the far side of the dinghy the crew were gathered in a circle, talking. Lana watched as each took turns to speak, their expressions serious. Denny sat with his arms folded over his lean chest, nodding. When Joseph was talking, Aaron turned to glance in Lana and Kitty’s direction. Lana wasn’t sure if he was looking at them or not, so she lifted her hand in an awkward half-wave. He didn’t acknowledge her, simply turned back to the others.
Shell had described the crew as wanderers and adventurers but, as Lana watched them, she wondered whether it was a thirst for adventure that had brought them out here – or whether they all had a reason for leaving their old lives behind.
‘It was the right thing, wasn’t it?’ Lana said suddenly, facing Kitty. ‘Leaving.’
The night that Lana had turned up at Kitty’s flat in a state of shock about her father, she’d made a decision that she was going to leave England. Kitty had held Lana’s shoulders, looked at her squarely and told her, ‘Then I’m coming, too.’
They’d talked further the following morning, Kitty ladling pancake mixture into a pan of hot oil as she confided, ‘I’ve been thinking for a while of giving up on the acting. It’s getting me down,’ she explained, tilting the pan so the batter spread evenly to the edges. ‘The auditions. The rejections. The bitching. Last week I turned up at an audition for a vacuum-cleaner advert – a fucking advert – and the guy said, “Come back when you’re not hungover.”’ Kitty had snorted. ‘I hadn’t even had a bloody drink! Can you believe that?’
‘What, that you hadn’t had a drink?’
Kitty had flicked out a hand and bashed Lana’s arm. ‘I’m just not sure I can face it any more.’
‘But you’re amazing at what you do.’
‘Am I?’ Kitty had said, loosening the edges of the pancake with a wooden spatula. ‘Maybe I thought I was at school, but in London every attention-seeking twenty-something seems like they’re trying to make it – and believe me, there are a lot of us. It’s hard, Lana. The constant rejections are crushing me. And … well, the thing is, I don’t even know what else I’d do. I’m not good at anything.’ Kitty flipped the pancake and it landed neatly back in the pan.
‘You’re a good pancake tosser.’
‘Curriculum vitae of Kitty Berry – experienced tosser.’
Over that long weekend in Kitty’s dingy studio-flat, while the rain fell in thick sweeps against the window panes, they’d spun the globe and concocted their plan to leave.
Lana had been surprised at how easy it was to dismantle her life. It’d taken a month to work her notice, move out of her shared flat, and sell her car. She and Kitty planned to start in the Philippines, and then travel on from there. They pooled their savings, then drew up a budget to see how long it would last them both, deciding to apply for work visas when the money ran out. They booked travel insurance, bought suncream, flip-flops and mosquito repellent, and had vaccinations for diphtheria and hepatitis A. The frenzy of activity was so consuming that Lana felt as if she hadn’t paused for breath until suddenly they were clanking down the metal plane stairway into the dense Filipino heat.
Now Kitty turned towards Lana, sunlight making her eyes glitter. ‘Leaving?’ Kitty repeated. Then her face bloomed into a smile as she said, ‘Best decision we’ve ever made.’
*
Lana waded into the shallows, feeling the cool grasp of the sea around her legs. Kitty hadn’t wanted to swim, so Lana pushed away from the shoreline alone, marvelling at the incredible feeling of weightlessness. When she was a little deeper, she ducked below the surface letting her body trail close to the seabed until her breath ran out.
She surfaced, then swam hard for a few minutes, feeling the muscles in her shoulders and legs tighten. When she reached a cluster of low-lying rocks, she pulled herself onto them, wrung the salt water from her long hair and leant back against the sun-warmed limestone.
Sometime later she saw a tanned back skimming along the surface, a snorkel pipe in the air. Denny lifted his head and, noticing her, he pulled the mask from his face, treading water.
‘See much?’ she asked.
‘Some amazing brain coral. Plenty of angelfish around, too.’ He clambered up the rock and plonked himself beside her, his shorts sending rivulets of water streaming towards her legs.
Looking down the line of her shins towards her feet, he asked, ‘How’s the ankle?’
‘Pretty good, thanks.’
His gaze shifted to her other ankle and he asked, ‘How long you had the ink?’
Lana looked at the black tattoo of a single wing of long black feathers. ‘Since I was seventeen. Kitty and I were supposed to get matching wings – but she fainted when she saw the tattooist’s needle.’
He laughed. ‘But you had yours done anyway.’
As they’d walked out of the parlour, Kitty had been bouncing around on the spot, saying, ‘I can’t believe you did it! Lana, you have a fucking tattoo! How cool is that? Your dad is going to go ballistic!’ But her dad said nothing. She wasn’t even sure he’d seen it. She went barefoot around the house, putting her feet up on the coffee table, but he either didn’t notice or simply chose not to pass comment.
Denny leant forward and placed his damp fingers on the tattoo. She felt heat spread from the point at which his skin connected with hers, and she stared at the spot as if she’d find it aglow.
‘It’s different,’ he said, looking at her sideways, and she couldn’t work out if he meant different-good or different-bad. She could feel warmth beginning to creep into her cheeks, and scrabbled to think of something to say. ‘Do you and Aaron know each other from back home? You’re both from New Zealand, aren’t you?’
‘New Zealand’s a big place,’ Denny said with an easy smile. ‘I joined The Blue in Australia.’
She nodded. ‘How do you all do this? This lifestyle that you have – sailing around the world with friends, living from one day to the next. It seems so …’ She paused, looking for the word. ‘… intangible.’
‘Intangible?’ Denny smiled, the sun catching in the golden hairs of his eyebrows. ‘I like that.’
‘But how do any of you afford it?’ she asked, then wondered if the question sounded rude.
‘We try and keep costs down, live simply. We all put in a hundred and fifty dollars a week to cover food, water, fuel and marina fees when there are any. If there’s anything left over it goes into the repairs fund. Some people had savings, plus we pick up work where we can. Like Shell – she makes jewellery and sells it in the tourist spots, and when we’re in port she teaches a few yoga classes, too. I know Joseph had some money put aside from before. I’m not too sure what Heinrich’s set up is; he said he’s going to be running dry soon. And then me – I work while I’m out here.’
‘Doing what?’ Lana asked.
‘I’m a translator. Of novels. French into English.’
‘I’ve never met a translator. What an interesting job,’ she said, looking at him afresh. ‘Is there an art to it? I can’t imagine how you go about replicating an author’s meaning in a different language.’
‘That’s what I love – trying to find the author’s voice and then convey it. Humour’s the hardest. It’s all wordplay and timing, which doesn’t always translate so easily.’
‘Where did you learn French?’
‘Went on a family trip to Réunion island as a teenager. It’s French-speaking. Loved it so much that I decided to study French for my degree as I got to spend a year of it on Réunion. After I graduated I worked in-house for a technical firm translating documents, but it didn’t suit me. Too much looking out a window longing to be someplace else, y’know?