Breathing Underwater Read online

  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.

  Thirteen

  It’s mid-morning, the next day.

  ‘Coming, then?’ Gramps is pulling on his boots and waterproofs at the back door.

  ‘You really don’t have to go, Freya.’ Evie says. ‘You know how cold you get on the boat.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Mind you wear life jackets. Both of you.’

  Gramps never used to bother. I wonder, briefly, as I go to fetch two life jackets from the hook in the shed, whether Evie blames him for Joe not bothering enough either. Except that when I think about it, Joe did. Bother, that is. He always wore a life jacket on the dinghy. Apart from that one time. It’s just one of the things that doesn’t add up. Doesn’t make sense.

  I follow Gramps out through the gate on to the lane. Two men are looking at the lighthouse buildings, holding clipboards. Gramps raises his hand in greeting as we go past.

  ‘Estate agents,’ he hisses, soon as we’re out of earshot, as if they’re a lower form of life.

  At Periglis, we dump all the gear in the rowing boat and drag it down to the water together. Gramps lets me row. It takes a while for me to remember how to get the rhythm going, but I do. The tide’s running out which makes it easier. To help with the rhythm, Gramps recites lines from Shakespeare:

  ‘ “Full fathom five thy father lies;

  Of his bones are coral made . . .” ’

  As we get level with the end of the rocks the surface of the sea changes; out of the shelter of the bay the wind’s whipping it up.

  ‘Steady there. Here she comes.’

  I brace myself as the wind slaps the side of my face. The boat rocks. A shiver goes down my spine. I think of Joe, out here in the dinghy by himself, in the dark.

  ‘Left a bit,’ Gramps says. Bit by bit he guides me out to the line of buoys and I hold on to the rope so he can start lowering the crab pots. I row from one marker buoy to the next, round in an arc. My arms begin to ache.

  There are rocks all round here, which is why it’s a good place to catch crabs. But you have to take care not to snag the boat: it’s hard to see where the rocks are, at this point of the tide, when it’s high enough to keep them covered. If you caught the boat on them, it would easily make a hole, and the boat would fill and sink in minutes.

  ‘Could we swim from here?’

  Gramps shakes his head. ‘You’re a strong swimmer. You might make it. But the tide would be pulling you out. It’s further than it looks. It’s always better to stay with the boat, if you capsize.’

  We’re both thinking about Joe, of course. The dinghy, upside down. The ache in the pit of my stomach shifts, moves under my ribs, to my lungs.

  I lean over the edge, trail my hand in the green water. It’s biting cold. Deep beneath, between the rocks, seaweedy forests sway, pulled by the invisible currents. It’s so clear you can see tiny fish darting in shoals in and out of the forest, shadows moving in the darker patches beneath. When the surface smoothes I see my own reflection, a face peering back at me from under the water. I shudder.

  ‘What happened to Huw?’ I suddenly ask, just as Gramps is lowering the last pot. Evie was right about how cold it is out here on the water. My hands are like ice. ‘Why isn’t he working on the Spirit this summer?’

  Gramps sits back in the boat and stares at me. The wind is making his eyes water. He doesn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t hear. Or perhaps he doesn’t remember Huw. A seagull flies low over the boat. It sounds like it’s calling the name: Huw Huw.

  Gramps’ breath sounds wheezy. He’s sort of hunched over, a bit slumped.

  ‘Gramps? Are you OK?’

  He nods, straightens up a bit, tucks his raw red hands under his armpits to warm them up. ‘Time to head back.’ His voice is croaky.

  I don’t ask him about Huw again. His face is too red, and his eyes are watering; his breath labouring in his chest. He doesn’t look right; perhaps he’s got too cold. My own hands are freezing and my arms aching but I can’t ask him to row, so I get back into position, pick up the oars again.

  After a while, the splash of the oars dipping in and out, the trickle of drips from the tips of each paddle, begins to mesmerise me. My thoughts drift. I think about the world beneath us, down, down, down. Water washing stone, grinding it slowly into sand. There are stretches of sea-bed between the islands which used to be valleys with village settlements, thousands of years ago. The sea level has slowly risen, covering it all up. Deep down, a whole flooded life is metamorphosing into something else. Fish swim through the places where houses would once have been; eels slither over ancient doorsteps. I imagine our boat gliding over empty rooms, sand drifting and burying the remnants of people’s lives: old cooking pots, a small leather shoe, a string of beads. Sea levels are rising all the time. Faster now, with global warming and that. One day, this whole archipelago will be underwater. Nothing left.

  A rubber dinghy with a noisy outboard engine swings into view. Their wash rocks our boat violently, so we have to stop rowing and cling on to the sides. Gramps yells at them and they swerve away. Someone waves.

  ‘Some lads from the campsite,’ he says. ‘With diving gear.’

  Izzy’s on the beach at Periglis, watching us come in. She helps us bring the boat back up to the slipway and turn it over to let the water drain. She flirts with Gramps and he loves it.

  ‘I’m just about to go over to Beady Pool,’ Izzy says to me. ‘Looking for stuff, if you want to come.’

  I hesitate. I’m starving, for one thing, and then there’s Gramps. But he seems fine now we’re back on dry land. Only a bit wobbly. And there isn’t much to carry back, just the oars and life jackets.

  ‘It’s all right. I’ll be heading back home,’ Gramps says. ‘You two go and enjoy yourselves.’

  We watch him walking slowly up to the path.

  ‘He’s cool, your grandpa,’ Izzy says.

  I nod. ‘He goes a bit dreamy and odd sometimes.’

  ‘I like odd,’ Izzy says. ‘More interesting. Come on, then.’

  ‘I should stop off and get some food really. I’m starving.’

  ‘We can go via the shop. I’ve got money.’

  We spend all afternoon together at Beady Pool. The tide’s ebbing, so there’s the whole length of the sand and shingle for us to search along for bits and pieces for Izzy’s jewellery. We spread our treasures on a flat stone to dry in the sun: pieces of turquoise glass smoothed by the sea; fragments of orange weed, like coral when they’re dry; feathers; a skein of fine nylon rope, bright blue; shells with mother of pearl; tiny tortoiseshell cowries.

  ‘I’ve looked a million times here for beads,’ I tell Izzy. ‘You know, like the beach is called after, from that shipwreck way back. How amazing that would be. You could charge the earth!’

  ‘Our shells are just as pretty.’ Izzy arranges them into patterns on the stone. She sits down on the sand, starts drawing with her bare foot. I watch her. I can’t help it. I’ve been like this all afternoon. It’s as if she trails magic after her. I want to know how she does it. It’s something to do with the way she knows exactly what she wants to do, all the time. She’s always in the present moment, not thinking about anything else. I wis
h I could be more like her.

  She draws patterns and shapes in the sand, with the flat edge of a pebble. She draws a girl with hair like her own, but a fish’s tail.

  ‘So, Freya, why are you here by yourself? Where are your parents?’ Izzy asks.

  I explain about them working, and moving house, and how it’s been the same most summers.

  ‘They come over to join us at the end of the holidays, usually,’ I start to say. ‘Only this year . . . I’m not sure. Dad might come. Mum says she won’t. They’re not getting on very well. They hardly talk to each other. It’s horrible. They don’t tell me anything. I’m worried they’re going to split up.’ Just like that, I’ve blurted out all the stuff I’ve been bottling up for so long.

  Izzy carries on doodling in the sand. She draws a house, gives it windows and a door, a chimney. She makes a pattern like roof tiles. ‘It might not be as terrible as you think,’ Izzy says. She adds a tree, and a garden fence with a gate, and a path up to the front door. ‘My mum and dad split. I lived with my mum. The first two years she was sad all the time, but then we got used to it. ’ She smiles. ‘You’ll be OK, you’ll see. And anyway, maybe you’re wrong. Maybe it’s just a difficult patch. All relationships have those, you know.’

  It seems weird, thinking about Mum and Dad like that: in a relationship. As a couple, kind of separate from me and Joe.

  ‘What about your dad, though? Do you still see him?’ I ask her.

  Izzy shakes her head. ‘Hardly ever. His choice. His funeral.’ She brushes sand off her hands.

  Doesn’t she mind? It fills me with misery, the thought of not seeing Dad. But he would want to see me, I know he would. He wouldn’t let me go like that, so easily. Which means I’d have to live in two places, or choose between them . . . It’s all too horrible to think about.

  Izzy stops drawing. She sits back and looks at me. ‘So. When’s your birthday, Freya?’

  ‘July.’

  ‘What day?’

  ‘10th. Why?’

  ‘So you’re Cancer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your star sign is Cancer. Home-loving, sensitive, but with a hard shell, to protect yourself from getting hurt. Don’t like change.’

  ‘I’m not really into that stuff. Don’t believe in horoscopes.’

  ‘Don’t you? What do you believe, then?’

  I think for a bit. ‘I’m not sure,’ I say eventually.

  Izzy’s moved on to draw a merboy next to her mermaid, with hair a bit like Matt’s. ‘But you are sensitive, with a shell?’

  ‘Suppose.’

  She stops drawing a moment to look at me. ‘I heard something about you. Least, I think it was you. Sally was saying something about last summer. An accident?’

  ‘My brother died.’ My voice cracks. I still haven’t got used to saying those words. I’ll never get used to saying them.

  She leans forward, her voice sort of breathy. ‘That’s terrible. That’s so sad. What happened?’

  My heart’s thumping. I have to keep swallowing. I can’t speak.

  Izzy puts her arms round me. She doesn’t ask any more questions.

  I cry softly, and Izzy just sits there, hugging me, for a long time.

  It starts to get cold, sitting still. Izzy stands up, stretches. ‘I think we should do something together,’ she says, ‘to free you from all this sadness.’

  She starts smoothing a patch of sand next to the mermaid and the merboy. She draws the outline of another figure. It’s like one of those chalk outlines in a detective film, to show where the body was, to begin with, but then she starts heaping up the sand, so that it looks like a body is actually there. After a while I can see it’s meant to be me. She gives me seaweed hair and pebble eyes, and then she goes along the edge of the sea, looking for something. She comes back with a flat black pebble with a hole at the top, and she threads it on to a thin piece of nylon thread unravelled from a piece of old fishing net. She threads two small shells either side of the pebble, then ties a knot. She places the necklace on the sand version of me, then comes to stand next to me. She puts her arm round my shoulders.

  ‘There you go,’ she says, in her lilting voice. ‘A talisman, to cure you of sadness. Now you will start to feel better.’

  I almost believe her.

  I want to believe her.

  If only it could happen like that.

  We stay there, not really talking or anything, but it feels nice, like something really special and important has happened between us. The sea slowly ebbs. It leaves stretches of glistening silver sand.

  We both look up when we hear voices. Two figures are making their way down the path to the beach. The spell Izzy has put over me is abruptly broken. I’m suddenly cold and hungry, and very, very tired.

  ‘I’m going back now, ’ I say.

  ‘OK.’

  I’m sort of expecting Izzy to come too, but she doesn’t. That brief, intense conversation is already in the past. It’s as if she’s forgotten all about it now. She’s moved on. She starts doing cartwheels along the beach, spinning further and further away.

  I wave at her as I leave the beach.

  ‘See you!’ Her voice comes back faintly across the sand as she spirals away.

  Almost as an afterthought, I snatch up the talisman necklace and kick the sand figure until it’s just a pile of loose sand, then I start running back to Evie and Gramps’ house.

  It’s late, much later than I’d meant to be. No one’s in the kitchen, even though it must be supper time. I call up the stairs. ‘Hello?’

  Evie comes to the landing. Her face looks strained. ‘Gramps isn’t well,’ she says. ‘He’s resting in bed now. Why didn’t you come back with him? Where’ve you been all this time?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say over and over. ‘I didn’t realise how late it was. Gramps said he didn’t mind me going with Izzy . . .’

  By the time she comes downstairs Evie’s calmed down. We make supper together and she takes a tray up to Gramps, and then we sit together in the front room.

  ‘He’ll be all right, won’t he?’

  ‘He’s exhausted,’ Evie says. ‘He’s all shaky. He’s not talking sense, half the time. I’ll phone the doctor in the morning.’

  ‘Is it my fault?’ I ask eventually.

  ‘Of course not,’ Evie says. ‘You mustn’t think that. I’m sorry I was cross before, when you came in. That was just worry, making me like that. Forgive me, Freya.’

  I can’t bear to see Evie like this. It makes me nervous. I can’t settle. When Evie starts reading her book I go and stand at the window but we’ve already turned the lamps on, so all I can see is my own reflection in the glass and darkness behind.

  ‘I’m going to bed.’

  ‘OK, love. I’ll be up shortly.’

  I go along the landing to say goodnight to Gramps, but I can hear him, snuffling and snoring, already asleep, so instead I go further along, to Joe’s door. I push it open and stand in the middle of the room, alone in the dark.

  Someone’s been in here: the window is open a little. I move forward, closer. The view through his window is the same as from mine, more or less. I can make out the dark shapes of trees and the black line of the sea, darker than the grey-black of the sky. The wind in the leaves makes a sound like water, and underneath, always there, is the rhythm of the sea itself, pounding the rocky shore.

  Fourteen

  Last summer

  The summer wears on. It’s unusually hot, day after day. Joe seems to be out all the time. Sam has stopped coming to the house for baths and stuff; she must’ve got used to the shower block or something. There haven’t been any more arguments, but that’s because Joe and Sam have stopped coming back to our place. I do the usual things – swimming, playing on the field, hanging out with the campsite kids and going on all the boat trips. A load of us buy snorkelling gear and we do that, down at Periglis. Me being so good at swimming means I’m as good at snorkelling as the older kids like Maddie and
Will and Lisa. Sometimes Joe comes down and joins in, but mostly not. He goes running first thing most mornings, before I’m even up, comes back for breakfast and then disappears for the day. Occasionally I see him out on the fishing rock by himself, but usually Sam’s there too, sunbathing with her eyes closed, leaning back against the warm rock face next to him.

  Today I find him by himself. I go to the edge of Wind Down, clamber out to the rock you have to jump from. He makes room for me next to him on the fishing rock. He even lets me have a go, using the float I made with him at the beginning of the holiday. That seems so long ago.

  ‘Here,’ he says. ‘Like this.’ He puts his hands over mine to show me how to cast the line and then wind it in, so the float darts through the water and the fish think it’s something live, to eat. His hands are so warm and big, I want to cry, suddenly.

  ‘I never see you,’ I say.

  ‘You’re seeing me now, aren’t you?’

  He seems older, grown-up, even. His face is shadowed with fine dark stubble. His body is an amazing bronzed colour: he’s hardly worn a top for weeks. He’s not much like the brother I know, these days. It makes me feel younger than I actually am.

  I try asking him about Sam. ‘What do you two do all the time?’

  He just looks at me with this funny lopsided grin. ‘Nosy,’ he says. ‘None of your business.’

  ‘Where is she now?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. A slight frown comes on his face, but he laughs it off. ‘Fishing isn’t exactly her thing.’

  ‘How long is she staying?’

  ‘Only a few more days,’ Joe says. He wrinkles his nose.

  Then he’ll go back to normal. I can wait that long. She won’t be here by the time Mum and Dad arrive, nor for the August bank holiday party, and I’m glad. Is that mean? Maybe it is. I should be pleased Joe’s so happy. But Sam doesn’t seem good enough for Joe. She’s pretty and that; I mean, really pretty. She looks amazing. But she’s not kind or funny, as far as I can tell. Not interested in the things Joe likes. I can’t think what they talk about.