Denny bellowed from down below, his voice echoing off the rock. The rest of the crew, who were still in the lagoon, whooped and cheered, too.
Joseph trod water for a moment, his blue shirt clinging to his body – and Lana was certain she could see him smiling. Then he turned and swam calmly back towards the yacht.
‘I’ll be damned,’ Aaron said, shaking his head. He looked at Lana for a moment and said, ‘Did that actually just happen?’
‘It did.’ She grinned.
Without another word Aaron walked to the cliff edge, then dived forward, his chest expanded, arms stretched out. It looked for a moment as though he was suspended in the air, offering himself to the sky. When he landed, he didn’t come up for breath but swam underwater, his dark shape visible below the clear surface as he ploughed hard in the direction of the yacht.
Lana picked up Joseph’s glasses from the cliff edge and gathered her things. Before beginning the climb back down, she stood on the cliff edge watching the rest of the crew swimming towards the yacht, Joseph at their centre. She found herself smiling, pleased for him.
Standing there, she felt a strange longing, as if she were watching the scene, not part of it. Somehow she knew these golden moments couldn’t stretch out endlessly. She yearned to press ‘pause’, to freeze this exact point in her life and hold onto it tightly.
*
Later that evening, the crew sat in the cockpit in the glow of a few candles, the cliff casting a dark shadow in the background. The wind had changed direction and small waves shivered through the bay, making the yacht rock. It was a rare, almost perfect evening, conversation moving fluidly from topic to topic and laughter rippling out over the dark water.
Up at the bow, Joseph was sitting alone again, writing in his notebook by head torch. Lana picked up her beer and moved along the deck towards him. ‘Mind if I join you?’
As he turned, the beam of the head torch swung over her face. She squinted, holding a hand up to her eyes.
‘Of course,’ he said, turning off the torch. He closed the notebook and slipped it away into the breast pocket of his shirt.
‘Impressive dive you made earlier,’ she said, lowering herself down beside him. ‘Where did you learn?’
‘Paris. Years ago I join a diving club. Many nights’ practice on the high board.’
‘Do you do any diving now?’
‘No. Not now.’
They sat in silence, the noise and laughter of the others drifting towards them. Lana was comfortable in the absence of words, having grown used to it in her own home. She felt a strange allegiance to Joseph – perhaps because she sensed his isolation from the rest of the crew and knew what it was to be an outsider, often wondering how lonely her teenage years would have been if she hadn’t met Kitty.
She watched the water, noticing how the tops of the waves glinted silver in the faint light of the moon. After some time she turned to Joseph and said, ‘Do you mind me asking what you’re writing?’
He thought for a moment, and then answered, ‘Poetry.’
‘Poetry about what you see, or what you feel?’
It was his turn to look at her. ‘That is interesting question.’ From the pocket of his shorts he took out a tin of tobacco and some rolling papers. His fingers were long and nimble, practised at evenly packing down the tobacco. ‘I write about what I feel.’
She nodded.
‘I see you with an art pad sometimes, yes?’
‘Yes. Sketching, mostly. Out here there’s so much I want to draw.’
Joseph lit his cigarette and took a long drag. As he exhaled, he asked, ‘You have fun on the boat, then?’
‘A lot. We’re very lucky to be part of this.’
‘It is different, to travel by boat. It is freedom, no?’ He took another drag and then offered her the roll-up. Lana hadn’t smoked regularly since university, but she still had the occasional yearning. ‘Thanks,’ she said, lifting it to her lips and inhaling. Nicotine flooded her head, giving her a pleasing rush.
‘Who did you leave behind at home?’ he asked.
She passed the roll-up back, saying, ‘Just my father.’ She pictured him in his worn green cords and a tired office shirt, sitting in his armchair with the newspaper folded at the crossword. She was surprised to feel a stirring of pity as she thought about the lonely routine of his days, wondering who visited the house now. ‘How about you?’
He laughed, but Lana caught the strange, sad note to it. ‘There is no one.’
‘What about your family?’
‘None.’
‘No family? None at all?’
He gave a quick shake of his head. ‘My mother and father are dead. One year ago.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry. What happened – if you don’t mind me asking?’
In the moonlight, she saw Joseph’s expression darken. ‘They died in a house fire.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said with meaning. She remembered Denny telling her about how they’d found Joseph sleeping rough on a remote Filipino beach. He must’ve been out of his mind with grief. ‘Is that what made you leave France? Come out here?’
He nodded slowly, eyes on the water. ‘I had some money, so I could be anywhere. Sometimes it is better to go, yes?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Sometimes it is.’
*
Lana went to bed at midnight and lay sweltering on the top bunk in just a pair of cotton pants, her skin clammy with suncream and salt. She wished there was enough space between her bunk and the ceiling to sit up fully. The porthole only opened a crack, barely allowing in any breeze, and she could feel sweat beginning to bead between her breasts.
The peaceful sound of the sea sloshing against the keel did nothing to lull her thoughts: they kept circling back to her father. Since joining The Blue her days had been so full that she could go for hours without thinking about him, yet often at night she’d find herself examining memories from her childhood, searching them for the faint cracks where the lies ran through.
Lana pushed her hand through the slim gap in the porthole to see if it was cooler outside. It wasn’t. She sighed.
From the bunk below, Kitty whispered, ‘You still awake?’
‘I think my organs are melting,’ Lana said.
‘You try this heat with sunburn,’ Kitty said, who’d insisted on the cliff top that she was tanned enough not to need suncream.
Lana rolled onto her front and lay with her head hanging over the edge, her hair trailing down. Below her, Kitty propped herself up a little on her elbows. Lana’s vision adjusted in the darkness so she could see the outline of Kitty’s features.
‘Kit, d’you remember how desperately I used to want to go to Greece?’
‘Course. For an entire term your packed lunches were feta-and-olive pittas.’
Lana’s mother had been brought up on the outskirts of Athens, before moving to England. Lana had only a few wisps of memories of her – like the smell of roasted aubergine and olive oil that filled their kitchen, and the strong angles of her mother’s bone structure that were set in relief by her full lips.
She said to Kitty, ‘My dad always claimed we couldn’t afford the trip, or he wasn’t able to take the time off work.’ She shook her head. ‘Just another of his lies. I keep on remembering all these little things – hundreds of details that were all bullshit. My whole childhood was a fucking fabrication!’