Swimming at Night: A Novel (28 page)

She gathered the bottom of her dress with a hand and took another few steps until water reached her knees. She glanced up, checking Finn was still near. He waved and she managed to lift her hand and wave, too.

He had asked her once, “Why don’t you swim in the sea?” They
had been sharing a bath in his apartment in North London, and the water had turned tepid, foam bubbles melting into a milky scum. She was leaning against his chest, her knees poking through the surface like two white hills, as she said, “I almost drowned at Porthcray when I was fourteen. The tide turned while I was swimming.” She had run her fingers over the metal bath handle, wiping off flecks of water as she added, “I’ll never trust it again.”

He had leaned forward and kissed her damp shoulder. It was the only response she’d needed.

Strange that she’d never told Ed about her fear of the sea, she thought now as she waded back out of the shallows, only Finn. She sat on the shore, pleased by the swirls of salt that dried on her shins. She turned her face to the sun and closed her eyes, feeling the tension in her neck loosening.

A few minutes later, Finn sank down beside her. The sun illuminated his face and she saw flecks of green in his irises. “Finn,” she said slowly, sitting forwards. “Why are you really here?”

He picked up a stone and turned it through his fingers as he said, “It’s been hard back in Cornwall. I’ve felt sort of . . . dislocated from everything. It was like I needed to be in Bali, to be there, where it happened, for it to seem real.”

She nodded. “I felt the same.”

“Did you?”

“When the police told me, it was so surreal. I don’t think I really believed it. Seeing her body helped, though. I needed to be certain.”

“That must’ve been hard.”

She nodded.

“When you rang a couple of weeks ago and said you were out here, I realized how much I needed to come to Bali, too. What
you’re doing—this trip, going to the places Mia did—that makes total sense to me.”

“Does it? Sometimes I’m not sure it even makes sense to me.”

“You’re searching for answers. I get that.”

“Am I? Or am I just running away?” She looked down at her hands.

“Katie?”

“Maybe this trip was never about Mia. Maybe I just used it as an excuse to escape my own life.” She thought of Ed, of her job, of her apartment. She missed none of it. What did that say about the life she’d left behind?

“It’s okay to be here for yourself, too. It doesn’t always have to be about Mia.”

For some time they sat on the shoreline listening to waves lapping against the sand. She could feel the skin on her chest prickling pink in the heat. “I think I should find some shade,” she said eventually.

She gathered her sandals and as they started to walk, Finn said, “So you went to Maui?”

“Yes. I visited Mick.”

He waited for her to continue, perhaps unsure how much Mia had committed to her journal.

“I know about Harley,” she said.

“Were you shocked?”

Katie nodded. “I wish Mia had told me herself.”

“She wanted to.”

“But instead she told you.” She glanced away, surprised by the speed with which old jealousies could surface. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m grateful that you were there for her.”

A cloud passed over his face, something she couldn’t understand. But just as quickly as it arrived, it vanished. “I think Mia didn’t
tell you about Harley because she was afraid that being half sisters would change things between you.”

“Maybe it would have. It was awful finding out. It felt . . . I don’t know . . . as if it diluted us.”

Finn smiled. “That’s exactly what Mia said.”

“Is it?” Katie smiled, too. “But I don’t feel like that anymore.
Half
—it’s just a word, isn’t it? We still grew up together, shared our childhood. Having different fathers makes no difference to me. We’re sisters.”

“Exactly.”

“Sometimes it feels like I know more about Mia from her journal than from her. It’s driving me mad that it’s gone. I’ve had it in my hands this whole time but didn’t read it all. I just keep thinking, what if she’d written something that would’ve explained things?”

“The police here must have examined it closely a few months back.”

“I’ve been told they would have. And I flipped through the last pages myself as soon as I found it.”

“And there was no note . . . no clue as to what happened?”

Katie shook her head.

“What do the police say about the backpack? Is there any chance it’ll turn up?”

“They said if there’s no news after a week it’s unlikely they’ll recover it.”

“How long has it been?”

“Almost two.”

He nodded. “Have you thought about visiting the British Consulate out here?”

“It’s an idea. Aside from the backpack, I want to know where Mia died. I know it was the Umanuk cliffs, but I’d like to know where, exactly.”

“Why don’t I arrange for us to visit?”

“Thank you, Finn.”

He found her hand and squeezed it between his.

The spark was immediate. Her stomach fell away and her cheeks flushed red and hot. She withdrew her hand, surprised that even in the bottomless depths of grief, the heart could still want. She marveled at the feeling, as if she’d just glimpsed the first green shoot of spring rising from the frozen ground.

(Bali, February)

T
he wind whipped Mia’s hair across her face and pinned Noah’s T-shirt flat to his chest. They stood on the shoreline, bare legs smarting from flying sand, watching the ocean writhe beneath the brewing storm.

When Noah spoke he had to raise his voice above the wind. “Rain’s coming.”

She glanced towards the sky. A flotilla of dark clouds, swollen with rain, were bowling in from the east. She guessed they had three or four minutes until the clouds reached them at the shore.

A wind shadow quivered across the surface of the sea, like the twitching scales of a fish. Noah took her hand in his and she felt grains of sand pressed between their fingers. “Here’s a big set,” he said, dark eyes shining.

Great mounds of swell the size of buses were building at sea. “Could they be surfed?”

His gaze swept across the water as if he were mapping out a route. “It’s possible, but you’d be paddling into wind and the waves
are breaking over reef. Tomorrow the wind will drop off, but the swell should stick. It’ll be perfect.”

He’d been watching the forecast all week, checking the maps as the low pressure traveled in from the Indian Ocean, following a course from Antarctica. She’d been surprised by the technicality of forecasting, listening as Noah talked knowledgeably about weather systems, swell periods, and local effects.

The lead wave of the set reared from the sea. It sucked up the water in its path, exposing the reef, jagged and brittle like the bones of a body from which the flesh has been sucked clean. The wave broke with a thunderous boom that reverberated in her chest. Water splintered across the serrated reef.

“My God!” Mia said, gripping his fingers. “The power in that wave . . . ”

“It’s humbling.”

She nodded, amazed.

“You must get some big Atlantic storms rolling into Cornwall?”

“We do. When we were kids, our mum would drive us to the pier and we’d eat fish and chips in the car, watching the waves smash against the seawall.” As soon as they’d finished, she and Katie would bundle up the greasy papers and race to the bin with the wind at their backs. They’d linger for a while, edging close enough to the seawall to feel the briny vapor kissing their faces. When they climbed back in the car, their hair matted and tangled with salt, it always smelled of chip fat and vinegar, and their mother would be singing along to the radio. “I miss it.”

Noah turned. “Cornwall?”

“Cornwall. The storms. My mum. My sister. All of it.” She fingered the shells on her necklace. “We grew up on the beach. It was our backyard. And now Katie’s in London and I’m here.” She
sighed. “Katie avoids spending time on the coast. I know it sounds stupid, but I think of it as our place. Our link.”

“What changed?”

Mia thought for a moment. “She’s afraid.” She remembered that day at Porthcray when the current turned the water dark and rough. She could almost feel the hard surface of the windsurfing board pressing into her hips as she’d spread herself across it, digging her arms into the sea. She shook her head, freeing the memory. “You and Jez are lucky—you both surf together still. It must be nice to share that.”

“Maybe.”

She caught the change in his expression. “Did Jez find it hard when you started surfing professionally?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it.”

“But when you went home, you must have sensed whether or not he was happy for you.”

“I never went home.”

“What do you mean?”

“I came out to Bali for a year. After that I traveled for a while, then joined the tour.”

“You never went back?”

He shook his head.

“You saw your family, though?”

“I’d meet my brothers whenever I was in Australia.”

“And your parents?”

A gust of wind blasted across the beach and they turned as the palm fronds clattered behind them. When they faced the ocean again, Noah was silent.

She squeezed his fingers between hers. “What about your parents?”

“Let’s just enjoy the waves.”

They watched wordlessly as the waves continued to thunder in and sand blew across the beach in sheets.

“How about you stay over with me tonight?” she said later, trying to regain some of their lost intimacy.

He shifted. “I sleep better alone.”

“Who said anything about sleeping?”

He didn’t respond and kept his eyes leveled at the water.

“You
are
pleased I came to Bali?”

He released her fingers to wipe salt from his brow. “I thought we were watching the storm coming in.”

“Not in silence. Sometimes I feel like . . . ” How did she begin to explain the cool stack of pebbles building in her stomach each time he pushed her away? “Like you’re not letting me in. Like you’re not always
there.
”

“I’m standing right next to you.”

“Yes, but you’re not talking to me.”

“You were talking about your sister. I was listening.”

“So let me listen to you.”

He swung around. “I talk when I want to. Not because it’s being demanded of me.”

“Demanded?”

“You’ve been here, what, two weeks? But you’ve not mentioned what went on between you and Finn. And that’s cool with me. I just figure people tell you things when they want.”

“I only want to feel closer to you—”

“And this is the way you go about it?” He turned from her, his T-shirt billowing in the breeze.

“Don’t go,” she called, but already he was striding towards the car.

She wouldn’t follow him. She wrapped her arms around herself as his reproach settled around her like clouds.

When the first raindrop fell, it landed on her wrist before sliding downwards, leaving a glistening trail. Then the clouds burst and rain fell in a heavy procession, leaving fine dimples in the sand. The noise filled her ears and within seconds she was sodden, her thin T-shirt turning skin pink. She wouldn’t go back to the car. Her eyes were stinging with tears, so she turned her face to the sky and opened her mouth wide, letting rain bounce across her lips and tongue. An earthy taste filled her mouth.

When she began to feel cold she rubbed her arms, her fingers sliding over her water-slick skin. Something in the distance caught her attention. A figure emerged from the rain, moving towards the shoreline. Every muscle in her body tightened as she realized it was Noah, board underarm, jogging determinedly into the surf.

*   *   *

Mia stood ankle deep in the sea, a hand held to her brow. She squinted through the driving rain trying to keep Noah in focus, while the seascape shifted and swam all around her.

It had taken Noah thirty minutes, maybe forty, to paddle through the hulking broken waves, duck-diving beneath solid walls of white water. Now he was only a blur sitting astride his board, being lifted and dropped by the swell rolling beneath him. She pictured the concentration on his face as he absorbed the rhythm of the waves, searching for the right one. A wrong choice out here could be fatal.

Mia caught the roar of an engine and turned. The battered truck Jez was renting swung into view, windscreen wipers cutting back and forth. He jumped out with a jacket pulled above his head and jogged towards her.

“He’s out there!” she yelled.

“What the fuck’s he playin’ at?” His tanned skin looked leathery and his lower lip had split from the sun.

A wave stormed in, sucking the reef raw and exposing new patches of jagged coral. Had Noah mapped out where the reef was hidden? Or was he hoping luck was on his side?

“How long’s he been out?” Jez shouted.

“Half an hour or so.”

They both watched as he paddled furiously for a wave. As it rose beneath him, he looked no larger than a barnacle on the back of a whale.

“Not that one,” Jez murmured at her side. “Too fast. Drop back, drop back.”

But he didn’t. The wave suddenly took him, carrying him upwards to its crest. The world seemed to slow. Mia felt needles of rain against her scalp, heard the howl of the wind, felt the sea sucking at her feet. Noah pushed himself up from the board and began gliding down the face of the wave and, for a moment, she was mesmerized by the sheer beauty of that image, the muscular power at the throat of the wave, the agility with which Noah danced across the water under a pouring sky.

In a split second, everything changed. Noah’s legs skidded from under him as if he’d hit ice. The board shot into the air and he bounced across the wave like a skimmed pebble. The wave smashed into the jagged reef in an explosion of white water and Noah disappeared.

As the rain lashed down, she began to count silently.
One, two, three . . .
He could have missed the shallowest section of the reef, landed in a deeper channel . . .
eleven, twelve, thirteen . . .
He was experienced, used to being held under by waves . . .
twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six . . .
He was fit and his lungs must be strong . . .
thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three . . .