It’s when we’re outside church, waiting for the minister to arrive and unlock the door, that Mum springs the bad news on us. She pulls Lucy and I aside with the kind of look on her face that makes me start running through a mental list of all the people who might be dead.
You remember Liz, Mum says.
We nod.
Cancer, Mum says. Just terrible. She doesn’t have long left.
Which is, in the worst way, a total relief, because Liz and Mum haven’t been close for years—not for so long that I can only picture her looking thin and blonde as a bridesmaid in Mum’s wedding pictures. I’m looking up at a stained-glass window as she tells me—there’s a yellow-haired angel with her hands pressed together. Something conflates in my mind—or maybe the two have always been confused—because I can’t tell if I’d always thought that angel looked like Liz, or if it’s only now, as Mum says, Yep, bone cancer, that’s a real bad one, she’s got a couple months at most.
Are we going to go see her, Lucy wants to know. Mum says no. Instead, her son’s coming to stay. Kevin. We’ve never met him—like I say, Liz and Mum aren’t close anymore.
He’ll take the spare room for a few weeks, Mum says. And keep Liz in your prayers.
Kevin takes the InterCity bus, which stops at the public toilets. He’s blond and quite small, and seems too good-looking for the name Kevin. He jumps off, waving to the bus driver, and hefts his suitcase from the luggage hold. He walks beside Lucy all the way home, talking over the rattle of his suitcase. I don’t say much.
On the doorstep, Kevin shifts his weight back and forward, making the loose floorboard squawk like a bird. Lucy laughs, and he looks at me, grinning. He does the same thing in his bedroom, moving the ladder on his bunk bed so it makes a sad keening sound. It’s a bit off-putting that he’s having such a good time, given the circumstances.
Mum singles me out to show Kevin around. She starts calling us “the boys” like we’re a unit; like we’re automatically friends or something.
We walk down to the beach; stormy-grey, heaving with waves.
You should only swim when Dad says it’s all good, I tell Kevin. This bit of coast’s dangerous.
My dad’s a triathlete, Kevin says airily. I’ve done lifesaving classes.
I think that’s when I decide I actively don’t like Kevin. He’s got this nonchalance, and he smiles too much. It’s weird to smile if your mum’s dying of bone cancer.
I point out the Wallaces’ place next door, with their ride-on mower parked on the lawn. The Wallaces leave the key in the ignition in case we ever need to borrow it. I could probably steal it if I wanted to, come to think of it. Behind us is the motorway, and behind that is the pine forest, with half the trees snapped like toothpicks from a summer storm a few years back. It’s my favourite place—there’s an old car wreck to hang in, fully stripped; just the outer shell with its wheels in the air. A teenager died while cutting the corner too tight. That’s a weird thought, when you’re holed up inside, playing with the gas and brake pedals.
Anyway, I don’t tell Kevin about all this. I want to make him feel as bored of this place as possible.
This is kind of it, I tell him, waving at the beach and the grey promontory.
Neat, he says, and smiles at me.
On the way home I see Lucy, pink in the face, gathering in all her undies from the washing line. I should probably lead Kevin round the back of the house to save her the embarrassment, but weirdly I freeze up because I’ve never known Lucy to be awkward about what goes on the line or in the washing machine, or wherever.
Inside, Kevin follows me to the kitchen. Anything to eat, he asks.
Dinner’s at six.
Dang, that long? I haven’t eaten in ages.
Then he opens a cupboard. Our cupboard. And starts combing through it, saying stuff like, Wow, only flour and eggs? No biscuits?
Have sardines if you’re hungry, I tell him. (No one in our house eats sardines. So far as I know, no one in their right mind eats sardines. We have a few tins stacked up with the emergency water in case the power goes out and the fridge food expires.)
He sighs and flings himself against the bench with the back of his hand against his forehead. I shall die of starvation, he says. Please, just a morsel.
I leave him there. I mean, honestly.
In our room, Lucy’s got the washing basket under one arm, and she’s scrunched her undies into little balls and is shoving them in the top drawer. Girls, you know. Crazy.
Luce and I share a room: two twin beds, forget-me-not wallpaper, a framed cross-stitch hanging on a nail. Edward VIII, Long May He Reign. My great-grandma made it—she’d probably barely finished it when he ran off with Marge Simpson, or whoever. She owned this house—great-grandma, that is—and it’s got dodgy wiring and a basement with dark stains on the floor, which I once told Luce were blood. I’m ninety percent sure they’re not blood, actually.
I’m looking at the cross stitch when Luce rolls over, head pillowed on her arm, and says, He’s alright, isn’t he? Kevin?
He’s kind of annoying, I say.
No, as in—he’s alright about his mum, isn’t he?
I don’t reply. It’s not like I know, anyway. I pull the rope hanging under the lightbulb.
D’you think we’ll get to see Liz before she dies, Lucy says into the dark.
It’s church that really rubs me up the wrong way. Kevin makes a stink about getting up early on Sunday, and then he talks all the way to church, which we never do.
Outside, we run into the Wallaces. They’ve got two kids: Amelia—who’s a bit younger, Lucy’s age—and Ben, who’s my year, but talks like an old man.
Pleasure to meet you, Ben says to Kevin, shaking his hand. I hear you’ve come to stay?
Yep, Kevin says, looking amused.
We’re glad to have you here, Ben says, seriously. Welcome to the community.
Kevin laughs.
We’re seated side by side, Kevin and I, for the service. We’re jammed up the front, and Kevin’s jiggling his leg the whole time, like he needs to pee. At Communion, he doesn’t know to cup his hands for the wafer, or even to lower his head as he’s being blessed. I’m beside him, doing it by example, dipping my wafer in the wine because Mum says we can only sip at fourteen.
Can I drink the wine, Kevin asks. The minister wipes the rim from the last person and offers it to him. He dips his golden head and closes his eyes as he sips, and it’s the only moment he seems to take seriously. Then he looks at me, grinning, smacking his lips, like I’ll find it funny.
After the service I try and avoid Kevin, kicking round in the graveyard while Mum and Dad talk at the church door. But he doesn’t bother me, and in the end, I find him standing under the stained-glass window of the golden-haired angel. Just staring.
Lunch is wet peas and tinned tuna on the yellow plates all scuffed up from knife cuts. I’m expecting Kevin to make one of his jokes about the plates, but I don’t get to find out; he’s sent out because he starts eating while we’re all saying grace. I can hear him rattling the ladder in his room while we pray for his mother. He comes in to eat once the food is cold and we’ve washed up, but I make an excuse and duck outside.
The beach is thin and pencil-grey. At one end, the rocks rise up to form a promontory; a long finger of land stretching into the sea. I walk as far as I dare, right up to where the ground cuts off at a cliff edge. I’m scared of heights. Looking down gives me this nauseous pull, like something’s making my senses go loopy, the way a magnet messes with a compass. Like when it’s dark, but you know something’s there.
When I get home, I hear voices by the veggie patch. I hear Lucy laugh. She’s standing in her church pea coat, watching Kevin, who’s plucked three plums off the tree. He tosses one in the air, then another, till they’re a red-gold blur between his juggling hands. Lucy watches, transfixed; she laughs and claps. Kevin smiles. He’s got the tip of his tongue pinched between his teeth, and one hand shoots out fast, tossing the plum to Lucy. She catches it.
Lucy, I say. She turns, wincing, dropping the plum.
We’re not allowed to pick the plums, I say, looking at Kevin.
But it’s Lucy who replies. What’s the big deal, she says, in a singsong tone. Kevin’s tone. That gets me mad. She can’t go switching sides on me like this.
The washing’s done, I tell her. You might want to get your undies. Before Kevin sees.
Her ears turn pink; she looks at me with absolute loathing. Then she storms past me down to the beach.
Kevin’s leaning against the tree, amused. He takes a bite out of one of the plums. A bit floury, he says, around his mouthful.
It’s stormy that afternoon. The wind picks up, and the waves churn in white foam against the promontory. A gull screams somewhere up high, held still by the southerly gale.
Honestly, I didn’t even know Lucy had taken the kayak out. It’s not out of character; usually after we argue she either goes for a long walk or a paddle. But you’d think, with the sky strangely bright and the weathervane spinning crazily, that she’d know better.
I’m midway through a jigsaw puzzle when I look up to see Kevin standing in the doorway, holding a tin of sardines with the lid curled back like a silver tongue.
Got peckish, he says.
You’re not meant to eat those, I tell him. They’re emergency food.
He opens his mouth wide and lowers a silver sardine, dripping with oil, into his mouth.
Gross, I say. He smacks his lips and smiles.
When’s church on next, he asks. I’m keen for more wine.
You’ll be left behind next time, I tell him.
He strolls into the room, swings his legs over the arm of the sofa and flops down on his back. I really wish you’d stop praying for my mum, he says.
It’s messed up not to pray for someone who’s sick.
He turns his eyes on me—clear and cold as ice-melt water.
You know that your mum won’t even go and visit her? She’s been sick for a year.
It’s got me frozen, that stare. There’s a hot pain in my chest. I stand up, dropping my handful of puzzle pieces, and mutter something about going for a walk. He jumps up, putting down his sardines.
Great, he says. I love walks!
Outside, the gale howls and scudders, turning the silver birches inside-out like white flames. I walk fast, but Kevin’s footsteps follow me up the beach. Sea spray soaks my face.
Ben waves me down. He’s bent double on the lawn, trying to wind an extra rope over the tarpaulin covering their mower. He shouts over the wind.
Goodness, what wild weather!
Behind the tractor stands Amelia in a yellow raincoat, watching us solemnly under her dripping hood.
Did Lucy get back in one piece, Ben asks.
Lucy?
I saw her take the kayak out. Thought it was strange, you know, what with the weather.
I turn slow, too slow, to see the kayak’s mooring rope is loose and snaking in the wind. And then Amelia gives a high, formless shout and points. That’s all, just points, but it’s like my guts have been sliced open. Way out at sea there’s something tiny and yellow, soaring up as it crests a wave before vanishing under the white caps.
I’m running before my mind’s fully decided what it is. A buoy, surely, or a lost lifejacket. I bound up the promontory, shaggy with rocks and loose scree, and that’s when I’m high enough to see Lucy, lifejacket-less, paddling in tiny, terrifying miniature against the impossible force of the swells.
A gasp leaves me, like I’ve been punched. I’m at the very edge of the cliff, closer than I’ve ever been, teetering where the grass gives way to steep wet rock and churning water. The drop is like a drawstring, pulling everything inside me tighter and tighter…
And then Kevin’s beside me, kicking off his trainers, sliding over the edge of the cliff.
No, no, Ben says suddenly, appearing beside me. No—go from the beach.
And I’d say the same, if I could, but the words are gone from my mouth, and I can only watch as Kevin swings down the rock face, nimble as a spider, until he lands barefooted on the kelp-slick rocks below. Then another wave comes snarling up, churning white and green, and he’s swallowed up by the water.
Oh my Lord, Ben says. Oh my word.
We watch as Kevin’s wet gold head bobs up. Then one arm sweeps in an arc, followed by the other. He’s swimming fast, kicking up a wake behind him, occasionally knocked off course by a swell. Out at sea, Lucy’s paddle works furiously in an endless futile beating, and I think of that gull in the wind fighting against the southerly, and it can’t move, can’t move…
My eyes are swimming; they’re wet with sea spray, and my ears have that blasting seashell roar. I blink, and see the kayak sailing merrily away, buoyed up on the wind, flipping over once, twice—empty.
Amelia, Ben says. Go get Mum, quick.
She runs away, her arms flapping, the yellow raincoat streaming behind her.
I should be praying. But more important, more present, is another thought—Don’t think, don’t think. There’s a horrible breaking-down inside me. I’ve let go of something, and it’s falling down, deep down…
Then Ben yells, He’s got her!
Way out at sea, two heads are bobbing close together, vanishing and reappearing as the waves lift them up. Foam churns as Kevin starts to kick and Lucy’s head vanishes. Someone’s yelling incomprehensible noises. It’s me, I’m yelling—I’m telling him to keep her head above the water, she can’t breathe, hold her up…
They’re close now, almost at the cliff. And it’s not me who clambers over the cliff edge, but Ben—Ben, who’s never been athletic; Ben, who I made fun of in PE for flinching whenever anyone passed him the ball…
Kevin clings to the rock, heaving in breaths, while Ben hauls Lucy, dripping, from the water. He turns, clasping her in both arms, and says something—I think, Can you grab her?—but my ears are ringing from the wind, and I stare at him stupidly while he staggers for balance on the rocks, with Lucy flopped lifeless over his shoulder.
Something seems to be searing the side of my face. Kevin’s staring straight at me, his eyes gleaming like bright wet sea-glass. It shakes me enough to move, and I lie flat on my stomach with my shoulders over the cliff edge. I can reach just far enough to get hold of Lucy’s shoulders when Ben climbs higher up the rocks, just within reach, and I catch hold of Lucy’s shoulders. Everything goes warped, swelling like the back of a soup spoon.
I pull her up onto the grass; wet, goose-flesh, bone cold. She’s wearing her old ‘Rainbow’s End’ t-shirt, and her hair makes thick black stripes across her face.
Panting and scrabbling, Ben hauls himself over the edge, grazing a knee, crawling onto the grass. I reach out again—my hand looks fleshy and far away, fingers splayed, not-quite-mine. I lean down, past the place where solid ground turns to open air—falling, the bone-hard crack of a skull, blood, waves burbling red and pink over what’s left of you—until I feel a helpless squeeze around my hand, and see Kevin pull himself up. He starts to climb, bare feet slipping, his free hand making a wild clutch at the lip of the cliff. He hooks the edge with his elbows, hanging breathless over the grassy ledge.
Ben’s kneeling beside Lucy, gently shaking her shoulder. Her eyelids look translucent, like wet paper. Her left hand, curled up like a baby’s, has five impossibly-little, bitten-down fingernails. And then one finger twitches.
She moved, Ben says.
Lucy’s nose scrunches, mouth murmuring and settling.
There’s a flapping noise, and I see Mrs Wallace running up in a white raincoat, holding her hat to her head with one hand, Amelia scampering in her wake. Oh my word, she says. Oh my word.
She’s alive, Mum, Ben says.
Mrs Wallace picks up Lucy in her arms. One arm, the hand I saw twitching a moment before, swings down limply.
Ben, Mrs Wallace says, run ahead. Tell Lucy’s parents. Tell Dad we need an ambulance.
I’m numb again; numb with cold, numb with relief. I watch Mrs Wallace rush away, hat sailing off her head, Ben and Amelia running, neck-and-neck, like two dogs.
Kevin takes a shuddering breath. He’s bowed over, head close to the ground, breathing in strange scrabbling pants.
I put a hand on his shoulder and he takes a deep, juddering breath, leaning against me with sudden heaviness. The grass is white-flecked with sea foam. And I’m glad—I don’t want to be, but I’m glad about something.
Stand, I say. Come on. We have to walk.
He does as I tell him, standing slowly, moving with a hunch like there’s something in him that hurts. We cross the promontory, up the beach, past our house. I don’t pause. Better not to think yet, keep everything light; not to know if she makes it or not. The world is too solid—all form and structure—and I’m oil, sliding as if unmixed through water; and I have an awful, deadened feeling that I’ve lost something—I don’t know what, but it’s gone forever.
Kevin doesn’t veer off to the house, but walks beside me, pausing at the road for traffic to pass. We cross. I press down the loose upper wire of the fence around the pine forest, and Kevin steps over it.
We walk side-by-side through the trees. Wide brown pillars, mint-tang, wet sap, a church-like stillness. Wind howls somewhere up in the green needles. I lead him to the car-wreck, the only place out of the wind.
In here, I tell him.
He kneels down, silent and compliant, and creeps into the old car. Someone’s moved a bunch of junk inside, and I shift it out: pinecones, a blue ice cream container of leaves, an empty paint bucket.
I give Kevin my jersey. He pulls it slowly over his head, getting his arms through the sleeves with his hands fisted up. He’s still shaking a bit, but his eyes are very level and cool, fixed on me.
My parents are gonna be mad, I tell him.
He’s silent for a moment, then laughs—or I guess would have laughed, if his breathing was in order. It comes out as a hard little huff of air.
Why’d you jump in?
’Cos I could, he says.
It comes back to me now; the passing mention that he’s learned lifesaving.
You know, you don’t always get the chance, he says. Like for my mum.
Outside, the wind is immense—an endless howl. I fall quiet. I’m looking at Kevin, but he feels unreal, both close and far away.
The bone cancer’s my fault, Kevin says. She had to take this drug while she was pregnant with me—this drug to keep me alive.
How’s that your fault, I say, finding my voice. You weren’t even born yet.
His eyes are big pools of dark. I push the point. It’s not your fault, I tell him, if you didn’t get a say in being born.
He leans forward with a small muffled sound and puts his forehead against his knees. The hair on the back of his head has begun to dry, paling, curling into ringlets.
Lucy is in hospital for three days. She’s mostly comatose, occasionally tossing and murmuring. On the third day, when Mum’s there with her Wednesday book club, she sits bolt upright with wild eyes and says a Sunday School prayer in a strained, high voice. They all agree it’s a miracle.
Luce is taken home and is put in our room, pillows plumped up like a queen, while I’m moved into Kevin’s room and we top-and-tail so Lucy can have some privacy. When I go to see her, she’s reading the seventh Narnia book and has hairpins and plum stones and a glass of water on her bedside table.
She asks if Kevin’s alright, and I tell her yeah, he’s got a runny nose but is holding up okay. We sit there in silence, and I suddenly don’t know what to say to her. She seems years older.
I ask her, tentatively, what she saw when she was drowning. She umms and ahhs, thinking. Not much, she says. Just water, then darkness pressing in on all sides. Then nothing.
I was right—Mum and Dad aren’t happy with Kevin or me. Which I blame squarely on Mrs Wallace, who hung around retelling her version of things over and over: her boy Ben hefted dear little Lucy right out of the water, and there he was kneeling over her so sweetly, while those other two were rushing round quite wild with panic, and after all that Ben had still had the energy to ring up the ambulance and usher the paramedics into the house.
And Ben, hopping from one foot to the other in an agony of embarrassment, kept saying no Mum, no; Kevin swam all the way out and pulled her home.
And Mrs Wallace laughed and stroked his head and said Ben, Ben, no one could swim with a drowning girl against those waves.
Kevin slept and ate quietly and looked pale for a couple of days, but he never told Mum and Dad what had happened. I can’t say, honestly, why neither of us set the record straight. Maybe we didn’t know ourselves. But the fact that Kevin and I had been standing there watching as Lucy nearly drowned bewildered my parents.
It’s just not like you, Dad told me. Why didn’t you come to get us? Was it Kevin? Did he tell you not to?
Those days after Lucy almost drowned felt like they came at me from the wrong end of a telescope: I’d lift my hands to find them too distant, not quite my own; sentences came out sluggish and wrong-ordered; and a flat-cold, frozen lake stayed inside me. I’d look at Kevin, and at dinnertime with my eyes on my plate, I’d feel him looking at me. But we’d never catch each other’s eye.
We see him off at the bus stop, Ben and I. Ben earnestly tells Kevin that it’s been a pleasure meeting him, an absolute pleasure, and he hopes Kevin will come to stay again. I can tell he still feels bad about the way his mum misconstrued the whole thing. I’m mad at him, even if Kevin’s not.
Kevin just nods. He buys a pie and a bottle of water as we wait. When the bus comes, he pauses in front of me, motionless, waiting. I look up. He’s watching me closely, reading my face. There’s something in his expression—resigned, almost serene—that cracks the ice inside me.
He leaves without a word, vanishing through the dark-tinted bus door.
Are you alright? Ben says to me. Hey, you’re crying!
Am not, I say over. Although at that moment, I’m almost mad enough to push Ben off the footpath.
It’s a week later that I steal the Wallaces’ mower. It’s just sitting there, tantalising, and I realise that I’ve been waiting all my life for the opportunity to nick it. I drive through the long grass, churning it up behind me like green confetti.
I wonder if that teenager who crashed in the pine forest saw anything other than horrible darkness as his wheels left the asphalt. I sort of try to replicate it when I drive the lawnmower down the beach and into the sea, but it’s hard to get the feeling when you know there’s no real danger. Still, underwater it’s just like Lucy said; darkness pressing in on all sides. I swim to shore and watch white bubbles of exhaust roil above the submerged mower.
Mum and Dad have no idea how to punish me, because normally they’d make me mow the paddock behind our house, which they can’t do now. After I’ve apologised to the Wallaces, they make me go into the basement with the bucket and scrubbing brush, and tell me I’m not allowed to leave until all the weird dark stains on the floor are cleaned off.
Mum stands in the doorway as I get down on my knees with the brush. She waits there, silent, as I sud the bristles. I could turn and ask her why she won’t visit Kevin’s mum. It wouldn’t be so hard—just putting words in an order and saying them. I could ask just about anything. She looks tired, worn down, one hand pressed against the wall.
The rasping brush makes a monotonous rhythm, like the sea, like wind in faraway trees. Like the sound as we sat in the car, just the two of us. Me, too numb to think it through, reaching out and touching the place where his damp gold hair curled into ringlets against the back of his neck. Kevin bolting upright, wary and quiet.
His voice, still dampened by cold. When we went to church, I heard my mother’s voice when I saw the angel.
When I didn’t reply, he edged a little closer.
That’s what frightens me, he said. I can’t remember what she sounds like. Even when we’re in the same room and she’s not speaking, I’ll suddenly forget her voice. But I heard it then.
We fell silent. I understood, without wanting to think it through, that whatever was mine was now his. The car rocked a little, touched by the edge of the storm, and in that endless forever-pull of wind and water, I felt my soul slip away, like the sea drawing back to leave the shoreline sparkling, hissing bright.