She kept her eyes carefully averted, not out of any prudishness but because she always approached new experiences with a moment’s care. She could never tell how something new was going to impact on her and, while she’d hung out with enough divers and surfers to give her some kind of certainty about what senses a half-naked person would trigger—apples for some random guy peeling off his wetsuit, watermelon for a woman pulling hers on—this was a new half-naked man. And a client.
She watched his benign shadow on the sand until she was sure he’d removed everything he was going to.
Only then did she turn around.
Instantly, she was back at the only carnival she’d ever visited, tucking into her first—and last—candyfloss. The light, sticky cloud dissolving into pure sugar on her tongue. The smell of it, the taste of it. That sweet, sweet rush. She craved it instantly. It was so much more intense—and so much more humiliating—than a plain old apples association. But apparently that was what her synaesthesia had decided to associate with a half-naked Richard Grundy.
The harmless innocence of that scent was totally incompatible with a man she feared was here to exploit the reef. But that was how it went; her associations rarely had any logical connection with their trigger.
Richard had come prepared with navy board shorts beneath his expensive but casual clothes. They were laced low and loose on his hips yet still managed to fit snugly all the way down his muscular thighs.
And they weren’t even wet yet.
Mila filled her lungs slowly and mastered her gaze. He might not be able to read her dazed thoughts but he might well be able to read her face and so she turned back to her rummaging. Had her snorkelling mask always been this fiddly to adjust?
‘I only have one set of fins, sorry,’ she said in a rush. ‘Five Fingers is good for drift snorkelling, though, so you can let the water do the work.’
She set off up the beach a way so that they could let the current carry them back near to their piled up things by the end of the swim. Her slog through sun-soaked sand was accompanied by the high-pitched single note that came with a warmth so everyday that she barely noticed it anymore. When they reached the old reef, she turned seaward and walked into the water without a backward glance—she didn’t need the sugary distraction and she felt certain Richard would follow her in without invitation. They were snorkelling on his dollar, after all.
‘So coral’s not a plant?’ Richard asked once they were waist-deep in the electric-blue water of the lagoon.
She paused and risked another look at him. Prepared this time. ‘It’s an animal. Thousands of tiny animals, actually, living together in the form of elk horns, branches, plates, cabbages—’
He interrupted her shopping list ramble with the understated impatience of someone whose time really was money. Only the cool water prevented her from blushing. Did she always babble this much with clients? Or did it only feel like babbling in Richard Grundy’s presence?
‘So how does a little squishy thing end up becoming rock-hard reef?’ he asked.
Good. Yes. Focusing on the science kept the candyfloss at bay. Although as soon as he’d said ‘rock-hard’ she’d become disturbingly fixated on the remembered angles of his chest and had to severely discipline her unruly gaze not to follow suit.
‘The calcium carbonate in their skeletons. In life, it provides resilience against the sea currents, and in death—’
She braced on her left leg as she slipped her right into her mono-fin. Then she straightened and tucked her left foot in with it and balanced there on the soft white seafloor. The gentle waves rocked her a little in her rooted spot, just like one of the corals she was describing.
‘In death they pile up to form limestone reef,’ he guessed.
‘Millions upon millions of them forming reef first, then limestone that weathers into sand, and finally scrubland grows on top of it. We owe a lot to coral, really.’
Mila took a breath and turned to face him, steadfastly ignoring the smell of carnival. ‘Ready to meet the reef?’
He glanced out towards the reef break and swallowed hard. It was the first time she’d seen him anything other than supremely confident, verging on arrogant.
‘How far out are we going?’
‘Not very. That’s the beauty of Coral Bay; the inside reef is right there, the moment you step offshore. The lagoon is narrow but long. We’ll be travelling parallel to the beach, mostly.’
His body lost some of its rigidity and he took a moment to fit his mask and snorkel before stepping off the sandy ridge after her.
* * *
It took no time to get out where the seafloor dropped away enough that they could glide in the cool water two metres above the reef. The moment Mila submerged, the synaesthetic symphony began. It was a mix of the high notes caused by the water rushing over her bare skin and the vast array of sounds and sensations caused by looking down at the natural metropolis below in all its diversity. Far from the flat, gently sloping, sandy sea bottom that people imagined, coral reef towered in places, dropped away in others, just like any urban centre. There were valleys and ridges and little caves from where brightly coloured fish surveyed their personal square metre of territory. Long orange antenna poked out from under a shelf and acted as the early warning system of a perky, pincers-at-the-ready crayfish. Anemones danced smooth and slow on the current, their base firmly tethered to the reef, stinging anything that came close but giving the little fish happily living inside it a free pass in return for its nibbly housekeeping.
Swimming over the top of it all, peering down through the glassy water, it felt like cruising above an alien metropolis in some kind of silent-running airship—just the sound of her own breathing inside the snorkel, and her myriad synaesthetic associations in her mind’s ear. The occasional colourful little fellow came up to have a closer look at them but mostly the fish just went about their business, adhering to the strict social rules of reef communities, focusing on their eternal search for food, shelter or a mate.
Life was pretty straightforward under the surface.
And it was insanely abundant.
She glanced at Richard, who didn’t seem to know where to look first. His mask darted from left to right, taking in the coral city ahead of them, looking below them at some particular point. He’d tucked his hands into balls by his hips and she wondered if that was to stop him reaching out and touching the strictly forbidden living fossil.
She took a breath and flipped gently in the water, barely flexing her mono-fin to effect the move, swimming backwards ahead of him so that she could see if he was doing okay. His mask came up square onto hers and, even in the electric-blue underworld, his eyes still managed to stand out as they locked on hers.
And he smiled.
The candyfloss returned with a vengeance. It was almost overpowering in the cloistered underwater confines of her mask. Part of her brain knew it wasn’t real but as far as the other part was concerned she was sucking her air directly from some carnival tent. That was the first smile she’d seen from Richard and it was a doozy, even working around a mouthful of snorkel. It transformed his already handsome face into something really breath-stealing and, right now, she needed all the air she could get!
She signalled upwards, flicked her fin and was back above the glassy surface within a couple of heartbeats.
‘I’ve spent so much time on the water and I had no idea there was so much going on below!’ he said the moment his mouth was free of rubbery snorkel. ‘I mean you know but you don’t...know. You know?’
This level of inarticulateness wasn’t uncommon for someone seeing the busy reef for the first time—their minds were almost always blown—but it made her feel just a little bit better about how much of a babbler she’d been with him.
His finless legs had to work much harder than hers to