for a moment, falling to her knees. ‘I think the baby’s coming right now,’ she shrieks after the pain dies away, but all she hears is the dial tone. Pete has gone.

  She crawls across to the sofa and manages to get her elbows onto the seat before the next cruel fire flares in her abdomen. When it’s finished, she finds she has bitten down hard on a cushion to stop herself from crying out. She thinks briefly of going for the car, but the contractions are too fast and too intense. She is stuck.

  She is unbearably hot. She manages to yank off her T-shirt as she crawls towards the door again. Another spasm hits her, and she curls up into a ball until it passes, then makes it onto the verandah. On and on they come, wave after rolling wave of intolerable agony. Once outside, she tries to listen for the ocean, to steady her breathing, but she can’t make out anything above the blood that pounds in her ears. The surroundings of the house are dark and still. She is utterly alone.

  When the next surge crashes over her, it breaks her down and buries her, leaving her sobbing into the floor. ‘No more, no more, I can’t do it,’ she pants into the empty air.

  Something changes after that, and although the pain is still excruciating it settles into a more predictable rhythm. Every time it comes she strains against it with all her might. It seems like it’s been going on forever when she finally hears a siren.

  She is vaguely aware of lights flashing red and blue, and voices coming nearer. They already know her name, and they are checking her and soothing her. She tries to respond, but it comes out as a grunt. She feels a hard pop, and the voice by her legs says, ‘The head’s out now, Desi. Another push and you’re done.’

  At first, she barely registers what they are saying. She is beyond spent; there is nothing else in the world except the blistering currents of pain that crash over her, and the brief spaces in between while the next one rolls in. But, briefly, her mind flashes back to one day in Atlantis. She sees herself hurrying with half a dozen others to the edge of the dolphin pool. Mila had been circling extraordinarily fast, as though trying to evade something, while the other females, Rani, Lulu and Karleen, chased her. As Desi watched, she’d spotted a tiny tail poking from underneath Mila’s belly. Mila had risen to snatch some air and then dived straight down towards the bottom, her fluke kicking vigorously once, twice, before a small streak of grey broke free. The baby wriggled frantically to the surface and took its first breath as its mother did another circuit of the pool. Mila slowed a fraction as she returned to pass by her infant, brushing its belly with her pectoral fin. The newborn immediately fell in beside her, and they began to cruise the pool in perfect sync, as though there had always been two of them together in the world.

  Desi returns to the present, covered in sweat and crouched on all fours. Without being told, she knows exactly what to do. She rises up onto her knees, just as her body, unprompted, gives one great, last push. The noise she makes might sound like agony but it is wrapped in triumph as her baby girl slips into the world, to be caught by waiting hands.

  40

  Pete

  ‘So how did you get on with Kate?’ Pete asks as he and Desi sit down to dinner.

  It is one of those idyllic nights where the wind hasn’t picked up, and conditions are perfect to eat outside. Desi blows out a breath as she passes him some cutlery. ‘I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps you should go first – did you find out any more about going to Indonesia?’

  ‘Yes, and it was much easier than I expected.’

  He had spent the morning on the phone trying to reach people at the zoo and in Sumatra. He’d learnt they were chronically short-staffed at the release station, and everyone seemed open to the idea of him heading back, particularly when they discovered he was planning to pay his own way. ‘In fact, I’ve booked my flights. I’m heading over there tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow!’

  ‘Yes, the sooner the better. I’ve learnt terrible things today about fresh burnings in Aceh. There’s only two hundred orang-utans there, and they could be gone in a few months, or even weeks. As well as the dead, there will be casualties for sure – and orphans. I’m sure if the powers-that-be can bring any to the release station, they will try to.’ He pushes his plate away for a moment; he can’t eat while he thinks about it. ‘It’s a total war zone, Des, where one side razes the ground with fire and bulldozers, and their opponents are innocent children who don’t even know they’re in a fight. It’s genocide for lipstick and soap and cooking oil, and we’re running out of time too fast to change anything.’

  Desi puts her knife and fork down as she listens to him. He’s on a roll now, frustration growing with every word.

  ‘And the trouble is, once they’re gone in five or ten years, along with the rhino, and the polar bears, and God knows what else, people will find them in a picture book and shake their heads sadly. They won’t even know what they’re missing. That knowledge will die with us. I know it takes a rare person to look in the mirror and see past themselves to the world behind them, but before long there won’t be any point – the entire earth will either be too barren or too horrific to be worth noticing. Millions of years of evolution, and humans destroy it in a few decades.’ He pulls his plate towards him again. ‘Okay, I need to stop ranting. Tell me about Kate.’

  Desi begins to explain what she’s discovered about Connor and Elizabeth in Africa, and Pete listens in shock. When she’s finished, he is silent for a moment, watching her. Then he says, ‘That’s a bombshell, Desi. You seem very calm, considering, I thought you’d be more upset.’

  She shrugs. ‘I don’t know. It’s strange realising I had no idea of the truth all these years. But if anything I’m … detached. It’s begun to feel so very long ago, and too much has happened in the last few years. I am horrified, though. And I’m so sorry for Kate and her family. It’s made me think I should try to get in touch with them again – tell them more about Maya, and my time on the boat with Connor. After all, they were so generous with the deposit for the shack. Maybe I gave up on them too quickly.’

  ‘Desi’ – Pete shifts in his seat – ‘there’s something I need to own up to. I was trying to tell you the other night – not all the money you used for this place came from Connor’s family. They sent a small amount, and I added to it from some of the inheritance my father left me.’

  Desi stops and stares at him. ‘How much did you add?’

  He holds her gaze. ‘Fifteen thousand dollars.’

  ‘Fifteen thousand dollars! Pete – that’s … incredible. Why did you do that?’

  ‘I wanted to help you out.’

  After an extended pause, Desi gets up, walks around to his side of the table, kneels, takes his face in her hands and kisses him. It takes him a moment to respond bec
ause he is so surprised, but then he wraps his arms around her and pulls her tight against him.

  When they break apart, he is worried that she will regret it. But she offers him a small, uncertain smile.

  ‘Pete, I know that ever since Maya has been little I’ve had a wall round me. I lost the desire to be vulnerable, but I didn’t have to worry with you, did I? You’ve been there for me and Maya through everything, and I don’t think I’ve appreciated what it might have cost you at times.’

  He keeps his arms around her. ‘I think we’ve all done the best we could. I can’t believe how fast the years have gone by. I’ve barely noticed how we got here.’

  Desi sighs. ‘I thought I was so strong, but I was a mess back then. It took the horror of the past few years to push me to confront myself. When I heard Kate talking about Connor today, it felt like there was a resolution to be found in it.’ Her voice holds an encouraging brightness. ‘Perhaps that might mean some new beginnings too.’

  ‘When I get back, we could go on a date,’ Pete suggests, hardly able to believe they are finally having this conversation. ‘We’ll get dressed up, I’ll pick you up, and we’ll do something special. Would you like that?’

  ‘Okay. And you have to take me to see Indah, remember?’

  Pete laughs. ‘Only you would consider that a date. But of course I will. So what are you going to do while I’m gone?’

  ‘Well, tomorrow I’m going to visit Rebecca,’ Desi says. ‘I’m not sure I can ever make amends, but I think I need to try.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll do fine.’

  Once they finish their dinner, they collect their wine glasses and stroll down to the beach. As usual, they fall quiet as they contemplate the water. Desi rests her head on Pete’s shoulder.