Now
I’m floating at the secret beach now, my old favourite, when I see him. I push myself upright, my feet catching on the slimed rocks beneath me. Water ripples through my hair, I could be dreaming or drowning.
He is standing above me. His face in shadow, it might not be him, and then the sun moves over his features and I know it is.
‘Lauren?’ he says.
Alex.
He’s grinning. I’d forgotten his grin but, now I see it, I’m not sure how I could have forgotten it. ‘I can’t believe it! It’s you!’ He is growing a beard and he’s smaller than the image in my head. But then, I was only a child when I knew him. ‘How many years has it been?’
‘Eighteen,’ I say automatically and then my brain crashes into that number. Until I said it, I hadn’t realised that when I lost Daniel, I lost Alex too. My oldest friend. Possibly my onlyfriend. A wave crests at my chest, splashing water over my cheek. I wipe it away.
‘I was onForagerwhen I saw you. I had to paddle out and check.’
‘Do you often check on floating women?’ I say lightly.
‘Only ones that could be you.’ He’s smiling but the look he gives me is serious and I have the sense that just being here with him is dangerous; I am on the precipice of something, about to fall in. But I can’t help it.
He holds out his hand. I take it. Standing in front of him, everything passes between us – the pregnancy test, how he came to the cottage that morning, drift seeds, seaweed,Forager– and then, I let go of age and time and throw my arms around him. He hugs me back, so tightly I nearly forget everything that’s happened.
‘I’ve drenched you,’ I say, when we come apart.
He plucks at the wet patches on his faded Adidas T-shirt. ‘I’m a fisherman, I don’t care. You, on the other hand, are soaked.’ He lifts his chin. ‘Do you feel like coming onForager?’
‘Always.’
I swim behind him, through the water, I can feel the force of his strokes. He lifts himself effortlessly onto the boat and then he steadies me as I clamber in. I am so clumsy, I want to apologise for being so much heavier, so much older than I once was, but I stop myself. Absurd. We’re both older, heavier.
‘Sit down,’ he says, after he’s helped me over the side. ‘Let me get you a towel.’
I don’t sit. I greetForagerin the only way I know how, trailing my fingers over the knots in the bench, the iron chains, the spill of nets.
He hands me a towel, an old T-shirt, board shorts, a hoodie. I change in the cabin. The hoodie is a faded violet, once blue perhaps, tears splitting the rim of the hood. I slip it on. It smells so clean.
We smile stupidly at each other when I step out.
‘Well, how are you?’ he starts.
I want to tell the truth. I want to say,I lost my baby. I left my husband and my daughter. I’m here with the man you helped me escape from,and I wish there is something else I could say that’s true, that means,I’m treading water, I’m surviving, please don’t ask me anymore, I can’t bear it.Instead, I say, ‘Fine.’
He smooths the aluminium of the gunwale. I have not been convincing.
‘You’ve done well,’ I say quickly, gesturing to the newly painted deck, the hatch. ‘You did exactly what you said you were going to.’
He scratches his chin. ‘I said that, did I? That I wanted to be a skipper?’
‘All the time.’
He laughs softly.
‘Do you love it?’
‘Nothing beats pulling a catch from the sea.’
I believe him.
‘How about you?’