Her eyes filled with tears. She could blame the wind, but there was no one there to see her. Besides, the tears didn’t flow anymore. She had cried all her tears.
I should tell you this face to face,he had written in that last letter, but I do not possess that kind of bravery…
Ari glanced down to the water again, down to the little cove below her, and what she saw there struck her like a punch to the guts.
A body floated in the water, just drifted there, arms outstretched, face to the sky.
CHAPTERTHREE
Coming home was never going to be easy. Rafael might love this place and everything here, but he had been away for a long time, apart from the odd brief visit. Everything seemed smaller somehow, less impressive. There was something worn and ragged about it.
And then there was Mémé to deal with. His great-aunt was nothing if not predictable, causing chaos with her projects and her obsessions. He’d come back to find plaits of seaweed on door handles, and little linen bags of God knew what hidden in the most unexpected places. Charms and amulets, protection, the magic in which she believed so adamantly.
Mémé was not going to listen to anyone else. The money she was drawing from her accounts wasn’t huge in the grand scheme of things, but there was no paper trail and he didn’t like that. It looked suspicious. She was an elderly woman and he feared that people were taking advantage of her.
She might have listened to his father. With no children of her own, he had been like a son to her rather than a nephew, but Rafael’s father was dead. Thirty years dead. Rafael had only been a child when the sea took him. As the sea always took the men of his line. From the lowliest fishermen to the CEO of a successful multinational.
Mémé could tell you all about it. At length. With examples, photos, a family tree and, if she had ever managed to get her head around the wonders of technology, a PowerPoint presentation. Inevitably, they ended up arguing. But Rafael didn’t suffer such superstition, even when the inevitable seemed to be clawing its way closer to him with each passing year.
As he always had done when he needed to escape, Rafael made his way down to the sea. The little cove below his home had been his safe space as soon as he could walk. The cliffs rose sheer on either side, the rocks a curious mixture of colours: black, pale grey, white, yellow. The sand there was the finest he’d ever encountered. He would make his way down here to swim whenever he got the opportunity, much to his mother’s horror.
‘In the sea, Rafael,’she would say, ‘like some fisherman’s brat. Anything could happen.’
But he never felt in danger here.
The sheltered inlet was once the heart of Sainte Sirène, where the boats had put out and come ashore for generations. Now they used one of the ports in Douarnenez, safer and more practical. Rafael knew every inch of it.
Perhaps understanding that the sea would only take him when he was thirty-five, like the rest of the men in his family, was a safety net. Or at least it had been, until he actually approached that particular birthday.
It was stupid. A superstition. Nothing more. He reminded himself of that constantly.
And yet…and yet…
His father, his grandfather, great-grandfathers aplenty…all the men of his line. Fishermen and farmers, lawyers and soldiers, lords and sailors. All taken by the sea.
He stripped off and left his clothes on the rocks flanking the slipway. No one else came down here, not really. There were barely fifty people living in Sainte Sirène outside of high season. People went to the Baie des Trépassés to surf, or the safe and family-friendly beaches on the southern coast of Cap Sizun to swim. Not here.
Without hesitation, he waded into the whispering ocean braced for the cold. The waves lapped up around him, caressing his skin. Not as chilly as he’d expected – it was the Atlantic Ocean, after all, not the South Pacific or the Caribbean… But this was almost welcoming.
The sand beneath his feet was soft and gentle. He skirted rocks draped in fine green seaweed like mermaid’s hair and waded out into the open water, lifted by each gentle wave.
Rafael laid himself back in the sea water, the salt buoying him up, and closed his eyes, letting the rolling motion take him. Sunlight played on his face and suddenly it seemed that the sea was all around him, rocking him, caressing him. It was like a song, something distant and half remembered, only heard under the water. He sank back further, only part of him in the world of air and sunshine and the rest…the rest somewhere else.
He breathed out, relaxing into the sea’s embrace, feeling it against his skin, feeling each ripple and current, letting it take him and trusting it completely. Tension ebbed out of him like the tide, and he drifted away.
He should invite Elena and Georges here over the holidays. That could be nice. Something to build their relationship on, perhaps. Something to share. It had been like this when he was a child, when he would come down here, when it was his escape instead of…what?
No, the cove was still his escape. But Sainte Sirène was—
A distant shout made him open his eyes, only half heard through the water. And the splashing, like a horse thundering through the surf towards him. A pair of hands grabbed him and he flailed wildly, going under the surface. Salt water filled his mouth and nose, choking him, drowning him, but then his feet found purchase on the sandy seabed and he launched himself up, ready to hit whoever it was who—
A woman, drenched and clearly terrified, stood over him, chest deep in the water, her upper body heaving with exertion and fear. Her eyes were huge, bright blue and wide in alarm. She hurriedly backed away, her hands held high as if to defend herself from a monster. Her wet grey T-shirt was plastered to her slim athletic body.
Rafael spat out the sea water – half the cove, or so it seemed – coughed violently and staggered towards dry land, cursing with what little breath he could still manage. She followed him, torn between trying to help him and not wanting to touch him again.
‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry,’ she said in rapid English. ‘I didn’t mean to…I thought, I just…I’m so sorry…’ Then she seemed to catch herself and switched to French. Not bad French, a little too precise, but practised. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought you were drowning. I thought—’
He coughed again, bent in two, finally clearing the last of the water from his throat. Long wet strands of his black hair hung over his eyes and he looked up at her pale, frantic face. ‘So you decided to drown me a second time just to make sure?’
