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John, eyes closed, head down, heard them arriving back on the beach before he saw them. Noah was chatting away at the top of his voice, thrilled about something, so John sneaked a look, intrigued. Noah was pulling an inflatable dinghy behind him, bouncing it along the sand by a rope. He’d been asking his mother for days for a blow-up toy, nagging, and this, their last day on the beach, was the day she chose to indulge him. Any inflatable toy would have done, but she chose the yellow-and-red dinghy, using her charm to persuade the man in the shop to empty his lungs and blow it up. She didn’t have the puff, she’d smiled. She’d used up so much of her ‘puff’ the night before.

The dinghy was a gift for Charlotte as much as Noah. It would distract her son, she hoped, keep him entertained so she could relax with her book, with her thoughts. Noah wasn’t very good at amusing himself, but this red-and-yellow plastic boat seemed to do the trick. For the first time in the holiday he seemed happy in his own company, lost in his own little world. He sat in it on the sand, chatting to himself, and his mother stretched out on her front and turned her head to face her lover. John mirrored her, turning his head to her, their eyes locking. There were people between them, but they didn’t notice, so absorbed were they in studying each other. She devoured him and he her. Her red bikini, barely covering the parts of her body he had come to know so well. He could visualize every part without even trying. It was as if she lay there naked. Her breasts, her buttocks, her pubic bone. He imagined her smell too, from where he lay, and his erection pressed into the sand.

He was desperate to touch her, desperate to slide under her and into her. And she knew that, she could see it on his face, in his eyes, and she turned on her side, her breasts moving inside her bikini, pushing against her arm as she leaned on it, and she parted her lips and smiled. Then she reached for her book and pretended to read, when really she was posing for him, her lover. Teasing him.

Her arm must have ached after a while, and she sat up. She was restless, bored. She glanced at her son, but he was happy, he didn’t need her to entertain him for he was captain of his own ship. She looked up and caught the eye of the mother of the family next to her. Her children were older, adolescents. Charlotte had noticed her smiling at Noah and now Charlotte smiled at her.

‘Do you speak English?’ she asked.

The woman shrugged and said, ‘A little.’

Catherine mimed a charade of the woman watching Noah while she went to the loo. The mother of the two adolescents was all too pleased to keep an eye on the sweet little English boy. Catherine was so grateful, she gave the woman her best smile and leaned over to Noah and told him she would only be gone for a moment. She worried he might need to go to the loo too, or make a fuss about her going, but he didn’t. He was as good as gold. He didn’t even watch as she slipped on her sandals, thin-strapped silver, flat, a thong between her elegant toes, and walked to the toilets. John was watching though. He watched her as she walked towards the toilets at the back of the beach, her hips swaying. He wanted to follow, but he had to wait, make himself decent, so he focused on a leathery-skinned woman, topless, buttocks withering from her thong, until his erection subsided.

Charlotte had stopped off at the showers, raising her face into the water and slicking back her hair, as if she was entirely alone and not on a public beach. She was well aware of John watching her. She turned off the shower and walked into the toilets. John followed. No one else was there and he knew where to find Charlotte: in the changing cubicle at the end of the line of toilets. He tapped on the door and she opened up. Straight away he slipped his hand into her bikini bottoms. He knew that she preferred to keep them on, she’d told him she liked to feel their tautness around her. His fingers searched and found the soft, wet, smoothness she had shown him. He lifted her on to the slatted wooden bench and pushed her bikini bottoms to one side, opening her up gently with his fingers, pushing his tongue up and down her, around her, where she had shown him, just the way he knew she liked it. She had taught him so much. She pushed her arms against the sides of the cubicle, stopping herself from falling, and she was so wet that he couldn’t tell what was her and what was his own saliva. The poor boy was drunk with love. Out of his mind with it. Even when they heard someone come in, he couldn’t stop, and she wouldn’t have stopped him anyway. They heard a bolt slam, they heard a gush of someone else’s pee and she pulled down his trunks and pushed herself on to him, wrapping her legs around him and kissing his mouth, taking what had been hers from his mouth into her own and swallowing it back into herself. And he clung to her, and held her, stronger than her and yet not. And when it was over she smiled and took his face in her hands as if he was a little boy. She kissed him on his lips, on his neck and finally on his forehead.
A
punctuation mark so that he would know that that was all for now.

They waited for the intruder to leave and then Charlotte opened the door and looked out. She went first, he followed a few moments later. She showered again but John kept walking, passing his towel and running straight into the sea, plunging down into a wave.

Little Noah was still in his boat, chatting away to himself. Charlotte had been longer than she thought. The mother had packed up their things, she and her family needed to go. She waved goodbye to Noah and Charlotte thanked her, stroking her son’s head as she did so. She watched, on guard again, as he pulled his dinghy closer to the sea. He wasn’t in the water, he was on the sand. He was happy. She hugged her knees and looked at him, smiling at his contentment. She was exhausted and lay down. If she turned her head a little, she could still see Noah. John returned to his towel, rubbing himself down, looking at Charlotte, but she was facing the other way, so he lay on his back and closed his eyes too. He dozed, thinking about the night ahead, a smile on his face as he imagined what they would do to each other.

When he woke, the wind had got up and he put on his T-shirt. Charlotte was asleep. It was then that John noticed Noah. He was still in the boat, but floating now in the shallows, happy being bounced around by the sea. In, out, in, out. Charlotte woke and turned to see what John was looking at. Perhaps she was surprised that something, other than her, had caught his attention. In, out, in, out went the dinghy, and each time the out was a little further and the in a little less. The sea had grown rough and there was a strong undercurrent dragging on the dinghy, pulling it out, a space of choppy water growing between Noah and the shore, where other people swam and played. None of them noticed the little English boy drifting out to sea.

John stood up and looked over to Charlotte. She too was on her feet, but she didn’t move. Her feet stayed planted on her towel. She turned to John, fear on her face, then back to Noah. Still she didn’t move. She called out to Noah, and then she called out to John. ‘Help,’ she cried. ‘Help me.’ And John would do anything for her. He ran immediately to the water’s edge, and only then did she move. John led the way and she followed. She called to Noah again and he looked up and waved at her, not a bit frightened. And still no one did anything, and there were no lifeguards on the beach.

John could see that Noah’s boat was heading out in the wrong direction. Heading out to sea. Soon he would be a speck in the distance. He ran, kicking sand into sunbathers and dived into the sea. He swam out towards Noah. Strong, a strong young man, a strong swimmer. The current pulled at him, but he went with it, letting the sea use its energy to pull him towards the little boy, so he could conserve his for the swim back. It was a strategy. He knew what he was doing, and he focused on his strokes: clean, powerful. And he reached Noah and he saw how frightened the boy was, calling out to his mother, but she wouldn’t have been able to hear him. He must have wondered why she didn’t come and get him. Why she hadn’t swum out for him. He was trying to stand, but he kept falling – the waves licking the sides of the dinghy and spitting into it. The plastic was too slippery and the boat rocked too much. He was in a blind panic. John tried to calm him down. He told him to sit still and hold on tight to the handles on the boat. But the little boy was frozen, staring towards the beach, hoping that his mother would come and get him. John grabbed the rope and made a fist around it, then began the swim back to shore.

He could see a line of people watching and, at the heart of them, Charlotte in her red bikini. He used every muscle in his body, pushed himself harder than he ever had before. Red, glossy, sinews pulling, stretching, blood pumping. The sea had become his enemy, no longer carrying him but pushing him back instead. And the wind had joined forces with it, whipping the waves, bouncing the boat as if trying to tip Noah out. John called to him to hold tight. When he looked back, Noah was rigid, gripping the handles, still staring beyond John, searching for his mother. Perhaps he thought the boat was making its own way to shore.

John’s eyes stung from the salt and his body had gone numb. He had become an automaton, arms and legs propelling him forward. There was no strategy any more. He swam to the rhythm of the blood thumping in his ears. And then two men, two other brave men, broke away from the group and ran, leaping into the sea and swimming towards the young man and boy. One was ahead of the other, a stronger swimmer. He was fast, the sea helping him, sending him towards John and Noah, and he reached them and took the rope from John, pulling the precious cargo towards the beach. No time for niceties, the man turned straight round and swam for shore. John reached out to hold on to the back of the dinghy.

As the man approached the beach, others rushed in to help him, grabbing the boat, taking care of the child. John saw them and he saw that Noah was safe. He saw them on the shore. He was still in the sea – a long way out. He’d lost his grip, but no one had noticed him. He watched as the second rescuer turned back, joining the throng and pulling the little boy to safety. John’s hands were white with cold and streaked with red where he had clung on to the rope. He couldn’t feel his hand. All he could feel were his lungs. They had grown, become out-sized, no longer room for them in his ribcage. He gasped for breath, but instead he took in a mouthful of water. He had wasted precious time, looking at his hand, thinking about his lungs, when he should have been swimming, and now the sea had pushed him further away and he would have to swim every stroke again in order to get to the point where he had released Noah.

He tried, he really tried. He hoped that someone would come for him. That someone would remember he was out there. And he wanted his mother. He wanted his mother to come and carry him out of the water. Like Noah, he yearned for the safety of his mother’s arms. He tried to wave to them on the shore, but his arms had lost their power. He couldn’t wave. He couldn’t swim any more. He pushed down at the sea with his arms, as if he could make it sink and become shallower. He was frightened. They say drowning is one of the better ways to die, but John was scared because he knew no one would come for him. He had spent the last of his strength on her child.

At last he saw a boat. And he thought for a moment that everything would be fine. But when they reached him he had already gone under two or three times. They threw a rope for him but he couldn’t grab it, because he was dead. He was already dead when they reached him. They pulled him in and laid him out in the boat. Someone tried the kiss of life, put their mouth over his. Someone pumped his chest. They drove the boat back to the beach and carried the young man’s body, three of them, on to the beach and they kissed him again. Again they tried to revive him. They pumped at his chest, but he had gone.

And at the other end of the beach a small crowd gathered around the little boy and his mother. They were protecting Noah from seeing that the man who had saved him was lying dead, further down the beach. And Charlotte was on her knees, wrapping a towel around her son, shielding him from the sight of her dead lover.

30

Summer 2013

A duck-egg blue Fiat 500 zips across the square. Robert watches it through the window. Catherine’s favourite colour. He had thought about buying one for her birthday. He is in the meeting he had turned up late for, even though he had pushed it back an hour. He’d had to shower, shave, change his suit. He always keeps a spare in the office, but it was the suit he had in case he had to go to a function – it was too smart for a day in the office and he’d seen the surprise on their faces, wondering what he was up to later. He is glad to be with them, to have people around him, talking at him. He doesn’t have to perform, or speak yet, simply observe, and he can just about manage that. He is grateful for their voices. It is their confidence in him that stops him from falling. Each time he begins to wilt, another word punches through the air and pushes him upright again.

It was only a book. It is only a book. He knows it’s just a version of events written by someone who clearly hates her, but can he blame them? And it is a version with enough truth in it for Catherine to have wished for its disappearance. At the very least, she fucked a stranger who then died saving their son’s life. It is not her, and yet it is. There is enough of his wife in there for him to recognize. And it has shown him things he had failed to see before. She is a woman who has always got her own way, always done as she pleased.

He remembers the first time he saw her. She’d asked him to meet her for a drink, said she wanted to talk to him off the record. She was young, it was her first job as a journalist. He shouldn’t really have gone, he could have lost his job, but she was so persuasive on the phone – she’d made him feel it was the right thing to do. He remembers she was late – even though he was the one doing her a favour – yet she managed to turn it into something charming. He remembers a young, striking blonde walking into the pub, and how he’d hoped it was her. She’d looked round, caught him watching her, and she’d smiled, quite shy. He’d smiled in return and got to his feet. She paid for the drinks, insisted on it, and he gave her everything she asked for, answered all her questions. Off the record, of course, but she had used what he told her. She managed to keep him out of it, but still she didn’t hold anything back. She was a good journalist. All the same, he could have lost his job. Even at that first meeting he was ready to do anything for her. She knew what she wanted and how to get it. Fuck the consequences.