Shallow Breath

15

Jackson




‘There’s a couple asking about diving – can you take ’em?’

Charlie is standing at Jackson’s door, hands on hips, his baggy top already lined with a V of sweat despite the early hour. The craggy line of his brow is furrowed even more than usual as he waits for an answer, squinting into the early morning sun.

There is no ‘How was your trip?’. Jackson wonders whether Charlie even remembers he’s been gone, except the grim line of his father’s mouth betrays him.

‘Not today, Dad,’ he says. ‘I need time to get things organised. But tomorrow I could – if they’re still around.’

‘Right-o,’ says his father, ‘I’ll let them know.’ And he marches back down the path.

Jackson sits down on his bed and wearily rubs his face. His flight had landed at two that morning, and it has taken nearly three days of flying and airport layovers to get home. In Galapagos, every moment of his day on the boat had been timetabled by someone else, and he’d rather enjoyed that. Now he is overwhelmed by the empty weeks ahead of him, and the pressure to fill them. He tries not to look too far ahead, just thinks about this morning. Should he contact Kate, or go and see Desi, or get the bloody diving equipment from a shop that’s a 45-minute drive away? Perhaps he should forget them all and get some more sleep – but he doesn’t want to spend days fighting jetlag.

He rolls his shoulders, trying to loosen them, and decides that an early swim must come first. He throws his case onto the bed and grabs from it a musky-smelling towel, which will have to do. Flinging it over his shoulder, he makes his way through the campground, listening to a crow cawing indolence to the sunrise. He passes Maya’s door, and wonders if she is awake, whether she might want to come. He could find out more about Desi, see if they have caught up yet, but he doesn’t want to wake Maya this early.

He strolls over the dunes towards the ocean. He loves this time of morning, everything fresh, the beach an unblemished stretch of sand, as though the sea has neatly remade its bed as it retreated. The water is beautifully calm, so he floats on his back for a while, hardly moving, staring at the sky, thinking about Kate, and everything she hasn’t told him.

A few days ago he had never heard of White Wave. But that’s who Ian said Kate worked for – at least, she had when he’d met her a few years ago in Thailand. There was a chance he might have his facts mixed up, but Jackson didn’t think so. His memory had been so specific. ‘It was 2006,’ he’d told Jackson that night on the boat, sitting down next to him, still absorbed by the picture, shaking his head. ‘I was on a trip to the Similan Islands off the coast of Thailand, surveying the whale sharks and the reef there, seeing what state things were in, a year after the tsunami. Kate was working out of the same dive shop in Phuket. She was part of a group doing a series of clean-up dives to try to restore some of the damaged reef. I’d never heard of the group before, but I was full of admiration – they were all tourists or travellers, paying their own way, simply trying to help out. The stuff they were getting from the bottom, it was amazing: statues, beach umbrellas, televisions, you name it. Kate was leading the group.

‘When I came home, I always recommended White Wave to people – I’ve been on the website quite a bit, and seen her name mentioned there. The last time was on their home page, when they announced the deaths of Kate and four others in the Japanese tsunami. I was sure that’s what I read, but perhaps it just said they were missing. I don’t know what they were doing there, but I was upset to hear it. It was absolutely tragic after all she’d done. Life has a way of being completely f*cking ironic, hey?’ Ian had added, rubbing his injured leg.

He had wanted to ask Ian to find out more, but knew how strange that would look. Why couldn’t he ask her himself? So on the journey home, Jackson had spent every spare moment on the internet, hunting down all the scraps of detail he could uncover about White Wave.

He has read their blurb so many times he knows it off by heart.

An environmental charity, White Wave was founded in response to the Asian tsunami of 2004, dedicated to community and environmental restoration projects. Run and staffed entirely by volunteers, our projects are hands-on, ambitious, and locally sustainable.

For moments as he researched, Jackson had almost forgotten about Kate, finding himself wanting to join in with these skilled people making a small but meaningful difference to other parts of the world.

But absolutely nowhere on the website, or on any other site, has he found mention of Kate. Not even searching through their site history. The notification that Ian had seen has disappeared.

Back in his caravan after his swim, Jackson opens the photo of Kate again and stares at it. If Ian is right, and Kate has told him absolutely nothing of this, it raises a few uncomfortable questions. How close had they been, really, if she had chosen to hold back huge chunks of her life? How much could you understand someone in a few weeks? Jackson doesn’t like knowing so little about a woman who is on his mind so much. He tries to console himself, thinks about all the parts of his life that he hasn’t revealed to Kate yet. Hell, he hadn’t even told her that Desi was in prison, only that she would be home very soon.

Could Ian have got it wrong? But it matches so much of what Jackson does know about Kate. Her passion for diving and her obvious skill in the water. The stories she had told him about her travels, where she always knew an incredible amount about the locals she’d encountered.

So why hadn’t she told him about White Wave, when it was such a fantastic project? He thinks about the footage of the Japanese tsunami – the great black tide that carried boats and buildings far inland, the small specks of cars and people running for their lives ahead of it. The horror as the water chased down all in its path, and swallowed them up. Had she really been there? How had she got through unscathed? Wouldn’t she still be traumatised?

He goes to his inbox, hoping there will be word from her. But all he finds is a stack of emails from Ian, thanking him for his help and enthusing about the trip. ‘May be other possibilities for you soon,’ he has written. ‘Come in for a chat when you have time.’ And he has added photos, lots of them. There is one of all the crew and researchers together. And there’s another he’s received from Sebastian, in which Jackson is tagging his very first whale shark. He stares hard at the image. This is the life he wants – on and under the water, working with like-minded people and learning more about the creature that fascinates him. Where do his feelings for Kate fit in with that?

He thinks about what Ian has in mind for him, and how difficult it will be to go on research trips like the Galapagos one if he has ties back home. He thinks about Desi and Maya. He can still remember how joyous Desi had been with Connor in Monkey Mia, and how impassive her expression was each time she served him at the petrol station. He still has his dreams; he doesn’t want to settle for less. If Ian is offering something, he has to grab it with both hands.

Perhaps he has built up his feelings for Kate into something far bigger than they actually are. But her absence will not bring any resolution to his worries. He needs to be with her again, and then he will know for sure whether any of his concerns are real.

He opens a fresh email, adds in Kate’s address, and switches to capitals for the subject line. ‘HONEY I’M HOME! WHEN ARE YOU COMING TO VISIT?’ he writes, then adds a smiley face to try to lighten the pressure of the question. Then deletes it. Adds it again, and taps send.

He leans back, crossing his legs and putting his arms behind his head, staring into space, wondering how long he will have to wait for an answer.