After a moment he nodded. “Yes, I can.” The words were reassuring but not the way he kept looking around him.
Yesterday, the tour had taken them on a boat journey along this part of the coast; the cliffs went on for miles in both directions. Unless he was a marathon swimmer, he wasn’t going to be able to find anywhere to climb. Besides, the water was too cold this early in spring.
What could she do?
“Can you do something for me?” He looked up at her.
“Yes, of course,” she answered, pleased there was some way she could help him.
“On the floor behind you there is a rucksack, my camera bag. Can you find it?”
She looked behind her. Indeed, it was by the entrance where he must have dropped it when he decided to climb down.
She rushed back to the window, climbed up on the stone.
“Yes, here it is.” She held it up to show him.
“Okay, keep it with you. Can you take down this number please?” He scrolled through his own phone and read out a number.
She keyed it into her own phone.
“Keep the bag with you,” he said, shoving his phone back in his pocket and hanging the camera by its strap around his neck. “I’m going to try swimming, and I’ll come and find you at our hotel.”
“Okay.”
So, he was part of the tour.
“If I don’t come for you by evening,” he went on, “can you call the number I gave you?” He paused, looked around at the rising sea.
“Ask for Eve. Tell her where you met me and that…” He swallowed. “Tell her I enjoyed this trip so much and have no regrets, I loved every minute. And tell her…” Again, he paused. “Tell her to sell the stuff in the bag, it’s worth a lot. Tell her I said not to hold on to any of it, even the bag itself should fetch a good price. And…” Finally, with a last look at the sea now around his feet, “Tell her, I love her. Very much. She and the boys.”
No!
No. He can’t be saying goodbye.
“You’ll make it. Just keep swimming. I’ll call from outside and alert the Coast Guard.”
Even as she said this, the white-tipped waves were crashing against the cliff further away from the little inlet around the tower. The sea was too rough, and the water would be too cold. Would a helicopter even be able to see a man in blue in the middle of the sea?
He was too young to die.
She looked again around her, if only she had something like a rope. If only she had been Rapunzel with hair was long enough to reach him.
But if not hair, maybe cloth.
“Wait,” she called down.
Her scarf was cotton and very long; it should hold. She unwrapped it and dangled it out the window, it barely reached a third of the way down. It needed something else to make it longer.
Her jumper had long sleeves and her skirt was wide and long. Thanks to her love of tie-dying, both were cotton.
After a moment’s hesitation, she pulled both off. Standing in bra and pants, she hoped no one was going to walk in on her. Then she amended this to hoping someonewouldcome, hopefully someone with a rope or even longer arms.
She tied one end of the skirt to the scarf and the other to the sleeve of her jumper then dangled them out of the window. It reached to just above him. He would need to rise on tiptoe to reach it.
“Thank you,” he called, deep relief in his voice. “Wrap your end twice around the bar, otherwise I’ll end up pulling it right out of your hand.” He pointed to the safety rail he had climbed over earlier.
She wrapped the edge of the scarf twice around the metal bar and grabbed with both hands. It made the whole thing a bit shorter. He would have to jump up to catch the end.
