Breathing Underwater (5 page)

I pick up my puppy and she squeaks. She's so warm. I bend my head over her and she licks my face with her rough pink tongue and wags her tail which makes her bottom wiggle too. Puppies can leave their mother when they're eight or nine weeks, which is about perfect timing for the end of August when we'll go back home at the end of the summer holidays.

Bonnie jumps up to check her puppy's OK. She's such a good mother. Tilly gets so excited and wriggly I nearly drop her so I put her down quick. ‘There you go, Tilly-Little.'

The puppy pushes up against Bonnie who flops over so she can feed. All the puppies plough in for a share. They paddle with their paws to make the milk come. Bonnie lets out a huge sigh.

‘She's had enough. We need to start weaning the pups soon,' Sally says. ‘And find them homes.'

 

Evie's unpacking a huge box of groceries when I get back. There's no sign of Joe or the fishing floats.

‘Wouldn't you like one of the farm puppies?' I ask her.

‘I've got enough to be looking after already,' she says. ‘With your gramps!'

‘I'd do all the looking after her when I was here,' I say. ‘Every summer.'

‘For how much longer, though?' Evie says. ‘You won't want to be coming here for ever, Freya. You're growing up.'

‘I'll never stop coming here,' I say. ‘It's my favourite place anywhere in the whole world.'

Evie makes a sound, a sort of
hmmm.
‘The world's a big place,' she says. ‘And it's all just waiting for you and Joe. You'll see.'

Seven

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My third morning, this summer. Evie sends me up to the farm to get some milk and stuff. I have to queue with the campsite people at the back door. I read the notices chalked up on the blackboard:
Fresh farm veg: courgettes and tomatoes. Organic lamb burgers; organic minced beef. Milk, cream, yoghurt. Boat trip to seals 7pm. Shower tokens 20p.

‘Hi.' The girl with the hair, Matt's friend, leans against the door frame. Sky-blue cotton trousers and a green top today. She's got an amazing tan, and three silver belly button rings.

‘I keep seeing you,' she says. ‘You're Evie's granddaughter?'

I nod.

‘Izzy. Dairymaid,' she introduces herself. She speaks with a local accent, but I've never seen her other years. ‘Also campsite cleaner, events organiser, occasional boat hand and general dogsbody.' She laughs, looks at me all wide-eyed.

I suddenly realise she's waiting for me to say something. ‘Freya,' I say.

‘Glad to meet you, Freya.' She has an odd way of talking. Sort of old-fashioned polite but as if she's laughing, too. ‘How may I help you?'

‘Milk. Two pints. One pot of natural yoghurt. Please.'

‘Hang on, then.' She goes to fetch the stuff from the big fridges in the barn.

While I'm waiting I look into the kitchen and out through its window to the back garden, where Tilly/Bess is playing with a ball. I'm just thinking about calling her over when footsteps thump down the stairs and Matt appears. He stuffs his feet into old wellies by the door. He grins at me. ‘Coming on the boat trip this evening?'

I'm suddenly tongue-tied.

‘You should. See the seals,' Matt says.

Izzy reappears. ‘Yes. It'll be fun. Seven o'clock at the jetty. See you there?' She hands me the milk and the yoghurt. ‘Yes?'

I can't work out whether they're being extra nice on purpose, because of what they've heard about me, or because it's Izzy's job, or what. Perhaps that's just how she is. She has this open, smiling face and all that golden hair and she's sort of brimming over with something. Happiness? Confidence? I notice it because it's the opposite of me, right now. And because it's a shock to realise that.
This
me isn't the one I used to be.

I think about that when I'm lying in the garden later. I can't read. I start, but my mind drifts off and away and I lose track. I doodle with a pen in my notebook with the blue cover, but I don't write, either. I draw a maze pattern, like the one on the cliff. Next I sketch a shape that becomes a sea-urchin shell. I shade in the stripes. It's like I need to pin things down on the paper. Everything might just as easily float off, like thistledown. I have to make myself stay there, seeing and hearing the world around me. I try to draw the foxgloves, and a bee. I draw the tiny yellow pollen bags on its legs. I draw another shape, like a fish.

I get up, legs stiff from being still too long. The shed door creaks when I push it and spiders scuttle into the corner as sunlight trickles in through the open doorway. I find Joe's box on the shelf, a year of dust settled on the lid. It stains my fingers. Inside, everything's still perfectly organised, exactly how Joe left it last summer. Hooks and spinners, flies, a ball of fine line, a series of floats in the neat compartments. There are three perfect hand-painted mackerel floats, and the messy one I made. He kept it, then.

I try to imagine Joe now, standing behind me and leaning over my shoulder to see into the tackle box. I try to feel his breath against the back of my neck.

Nothing.

How long have I been standing here?

Evie peers round at me. ‘Saw the shed door was open,' she says. ‘You'll find the rods at the back, if you're thinking of going fishing.'

I'm not. At least, I hadn't been planning that at all. But why not? If Joe's anywhere on this island, he's most likely to be out on the fishing rock below Wind Down. That's where he'll come to me, if he's going to.

I don't exactly think this out, not as clearly as this, because if I did I'd see how really mad it sounds. It's more a feeling, pushing me to do things I wouldn't normally. I don't really like fishing much. It's Joe's thing, for starters, and you have to stay still and quiet for ages, just hanging around, and then if you do catch anything it's all rather horrible: the hook stuck in flesh, and the goggling eyes, and the flapping about and everything. Seeing a fish in air is like how I imagine drowning, for a person. Gasping for breath.

That's three good reasons not to do it, but here I am, already brushing cobwebs and dust off the two fishing rods. I try winding the reels. One's rusted up. I take the other one outside into the garden, and the box. I haven't much of a clue how to do it, since I've never done it by myself before, but I reckon I can always ask someone. That boy, even.

Or Matt.

Why do I keep thinking about him?

I'm feeling braver today, so I risk going the quick way via the campsite to get to Wind Down. There aren't many people around as it's nearly midday and quite sunny, so people are at the beach already or off on boats or whatever. There's no sign of anyone I know from other years. Nor the boy.

Outside a big, hexagonal orange tent someone's propped a board pinned with home-made jewellery against a camping chair. I stop to look. The earrings, necklaces and bracelets are made from bits of shell and pebble and tiny feathers strung on silver wire.

The tent door unzips. Izzy pokes her head out. ‘Hi, Freya!'

‘Hi!' I know I'm blushing. Stupid. Again.

‘Like them?' Izzy asks.

I nod. ‘Are they yours? You made them?'

‘Yep. Necklaces seven pounds. Earrings two pounds fifty. Real silver. Bargains.'

‘They're lovely,' I say. They really are. The colours, the delicate designs.

‘Thanks,' Izzy says.

There's an awkward moment: her half in, half out of the tent, me standing there.

‘Is this where you're living?' I ask.

‘Yes. Third tent since April. Two got ripped, in storms, but this one's extra good. It's my mum's.'

‘Since
April
? In a
tent
?'

Izzy laughs. ‘Mad, yes? I came over soon as we got study leave for A levels. My mum went mental! I went back to do the actual exams. Then I got the summer job here. But this tent's properly waterproof and really cosy inside. See?' Izzy holds open the flap so I can see inside.

And it is amazing. Like a Bedouin tent or a yurt or something exotic like that: Indian bedspreads and rugs and cushions, everything bathed in a pinky-gold light from the sun filtering through the fabric.

A head sticks up from under an orange blanket and stares, bleary-eyed, at Izzy and me. It's Matt.

‘What's the time?' he mumbles.

‘Twelve? One? Time you got up,' Izzy says.

For a second I'm confused. Haven't I already seen Matt, up at the farmhouse, earlier this morning? He must have to get up early for milking, and the first boat . . . So maybe that's why he's gone back to bed. And then I see the look he gives Izzy, and I go hot all over. Duh! Izzy and Matt haven't been just sleeping . . .

I duck back out of the tent. Izzy whispers something to Matt, and he laughs. There's the soft thud of someone lying down, and I don't stay to hear anything more. I know they're not laughing at me. I know that. They won't give me another thought. I start to run, the rod and the box banging against my legs. All the way, I keep thinking of Mum and Dad, the way they used to be. Izzy, in her bright, silly clothes with that big happy smile. Matt's soft mouth, finding hers.

I want to cry. I don't though. I've stopped doing that all the time. It cured me, hearing Mum night after night. It doesn't do any good, not after a while.

I decide I'll just go and sit on the fishing rocks; I don't have to fish, I'll just see what it's like sitting there. And I can think about Joe, and see what happens. If no one else is there, that is.

But someone is. Why am I surprised, even, that it's that boy again? Joe's shadow. I'm about to turn back but he's seen me and he waves. So I go on. He stands up, and he walks to the edge of the biggest rock which is nearest the cliff, and he holds his hand out to help me do the jump across the gap, as if he knows I might be scared, but without saying anything. So I start liking him a bit, right then.

I've done the jump across before. It's better not to look down. It's hardly any distance across, but there's a deep drop and the sea is always boiling and churning as it's squeezed along the gap between the rocks. If you fell you'd be smashed up quite badly.

‘It's a good place for mackerel,' the boy says. ‘They come in really close, because the water's so deep.'

‘I know,' I say. ‘I've been here loads of times.'

He threads a silver sand eel on to a hook. Casts the line out. Stands with his back to me. I wait. It's so like being with Joe I can hardly breathe. My hands shake when I try to open the box.

‘It's my first holiday here,' the boy says. ‘Every one else at the campsite seems to have been a million times. Are you camping?'

‘No.'

‘Nice fishing rod,' he says after a long gap.

I almost laugh, but I can see how shy he is, and he's trying to be friendly, and Miranda's a long way away and she'll never know about this particular conversation, so I make a big effort to be friendly back.

‘It was my grandpa's,' I say. ‘I stay with him and my gran every summer. I'm Freya.'

‘Danny,' he says. ‘You can borrow some bait, if you want.'

For one horrible moment I think he's about to hand me a heap of pink wriggling meal worms. But he shoves a bucket with his foot. ‘Help yourself.'

And that's how I come to hook my first ever sand eel, eyes wide open, holding my breath.
Sorry
, I say in my head to the sand eel as I skewer it. I catch my first ever mackerel by myself soon after. Me and Danny catch three each. After the first one, Danny takes over the actual killing bit, flipping the fish against the rock so it dies quickly, but I'm glad I've done one, at least. Joe would be proud of me. I can almost hear his voice, telling me. But he's not here. There's no sense of him at the fishing rock today, and I know there can't be, not with Danny here too.