Breathing Underwater Read online

  When I text Miranda about it, she phones me straight back. She thinks she’s such an expert when it comes to boys. She doesn’t understand why I’m going on about it.

  ‘He’s in love, stupid! Talking doesn’t come into it!’

  Miranda says that, but I think it should. I think it does matter, that you’re a nice person.

  ‘Well, what do you know about it, Freya? Wait till you fall for someone, like real love,’ Miranda says.

  I can’t imagine I ever will. I think about everything too much. I’m too picky.

  That evening Joe has supper with us all. Evie’s made shepherd’s pie, and strawberry cheesecake for pudding. Afterwards, Joe comes with me to play football on the field. I’m allowed to be on his side. We play cricket next and I’m really happy because I bowl two people out (Lisa and Ben), and Joe and everyone on our team cheers. Lisa and Ben are fed up with me for ages. Sam isn’t there. Neither is Huw.

  We play out till long after dark. I love this night. I never want it to end. But it does, of course, eventually. Everyone walks back along the footpath to the campsite, and then just me and Joe go up the lane to our house.

  ‘You go in,’ Joe says. ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Not far. Go on, it’s late. Evie and Gramps will be wondering where you are.’

  ‘What about you?’ I say. ‘That’s not fair!’

  ‘I’m sixteen, for heaven’s sake, Freya. I can do what I want.’

  ‘No you can’t!’ I say, but I unlatch the garden gate.

  I watch him carry on up the lane, until he’s swallowed up in the darkness.

  Lying in bed, I try to imagine where he might have gone. Up the lane, past the empty lighthouse buildings, and then where?

  A few days later, and I’m retracing his steps. I don’t know that for sure. I’m following my instinct, intuition, whatever. When you just know something without knowing you know it. I stop at the lighthouse buildings. The Keep Out notice pinned to the gate has faded in the sun and rain so you can barely read the words. Rust from the drawing pins has bled into the paper. I push open the gate into the overgrown garden. I haven’t been here since that last time with Joe, weeks ago.

  Someone else has, though. No one else would notice, but I see that the weeds growing over the path have been flattened by feet, and there’s something different about the front door. That’s it! You can actually see the door with its peeling blue paint. Before, there was this mass of prickly climbing rose and clematis growing right over it.

  My heart’s beating faster. I look over my shoulder. No one’s there; just a bird calling from the hedge, and the sun still beating down, drawing out the smell of rank undergrowth. Butterflies flit from bush to bush. One shrub with blue flowers is covered in honeybees. Gramps’ bees? For no good reason, that gives me courage. I step carefully over the squashed nettles growing beneath the front window and peer in.

  Someone has definitely been inside. There’s a small table where there wasn’t one before, two rickety-looking chairs and a pile of rugs and cushions. If it was anywhere else, I’d have said a tramp or homeless person had moved in, but we’d have seen someone like that: on the island they’d stick out a mile off.

  That’s as far as I go, the first time.

  I don’t tell anyone. Not even Joe. I’ve got my secrets too.

  The next time I visit, it’s evening.

  Joe hasn’t been back to the house all day, but that’s OK – we aren’t having supper together because everyone’s invited to the barbecue later in the evening, on Periglis beach. Evie and Gramps are busy in the garden. It’s about seven in the evening. I find myself wandering up the lane, towards the old lighthouse. I’m not sure if I’m imagining it or whether there really is the smell of woodsmoke coming from the house. I can’t see any smoke from the chimney. My heart’s beating fast. I’m not afraid exactly, more like on edge, a bit excited, even. The gate’s been left open. Someone’s definitely been here before me. I creep in to the garden. All I’m going to do is look through the window. There’s no harm in that, is there?

  What did I expect? I’m not sure, thinking about it now. Is it spying, what I’m doing? Being nosy? I don’t want anyone to see me, for sure. I sidle along the edge of the house to the window and peep in.

  Samphire’s sitting on one of the chairs at the table. The other is empty. She’s looking down, smiling at someone out of my view. They must be sitting on the floor, on that rug. I realise how rare it is to see Sam smile like that. All her attention is on whoever it is in the room with her. She holds the long sweep of her hair back from her face with both hands and leans forward. She lets her hair fall softly back, and then she takes the hem of her skimpy T-shirt and slowly, ever so slowly, she starts to pull it up and over her head, still smiling, smiling. My first thought is: She’s undressing. What on earth for?

  Such a silly, childish thing to think! I know why really.

  Heart hammering, I think: Joe.

  It must be Joe, sitting on the cushions on the floor at her feet, watching every move she makes. She’s taking her clothes off for him. This is what they do together.

  I go dizzy. Quick. I’ve got to go, before they see me spying on them. Stupid, ignorant, naive little sister.

  An insect brushes my hand. It startles me. I shake it away, and as I turn I suddenly get a glimpse through the window of the person in there with Sam. It’s not Joe. Relief floods through me. I duck down quick, and slink back along the wall underneath the window, round to the back of the house where there’s no chance of them seeing me. I pick my way through huge rhubarb leaves and self-seeded cabbage plants and tall pink flowers with fluffy seeds in what must once have been the vegetable garden. I keep catching my clothes on things. Something stings my leg. At last I clamber over the stone wall and get back on to the lane. My heart’s still thumping. No one saw me, though. No one knows.

  As I get back to our house, it’s beginning to dawn on me, what I’ve seen. What it means for Joe. Little by little, it becomes a weight, pressing down on my heart. I think about it as I pick the tiny, clinging burrs off my clothes. My leg is stinging and itchy with nettle rash.

  Joe’s beloved Sam was taking her clothes off for Huw.

  What do I do now?

  Tell Joe? Pretend I don’t know? Say something to Sam? Or Huw?

  It’s none of my business.

  I’m pretty sure that’s what Miranda would say, or Maddie or Lisa or anyone else. Not that I’m going to tell any of them.

  I hold the secret tight to me. All the rest of the evening and into the night, I can feel it there, a hand pushing down on my chest, stopping my breath.

  Fifteen

  I’ve been dreaming again. I wake with a start, all hot and muddled, because I can hear Evie talking on the phone, and I know from the tone in her voice that she’s worried. Gramps, I think instantly. Something’s happened. I lie in bed for a while longer, trying to work out from her voice just how bad it is. Then I hear Gramps calling out for her, and I can breathe again.

  ‘The doctor’s coming over,’ Evie says when I go into the kitchen.

  ‘Is he worse?’

  ‘Same. Breathless. Muddled.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Nothing, love. You mustn’t worry. I’m sure he’ll be fine.’

  I’m not convinced. I take a glass of juice out into the garden. The sun hasn’t reached it yet; the shadows are long, and the grass is spangled with dew. It will be hot later. There’s no wind. I prop open the greenhouse door like Gramps would normally do, and water the tomatoes and peppers in there. I love the smell of the leaves when you brush against them.

  Gramps is propped up against the pillows when I go in to see him.

  ‘Fern!’ he smiles.

  ‘Freya,’ I say. ‘I watered the tomatoes for you.’

  ‘Good lass. You can get me the crab pots later. They need checking today.’

  Evie bustles in with a tray. ‘No she can’t
,’ she says. ‘Whatever are you thinking of? We can’t have Freya going out on her own in the boat like that!’

  ‘I could ask someone else to help,’ I say.

  ‘Dave would do it, if he has a spare moment, when he’s done the morning ferry. Would you go down and ask him later? And perhaps you could get some shopping, if I give you a list? I need to stay here with Gramps.’

  ‘All this fuss,’ Gramps says. He sinks back a bit, and his face looks too red against the white pillow. ‘Tires me out.’

  Evie shoos me back out of the bedroom. ‘He needs to rest,’ she whispers on the landing. Her hand is cold on my arm.

  I’m thinking about yesterday, out on the boat. Why didn’t I go back home with him? I could’ve carried all the stuff. It feels like it’s my fault he’s got this ill. What if something happens to him now? Joe first, then Gramps . . .

  As I come over the ridge of the island I see the Spirit anchored out in the bay. The sea’s still as a millpond, deep blue. I find Dave stacking boxes at the end of the jetty. A tractor-trailer is parked halfway down. The supplies boat must be due. I sort of hover, not wanting to interrupt, waiting for him to notice me. Which he eventually does.

  ‘Freya,’ he says, like a statement of fact. He keeps on stacking.

  ‘Gramps sent me, he’s not very well and he needs some help with the crab pots,’ I say in a rush.

  ‘What’s up with him?’

  ‘I don’t know. The doctor’s coming over.’

  He stops, straightens up and frowns. ‘Is this her?’ We both hear the chug-chugging of a small boat engine coming round the headland, but it’s not the doctor’s boat. My face goes hot as I see who it is.

  Matt steers his boat alongside the jetty and throws the rope for Dave to catch.

  ‘Morning!’ Matt says. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Freya here needs a hand to get some crab pots,’ Dave says. ‘Her grandfather’s took ill. Can you do it, Matt? I’ve got the supplies boat arriving any minute.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Before I can say anything, Matt’s got back in the boat and is making a space for me. There’s nothing else I can do, is there? I haven’t got a life jacket: Evie would go mental if she knew. But I get in anyway. Everything just falls into place and I go along with it.

  No need to worry. There’s not a breath of wind. The sea’s like glass. But I guess everyone thinks like that, and that’s when things go wrong. You never think it will happen to you.

  ‘You’ll have to show me where,’ Matt says. He starts up the engine. It makes too much noise for us to be able to talk much, which is a relief. I just point which way to go. He knows about the rocks. I feel perfectly safe. I start to enjoy it: the blueness all around, the sun beginning to warm my back. Matt and me. Alone! I imagine telling Miranda.

  As we come round the rocks towards the first buoy the light on the water is dazzling. I screw up my eyes. My face is wet with spray. Matt’s boat is much faster than Gramps’ old wooden thing. ‘Here!’ I say, and he cuts the engine. Silence folds back round us. The boat bobs on the waves. We work together, pulling up each pot to check for crabs. Most of them are too small, or the wrong kind and we throw them back. A crowd of squawking gulls starts following the boat as we move round the buoys. My hands begin to hurt from the cold.

  ‘What shall we do with the empty ones? Leave them? Or bring them back?’

  ‘I don’t know. He didn’t say.’

  ‘We’ll bring them all back,’ Matt decides. ‘Then he won’t have to worry about them.’

  In the end there’s only a handful of edible crabs. It hardly seems worth the effort. But I’m not complaining really. I’ve spent all this time with Matt, just him and me, and it’s easier talking when you’re working together, somehow. He tells me about his dad’s work on the Newlyn fishing trawlers. He talks about learning to scuba dive.

  ‘I like snorkelling,’ I say. ‘That’s all I’ve done, really. And a bit of free diving.’

  ‘You should try it with oxygen,’ Matt says. ‘You’d love it.’

  He pushes his fair hair back from his face. His eyes are shiny blue. I’m suddenly tongue-tied and embarrassed. Can’t think of what else to say. If Izzy was here, she’d be chattering away, noticing things, making him laugh. I can’t do that.

  ‘OK, then, Freya? We’ll head back, yes?’

  He starts up the outboard. The gulls wheel off again.

  I’m thinking of the way my name sounds when he says it. Freya. I look at his hand on the outboard, and the other on the edge of the boat. We don’t speak. I want the journey to go on and on, not straight back to the jetty, but round the island, just me and Matt, and then we’ll land somewhere, and swim, and maybe he’ll teach me how to dive, and then we’ll lie out in the sun . . . I hardly know what I want, and I know it’s all wrong, me thinking like this, because he’s Izzy’s boyfriend. He’s too old for me, and anyway it’s all totally hopeless and silly. He probably thinks I’m just this little kid. He’s only helping me because Dave asked him to, and because he’s kind.

  For the first time, I can just begin to imagine what it might have been like for Joe: how he might have been feeling about Sam, last summer . . .

  We’re back at the jetty. Matt’s looking at me, waiting for an answer to a question I didn’t hear.

  ‘Sorry. What?’

  ‘I’ll bring the crab pots back to your place later, on the tractor, if you like? Save you carrying all this.’

  ‘Yes. Thanks.’

  He gives me a hand up from the boat. When he smiles down at me from the jetty, as I climb up the steps, my heart turns over.

  ‘Thanks, Matt.’

  ‘No problem.’

  I force myself to keep walking without looking back.

  Matt. I said his name, out loud.

  He’ll be coming round to the house later.

  Stop it, I tell myself. He belongs to Izzy. It isn’t right.

  But I know Izzy can look after herself. She’d just laugh, if she knew. She wouldn’t be worried. They’re an item, a proper couple, Matt and her. And anyway, how could I ever be in competition with Izzy? That’s really stupid.

  I almost forget to stop by at the shop, but just when I’m going past I hear voices from inside and it reminds me I promised Evie to get stuff for her.

  It’s Izzy’s voice.

  I go in; for a second it’s too dark to see anything. My eyes adjust to the gloom: there’s Izzy, leaning up at the counter, talking to the person at the till. Ben’s dad runs the shop and post office. But it isn’t him, or Ben, that Izzy’s talking to.

  ‘Freya!’ Izzy beams at me. ‘I guess you two know each other already? Huw?’

  My heart stops.

  Huw barely glances at me. He only has eyes for Izzy.

  I hate the way he’s looking at her. The way she’s leaning towards him. I want to shout, or run away, or hit someone . . .

  ‘I heard your grandpa’s ill,’ Izzy says to me. ‘We saw the doctor’s boat earlier this morning.’

  ‘Should be getting back, to see how he is,’ I mumble. I snatch up a wire basket and start putting in the things I remember from Evie’s list. When I search for it in my jeans pocket my fingers close round the necklace Izzy made yesterday, on the beach. It didn’t work, did it?

  Except that I’m not sad. Right now, I’m furious.

  Huw’s still chatting to Izzy. Over the shelves of cereals and tins I watch his face. His fair hair flops over into his eyes and he smoothes it back. He’s good-looking, but he knows it. Arrogant. It’s all his fault. If he hadn’t been there, Sam and Joe might still have been together, and none of the rest would have happened . . .

  And here he is all over again. Messing with Izzy now.

  Does he sense me staring? He falters and is silent, mid-conversation. Is he remembering me, and last summer, and Joe? Feeling guilty?

  Tea, filter coffee, orange juice, biscuits, eggs. I find the list, in the other pocket. Evie’s written, Treats? What woul
d Gramps like? Not beer or cake, if he’s ill. I choose three ripe peaches and a bunch of red grapes.

  I make myself go up to the counter. I put the basket on the side.

  Huw starts taking the things out, weighs the fruit, prices it all up. ‘Nine pounds and fifty-nine pence,’ he says. He puts the shopping into a plastic carrier bag.

  I keep my eyes down. I hand him a ten-pound note. He presses the change back in my hand.

  ‘So, how are you, Freya?’ he says.

  His voice is different to what I expected: quite low and gentle.

  He remembers everything. I know he does, in that instant.

  ‘Got to get back,’ I blurt out.

  I know they’ll both be watching me, will talk about me when I’m gone. I’m such a mess. It’s all such a muddle. Suddenly it all seems like a terrible mistake, me coming back here for the summer. Raking up all the hurt.

  I run in the back door, dump the bag of shopping on the kitchen table, run upstairs. I lie on my bed. Izzy’s necklace in my pocket starts to hurt, pressed against my thigh. I take it out, dangle it in front of me. The shiny black stone has dried to a dull grey, but as it slowly revolves the light catches specks of crystal in it, like tiny stars. I hang the necklace in the window. Outside, the sky is a deep beautiful blue, but the day is spoiled now. I go back and lie on the bed for ages.

  The house is deeply silent, as if it’s empty. Gramps must be sleeping. Perhaps Evie is too. I don’t go and check. I stay there on the bed, locked in my own misery. I don’t even go down when I hear the tractor stop out in the lane, and the thud as the crab pots get dumped at the gate. The tractor starts up again: I let myself look from the bedroom window, but all I can see is the top of his head, his sun-bleached hair. It’s all hopeless.

  Why did Huw have to come back?

  His part in things complicates everything, and now I have to think about that, too.

  Eventually, I go downstairs. The shopping’s all been put away in the cupboards. Evie’s made food for us. She tells me about the doctor’s visit.