Twenty seconds, now. Thirty, perhaps?
She becomes aware of her pulse ticking in her throat and the cold Atlantic sea dripping into her thoughts. The flash of an orange lifeboat. The roar of a helicopter in the sky.
Her mouth turns dry as she waits, her gaze pinned to the point at which he dived down. He has to come up. She knows he must. Yet her heart is drilling against the cage of her ribs.
Without thinking, she is suddenly jumping from the deck and jogging towards the water. With each step, she is back on that Dorset beach in December, gusts of sand sheeting along the beach, the wild, grey seascape empty of Jackson.
Eva stops at the shoreline, panting. The sun glances off the water, making her squint as she scans the bay for Saul. But it is mirror flat; there is not a ripple.
Sweat prickles underarm. Could she swim out far enough to reach him? Would it be better to call for help? Would anyone even hear?
More images flood through her mind: a policeman speaking into a radio; a crowd of people huddled together, waiting; a lifeboat making a search pattern in the raging sea.
Then suddenly there’s movement out in the middle of the bay. Saul breaks through the surface. She imagines the water pouring from his face as he gasps for air.
She steps back, the tension in her muscles sending tremors through her body and making her knees shake. She waits for the tide of relief to fill her, but it never comes. Because all Eva is thinking is: It’s not Jackson.
*
When Saul wades in, he finds Eva standing on the shore, her expression taut. He puts down his mask and fins and wipes the salt water from his face. ‘Everything okay?’
She nods quickly. She takes a breath, then asks, ‘Good dive?’
‘Like glass out there.’
She glances over the length of the bay. ‘It’s quiet here.’
‘Yeah, every so often you get the odd fishing boat or kayaker passing. That’s about it.’
Silence follows. A gull soars above, white wings struck with sunlight. They both watch as it glides beyond them, dipping low to the water.
Saul shifts on the spot. ‘The shack all right for you?’
‘Yes. Very comfortable,’ she answers banally.
‘Good.’
‘Thanks for organizing it.’
‘No problem.’
Small talk sets like a cast around the delicate bones of what they’re both afraid to talk about: Jackson.
‘I can run you to your car in a bit?’
She nods. ‘Thank you.’
‘Where’ll you go next?’
‘Hobart, I suppose. Maybe I’ll try and get in touch with some of Jackson’s old friends. I’ll work it out,’ she says with a brave smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
Saul thinks about her drifting around Hobart, asking questions about Jackson – and he knows that’s not a good idea. All the tension that his dive had eased now begins to creep back into his body, tightening in his temples and the base of his jaw.
He looks towards the shack, turning an idea through his head. Out here on Wattleboon barely anyone will remember Jackson, as he hasn’t been on the island since he was 15. But in Hobart there are people who know.
After a moment Saul says, ‘The shack’s free for a while. You’re welcome to stay on, if you want?’
You asked me once why Saul and I fell out, so I told you.
But it was only half of the truth.
I was shaving at the time, and carefully smoothed foam over my jaw as I contemplated my answer. I needed to get it right.
‘It was my birthday,’ I began, feeling my heart start to pound. ‘I had a barbecue down on the bluff near where I was living. I didn’t organize many things like that, but I wanted to that year because there was … this girl. Someone I thought was special. I wanted to introduce her to my friends.’
I drew the razor over my cheek, pulling my lips to the side to keep the skin taut as I told you, ‘Saul turned up late – and drunk – but I was just pleased he’d come. I slung an arm over his shoulder and walked him to the barbecue, where my girlfriend stood. Before he’d even said a word, I knew he was gonna make a play for her. I could see just by the way he was looking at her.’
‘Did he?’ you asked carefully, watching my reflection in the mirror.
I laughed, a dark sound. ‘Couldn’t help himself. He always had to get the girl. I saw him with her later that night. Right in front of me – like he didn’t even care. Like he wanted me to see.’
‘I’m sorry.’
I shrugged, tried to brighten my voice. ‘Maybe it worked out for the best. Saul kept on seeing her, so I ended up getting out of Tas for a few months.’
‘That’s when you went to South America?’
‘Yeah. Travelled up through Chile and Peru, then across to Brazil. I surfed, hiked, got some work building trail paths, bought a motorbike in Brazil. It was a good time – a good thing for me to do.’
‘What about when you came back?’
‘She and Saul were livin’ together up north. I stayed down south. We didn’t see each other.’
‘They’re still together?’
‘No. Not now.’
‘And you can’t forgive him?’
I put the razor down and clenched the edge of the sink, lowered my head. ‘He’s a liar. I can’t trust him.’
You crossed the bathroom and placed the flat of your hand in the space between my shoulder blades and ran it in smooth strokes. It was like you were reaching inside me, soothing somewhere that I didn’t know still hurt.
I looked up and our gazes locked in the mirror. ‘Do you think people can change, Eva? Do you think it’s possible?’
I think the intensity of my voice startled you because you dropped your hand and said, ‘Yes. People can change.’
But here’s the thing that terrified me: What if they can’t?
Eva drifts through the shack as her mother continues talking. She catches the words scan, due date, trimester – words she associates with work, not her own pregnancy.
She pauses by a photo of her and Jackson she’d brought with her from England. It was taken last summer at a 1920s-themed jazz festival in London. In the picture Eva is wearing a drop-waisted flapper-girl dress and a beaded headband, and Jackson has one hand around her waist, and with his other he’s touching the brow of his black hat, laughing. There’s sun flare behind them and they both look tanned and happy, in love.
Tucking the phone under her ear, Eva takes down the picture. It’s housed in a thin glass frame, and she uses the hem of her dress to clean her fingerprints