‘You’re really going?’
‘I’ll stay close to the yacht.’
‘But it’s dark.’
‘Tends to happen at night.’
As Lana moved towards the door, Kitty said, ‘Lana, are you all right?’
‘Fine. Sorry. Just overheating, I think.’
‘Okay …’ Kitty said. ‘Just be careful, won’t you?’
‘Course,’ Lana said. As she slipped out of the door and along the passageway, she felt herself thinking of that strange, slithering touch she’d felt a few nights ago and just for a moment she hesitated.
*
Lana crept along the passageway towards the galley, where the lingering smell of their mince dinner still hung. She heard the faint sound of snoring drifting from a cabin somewhere and the hum of the fridge.
Up on deck the air was only marginally cooler, but just being out of the narrow space of the bunk felt good. She was moving towards the stern when someone started.
‘Shit!’ Denny said. He was standing with his back to her. ‘You always creep up on people when they’re taking a piss?’
‘Sorry,’ she laughed, covering her mouth with her hand.
‘And there’s a queue if you’re wanting to use the open-air bathroom.’
‘Think I’ll use the underwater bathroom.’
‘You’re swimming?’
She nodded. ‘Need to cool off.’
‘Fancy company?’
She shrugged. ‘If you can keep up.’
*
They dived from the bow, the cool night sea closing around their bodies. Lana led, swimming away from the yacht and the shadow of the island, out towards the silver pathway of the moon.
They swam without words, hearing only the sounds of their arms cutting through the water, the rhythm of their breathing, the kicking of their feet.
The moon was almost full – a waxing moon. One of Lana’s ex-boyfriends had once explained how you could tell whether it was waxing by looking at the right-hand side of it, which should be full and rounded – whereas the left edge should be flatter, making it look like a ‘D’ shape. When the moon was waning the edgings were the other way around.
After some minutes Lana slowed, treading water. Denny paused alongside her. The yacht floated serenely in the distance, moonlight catching on the curve of the hull and the tall line of the masts. She thought of their friends curled in their bunks, the light lapping of waves rocking them in their sleep.
‘Joseph’s dive,’ she said, trying to shake free of the thoughts of her father that still lingered at the periphery of her mind, and think of something light-hearted to talk about. ‘Wasn’t it brilliant?’
Denny grinned. ‘I love that he’s been on board for almost two months, yet he’s not breathed a word about being some Parisian diving god. He just let the rest of us get on with our hooting and gooning – and then ends the day with that manoeuvre. I was feeling pretty pleased I’d nailed the swallow dive until I saw that.’
‘Nailed?’ she said, an eyebrow arched.
‘Okay. Attempted.’
Lana rubbed the water from her eyes and said, ‘I was talking to Joseph earlier. He told me about his parents. They were killed in a fire.’
Denny nodded. ‘Only last year. There’s no one else either – no other family. I can’t … I can’t even imagine that.’
‘You’ve got a big family?’
‘Not huge. Just my parents and a brother. How about you?’
‘It’s just me and my father.’
‘Are you close?’
She made a small sound, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. ‘Not right now.’
Denny waited, saying nothing. In his silence, Lana was horrified to find that tears had sprung up on her lower lids. She wiped at them hurriedly.
Denny swam nearer. ‘Hey, what is it, Lana?’ he asked gently.
She didn’t know whether it was the darkness cloaking them, or the anonymity of being at sea, or the open, intent way Denny was looking at her – but Lana found herself beginning to explain. She told him about the last time she’d seen her father, which was a few weeks before she’d left for the Philippines. She’d been kneeling on the floor of her father’s bedroom, when she heard the front door opening downstairs.
‘Lana? Is that you?’ he’d called.
She hadn’t answered. Hadn’t moved. She’d listened to the slow tread of his feet as he climbed the stairs, sliding his palm along the banister. The floorboards creaked as he crossed the landing to the doorway of his room.
‘Lana, what are you—’
He’d stopped when he saw his old leather suitcase open, and a Manila envelope in her grip. Her father lifted a hand to his throat, pinching at the loose skin around his Adam’s apple. ‘Lana …’
It scared her the way his whole face changed into something blank and fearful, and his voice sounded hollow, as if he were two people: the one she’d always known, and this new version of himself.
‘You … you …’ she began, but couldn’t seem to make her lips work. Her tongue had felt numb and thick in her mouth. She lifted up the envelope, which contained a letter from a Greek solicitor. ‘She didn’t die, did she? Not when I was three.’
Her father had closed his eyes, the muscles in his face slackening so that all his features dragged downwards.
Lana told Denny that she’d always believed her mother had been killed in a car crash – but that the truth was entirely different.
Her mother had walked out on them, returning to her homeland. She had been desperately unhappy living in England, and had found comfort in a Greek doctor who was on secondment at a hospital where Lana’s mother worked. When his contract was finished, she returned to Athens with him, saying nothing of the family she was leaving behind.
‘I tried telling you the truth at first,’ her father had said, his voice choked with emotion, ‘but you were too young to understand. Some mornings I’d wake to find you sleeping on the rug by the front door waiting for her to come home.’
Eventually her father decided they needed a fresh start, so they moved to Bristol, buying a small terraced house on a street that Kitty would move to a few years later. ‘When I took you for your first day at primary school, your class teacher asked that you tell her a little about yourself. Do you know what you said, Lana? You told her you were four, your birthday was in August, and that you didn’t have a mummy because she’d gone away to heaven. I was horrified,’ Lana’s father had said. ‘I’d no idea where you got that from – but your class teacher was already patting you on the arm, saying, “I’m sure your mummy is watching you from heaven.” You’d beamed then, the largest smile I’d seen in months. And so … I didn’t correct you.’ Her father had simply stayed silent, and from there, the lie strengthened and grew until it became so permanent that it seemed to be the truth. Later, when Lana started asking how her mother died, her father had come up with the story of the car crash.
Lana’s mother never wrote or phoned from Greece. Apparently she’d come back, just once, when Lana was sixteen. Lana had been out at the time and her father had explained to his ex-wife that Lana believed she was dead – and that he wasn’t prepared to undo that unless she was committed to establishing a regular relationship with her daughter. Her mother had cried, saying her new husband still did