The Convent (27 page)

In no time there were a couple of circles of inebriated dancers holding onto each other, laughing and screaming, falling over, weaving in and out and around the furniture. I saw Det and then Cassie and Stephano across the room from me and was really glad to see that Det seemed to be having a good time. I couldn't see Fluke, but assumed that he was somewhere in the mix. When it finished I was sweating and dry-mouthed. After getting more water I started for the bathroom. Det intercepted me at the door.

‘A few of us are going down to the beach,' she said excitedly, ‘want to come?'

‘But how would we get down there?' I said, not liking the idea. ‘This place is up high.'

‘There's a track down to the beach,' Det said. ‘I've checked it out.'

‘It will be freezing, Det.'

‘So? We've got coats.'

The reckless glint in her eye alarmed me. Det had two ways of getting over heartache. She either closed herself up in a room for weeks at a time and never went anywhere, or she went
wild.
Seeing as it was me who had talked her into coming to the party, I figured that I should keep an eye on her.

‘Okay,' I agreed.

‘So get your coat. We'll wait for you outside.'

‘I'll just find Fluke and see if he wants to come.'

‘Fluke's in the kitchen,' Nick said on his way into the toilet.

‘You coming, Nicko?'

‘No way.' He grinned at me.‘I'm not mad.'

They were the only two people in the kitchen. Fluke and this amazing-looking, sharp-faced girl, with very long, straight black hair and dark skin. They were holed up in a corner away from the buckets of ice and drinks, having some kind of deep conversation. She was covered in silver, rings on every finger, chains around her neck, silver combs keeping her hair back from her face. She was older than him, definitely, probably in her late twenties, and dressed in tight shimmering green pants and a very small, cropped green leather jacket with studs all over it. More than anything she reminded me of a praying mantis, all thin and spindly and green, but beautiful too in an oddly elegant way.

The way they were standing together, not actually touching but so very close, was disconcerting. He was leaning against the wall, bending over her and she was looking up into his face, her eyes glowing and animated. They were intent on each other in a way that didn't include anyone else. A spurt of jealousy rushed through me as I stood watching from the doorway.
What is going on here?

She saw me first. Her eyes left his face and narrowed.
What do you
want?
As though I had no right to be standing where I was. When Fluke turned around I swear it took him a few moments to place me. It was as though my sudden appearance had flummoxed him.

‘Oh hi,' he said, as though suddenly remembering. He came over, put his arm around me and dragged me over to her. ‘Come meet an old friend.'

‘Is that what I am?' The girl's laugh was thick with suggestion and she barely looked at me as I mumbled hello.

Luke's face coloured with embarrassment. ‘Ada, this is Peach.'

‘
Peach
,' she mocked, ‘as in the
fruit
?'

I nodded. ‘Det and I are going down to the beach,' I said to Fluke. ‘Do you want to come?'

Fluke didn't notice, or pretended not to notice, my consternation. ‘Oh sure. Yeah. Let's go.' He turned to the girl and smiled. ‘How about you, Ada?'

‘No way!' She gave me a withering look. ‘It will be freezing.'

There was a moment or two of awkward silence and I watched in shock as her eyes flitted flirtatiously over him. She placed one of her ringed hands briefly on his arm in a mocking gesture of supplication.

‘Don't go yet,' she whispered. ‘We've only just found each other again.'

‘Listen,' Fluke said to me quietly, as though I was his kid sister or something. ‘I'll be down in a little while, okay?'

‘Sure,' I said stiffly, and turned my back, almost in tears. I went and found my coat, pulled my proper boots from my bag and joined Det and Walt and two others I didn't know who were waiting for me.

Det led us over to the track at the end of the garden. Thankfully Walt had thought to bring a torch, because halfway down the very steep track got really rough. Any one of us might have taken a tumble and broken our neck. Det was going faster than everyone else, screaming out instructions about tree roots and slippery bits, completely wired on the danger of what we were doing. I could hear it in her voice and I wanted to yell out for her to calm down. But I was too churned up by the scene in the kitchen.

Miraculously, the five of us got down to the beach in one piece. Once we hit the sand we all began to run to keep warm, because the wind was really sharp.

‘Isn't this fantastic?' Det yelled as she passed by.

‘Yeah,' I screamed into the wind, running after her. I told myself that Fluke would be down to join us any minute. He'd explain the scene in the kitchen and we'd laugh together about what had just happened.

But he didn't come. And after about twenty minutes every minute that passed had me feeling worse. I was running about, screaming into the wind, acting drunk, but really it was just a show. I suppose I still might have been a little drunk, but not so it mattered. I kept turning to scan the cliff face, my eyes raking up and down the beach trying to discern a lone figure making his way towards us. Surely any moment he'd be there. I knew the rough track down wouldn't stop him.
So where was he?

The five of us linked arms and walked along the beach.
Who
was that girl? What the hell was going on between them? Why had they
been standing like that? Why hadn't he chosen to come with
me
?
It was as though the ground was giving way beneath me and I was clutching for anything to help me keep my balance.
Didn't he tell
me just a couple of hours ago that …
Well, what did he say really? Maybe I imagined that too.
Maybe I've read him wrong all along …
maybe he was …

‘Listen, I want to go back,' I said to the others.

‘Just a bit longer.' Next to me Det threw her head back to look at the star-filled dome above us. ‘This is
so so so
great.'

‘No, Det.'

‘Come on, Peach! It's magic.'

And it was. Some part of me could see that. Just the five of us on the lonely windswept beach, the stars flickering above, the dragging sound of the waves on one side of us and the rugged cliff face on the other. The moon. The brilliant round moon beaming white light down on us. I thought of Stella and the way she'd warned me off this night.
Oh Stella … I wish you were here.
I let myself be dragged along until Walter decided that he'd definitely had enough. The two others also wanted to go back, but something had got into Det. Or something that was always there had reared up and come to life. Just as we were heading back up the sand towards the track she stopped.

‘Hang on,' she said.

We all turned around. ‘What?'

‘I've got an idea.'

A pause. The four of us looked at her.

‘Let's go
in
!' she shouted.

‘What?' Walt shouted into the wind.

‘A swim,' she screamed.

My heart sank. She had to be off her head. It was either booze or grief or something else I didn't know about. ‘Listen, Det, no!' I yelled.

‘Oh, Peach!' She ran towards me, laughing, and threw both arms around me and lifted me in the air. ‘Come on, let's do it. See if we're strong enough.'

‘Det, it's freezing!'

But she was already taking off her coat.

‘Come on!' she laughed. ‘We're young and we're tough! We can do anything.'

Walt sighed and shook his head. So did the other two guys. ‘Come on, Det, please. The cold will kill you.'

But Det already had her boots off. She unzipped her jeans and threw off her shirt and underclothes. Completely naked, her thin white limbs so childlike and utterly vulnerable in the moonlight, she ran into the waves, shouting and shrieking.

‘Det,' I yelled after her, ‘you can't!'

‘Yes, I can,' she shouted. ‘Watch me.'

And so we stood and watched her. Me and Walter and the other two guys on the sand, watching Det plunge naked into the icy cold of the Southern Ocean at midnight in July.

‘Oh God!' she screamed again and again. ‘I'm going to die. I swear it! I'm going to die!'

The three guys laughed and shook their heads in grudging admiration at her courage.

‘Christ, she is nuts,' Walter groaned. ‘You'd have to be totally and utterly nuts to do that.'

‘I reckon!'

There was nothing for me to add to any of that.
She is nuts
. I watched her small head bobbing against the waves. She wasn't hanging about in the shallows. She was actually swimming out.

‘Det,' I yelled into the wind, ‘enough!'

‘How long will she stay in for?' Walt asked me.

‘How would I know?' I snapped.

‘I think she's, like, swimming out,' one of the other guys murmured. ‘Jeez, I hope she'll be able to get back.'

‘Det,' I screamed, ‘don't go too far.'

But she was too far out to hear me. I watched her head bobbing along and her white arms chopping through the water as if she had a destination in mind. And I thought of sharks and stingers and the terrors of the deep and waited for her to turn around. Then she disappeared.

At least, I couldn't see her anymore. I stood there on the edge of the water peering into the blackness for some sign but there was none. When I turned around the three guys were standing with arms crossed against their chests, edging away, mumbling again about wanting to get back to the party.

‘You can't go now,' I yelled sharply.

‘She'll be all right,' Walt said defensively.

‘But what if she's not?'

The three of them looked at each other uncomfortably.

‘Well, what do you want us to do?'

‘I don't know!' I was on the point of tears.‘But we can't
leave
her.'

‘Can you see her?'

‘No, I can't.'

‘She'll be okay,' Walter said, as if he knew something that the rest of us didn't. ‘Det has a pretty good radar for danger.'

‘And how long have you known her?' I screamed at him. ‘All of about twenty hours!' I was the only one there who really knew Det. And what I knew was that there was always one part of her racing towards her own destruction.

‘Listen, I'm sick of this,' the short guy said. ‘It's up to her. She decided to go in. I'm not hanging about. I'm going back.' He turned on his heel and started up the sand again.

‘Me too,' the other bloke said and walked off. So it was just Walter and me looking at each other waiting for the other to move or say something.

‘Whatever happens, I'm not going in there,' he said awkwardly, ‘I want to make that clear. I'm not a good swimmer.'

‘That's comforting,' I snapped.
Fucking shit.

‘But I'll go and alert someone if you like?' he added.

We both turned back to the black water.

‘Can you see any sign of her?' I mumbled desperately.

‘No. I'll go back up and raise the alarm then?'

‘Okay.'

It was while I was watching the three of them head back up the track that I felt it coming on, although I didn't immediately recognise it for what it was. It crossed my mind that someone might have dropped a slow-acting something in my drink, or that I was having some kind of heart attack. Anything other than being pulled backwards into no-man's-land. But it was dread filling me.

In my dreams I was always alone, abandoned on a railway platform, or an empty house, a shopping centre with everyone else moving slowly away from me. Mum and Dad and Stella. I call out, wave, scream, but no one hears me.

First Luke, then Det and now those three guys.
What is it about
me?

In my madness – becuase that's what it was, madness – I decided that if Det was going to drown, then so would I. I pulled off my coat, my jeans and jumper and ran down to the water in my underwear. The first icy wave across my feet took my breath away and the next one was even worse.
No. I can't do this
. Yet somehow the dread pushed me forward.
One step at a time,
I told myself when every instinct told me to retreat.
One step at a time.

I did it. I actually made myself go in. Filled with blind terror I plunged under the freezing water, gasping, spluttering and shrieking, and then, like Det, I started swimming straight out. All thoughts of the dangerous creatures hiding under the waves faded. I swam and I swam and as my blood cooled so did the terrible racing panic. But I still couldn't see Det. I looked back to the beach, just able to see the three figures making their way up the track in the moonlight. The first two were almost at the top of the cliff face and I guessed it was Walter about halfway up.
Cowards!
But it didn't matter so much anymore. I'd come back into myself and knew who I was again. Still treading water, I watched them.

Then I saw a figure stumbling out of the water and running along the beach.
Det.
Had to be. A shot of pure elation raced through me, but before I had a chance to savour it properly a wave out of nowhere picked me up and threw me back into the shallows. In the process I lost my pants, scraped my knee badly and took in a great mouthful of water, but I was able to stumble to my feet.

‘Peach, you hero!' Det was screaming as she rushed into the water to help me out. ‘You did it! I knew you would. We both did it! Wasn't it just so fucking
unbelievable
?'

I was numb with cold, half blind, there was water coming out of my nose and my eyes were stinging like crazy.