Breathing Underwater (8 page)

I come up for air, spluttering. Someone's banging at the door.

‘All right in there?' says Gramps. ‘Not gone down the plughole or anything? Some of us lesser mortals need the lavatory once in a while, you know.'

‘Sorry, Gramps,' I call back. When I stand up, water sloshes over the edge of the bath. I wipe it up with the mat. Start to towel myself dry.

How long was it that time? I lost count. I need a stopwatch.

I've got one, in actual fact. On the watch I use which was
his
, of course. The watch which has a compass and everything you need for navigation, and which he wasn't wearing either, along with the wetsuit that would have kept him warm.

 

Izzy waves as I come round the edge of the field. The game's already in full swing. I join her end of the pitch.

‘Good you've come,' she says.

‘Thanks for the note.'

‘I looked for you earlier. Saw you'd all gone out. Nice time?'

‘OK. Swimming and that.'

‘Cool.'

‘You?'

‘Worked all day. Really busy. The campsite's packed.'

‘Oi! Stop chatting!' Matt puffs past us after the ball. ‘Come on! You're on our side, Freya.'

My cheeks go hot. Izzy doesn't notice. She chases after Matt and I'm left standing there like a loser, so I make myself run too. Danny waves to me from the other end of the field.

‘Freya!' a voice calls.

The ball bounces past me and rolls into the gorse bushes at the edge of the field. I run after it. Matt gets there first and we almost collide.

‘Whoa!' he says. He puts his hand on my arm, and all the rest of the game I can feel the place, like a burn. I know it's mad, but he's so totally gorgeous. Then Danny comes over and I forget about Matt for a while. He's caught a whole load of mackerel for the barbecue and he's dead proud of himself. He's OK, Danny. I like the way he gets enthusiastic about things. It's so
not
how most boys are, back home.

Danny's side win, but it doesn't matter. We play until the sun's gone down and it's too dark to see the pitch. Izzy and Matt have left already to start a fire on the beach at Periglis.

Some of the younger kids go back to the campsite. The rest of us join Izzy and Matt on the beach. We gather round the fire in a rough sort of circle. Danny comes over to sit next to me. We watch the sparks spiralling into the sky each time someone adds another log to the fire.

After a while, Izzy stops people piling more wood on. ‘It needs to be white-hot for cooking, not flaming like this.'

Matt and Lisa lay sausages and burgers on a grill balanced between two rocks over the glowing logs. Danny adds the fish, tail to head alternately. He sprinkles herbs on them.

‘Freshly picked?' I say.

He grins. ‘'Course.'

A dog comes nosing along the beach. It's Bonnie, from the farm, snuffling out the crisps and bread people have dropped. She can smell the meat cooking. She comes when I call her, and sits right close to me, leaning into my legs. I smooth her head and she wags her tail in circles. Her ears are warm and silky under my hand.

Everyone watches Izzy. Her hair is frizzy from sea-spray, from the heavy dew that fell those last minutes on the field after the sun went down. It's spotlit by firelight, an orange glowing halo around her oval face. She's stripped down to a thin sleeveless T-shirt. Each time she leans forward, I glimpse the curve of her body. I can't help it. Matt sees too. Danny, Will, everyone.
Joe too, if he was here.
My skin prickles. I bend down and hug Bonnie.

Everyone helps themselves to food. Some of the older kids pass round cans. Some of them light up cigarettes. Danny and I go quiet, watching and listening. We're the youngest people left, now. The lighthouse beam goes round: two sweeping beams every twelve seconds, lighting up the rocks, guiding ships to safety. As the night gets darker, the beam seems stronger and brighter.

Matt and Will are talking about this theory that humans evolved from apes who lived in water, not land, and that's why we don't have fur and why we can control our breathing when we dive, and need to eat fish, and walk upright and stuff. I listen. It makes a lot of sense.

‘It's late,' says Danny. ‘I've got to get back.'

‘Me too.'

Izzy gives us a little wave but no one else notices when we get up to leave. We walk single-file along the narrow footpath at the top of the beach, back to the campsite.

Danny peels off towards his tent. ‘See ya!' he says. ‘Sweet dreams.'

Electric light from the washrooms floods the top field. I make my way through the gate. After that, the lane seems extra dark. A dog barks as I go past the farm. My Tilly?

It's pitch-black, but not scary. The dark seems gentle and soft, folding round me. There's no wind, and no moon. The first part of the lane is overshadowed by the hawthorns either side, but as it goes up the hill the hedge falls away, and suddenly I see the sky above me like a huge canopy, studded by a million stars.

Nearly there. I can see the house.

Something light and feathery brushes my arm. For a second I hold my breath.
Joe?
But it's just a moth, flitting towards the light in the window. Evie never draws curtains. Who's to look in, after all?

She must have heard me come in. She calls from the top of the stairs. ‘Everything OK? Did you have a good time, Freya?'

‘Yes. Fine.'

‘Night, night, then.'

 

I flick on the bedside lamp. Evie's turned down the sheet ready for me. There's a jug of flowers from the garden on the chest of drawers. Two pale rose petals have already dropped. A faint smell taints the room. Not the smell of stale water, something else. Different, but familiar, somehow.

A memory comes. Me and Joe, quite small, making rose petal perfume in the garden. We're squashing the sweetly-scented petals into a jam jar, topping it up with water from the can in the greenhouse, stirring the pink mixture with a teaspoon. The next day the pink water has become sludge and is beginning to go brown, and each day it smells worse, stinky and foul and nothing like the scent of a rose.

Joe must be about eight. He's already too old for the game. He sneers at me. ‘You didn't really think we'd be making real rose scent, did you?'
He'd
known all along it would go smelly and rotten. I'm furious. I cry.

I shut the memory out of my mind. I don't want to think about my brother like that.

You can't always do that so easily. Memories come back, pressing in on you, like ghost faces in the darkness pushing up against the glass, trying to get into the lit room. And sometimes the ghosts come in the night, in dreams, and there's nothing you can do to stop them.

Twelve

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last summer

The girl who arrived that day, August 14th, is sixteen. She comes from somewhere near Birmingham. Her mother (Lorna) is divorced. Her little sister's called Coral. Rosie makes friends with Coral.

Joe's like a lost person. He's fallen in love for the very first time.

‘Hook, line and sinker,' Gramps says.

Gramps laughs when he hears what her name is. ‘Samphire! It's a
plant
,' he says.

‘Well, there's Ivy and Rose and Lily and all manner of flower names,' Evie says. ‘The old names are coming back.'

‘It's in Shakespeare, too,' Gramps says then. ‘
King Lear
.'

‘No,' Evie says. ‘You're getting muddled up now. That's Cordelia. The favourite daughter.'

‘Samphire's in there too,' Gramps says. ‘But as a plant, not a person. For picking and eating.'

They carry on like that for a bit, amusing themselves, but Joe doesn't think it's funny. He slams out of the back door, and goes to find Samphire (he starts calling her Sam, after that) for another
walk
, or whatever it is they do.

The first day after she turned up Joe showed her round the island, since she hasn't been here before. He wouldn't let me come, though. That's another thing that's new: before, all us kids just mucked in together.

I hear little bits and pieces about Sam. Scraps that start making a picture. Like the fact she doesn't like camping – never done it before. She's brought a different outfit for each day, but nothing warm enough, so Joe lends her his fleece. She starts using the bathroom at our place, because she doesn't like the showers at the campsite. She and Joe spend ages in his room.

That's where they are now. I'm lying on my bed in the room next door to them, writing in my notebook. I wonder what Sam makes of the pictures on the wall next to Joe's bed: boats and lighthouses and fish and stuff. The map of shipwrecks, with the names and dates of the thousands of boats that have gone down around this archipelago (that's one of my favourite words at the moment). It's one of the most dangerous in the world, which is why Gramps has taught Joe about currents and navigation and sea-charts. He bought him a special watch with a compass and everything.

When I listen up against the wall, I can't hear a thing. No voices, or music, even.

 

Gramps clumps noisily up the stairs, whistling. He stops outside my door.

‘Coming for an evening walk, Freya?' he calls. ‘We'll stop at the pub.'

He knocks on Joe's door. ‘Joe? Coming? Bring your friend, too.'

He's either forgotten her name, or he can't quite bring himself to say it.
Samphire
.

There's the sound of something scraping along the floor – furniture, or something heavy, before Joe opens his door a crack. ‘Join you later,' he says, and he shuts the door again.

Through my open door I see Gramps just standing there, as if he's not sure what to do.

‘I'll come,' I say. We go downstairs together.

In the kitchen, Evie purses her lips. She looks worried. ‘What would Martin and Helen do?' she says. Helen is Mum, Martin is Dad, their son.

‘About what?' I ask.

‘Joe and that girl in his room all that time.'

I shrug. ‘Nothing, I guess. She's just a friend.'

Evie and Gramps give each other funny looks.

‘Sam is friends with everyone,' I say. ‘It's fine.'

 

I think about this at the pub while Evie's ordering our drinks and Gramps is chatting to people outside. It's true that Samphire is friends with Joe and Huw, but not really with anyone else. She hardly speaks to me or the other girls, not even Lisa and Maddie. She doesn't join in the games on the field in the evenings with everyone else. She watches from the sidelines, looking bored. Sometimes I see her with Coral, washing up at the campsite sinks outside the stone barn, but mostly Coral plays with Rosie.

I know Evie and Gramps are worried, so for some reason that makes me want to reassure them. I take Joe's side every time, even though I am cross with him for spending so much time with his new
friend
. Now, sitting at the table outside the pub, I chat away so they don't keep wondering where Joe's got to.

He doesn't turn up, of course. At closing time we walk back in the soft dark, over the field and along the top of Periglis.

‘Watch out for shooting stars,' I say. You always get them in August, when it's clear like this, if you look for long enough. Then you can make a wish.

I wish for the puppy.
Please let Mum and Dad say yes
.

 

Later, lying in the bath, I hear raised voices. My heart beats faster: it's so rare to hear Evie and Gramps arguing for real.

A door slams. I turn off the hot tap so I can hear better, but someone turns the radio on in the kitchen; classical music. I sink back into the water. I'm practising holding my breath. I want to be as good as Joe. Better. He can do nearly two minutes, he says.

When I come out of the bathroom the house is quiet. The bathroom is downstairs and you have to go through the kitchen to get to the stairs. The radio's off. Evie's reading in the front room.

‘Nice bath?'

I nod. ‘What happened?'

‘Oh, nothing,' she says. ‘Joe got a bit cross with us for interfering. We forget he's sixteen now. I suppose we're a bit fuddy-duddy. Old-fashioned.'

‘No, you're not! You really aren't, Evie! Mum and Dad would've been much crosser, I expect, if he'd had a girl in his room all that time.'

Up in bed, I feel bad for saying that, as if I've betrayed Joe, somehow. I write about it in my notebook before I go to sleep.
Sorry, Joe
. But he had it coming, really. He should think about the rest of us sometimes. Evie and Gramps and me.