Breathing Underwater (3 page)

‘Tea?' Evie calls from the kitchen.

‘Coming.'

The tractor rumbles up the lane from the farm. I hear the
thump
of my bag being dumped at the gate. Evie calls out, ‘Thanks, Matt!'

Through the window I glimpse Matt's sun-bleached hair, the back of his blue T-shirt. The tractor chugs off again.

 

‘Better phone home to say you're safe,' Evie says.

I nod. I don't want to talk to Mum right now. Don't really want to think about her, or Dad, or anything I've left behind back there, but Evie starts asking questions while we're drinking tea and waiting for Gramps to turn up. He's gone to fetch in the crab pots.

‘It's good they let you come,' Evie says. ‘That's progress, isn't it?'

‘Yes.'

‘How's your mum doing, now?'

‘Same. She still can't work. But she's got the move and the house to sort out, so she's busy enough.'

‘And Dad?'

‘Still working all the time. He says he has to, because Mum's not earning anything. They argue about it.'

Evie's face closes up. I wish I hadn't said anything. I don't usually. Not even to Miranda. No one knows about all the arguments. Or the silences. The silences are the worst. I imagine too much. I'm scared it's all falling apart – them, our family . . .

Evie pulls herself together. ‘Well, it's been such a tough year for you all. I'm so glad you're here, Freya. You're very pale. You look like you could do with a holiday.' She's got tears in her eyes.

I look away.

‘We'll do our best. I know it's not much fun with just Gramps and me. But there are lots of kids at the campsite for you to play with; Sally says they're fully booked all August. Loads of families.' She smiles at me. ‘Unless of course you're too grown-up to play this year, Freya May?'

‘I wouldn't play anywhere else,' I say. ‘But here, it's different. Everything is.'

‘Well!' Evie says. ‘Thank heavens for that, at least. But it won't be easy, Freya. Everything will remind you of last year . . . bring it all back. You need to be prepared for that, yes?'

Of course I know that. But right now I can't speak, my throat too tight, choked with tears.

I want to tell Evie how much I love being in this house with her and Gramps, even though they're old and don't have a computer or anything much. Or perhaps
because
it's like that. Life is simple and easy.
Used
to be, anyway. But I don't tell her.

I lug my bag upstairs, trying to keep my mind off that boy – Matt – because it seems sort of disloyal, to be thinking about anyone but Joe. Silly, really. And it doesn't stop me, in any case. Matt's got fair hair like Huw, but he's younger, I guess. Eighteen, rather than twenty. I wonder what he knows about me, and Joe, and last summer. Is it all round the campsite? It was in all the newspapers at the time, of course. Accident. Inquest. Verdict. Sally might have told him.

Through the little bedroom window under the eaves I can see straight across fields to the sea, right out to the Bird islands, Annot and Kila, and the jagged shapes of the Western Rocks.
Don't think about that now
. I take a deep breath. I sit on the bed, run my fingers over the faded pink bedspread, the tiny neat stitches of the patchwork. When I was little, Evie used to tell me stories about the different scraps of material: bits of her mother's dresses, a patch of curtain.

The sky is beginning to clear.

I leave my bag untouched, go back down to the kitchen.

‘I'm going out,' I tell Evie.

She nods. ‘Look out for Gramps, then.'

 

The wind's blowing hard. I twist my hair into a rope and tuck it inside my collar. I'm going to do what Joe and I always do together, when we first arrive: walk right round the island. It's not far; only takes about an hour. I start by going through the cow field to the cliff, where there are huge rocks you can climb up.

Wherever you are, you can hear the sea, like a rhythm, a pattern of sound in your skull. Over time, it becomes so familiar you hardly notice it, but when you first arrive it hits you all over again. Today, because of the storm, the sea's still churned up, thundering and sucking and swooshing on to the rocks. The wind carries sea-spray – spindrift – which coats my hair and clothes in a fine mist. The sea has a voice. Today it's angry and wild. I love it. The wind whips my hair out from my collar as I begin to climb higher. It lashes thin wet strands across my face and makes it sting. It's like it's waking me up.

From the top, I can see almost the entire island, east to west. I stretch out my arms wide and lean into the wind. I gulp the sweet cold air, great lungfuls of it. I yell out, and the wind snatches my voice. The roar of the waves drowns it.

A thin streak of sunshine gleams on the sea over at Periglis. Gramps might be back with the crab pots by now. I climb down from my boulder perch and start making my way along the foreshore, skirting the bottom of the farm and the lower fringes of the campsite, towards Periglis beach.

Voices.

Someone laughs.

Two people are sitting close together on the stone field boundary at the shore edge. One's a girl I don't recognise, with golden, wind-swept hair, in a big turquoise jumper and baggy orange trousers, bare feet. Looking at her intently, laughing, is the fair-haired boy from the boat. Matt.

My heart sinks. They've seen me. I'm not ready for this.

‘Hello there!' The girl grins.

‘Got your bag OK?' Matt asks.

I nod. Can't speak. My face is burning. I hurry on past, slipping on the wet seaweed and rocks. I know they're watching me. Wondering why I'm so rude. Or shy, or stupid. But when I glance back, I see they're holding hands, looking at each other. They've forgotten all about me already.

There's no sign of Gramps at the beach, but the rowing boat is stowed safely at the edge of the old lifeboat slipway. I try not to see the space where the dinghy used to be. Instead of going on round the island, I cut back to the lane. I can do the rest another time. The lane takes me past the empty house attached to the old lighthouse. The gate's hanging off its hinges, and one of the windows upstairs is broken. Nettles grow waist-high in the big front garden.

Something looks different. There's a notice pinned to a post in the garden:
For Sale
.

I'm dragging my feet.

Remembering.

Last summer.

Four

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last summer

We're sitting in the overgrown garden next to the old lighthouse, our backs against the sun-warmed wall. Joe's eyes are closed, his face lifted to the sun. He's so brown! He's been off school since his exams finished in June, and even before that he was on study leave, revising in the garden (not!) and getting a tan.

I study his face. He doesn't look so much like my brother these days. There's a line of dark stubble along his cheek and under his chin. He leaves a razor in the shower. He spends hours in the bathroom, door locked. He shuts his bedroom door.

He's stripped off his T-shirt. His chest is all muscly and his stomach is flat as a board. Dad teases him about the six-pack. Dad's jealous: when he sucks in his stomach it still sticks out and Mum laughs, but in a nice way. Joe works hard at being fit. Sometimes I go into the living room and he's on the floor doing press-ups and stomach crunches, red in the face like he's about to explode. Since we came here for the summer, Joe's been running almost every morning before I'm even up. I seem to be sleeping longer and longer. Evie say it's my age. I'm growing fast.

Not as fast as Joe, though. He's taller than Gramps, and changing all the time. This is the first year he hasn't wanted me tagging along. He's worse at home: he won't even walk to town with me any more, in case he meets someone he knows. But here, because all the kids – all ages – play out on the field in the evenings, Joe can't stop me joining in. The first couple of weeks this summer he let me go fishing with him too, as long as I was quiet. He even showed me how to cast a line and we made spinners together. But lately that's changed. Joe's changed. He's not mean, exactly, just different to how he was before. And sometimes he's still lovely, the person I love best in the whole world. Miranda can't believe I feel like that. She and her brother squabble all the time.

‘What are you looking at?' Joe growls, one eye open and squinting at me.

‘Nothing.'

He stretches his legs out. They're all tanned and hairy. The sun has bleached the hairs. He closes his eyes again.

We've trampled down the weeds to make a place big enough to sit, hidden from the lane. It smells rank: hot roots, crushed stems and leaves. The pink flowers stink something rotten when you squash them. We stopped off here on our way back from the shop because Joe wanted to explore the garden: he's always on the lookout for old junk and stuff other people have thrown away. I just followed and he didn't say I couldn't.

‘Why doesn't someone buy this place?' I say. ‘Imagine living in the lighthouse! You could have your bed at the top. All the furniture would have to be round.' We often think about different places to live. Joe wanted a tree house, for ages: not a play house but a real one, big enough to live in. ‘This could be a lovely garden. There are roses and fruit trees and everything.'

‘The house is a wreck,' Joe says. ‘You'd have to spend a fortune doing it up. Bringing everything over by boat. It's not worth it.'

He gets up and I follow him. We beat a path through nettles and long grass to one of the windows and peer in. Hard to see through the dirty glass: I can just make out wooden floorboards, a fireplace, some sort of cupboard against the end wall.

Joe pulls at the window. Part of the wooden frame comes away in his hand. He laughs. ‘See? The wood's all rotten. It'd be easy to get in.' He starts edging along to the door.

‘Don't,' I say, suddenly uneasy. ‘We shouldn't be here. It's private property.'

‘No one's been here for years,' Joe says. ‘Who's to know?' But he walks away from the house, back to our warm spot against the wall.

 

I pick off dead flowerheads from the rose that sprawls through a crab-apple tree. Joe looks like he's asleep. Next year he wants to do a boat-building course, instead of A levels, and leave home. He talks about crewing yachts round the world. He wants to travel, have adventures. He's full of plans and dreams. He tells me these things, but not Mum or Dad. They won't be happy about the no-A levels plan. Dad thinks Joe should be an architect, like him. I try to imagine home without Joe. My last birthday, he made me a cake with icing and everything. Not many brothers would do that.

‘Will we swim, then?' I say, eventually. ‘It's warm enough now. We can dump the shopping and then go to Beady Pool. Or the sand bar.'

‘If the tide's low enough,' Joe says. We both know it's dangerous to swim there at high tide.

Joe doesn't move. Time stretches out. We might have been here for hours. The garden's hot and dusty. It hasn't rained for days, which is unusual, here. Even in high summer there are storms.

I'm desperate to go to the beach now. ‘Come on, then,' I say.

Joe stretches his arms above his head, hands interlocked. His fingers crack. He yawns like a sleepy cat, and gets up.

‘I'm going sailing this afternoon,' Joe says. ‘I just remembered. Sorry, Freya.'

Five

 

 

Gramps taught Joe to sail when he was about nine. He tried to teach me too, but I didn't like it much. Joe loved it from the very beginning. The first time they went out, it got windy suddenly, and Joe just laughed. I see all the dangers. When I'm scared, I can't think. Sailing, I was scared most of the time, even on a calm day. But swimming is different. Swimming, I feel in control. I swim like a fish, strong and steady. Crawl and backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke. I like diving, swimming underwater, seeing how long I can hold my breath.