It’s then that she feels it, a tug against her ankles. Her stomach knots when she realises what’s happening to Damon.
Of the eight months she spent backpacking in Australia after completing her A levels, five were spent at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, working as a lifesaver. She recalls being shown a documentary as she trained for her Bronze Medallion. Rip currents are narrow channels of water that don’t typically drag people beneath the surface, but can pull them away from their intended path without warning. The narrator of the video explained that a person’s reaction is more likely to kill them than the current itself.
Melissa takes one more frantic look around her, and when she can’t locate him, she takes a deep breath and dives.
Everything under the water is grey, silty and murky, making it almost impossible to see her own hands in front of her face, let alone hope to locate Damon. When her air runs out, she rises to thesurface, surveying her surroundings again and continuing to shout his name as loud as her constricted throat will allow.
Nothing.
She takes in another breath, and this time when she submerges, the strength of the current intensifies. Melissa doesn’t know for how long it carries her, but eventually she reaches beyond the zone of breaking waves. Another sharp intake of air and she dives again. The water is less cloudy here, but only moderately so, and she wishes she was wearing her swimming goggles because then she might see further and without having to keep squeezing her eyes shut. She kicks with her legs and moves her arms in front of her, mimicking the technique police divers use in fingertip searches of murky rivers. And all the time, she is acutely aware that the longer she takes to find Damon, the lower his odds of survival are becoming.
When the air runs out and the burn in her lungs threatens to set her chest ablaze, she rises, sucks in more air, and dives again and again and again until she is utterly exhausted. The warmth of her tears as they streak down her face is at odds with the water’s sharpness. She is fast reaching the point where she might have to consider defeat when, under the surface, she spots colours close by. Orange and white. The colours of Damon’s shorts.
She swims towards him, fumbles around until she can grab hold of his arms, then pulls him up to the surface with her. He’s unconscious. She cannot hear if he is breathing over the sound of the waves. She turns him on to his back, resting his head against her chest to keep it above water, and kicks hard to get them both back to shore. She thanks God he has a slight frame because it’s taking every ounce of her depleted strength to keep them moving.
At last, through sheer, desperate stubbornness, she eventually feels the shingle under her feet. She clambers out from under himand begins dragging him by his arms up the beach, away from the water.
‘Please be alive, please be alive,’ she whispers as she settles him on to his back and flips to trained paramedic mode, searching for vital signs. There’s no air coming from his mouth or nose, no pulse emitting from his wrists or neck.
His heartbeat is absent.
Damon is dead.
Chapter 4
Melissa
‘Ensure airways are open and seal their nose with your fingers,’ Melissa begins, reciting aloud her lifesaving training. Then she performs two initial rescue breaths. She tries her hardest to avoid cracking his ribs as she begins compressions. She counts to thirty before giving him two more mouth breaths. It triggers an unexpected memory of the first time they kissed. They were fifteen and in an empty kids’ playpark as night fell. They were drunk on the bottles of Smirnoff Ice they’d stolen from under her older brother’s bed, and it just kind of happened.
They have shared so many moments over the fifteen years they’ve known each other: their journey is not supposed to conclude on this beach. Not like this. It cannot be her fault he is dead.
Regrets flow thick and fast, like a swollen river bursting through a dam and swallowing everything in its path. If only she hadn’t agreed to these stupid challenges. Damon often comes up with ridiculous suggestions after a few drinks. Matching tattoos, cutting each other’s hair blindfolded, ziplining, Interrailing, learning how to play the ukelele, hiking across the Pennines. She’s shot so many of them down in flames. But every now and again she humours himbecause she knows why he wants to pursue them. There are voids in his life. And guilt compels her to help fill them.
‘Can I help?’ a concerned voice from behind them asks. Melissa turns to find a frowning middle-aged man walking a yappy dog without a lead.
‘Call an ambulance,’ she shouts, then sets to a second round of compressions. The man removes a phone from a tote bag and makes the call.
Statistics from her paramedic training come rushing back. Of how the human brain can survive for four minutes without oxygen, but after that, the chance of permanent damage rises. Time is against her as she begins a third round of compressions.
Random images from their shared history begin to flash like torchlights. Of their honeymoon in Madrid; of climbing over ten-foot-high fences to enter a music festival without paying; of the star he paid to name after her beloved cat Freddie, who was hit by a car; of him joining her for two months of her Australian travels. And of their wedding day, when she promised until death do us part. She isn’t ready to become the sole guardian of these memories.
Suddenly, a fountain of saltwater jets from Damon’s mouth.
Her prayers have been answered.
Melissa pushes him on to his side where more follows, dribbling down his cheek as he gasps for breath. She rubs his back and reminds him he is safe, and she is here with him. His body shivers, and his teeth chatter so hard she is scared they might chip.
‘Pass me those towels and give me your coat please,’ she tells the man with the dog, and together they drape them over Damon. He is as white as a ghost and she holds on to him for dear life, irrationally fearing that if she lets go, he might float back out to sea, never to be seen again.
‘What about you, love?’ the man asks, and it’s only now that Melissa realises how badly she’s trembling. A combination of coldand shock. Goosebumps march across her flesh but it’s Damon’s well-being that matters. This isn’t something new; it’s been this way for years.
Now a woman appears and covers Melissa with her own thick suede coat. Melissa tries to thank her but can’t get the words out. She doesn’t know how much time passes before she hears the faint sound of an approaching ambulance siren. It brings about a Pavlovian response in her and she leaps to her feet, scrambling into her clothes. She is about to begin dressing Damon when he speaks for the first time.
‘Who was he?’ His rasp is barely audible.
‘Who?’
‘The boy.’
