I don’t want to undress. I know Thea would laugh at my selfconsciousness, but I can’t help thinking of my post-pregnancy body, my blue-veined milky breasts, and the stretch marks on my still-soft belly. It would be different if Fatima were swimming too, but she’s not – it will be me and Thea and Kate, both of them as slim and lithe as seventeen years ago. But I know I won’t get out of it, not without a ribbing from Thea. And besides, there’s part of me that wants to. It’s not just the stickiness of the hair against my neck, and the way my dress is clinging to the perspiration on my back. It’s more than that. We are here, all of us. There’s part of me that wants to relive that.
I take a towel and walk outside into the darkness. I never had the courage to go in first, when we were teenagers. I don’t know why not – some strange superstition, a fear of what might be lurking in the waters. If the others were there, I would be safe. It was always Kate or Thea who led the charge, usually running off the jetty with a shriek to dive-bomb into the centre of the Reach, where the current ran fast. Now, I am too cowardly not to go first.
My dress is soft, stretchy cotton and I peel it off in a single movement and drop it to one side, unhook my bra, and step out of my knickers. Then I draw a breath, and lower myself into the water – quickly, before the others have time to come out and see my soft nakedness.
‘Whoa, Isa’s gone in!’ I hear from inside, as I surface, spluttering with the cold. The night is warm, sweaty even, but the tide is high and the Reach is salt water, straight from the Channel.
Thea strolls out onto the jetty as I tread water, gasping as my skin acclimatises. She is naked, and I see for the first time that her body has changed too, as drastically as mine in some ways. She was always thin, but now she must be close to anorexia, her stomach hollow, her breasts shallow saucers against visible ribs. One thing has not changed though – her complete unselfconsciousness as she saunters to the very edge of the platform, the lamplight casting a tall slim shadow over the waters. Thea has never been ashamed of nakedness.
‘Out of my way, bitches,’ she says, and then she dives, a perfect dive, long and shallow. It’s also suicidally stupid. The Reach is not that deep, and is full of obstructions – pikes in the riverbed, the vestige of old jetties and mooring posts, lobster pots, junk washed downstream by the current, sandbanks that shift and change with the tides and the passing years. She could easily have broken her neck, and on the jetty I see Kate wince with horror, and put her hands to her mouth – but then Thea surfaces, shaking the water off her hair like a dog.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she calls to Kate, who lets out a long slow breath of relief.
‘You idiot,’ she says, something close to anger in her voice. ‘There’s a sandbank in the middle there, you could have killed yourself.’
‘But I didn’t,’ Thea says. She is panting with the cold, her eyes bright. Her arm, as she raises it from the water to beckon to Kate, is rough with goosebumps. ‘Come on, get in the sea, woman.’
Kate hesitates … and for a minute, I think perhaps I know what she is thinking. There is a picture in my mind’s eye … a shallow pit, filling up with water, the sandy sides crumbling away … Then she straightens her spine, an unconscious defiance in every bone.
‘All right.’ She peels off her vest top, steps out of her jeans, and turns to unhook her bra and then, last, before she enters the water, she picks up the bottle of wine she has brought out onto the jetty and takes a long, gulping draught. There is something about the tilt of her head and the movement of her throat that is unbearably young and vulnerable, and just for a moment the years slip away and she is the same Kate, sitting out on the fire escape at Salten House, throwing back her head to drain the whiskey bottle.
Then she lets the bottle drop on top of her pile of clothes, squares herself for the plunge, and I feel the ripples as she hits the water, feet away from me, and sinks beneath the moon-dappled surface.
I wait, expecting her to come up somewhere close … but she doesn’t. There are no bubbles, and it’s impossible to see where she is, the moonlight reflecting off the water makes it hard to see anything beneath.
‘Kate?’ I say, treading water, feeling my anxiety rise as the seconds tick past and there is still no sign of her. And then, ‘Thea, where the hell’s Kate?’
And then I feel something catch on my ankle, a cold, strong grip that jerks me down, deep, deep into the Reach. I catch a breath before I go under, but I am deep below before I can scream, grappling the thing that is pulling me down.
Just as suddenly, it lets go, and I surface, gasping and raking salt water out of my eyes, to find Kate’s grinning face next to mine, her arms holding me up.
‘You bitch!’ I gasp, not sure if I want to hug her or drown her. ‘You could have warned me!’
‘That would have spoiled the point of it,’ Kate says, panting. Her eyes are bright, and laughing.
Thea is far out in the centre of the Reach where the current is strongest and the water is deep, floating on her back in the sweep of the turning tide, swimming to keep herself in one place.
‘Come out,’ she calls. ‘It’s so beautiful.’
With Fatima watching from the jetty, Kate and I swim out to where Thea floats, suspended in reflected starlight, and we turn on our backs, and I feel their hands link with mine, and float, a constellation of bodies, pale in the moonlight, limbs tangled, fingers clutching and bumping and losing hold, and then clutching again.
‘Come on, Fati,’ Thea calls. ‘It’s gorgeous out here.’
And it is. Now the shock of the cold has worn off, it’s surprisingly warm, and the moon above is almost full. When I dive beneath the surface I can see it, glinting, refracted into a thousand shards that pierce the milky, muddy waters of the Reach.
When I surface, I see that Fatima has moved closer to the side of the jetty, and is sitting right at the edge, trailing her fingers in the sea, almost wistfully.
‘It’s not the same without you,’ Kate pleads. ‘Come on … you know you want to …’
Fatima shakes her head and stands, I assume to go inside. But I’m wrong. As I watch, treading water, she takes a breath, and then she leaps – clothes and all, her scarves fluttering like a bird’s wing in the night air, and she hits the surface with a smack.
‘No way!’ Thea crows. ‘She did it!’
And we are scything our way through the water towards her, laughing and shivering with a kind of hysteria, and Fatima is laughing too, wringing out her scarves, and hugging us to keep afloat as the water drags on her clothes.
We are together again.
And for that brief instant in time, it’s all that matters.
IT IS LATE. We have dragged ourselves from the water, laughing and cursing, scraping our shins on the splintered rotten wood, and we have towelled our hair and dried our goosebumped skin. Fatima has changed out of her wet clothes, shaking her head at her own stupidity, and now we are lying sleepily on Kate’s threadbare sofa in our pyjamas and dressing gowns, a tangle of weary limbs and soft worn throws, gossiping, reminiscing, telling the old stories – do you remember …