Breathing Underwater (21 page)

‘Yes, of course!' I say, but I laugh, too.

 

When Evie takes a tray of supper up to Gramps I go with her and we sit on his bed. We tell him about our day. He listens and smiles, but he doesn't say much.

‘I'm tired out,' he says. ‘I'll be better in the morning. Tomorrow's a new day.'

It's still raining, quietly. I stand at the open back door, looking out on the sodden lawn. A blackbird's tugging up an earthworm from the damp earth beneath the apple tree. High in the branches, a thrush sings. I know it's a thrush because it sings every phrase three times, and Gramps taught me that. His bees will be tucked up snug in the hive this evening. I wonder whether Evie's told them about him being ill. You're supposed to tell the bees everything that happens in a family. He's ill, and it's raining, and I'm lonely tonight, but I don't feel terrible like I have done before. There's a kernel of hope growing inside me, little by little, that one day I will feel happiness again. Little bits of happiness, because it's in my nature to be happy. And no one is happy all the time. It's only ever in bits.

‘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.

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.'