Swimming at Night: A Novel (27 page)

She threw her clothes back on and moved towards the door. He followed, picking up his room key. “You’re going out?” she asked, turning.

“For some fresh air.”

The light had disappeared from his eyes and she guessed it had been the mention of his brother. She hesitated in the corridor, searching for the right thing to say.

He locked the door and dropped the key into his pocket.

Nothing came to her.

“Night,” he said.

She watched him leave, glimpsing flashes of the black wave on his swinging arm, Jez’s words ringing in her ears.
He’s good at leaving.

(Bali, August)

H
ave there been any messages?” Katie asked, spreading her palms flat against the cool polished wood of the Khama Heights Hotel front desk.

“Yes,” Ketut replied. “One message for you.”

Please,
she thought as he lifted a slip of paper,
tell me my backpack’s been found.

“It is from Passport Services. A replacement passport will be sent to you by the end of the week.”

“Oh. Were there no others?”

“That is all today, Miss Katie. I am sorry. Perhaps tomorrow they will find your luggage?”

Her hands slid from the desk, a faint trail of condensation left behind. “How long have I been here, Ketut?”

“Twelve days,” he answered, without needing to check.

Which meant it was twelve nights ago that she discovered her backpack had been stolen. Thankfully, she’d had her bag on her and could pay a taxi driver to take her to a “safe hotel.” She
remembered drifting, luggageless, into the grand lobby of the Khama Heights Hotel. It was Ketut, standing behind the front desk in a pressed burgundy blazer with neatly oiled hair, who smiled warmly and asked how he could help. On her behalf he made calls to the police and the British Embassy, while she stood next to the desk, picking at a loose thread on her dress until the hem came undone.

She had visited the police station three times since then, waiting in the sweltering entrance that smelled of metal and disinfectant, listening to the bounce and clicks of men speaking Balinese behind a high wooden counter. Each time she was told the same thing: they would be in touch if there was any news.

She had lost everything—clothes, underwear, a bag of Chanel makeup, her new set of acrylic paints, two dresses of Mia’s, her engagement ring, her passport—but it was only the loss of Mia’s journal that she cared about. She found herself fantasizing about meeting the person who’d stolen it, grabbing them by the shoulders, and screaming into their pitiful face until they understood the damage they’d done.

“Miss Katie?” Ketut said. “Miss Katie, are you feeling not well?”

She placed a hand to her forehead and could feel the damp heat of her skin against her palm. She hadn’t been sleeping or eating properly. “I’m fine. I just need a little fresh air.”

She concentrated on breathing steadily as she moved through the lobby towards the gardens. As she took the tiled steps, she caught her reflection in an ornate wooden mirror hanging from the wall and paused. Her hair had grown out of its style and was lank, darker blonde at the roots where it hadn’t been highlighted. She’d lost weight, too, which showed in her hollowed cheeks and the new prominence of her breastbone. She wore no makeup, not bothering to replace anything that had been lost in the backpack
except for a few cheap cotton dresses she’d picked up from a market stall.

She ducked her head and continued on, moving through the manicured hotel gardens where a light breeze carried the sweet fragrance of frangipani to her. Ahead, she noticed an older woman bending to grasp her sun hat, which had been lifted by the breeze. It rolled casually out of reach and the woman flounced after it, her heavy bosoms only just remaining concealed beneath a flame-orange sarong. The hat pinwheeled into Katie’s path and she bent down and plucked it from the lawn.

“Thank you!” the woman said, as Katie handed it to her. “I keep meaning to grip it in place.”

Katie smiled and moved to walk on.

“Another beautiful afternoon. Aren’t we spoiled? I hear it’s been solid rain for a week at home. You
are
English?”

Katie nodded. She hadn’t yet interacted with the other guests, avoiding the bar and restaurant, and preferring to take her meals in her room where there was no one to watch her pick at the food.

“Thought so!” The woman’s cheeks were pink from the heat and a web of broken capillaries deepened the color. “I don’t recall seeing you with anyone. Here alone?”

“Yes.”

She leaned in close, placing a warm hand on Katie’s arm. “It’s a man, isn’t it?”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s why you’re here. Mending a broken heart. Am I right?”

Katie shook her head.

“Oh. Usually I’ve got an instinct for these sorts of things. Must be losing my touch!” The woman laughed, pressing her hat to her chest. “What brings you to Bali, then?”

Katie swallowed. “My sister died here recently.”

“Oh, goodness! How awful. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t that poor girl in the papers? Came off her moped?”

“No,” Katie said, impatient to move on.

“Such a beautiful girl, but no helmet! Could have saved her life! Tragic. But any young person’s death is, isn’t it, when there’s still so much life to live? How did you lose your sister?”

“She committed suicide,” Katie said matter-of-factly, surprised at herself for wanting to shock the woman, but more surprised for wanting to say those words aloud to see if the idea had become any more possible.

The woman’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

An awful silence stretched between them. Katie could hear the faint trickle of water and the breeze stirring palm fronds.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said eventually, her eyes not meeting Katie’s.

Katie left the hotel gardens, her heart pounding. She moved along the beach, passing pairs of sunchairs placed at discreet intervals along the shore, where couples in swimwear lay reading or dozing. She averted her gaze from them and walked for some time, her sandals filling with warm, golden sand.

The sun was hot against the back of her neck and she thought vaguely that she should have applied sunscreen. When she was well beyond the resort, she sank down in the shade of a palm tree and hugged her knees. Her throat felt dry and she couldn’t remember when she’d last drunk anything. She was weary with exhaustion and now wished she’d not left the cool of her room.

Katie rested her chin on her knees.
Am I losing it, Mia? I don’t seem to know myself anymore. Does that surprise you? Me, of whom you once wrote: “Katie knows who she is and strides confidently through the world.” Well, here’s the thing: now I feel like I’m only tiptoeing.

I can’t afford to stay here much longer, but I don’t know what to do next. The thought of going back to England terrifies me. I honestly don’t think I have the strength. Your journal was the only thing giving direction to my days, and without it I feel . . . adrift. Hours seem to stretch out endlessly and, God, Mia, it’s so lonely. I am desperately lonely.

Nights are the worst. I keep dreaming about you. You’re on the cliff top and I’m beside you. We’re arguing. You’ve just discovered that I’ve been reading your journal and you’re furious with me. The wind is pushing your hair away from your face and I can see that your eyes are bright with anger. You demand the journal, but I don’t answer you and we both listen to the waves crashing somewhere below. When you ask a second time, I tell you that I’ve lost it—I carelessly left it in a hostel and went out for dinner, not giving it a second thought. You picture those beautiful cream pages and heart-worn words, lost, completely lost, and become so furious that you start shifting, not watching where you’re putting your feet. You’re pacing close to the cliff edge and I’m terrified that you’re going to fall so I reach out, but instead of pulling you back to safety, I push you.

That’s what I dream, Mia. Every night.

Her cheeks were wet with tears. They fell onto her knees and soaked into the loose hem of her dress.

“Katie?”

His voice was an electric jolt and her head snapped up.

He stood in front of her, a hand shading the sun from his eyes. His skin was pale and his hair had been cut short.

“Finn?”

*   *   *

He tried to conceal his shock at her appearance. Her grief had turned physical: it was the dark shadows under her eyes and the
thinness of her arms that hugged her knees against her chest. Her hair had grown darker and it seemed, for an absurd moment, as if he were looking at Mia.

“Finn?” She rose to her feet. “Oh, God! It’s really you!” She lurched forwards, throwing her arms around him.

He breathed in a scent caught in her hair and closed his eyes, folding himself into a memory.

Eventually, Katie pulled away, wiping her face and smoothing her hair behind her ears. She looked small and fragile, like a wilting flower starved of water.

She stared at him, shaking her head. “What are you doing here?”

“Thought you could use a little company,” he said lightly. He wouldn’t tell her that her voice had sounded so flat and lifeless when she phoned, it had scared him. He’d already let one Greene sister come here on her own; he would be damned if he’d make the same mistake twice.

“How did you know where I was staying?”

“I spoke to Jess.”

“She didn’t say you were coming.”

“Apparently you’re not so efficient at checking your e-mails these days,” he said with a smile. “The two of us have been plotting. We didn’t like the thought of you here alone.”

Her eyes turned glassy and it was a moment before she asked, “When did you arrive?”

“Couple of hours ago. I got a taxi straight here. The guy at the reception desk told me you’d be on the beach.”

She smiled at him for the first time. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Shall we walk?”

They moved along the shoreline. A light breeze stirred the surface of the sea and small waves broke inshore. He could smell
the sea in the humid air, but also something citrus that he couldn’t place. “Jess told me about your backpack,” he said eventually.

“Mia’s journal was in it.”

“I know.” He glanced at her and saw she was biting her bottom lip.

“It feels like I’ve lost her again.”

“Hey,” Finn said, nudging her with his shoulder. “What are a few pages of Mia’s ramblings when you’ve got me here to recount all those traveling tales?”

Katie smiled.

“Anyway, it sounds like you’re the intrepid traveler these days.”

“Not really.”

“Manage to do any camping?”

“No. I’ve stayed in a few hostels, though.”

“Katie Greene in a hostel? That’s not something I would have believed.”

“I skydived, too.”

“No! In Australia? At the Slade Plains?”

“Yes.”

“And that from the girl who wouldn’t jump a rock pool without doing a risk analysis first. I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be. I hated it.”

He laughed.

“Mia loved it, though, didn’t she?”

“I swear I could see her grinning a thousand feet up!” He remembered her running over to him in her jumpsuit, her goggles pushed up on her head, her smile stretching into her eyes.

“You both had a lot of fun.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

“What did you do after Mia left for Bali?”

“I missed my flight to New Zealand, so I stayed in Australia. I rented a car and headed for the east coast.”

“Long drive.”

“Yes,” Finn said, thinking of the hot, dusty stretches of road, and the cool nights sleeping in the backseat of his car. “I never made it.”

“Where were you,” she said seriously, “when you found out about Mia?”

“At a gas station. It was in the middle of nowhere. They had an old computer hooked up to the Internet, so I logged on to check my mail. There were seven messages from my brother telling me to call home urgently. I lost my cell a few weeks before, so no one had been able to get in touch with me. I paid the cashier $20 to let me use the office phone.” He remembered that she wouldn’t allow him behind the desk, so he’d made the call leaning over the kiosk, a rack of mints pressing into his hip bone.

“My dad answered. I knew something had happened as he wouldn’t speak to me, kept telling me to hold on while he found Mum. She was in the bath. Took ages for her to get to the phone. I was sweating by the time she came on the line. She just said it outright: ‘Mia Greene has died. They found her body at the bottom of a cliff in Bali thirteen days ago.’ She had been dead for thirteen days and I didn’t know,” he said, shaking his head.

“Afterwards, I hung up, got back in my car, and drove off. I don’t know what I was thinking. In fact, I wasn’t thinking, it was like my mind went totally blank. Maybe the logic was that if I drove far enough away from that phone, then it wouldn’t have happened.”

“Oh, Finn.”

He glanced out to sea where a speedboat raced across the water, the hull bouncing off the waves. “I pulled in later at a beach and
just sat on the shore watching the waves break until it was dark.” He’d cried and raged, and punched a tree so hard he dislocated a knuckle. “Then I drove straight through the night to reach Adelaide Airport and took the first flight out of Australia.”

“Oh, Finn,” she said again.

“Anyway, that’s enough of the happy talk for one afternoon,” he said, stopping and turning to face the sea. “Eighteen hours on a plane—I’m ready for a saltwater bath.” He pulled off his T-shirt and tightened the cord on his board shorts. Then he ran into the clear water, wondering if every ocean would always remind him of Mia.

*   *   *

Katie watched him dive under the water. He surfaced, shaking his head, sending silver droplets flying through the air. Then he flipped onto his back and floated beneath the cloudless blue sky.

Finn is here. He is really here.

The sea glittered and the breeze seemed to skate off its surface, sliding over her skin. Two young girls with their hair in braids padded through the shallows, snorkel masks swinging from their hands. She smiled, thinking of Mia. Then she removed her sandals and stepped forwards, sinking her bare feet into the wet sand at the edge of the sea. She concentrated on the feeling of salt water shifting beneath her toes, and then she took another step and let the sea spill around her ankles. It was warm and clear, inviting, not the cold sea of Cornwall.