Breathing Underwater (2 page)

Now Miranda's in Spain somewhere, with her family, and I'm on my way to the islands, to my favourite place on earth, except that . . . well, it's just me. By myself.

‘Are you sure you should go?' Miranda said. ‘I know you love it, and everything, but won't it just be too sad? Bring back all the memories?'

But I want to remember. That's the whole point. I want to remember everything, all the tiny details, and I want to work something out. There's this big horrible question mark hanging over it all, about Joe. Gradually, the question's got stronger. I reckon it's what's eating away at Mum, nibbling her from the inside, turning her into a hollow shell.

The question is this. Was it an accident,
really
?

 

The train wheels rattle as we go into the first of a series of tunnels through the red cliff. The track goes right next to the sea. As we come out into daylight again, I press my face against the glass. Silvery-blue light reflects off the sea. I want to drink it in, all the light and the colour. For the first time in ages, a little quiver of excitement runs down my spine. Or is it fear?

I've done this journey so many times with Joe, I still can't quite believe he's not here now. Lately, I've had these . . . well, strange things have been happening. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpse a shadow, a shape. Or the door opens, but no one's there. Sometimes there's a smell, like river water. I haven't told anyone, not even Miranda. I want to see him so much, and I'm terrified, too. Like, he's going to speak. Tell me something. And I know that it sounds ridiculous, and it's impossible, and everything, but I'm scared of what he might tell me.

The train's slowed right down to go over the old iron bridge that spans the wide river in a beautiful curve, so high above the river that when you go across it's almost like flying. If Joe was here, he'd have his head out of the window even though you aren't allowed, and his hair would be wilder than ever, full of tangles that would stay the entire summer and no one would mind. Evie couldn't care less what we look like. She's not your average sort of gran.

I squeeze past the woman in the seat next to mine, out into the swaying carriage and down to the doors. It's one of those long-distance trains where the inside doors are automatic, but you can still pull down the windows on the exit doors. That's what I do. The window sticks, and I have to work it loose, till there's space for me to stick my head right out, like Joe would've done. The wind rushes at my face and makes my eyes water. So much air and space! It's exhilarating after hours stuck inside the stuffy train.

The wind tugs and pulls, as if it wants me to come out further: out, out and then down, down, down – gravity, I suppose, pulling me down to earth. Or down to water, rather, because the river's directly below. For a second I go dizzy. I imagine opening the door, stepping out into air and space and light. I smell estuary mud, salt. Sounds crash back in: creaking train wheels and seagulls screaming, a boat horn; it's like a picture suddenly coming to life. Everything's coming sharply into focus.

That's when it happens.

Joe's voice, in my ear. ‘Careful, Freya!'

He's standing right behind me. His hand's on my arm, holding me back from the too-far-open window. For a brief second, relief floods through me. Everything's OK. Nothing has happened after all. He's here. And then a different voice is shouting, and rough hands are pushing past me, yanking up the window.

‘Stupid girl! Can't you read? IT IS DANGEROUS TO LEAN OUT OF THE WINDOW.'

Dazed, I shove past the ticket collector, back into the carriage and my seat. My eyes are blurry with tears. I'm shaking all over.

Two

 

 

I don't really believe in ghosts. But something must happen after you die. Otherwise, what is the point? It is impossible for me to believe that Joe has just disappeared completely, in an instant. How could someone so alive and funny and maddening and clever and amazing as Joe just vanish? I have thought about this for a whole year, nearly. So what's going on? Am I just imagining what I want to believe? Conjuring him up out of my imagination? Or could it be that because I'm somehow open to the possibility, he can actually come back, in one way or another? What exactly did happen, back there at the door?

I don't believe in the white spectre-type ghosts you get in stories, but what if ghosts are something else? Like memories, somehow caught and trapped in time, released by being in certain places where the things first happened. Or what if dead people can actually come back in some way, a spirit version of themselves, the same way they come in dreams, when you're sleeping?

My heart's thumping like mad. I'm still holding my breath. I let it out, in a long sigh. The woman next to me stares and I look away, quick, out of the window. Moorland, chimneys, the remnants of derelict tin mines. Deep wooded valleys. Mist, turning to drizzle. Another hour to go. I close my eyes, drift into sleep.

Bit by bit, we're edging closer.

The drizzle has turned to rain. Slanting sheets of it hit the train windows, run in rivers down the glass. The train is a column of light snaking through a grey landscape.

I get off the train, find my way to the ferry, find a seat where I can leave my bag, and go up on the deck to watch the crew winding in the mooring ropes, pulling up the huge doors. Just before we leave the harbour, a storm warning comes out over the loudspeakers. They give you the option of delaying your journey. Full refund. No one is to stay out on deck. I go back down below.

The ferry creeps along the coast as far as the tip of the peninsula, then it starts ploughing westwards. The rollers come in one long uninterrupted sweep across the Atlantic: there's nothing between here and America. The ferry begins to pitch and roll. The engines change note. It's going to take hours, having to go so slow. The ferry creaks and groans and a deep
thud
shakes through the whole ship each time an extra big wave hits the bows.
Joe would love this.
We've never come across in a storm before. But Joe isn't here. When I close my eyes, I can't even see his face.

‘Is it all right?' A small child's voice keeps piping from the seat behind me. ‘Is it safe? Are we going to drown?'

 

Five hours of it, sick bag on my lap, and I get my first glimpse of land. I've been watching for ages, rubbing a space in the misted-up window.
Land
starts as a faint shadow on the horizon, then another: low dark shapes floating on the water. My heart lifts. I love this moment. More and more shapes appear: clearly rocks now, not shadows, and at last the first proper islands. A cluster of white houses, small fields, an empty rain-swept beach. Almost there.

The ferry docks at Main Island. I'm on auto-pilot now, I've been travelling for so long. Queue to get off. Go along the harbour. Find the small ferries waiting to take passengers to the outer islands. The boat I want, the
Spirit,
is moored below stone steps, halfway along the harbour wall. Another queue.

I've got my hood up. It's still raining, though not as hard. I'm still feeling sick, like everyone else. I want to blend in with the crowd, be swept along, unrecognised. But the boat skipper, Dave, knows me instantly. He presses my hand as he helps me on to the boat.

‘Freya! Good to have you back. OK? Bit of a wild crossing, I bet!'

I have to hold back tears. It hits me, suddenly, what it's going to be like. People knowing. Feeling sorry. Not knowing what to say. It's hard for everyone; I understand that, I really do. I know why people avoid it altogether, don't say anything rather than say the wrong thing. There isn't an easy way through any of this.

A fair-haired boy is doing the tickets. Not Huw, thank goodness. I make myself breathe properly: in, out, steady. People with rucksacks and tents and stuff pile into the boat. Jokes about the weather; camping. I let the voices wash over my head. Dave starts up the engine and the
Spirit
chugs slowly out of the sheltered harbour and across Broad Sound to St Ailla.

 

Evie is waiting on the jetty, waving wildly as the
Spirit
edges in. I wave back. I'm last off the boat. Dave and the boy start loading bags and camping stuff on to the tractor-trailer on the jetty, ready to take it to the campsite at Sally's farm and the holiday houses round the island. It was Huw's job, last summer.

The fair-haired boy turns to me. ‘All right?' he says. ‘Sling your bag on with the others and I'll bring it up to the house after I've done the campsite delivery.'

So he does know who I am.

Evie steps forward. ‘Thanks, Matt,' she says. ‘This is Freya, my granddaughter.'

Matt smiles. ‘I guessed.'

He's got the bluest eyes.

Evie folds me in a big hug. Just for that moment I want to bury my head in the softness of her body and forget everything.

‘Safe and sound, thank goodness,' Evie says. ‘What a storm!' She hugs me even tighter. ‘I'm so glad to see you, Freya. You can't imagine!'

The rain's almost stopped. I wait with Evie while Matt gets the tractor started up. We sit on the wall, watching the fog lifting off the water, while everyone else walks up the hill, turns off left to the pub or right to the campsite. Once everyone's disappeared, I let myself imagine we're the only people on the whole island.

The air's sweet after rain. Waves wash against the stone jetty. The tractor engine hums into the distance. For a moment, there's silence. Something drops away inside me. It's like an elastic band twanging free. I can breathe again. I'm here, at my favourite place on earth, where I can really be me.

But nothing is that simple any more. This is an island full of memories now. Full of ghosts, and secrets.

Three

 

 

Back at the house, I do what I always do when I get to Evie's, sort of check out each room for new things. I read the postcards that are propped along the mantelpiece in the sitting room. Evie and Gramps don't mind. It's like I'm catching up on what I've missed. Sometimes I think I've got two lives: the ordinary one, back home, and my one here, on the island. We've been coming here almost every summer since Evie and Gramps bought the house, seven years ago. That's half my life. I even have my own room.

The photographs are here just the same, of course, lined up along the bookcase: me, as a baby, at five and seven, eleven and thirteen, and the same for Joe, and one of Gramps in his funny white bee-keeper's suit, and lots of Dad, and the wedding one I love, because of the loving, happy way Dad's looking at Mum, and because I know their secret: that even though Mum looks slim and beautiful in her cream silk dress, baby Joe is there already, growing inside Mum, already five months big.

Now all the photos of Joe will stop. He'll be here, at sixteen, for ever, and never any older, while I'll go on growing up, and before long I'll be older and bigger than Joe and not his
little sister
any more . . .

I pick up the very last one of Joe. We didn't know that, of course, when Gramps took it. Joe's holding up three mackerel he's just caught, grinning into the camera. Behind him the sky is a brilliant blue.