A Single Breath

by Lucy Clarke

  “Tell me exactly what happened,” Callie says.

  Eva puts down the wine and grips the counter, repeating the conversation between Flyer and Saul.

  Callie listens, rubbing her brow as if massaging in the information. “I’m staggered. Staggered,” she repeats, shaking her head. “How could he? I just . . . I can’t believe he’d do this to you. Jackson? He loved you. Why did he do it?”

  Eva squeezes her temples, where a deep pressure feels like it’s building. “I’ve no idea.”

  THEY TRAMP UP THREE flights of metal stairs to reach the roof terrace. Callie is relieved to find they’re the only ones up here tonight. She sets down their wine on a table at the edge of the terrace and they settle into a low double seat, looking out over the city. From a nightclub somewhere, a laser light beams up at the sky.

  Eva tucks her feet beneath her and cups her wineglass. With her salt-stiffened hair, flip-flops, and denim shorts, she looks like a castaway washed up in the city. Noticing that Eva’s hands are trembling, Callie asks, “Darling, are you warm enough?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Have you got anything else with you?”

  She shakes her head. “I came straight from the boat. Maybe I should’ve gone back to Wattleboon. I wasn’t thinking. I’ve only got my handbag.”

  “I can sort you out with everything you need. You don’t have to go back, not if you don’t want to.”

  Eva leans her head back and looks up at the sky. She sighs. “Did we rush it, Cal?”

  “You and Jackson?”

  “I never expected to fall in love. Not so quickly. It just . . . happened. I know everyone thought we were moving too fast—but it just felt right.”

  Callie presses her lips together, but doesn’t say anything. Music drifts through a window below, and there is a hum of traffic beyond.

  “Did you like Jackson? I mean really like him? I somehow got the impression that you never warmed to him.”

  “Did you?” Callie says, surprised. She runs her finger along the base of the wineglass, thinking about the question. “I liked Jackson, I honestly did, it’s just . . . I suppose he wasn’t who I’d have pictured you with.”

  She remembers feeling as if Jackson had just barreled into Eva’s life with his big personality and big gestures. Within three months they’d rented an apartment together in London and on weekends he would sweep Eva off to Paris, to Wales, to Oxford, to Cornwall. The speed and suddenness of it all was so out of character for Eva, who’d always been careful to retain her independence in previous relationships.

  When Eva was visiting her in Dubai the week before she met Jackson, she’d confided in Callie that her life in Dorset had become static and she was thinking of moving to London. Maybe she feared she was slipping back into the too-quiet rhythm of her childhood. And then Jackson turned up, a burst of energy promising to fill her world with color.

  “Did you have doubts about us?”

  “I never doubted he loved you. Not once,” Callie answers truthfully.

  “But?” Eva prompts.

  “But . . . I don’t know . . . it’s difficult to explain. Maybe I just wondered if he’d look after you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She thinks of the ease with which he spent money, never putting anything aside for the future, and the nights out they’d all go on—Jackson pushing to continue on to the next bar, the next club, even when Eva was exhausted from her shifts. “I suppose what I mean is, as much as he loved you, I always felt like he put himself first.”

  Eva hugs her arms around her chest. And that’s when Callie notices: her wedding and engagement rings have already gone.

  THEY’VE BEEN ON THE roof terrace for an hour when Eva’s cell phone vibrates. She pulls it from her bag and stares at the name flashing on the glowing screen.

  “Who is it?” Callie asks when Eva doesn’t answer it.

  “Saul.” Eva turns off the phone and stuffs it back in her bag, which she pushes under the table with a foot. “He had so many chances to tell me about Jackson.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to hurt you.”

  Eva’s thoughts trip back to the boat ride earlier in the day. Had that really only been this morning? She remembers the way he’d carefully held her foot as he’d smoothed the Band-Aid over her heel, and the exquisite tenderness of his lips against hers. “I kissed Saul,” she says quietly.

  Callie straightens. “What? When?”

  “Today. Before all this . . .”

  “Jesus, Eva. What happened?”

  “We were on his boat. And . . . I don’t know . . . somehow we kissed.”

  She can see by Callie’s expression that she is thinking the exact same thing as Eva: But he’s Jackson’s brother. Eva picks up her wine and takes a long swallow, feeling the dull heat of shame in her cheeks. “I don’t know why I did it.”

  “You’ve been through such a huge loss—and Saul’s your link to Jackson. Maybe he helps you feel closer to Jackson,” Callie suggests gently.

  Eva presses her lips together as she nods. She cannot deny she found comfort in hearing Saul pronounce the occasional word in the way that Jackson might have, or catching the same vibration in their laughter.

  “It was just a kiss, darling. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

  Eva doesn’t say that when she was in Saul’s arms, it was the first time in months that she’d felt light. It may have been just a kiss, but in it she’d tasted the first stirrings of possibility.

  SAUL SLINGS HIS PHONE on the table, then goes outside onto the deck.

  Low clouds veil the stars tonight, making it seem as if the night is pressing down on him. He stands with his hands gripped to the railings, feeling the grain of the wood against his palms.

  There are still no lights on over at Eva’s shack. She’s not coming back here, not tonight. He imagines she’s in Hobart somewhere, or perhaps in Melbourne with Callie. He just hopes that wherever she is, she’s okay.

  Christ, he’s been an idiot. He should’ve told her the truth about Jackson that first day she turned up on Wattleboon.

  But he hadn’t—and then she’d found out she was pregnant and he couldn’t do it after that; she just seemed too fragile.

  Or maybe that’s bullshit. Maybe sometimes it’s just easier to lie.

  A bat swoops low overhead, the thrum of its wings making the air vibrate. He sees it dip again and then disappear into the trees.

  He runs a hand across his unshaven face. He feels the nicks on his fingers from wrestling tags into all those squid. He’d loved having Eva on the boat, watching her concentration each time she hooked a squid, her face so serious as she reeled it in. It’d been incredible free-diving together, too; diving deep through the kelp forest and sharing the beauty of watching a sea dragon drift by. And that kiss: that was really something. He doesn’t want to even pause on how good that felt, not when he’s messed everything up so badly.

  He should never have taken her up the east coast. Letting her stay on at the shack was stupid enough, but he’d told himself that it was a better option than Eva wandering around Hobart trying to meet up with Jackson’s old friends.

  He replays the conversation they had after Flyer left, how her whole face stretched thin with pain. Then she’d bent forward as if he’d punched her in the stomach.

  Seeing her like that, hurting so badly, made him feel black inside. He keeps on asking himself over and over, Why the hell did Jackson do it?

  IT’S AFTER MIDNIGHT WHEN Eva crawls into bed. She is desperately tired, but can’t drift off, as her mind is still pawing through the day’s events.

  When sleep finally claims Eva, her dreams are disturbed and broken. She finds herself walking along a darkened hallway toward the sound of voices—but when she calls out, no one answers and her words echo off the narrow walls.

  Reaching the end of the hallway, she sees Jeanette sitting at the kitchen table, her back to Eva.

  Jeanette says something and then stands,
lifting a plate. As she moves, Eva sees there is someone else at the table.

  Jackson is facing her, eating a bowl of cereal drenched with milk.

  Eva’s throat vibrates as she screams.

  But Jackson doesn’t look up. No one does.

  Eva staggers forward into their kitchen. “Jackson? How? I . . . I don’t understand. You’re dead! You’re supposed to be dead!”

  She spins around. Jeanette is washing a dish in the sink, and Jackson continues to eat his cereal. “Why are you pretending you can’t hear me?” she cries.

  Their faces are blank. No one so much as glances up.

  And then she realizes: they can’t hear her, or see her, because it is Eva who is dead.

  She wakes, clawing at the covers.

  Her breath is ragged as she twists free of the duvet and sits up. She reaches for the light and blinks as it flickers on. Her body is slick with sweat, her hair pasted to her forehead.

  A dream, a dream, she tells herself.

  She lurches from the bed and goes to the window, pushing it open. The air is cool against her face and she gulps it in, tasting the heaviness of the city. Tears stream down her cheeks, emotion thickening her throat.

  Why has Jackson—the man who promised to love and honor her—done this? Her memories feel uprooted, like trees ripped from the earth in a storm.

  She concentrates on trying to regulate and slow her breathing, using the technique she’d learned from free-diving. It takes several minutes, but when she’s caught her breath, she dries her face and looks at her watch. It’s 3:20 A.M. She cannot go back to sleep, not when her nightmare still keeps the bed warm. She’ll get a drink; her throat is dry and she can feel the stirrings of a headache in the base of her skull.

  She creeps from the room, picking her way carefully along the hall and into the kitchen. She had forgotten how in a city, rooms are never truly dark. The lights from the surrounding apartments, offices, and streetlamps cast just enough of a glow for her to locate a glass on the draining board. She fills it with water and drinks it down, the cool liquid soothing her throat.

  Then she moves through the living room and pushes open the doors onto the balcony. Somehow she had expected to hear the bay, but instead she hears traffic, voices, a hum of something electric. The oversize T-shirt she’s borrowed from Callie stirs lightly around her thighs and goose bumps rise on her skin.

  She stands on the balcony, looking south over the city in the direction of the coast. Somewhere beyond there, across the Bass Strait, lies Tasmania. And living on that island is a woman who also calls Jackson her husband. Eva tries picturing her. Is Jeanette beautiful? Young? When did they marry? What was their wedding like? Did Dirk go? Did Saul?

  Eva’s thoughts trail back to her own wedding. She remembers the butterflies of excitement in her stomach when she heard the first chords of the organ. She’d walked slowly down the short aisle, her arm linked with her mother’s, her eyes on Jackson. He’d been standing with his hands clasped together, watching her with a deep, unblinking focus.

  When she reached his side, she could see beads of sweat on his brow and feel the heat radiating from his body. She knew he was nervous, but she’d thought: What groom isn’t nervous on his wedding day?

  When her mother passed her hand to Jackson, Jackson’s palm felt hot and damp. As the organ played its final bars, his gaze was still pinned to her face. She watched as a bead of sweat trailed down his forehead and got caught in his eyebrow. “You okay?” she’d whispered.

  “You make me a better person, Eva,” he’d said, a low intensity to his voice. “We’re meant to be together. Aren’t we?”

  “Yes,” she’d said, squeezing his hand twice.

  Jackson had smiled, his expression softening into something more familiar. Then he’d turned to face the priest, ready to make vows that had no more substance than air.

  On the morning of our wedding I got cold feet. Not about you. Never about you, Eva. I promise you that.

  Our service was at one o’clock, but at noon I was still sitting at the pub in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, looking into the bottom of a whiskey glass. I was picturing you and Callie getting ready together in your old bedroom at your mother’s house. It would have been chaos—clothes and makeup and shoes strewn around the room. Callie was probably feeding you champagne, your mother constantly poking her head around the door.

  I stood up from that pub stool, knowing I couldn’t go through with it.

  I was walking back to your home, working out what I was going to say—what possible explanation I could have given you for calling off the thing I wanted most in the world—when the wedding car drove past me on its way to collect you. It was an old white VW Beetle, with a huge cream bow tied from the sideview mirrors to the bumper.

  When I saw it, all I could think of was how in an hour’s time we could be sitting in the back of that car as husband and wife. I wanted to marry you so much, and at that moment it seemed worth it, whatever the cost.

  So I ran back to the hotel, pulled on my suit, shoved my feet into new shoes, and sprinted to the church. I arrived three minutes before you.

  When the organ played those first chords, I turned to watch you walk down the aisle. You looked so beautiful. I know all grooms say that—but honestly, Eva, you did. I don’t know the right words to describe the cut of the dress or what you’d done with your hair. All I know is that you looked more incredible than I could have imagined.

  At the altar you asked me if I was okay, and my reply was a whispered question: “We’re meant to be together. Aren’t we?” I put our fate in your hands, and of course you answered, “Yes,” because you didn’t know everything back then.

  You still don’t.

  18

  Eva is swept along the rush-hour streets of Melbourne. It’s a Friday evening and the buzz of the weekend fills the air. The crowd deepens as she passes the train station, where food stalls sell popcorn and waffles, neat trays of sushi, and onion-drenched burgers. Traffic is backed up in the streets and she hears the ring of cable cars above the thrum of voices and engines.

  To the passing crowd, Eva could be just another tourist taking in the city, or an office worker on her way to meet friends for a drink. Nobody knows her—and the anonymity is a comfort.

  She catches the low, vibrating tones of a didgeridoo up ahead and is drawn toward the sound. She manages to squeeze through the press of people crowding the wide pavement and sees two young men in low-slung jeans at the center, busking. One blows into the didgeridoo, his hands cupping the mouthpiece, and the other raps clever lyrics with his lips to a microphone as the crowd nods and dips to his beat.

  These are the pockets of city life that Eva once loved, where around every corner there is something vibrant to discover. But today she can’t feel it—neither the buzz and energy of the performers nor the rhythm of the music in her chest. She feels deadened.

  Eva’s been in Melbourne two weeks now, and she spends her days walking. She is learning the routes and layout of the city: where the best parks lie; which walls are covered in street art; how to reach the alleys that bustle with quirky shops. She doesn’t think she ever walked so much in all the time she lived in London. Her heels are blistered and sore, but she needs to keep going, to do something.

  She’d called home earlier and had a disjointed conversation with her mother. She hasn’t told her what’s happened yet. She can’t bear to. Eva needs her mother to keep on believing her marriage to Jackson was real and that they were in love—so that she can keep believing it, too.

  As her mother talked, Eva felt removed from the conversation. “I had another card from one of your friends yesterday. This one was from—” She’d paused, reading the name. “Sarah. So lovely that everyone’s thinking of you.”

  Eva couldn’t even place the name. It was as though her brain had been shaken so that everything was jumbled, information difficult to reach. As her mother read out the kind message about Eva’s loss, all Eva was thinking wa
s: If only you knew.

  The crowd presses around her and she feels the heat of other bodies, the air thickening. The soulful song of the didgeridoo weaves into her thoughts and she finds herself thinking, Jackson would’ve loved this music.

  But then she shakes her head: Or would he? She thought that she’d known the intricacies of his tastes: that he loved reggae, rock, and blues, but wouldn’t listen to anything with an electronic beat; that he’d eat olives and anchovies by the jar, but wouldn’t touch capers; that he was particular about wearing good shoes, yet would wear the same pair of trousers until the knees wore thin. But now, how could she be confident about where the truth ended and the lies began?

  The crowd around her grows and tightens. Just as she is turning, thinking, I want to leave, across the street she catches sight of someone so familiar that her mind stalls.

  She knows it can’t be. Knows that it is impossible that he’s here . . . yet . . .

  She struggles amid the people, twisting around to see him more clearly.

  There he is! Walking on the opposite pavement! Her heart rate flares as she sees his long, fluid strides, and his thick dark hair cut close to his head.

  “Jackson!” she cries out, but his name is swallowed by music and traffic.

  As the crowd continues to move around her, she loses sight of him. She pushes up on her tiptoes, craning her neck to see. But she can’t locate him.

  “Out of my way!” she cries, fighting her way through. He’s here! He’s right here. She needs to get to him. Speak to him.

  She uses her elbows now, pushing past a tightly packed group of teenagers who scowl at her beneath heavy hair and piercings.

  She cannot lose him! She jumps, pushing herself up using other people’s arms and shoulders—and catches another sight of him. He’s still on the other side of the road, heading north.

  Her breathing is ragged now as she moves through the crowd, forcing her way past two men who curse at her. Then suddenly she is free and is rushing forward, crossing the road toward Jackson . . .