Libby’s stomach flipped. “So, it’s okay to go down there without any training?”
He wouldn’t quite meet her eye, which should have made her turn and run. “Yeah. It’s only a little dive. Training is costly and it takes a lot of time. We’ll have you in and out with the minimum fuss.”
Libby regarded Alan, who had turned away and was in deep, hushed conversation with his father, and her panic grew. He looked like thin comfort. She wanted a big man with her, somebody with courage and strength and honor. She wanted Mark. She never seemed to stop wanting Mark.
Another couple pulled up in a black BMW, and then when everybody was on board, Graeme started the motor and they moved out into the bay.
The sun was bright but gentle, the water deep blue-green beneath them. Libby sat on the starboard side of the boat, watching its wake over the low railing. The couple were obviously experienced divers, talking to Alan in confident voices. Graeme stood in his half-cabin, steering the boat out towards the reef. After a ten-minute journey, he cut the motor and they slowly came to a dipping-and-bobbing rest.
Graeme came out with a wetsuit and fins, and Libby changed quickly. Then he spoke to her rapid-fire while harnessing her into a vest that he called a “BCD,” air tanks with tubes leading everywhere, a belt and a diving mask that pinched the skin around her cheeks. She listened carefully as he explained how everything worked, as the other couple splashed into the water, leaving her behind. Her brain whirled frantically. It wasn’t simple. Not at all. And she was going to have all that water on top of her. This wasn’t like swimming laps at the health club, it wasn’t even like taking an afternoon paddle in the ocean. She would be a long way under.
“Look, love, nothing’s too complicated. Breathe through here, and if that doesn’t work breathe through there. Alan’s going to be beside you the whole time.”
Libby nodded, apprehensive despite his reassurances. Soon, she was sitting on the side of the boat, about to splash into the water.
She was a good swimmer. She hadn’t always been, but Mark liked to go to the beach for holidays, so she had practiced laps up and down the narrow pool in the health club a block from work back in Paris. Mark would tell her she was being silly. Mark would tell her just to get in.
But Mark didn’t know everything about her.
She popped the regulator in her mouth, steeled herself and then tumbled into the sea.
Alan gestured that she should follow him, but she took a moment to get used to breathing through the regulator. At first her chest felt constricted and anxious, but soon she had the hang of it, and she began to swim down into the blue. The light penetrated softly, lending everything a smoky haze. She could see the wreck already, barely recognizable as a ship. It seemed both manmade and organic: carefully wrought and now overgrown with mad, woolly sea life. The hot colors on the spectrum disappeared the deeper they swam, until everything was smoky blue. Libby gazed around her in wonder. Rays and turtles and schools of silvery fish. She felt free and light and alive, and so incredibly glad that she’d come. How Mark would have loved this. How proud he would have been for her to put aside her fears and come down here. Alan pointed down towards the wreck and indicated she should go ahead. She swam down towards the Aurora.
Libby gazed in wonder at this ship, this mysterious vessel she had been sketching and painting for weeks. It was as though a mythical being had sprung to life in front of her. After having only seen it in her imagination, its physical presence electrified her. It was in two clear parts on the ocean floor, divided by rocks and weed, sloping at impossible angles. Only part of the main mast still stood, like a jagged tooth emerging from the deck. She checked that Alan was close by, then swam towards it and around it, then along the deck through the warm blue water. A large ray shadowed her underneath, slipping over the side of the ship and into the dark below. Libby saw a hatch up ahead and put on speed to get to it.
She stopped above it, treading water a minute, looking down into the hatch. It was dark, but she had a torch attached to one of the cords on her BCD, so she fumbled for it and pulled it out. Its beam lit the inside of the hatch, which bristled with weeds and barnacles. A set of stairs, debris on the floor. She thought she saw a shard of broken crockery and slowly made her way into the hatch to investigate.
It was cramped, and immediately she wanted to turn around. The space made it difficult, but she managed, only to notice that she was surrounded by tiny bubbles. She watched them all around her face, frowning. Was that normal? She emerged through the hatch again, only to be buffeted by a warm current. Bang. Her right elbow hit the edge of the hatch hard. Instinctively, she put her hands out to steady herself, remembering too late that Graeme had warned her not to touch anything with bare hands. She hardly felt the sharp edge of the barnacle slice into her hand, but she certainly saw the blood smoke into the water, a dull green color.
Libby looked around for Alan but couldn’t see him. She was alone.
She pressed her hand against her thigh to stop it bleeding and made her way out of the hatch. She tried to regather her happy feelings of freedom, but she was disorientated now. The angle of the wreck made it difficult for her to work out which direction she’d come from, and she could see neither Alan nor the other couple, nor had she any idea where Graeme’s boat was. And all of this was made worse by the veil of bubbles in front of her eyes.
She decided just to swim upwards.
That’s when her air stopped flowing.
One second she was breathing, the next there was nothing.
Cold panic hit her heart. Not just panic for the situation now, here in the present, but a terrible dark memory, dredged like a childhood nightmare from her brain. I am underwater and I can’t breathe.
Her throat seized up. She remembered she had a spare regulator, somewhere on her vest. She felt around for it, but her hands were suddenly made of clay. She couldn’t move them properly, couldn’t find anything with them, and stars were spangling around the edges of her vision.
The weight of her body.
The lead in her lungs.
Her arms reaching out for help.
The light going out in her brain.
Then, suddenly, her regulator was ripped from her mouth and replaced with another. She opened her eyes to see Alan, holding his spare regulator to her lips. She breathed greedily, letting him swim her slowly up to the surface. Grateful, so grateful to break the surface and breathe real air. Alan was shouting something at Graeme, who hauled her into the boat like a prize fish. He took off her mask and she blinked water out of her eyes. The sunshine was blinding.
“You all right, love?”
“I think so. What happened?”
“Alan said your reg malfunctioned.”
“My . . . what . . .”
“Don’t worry, you’re okay. Do you need to go to hospital?”
“I . . . No, I’m fine.” Libby sat up. “It was more panic than anything else.” She swallowed hard. “I nearly drowned when I was younger. It brought it all back.”
Graeme squinted off into the distance, as if afraid he was being watched. “Yeah, yeah. I see. Well. Let’s not . . . Ah. I won’t charge you for today, hey? So you don’t need to tell anyone.”
It took Libby a moment to realize he was worried she was going to report him for faulty equipment. And probably for letting her dive untrained. She shook her head. “I won’t. Don’t worry. It’s the last thing on my mind.”
He fussed about her a bit longer, then the other couple came up and they headed back to shore. Libby sat watching the water again, but without the lightness on her heart that she’d felt going out. Everything seemed too bright now; overexposed and raw. Today had brought it all back: the reason she’d never wanted to return, the reason Juliet had never forgiven her. Twenty years ago, she had done something terrible. And she would never be able to escape it.
Juliet was sitting at one of the tables in the tea room, with invoices spread about her to sort out. It was late afterno
on, just after closing time. She normally did this upstairs at her desk, but Damien was still in the kitchen measuring cabinets. A knock at the locked front door caught her attention, and she looked up to see the elderly couple who had been staying in Room 1.
Juliet rose to unlock the door, and they handed her their room key.
“Have a safe journey home,” she said.
“Thank you for the late check-out,” the man said. “We really appreciate it.”
“It’s fine. It’s the start of the quiet season now and nobody else was using the room.” She heard a thump from the kitchen and wondered what Damien was doing.
The elderly man nudged his wife, who reached into her basket and pulled out a bottle of red wine.
“This is for you,” she said. “We had a lovely stay and your breakfasts were superb.”
Juliet beamed. “Oh, thank you.” She tucked the bottle under her arm and shook their hands. They said their farewells and Juliet locked the door again, placed the wine on her table and went through to the kitchen.
“Are you okay?”
Damien was crouched on the floor with his head in a cupboard. He looked up when she came in. “Yes, sorry. I dropped one of your drawers. It’s back in place now.” He stood, stretched out his leg. “Though it did land on my foot.”
“Ouch. You need ice?”
“I should be fine.”
She leaned closer to look at his foot. A red lump swelled on it. “No, you need ice. And you need work boots, not flip-flops.”
“I do have some. But . . .”
“Yes, I know. It’s complicated. You’ve said that a few times now.”
“I don’t mean to be mysterious.” He glanced around. “I’m done with measurements. Want to talk through some ideas?”
Juliet hesitated, then swallowed hard and ploughed ahead. “I’ve got a bottle of wine out there. Would you like to share it?”
He smiled. “I would love that.”
She found a bag of frozen peas for his foot and they sat in the locked tea room by soft lamplight, drinking wine out of teacups. She opened the side windows so they could hear the sea. They talked through the first cup about his ideas for the kitchen, through the second cup about how she had managed the business these last fifteen years, and by the third her curiosity overrode her politeness.
“You’d better tell me what’s going on. Why don’t you have access to your bank or your boots or anything else?”
Damien shook his head. “A very, very bad relationship breakdown.” The pain on his face was momentarily visible but then carefully hidden. Juliet had a flash of memory from twenty years ago: Damien frightened by a bad dream. In childhood, the nightmare situations usually involved monsters. In adulthood, nightmares were far more mundane. Broken hearts, money worries, family problems.
“We owned a lot of stuff together,” he continued. “She’s locked me out of all of it. Bank accounts, our house . . . I had to break into my own garage to get my car. I swiped the cat while I was there. Left her with Libby.”
“I’m really sorry to hear it.”
He shook his head. “Wow. This is the first time I’ve talked about it to anyone.” He laughed. “I don’t know if it’s the wine or if it’s just because I’ve known you so long. Trusted you with my feelings . . .”
Her heart felt warm. Or perhaps she was just a little drunk.
“You know, I haven’t even told my mother. She didn’t like Rachel and she warned me about her.” Damien shrugged. “Sorry. I guess I sound pathetic.”
“Not at all. But you shouldn’t just let her . . . Rachel get away with it. Can you call a lawyer?”
“I’ll get there. Eventually. Time will help, I hope. She’ll cool off and . . .” He trailed off. “Well, nobody knows what the future holds. I’m trying to be optimistic, but it’s been a little hard sleeping on a mattress in a lighthouse. So, now you can see how much it has meant to me to have a proper place to stay.”
Juliet considered him by the lamplight. The sea roared in the distance. She had a sensation of the familiar and the strange, the past and the present lying on top of each other: she knew Damien, but she didn’t know him; she knew her sister, but she didn’t know her. Why was this all happening at once? It was as though the twenty-year anniversary of Andy’s death had brought to the surface matters that had long been buried.
“Anyway,” Damien said, shifting in his seat and rearranging the frozen peas on his foot. He looked very comfortable and at ease. “In-kind. I told you my dark secret. What’s yours?”
She smiled. “I don’t have one.”
“Yes, you do. What’s going on with you and Libby?”
“Nothing,” she said, a reflex.
“Come on. It’s written all over your face that something’s wrong. You practically flinch when I say her name.”
Juliet sighed. Libby. Inescapable Libby. “The short version is that I haven’t seen her for twenty years and now she’s shown up and is making life difficult for me.”
“Difficult? She just sent you a free carpenter.” He spread his hands.
She laughed. “Well. I suppose I’ll send her a thank-you card.”
“You’re lucky to have a sister. I always wished for a sister or a brother.”
Juliet remembered all the times she’d wished she didn’t have one. “It’s complicated.”
“Why did she go away for twenty years anyway?”
“Lighthouse Bay wasn’t enough for her.”
“But not even to visit? To maintain contact with you?”
Dark feelings. She wished she hadn’t drunk so quickly. Her head felt crowded.
Damien seemed to read her mood. He dropped his voice low. “Juliet? Are you okay?”
She shook her head.
He was silent a moment, then he said, very softly, “What happened?”
“Andy drowned,” she said.
“Libby told me that much. What really happened?”
Juliet took a deep shuddering breath, the horrible truth—voiceless for years—about to be spoken aloud in the world. Was she really going to say it? But then the words were falling from her lips and she couldn’t recall them. “Andy drowned and it was Libby’s fault.”
Damien was stunned, wordless for a few moments. “Okay,” he said, “you’re going to have to tell me everything.”
So she told him. Everything.
Juliet and Andy were meant to be together, and everybody knew it. She’d made a space next to her in Year Nine math class for the new boy with the sandy hair and the deep brown eyes, and he’d occupied it willingly from that moment on. They were like an old married couple by their final year. Other relationships around them came and went. Libby, with her head-turning looks and coquettish teenage vanity, chewed through boyfriends in a week or two; but Juliet and Andy were steady.
But not boring. Never boring. He had a unique intelligence. He saw things from such interesting perspectives. She loved to talk to him, for hours and hours, about everything: the natural world, the social world, history, philosophy, cooking, painting, anything. He had something to say. And just when she thought she wasn’t interesting enough or clever enough to keep him, he would laugh at one of her jokes and she would be reminded that it would always be easy with Andy. He loved her easily; he was easy to love.
Then there had been a pregnancy scare. A false alarm as it happened, but they’d started thinking, Why wait? They knew they wanted each other, they knew they wanted a family, a future. Dad had given them his blessing: he adored Andy. A beach wedding—she would wear something simple and pretty—then a life together full of as many simple moments as adventures. Soul mates.
It was Libby who suggested the night-before party. Juliet had turned down the idea of a hen’s night, just as Andy had little interest in a boys-only night on the town. So Libby invited a dozen old school friends out to the surf club. Juliet didn’t want to be hungover at her wedding and, besides, she was never much of a drinker, and Andy kept her company in sobriety. Bu
t everybody else drank way too much, the way only young adults do.
Libby drank the most of all. Juliet had seen her wild before, but tonight something was different. She had on her usual bright red lipstick, her dark hair was teased up high, and she wore a tight blue dress. Every man in the surf club was stealing glances at her. But it wasn’t just her looks that were attracting attention. She was laughing loudly, flirting with everyone, tossing her hair and making lingering eye contact. Juliet often wondered if Libby was jealous of Juliet getting married: she was, after all, used to being the center of attention. Or perhaps she was just happy and excited that night.
It was definitely Libby who suggested they all go skinny-dipping at the beach. There were murmured agreements, but it wasn’t serious. They flowed out of the surf club and down onto the sand, laughing and chatting and splashing about, but nobody really thought they would go in for a swim.
Until somebody dared Libby. It was one of the boys, no doubt inflamed from a night watching her vivacious show.
“Double dare me!” Libby shouted. And then, “Triple dare me!”
This went on for a while and Juliet had started to feel tired. She squeezed Andy’s hand and leaned into his warm shoulder. The April breeze was soft on her skin. “Time for bed,” she said.
“And when we wake up, it will be tomorrow.”
She turned her face up for a kiss, and his warm mouth closed over hers. But a sudden screeching made him break off. A hundred meters down the beach, Libby was wriggling out of her blue dress. The others were hooting and laughing. Juliet and Andy stood back.
“She’s gone crazy,” Juliet said.
“She shouldn’t go in the water like that,” Andy said. “She’s too drunk.”
The first stir of unease spread across her skin.
There was Libby, wading into the water in her black bra and knickers. Then diving under and emerging, hair flat now, make-up streaming, laughing and laughing. “Come on!” she called. “The water’s fine.”
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