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Authors: Still Waters

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“Hey,” he looked up. “Maria not with you?”

I shook my head. “She wanted to see the body.”

Luke blinked. “Body?”

“Yeah.” I took my jacket off and made a face at my reflection. “Some tourist hanged herself in the pub cave last night. Or this morning. They found her an hour ago.”

Luke raised his eyebrows. “Bloody hell.”

“Yep.”

“Still waters run deep, huh?”

“That’s not funny.”

He grinned. “Didn’t mean like that. Sophie?”

“Mmm?”

“Did you go out in your pyjamas?”

I made another face. “I didn’t think it was that obvious.”

“They’re four inches above your ankle.”

“Not my fault I have long legs.”

Luke said nothing and went back to his paper. I let myself into the bathroom, showered and cleaned my teeth and went downstairs to get dressed, the cherubs glaring menacingly at me as I did.

I love winter; I love the clear bright blue skies and the cosiness of curling up with a book or a film when it’s raining outside. I love cute little hats and soft fleecy scarves, the ladylike feeling of wearing elegant gloves with seams down the fingers. I love winter colours, all the dark wools and long skirts you can wear, and I love boots, so much more classy than sandals.

I pulled on chocolate-coloured jeans and a dark red top with long sleeves and a gold pattern on it, left my hair to dry loose, and put on a little makeup because, although Luke and Maria and half of Port Trevan have seen me naked-faced, I still feel much better with a barrier between my skin and the world.

When I went back upstairs, Maria was opening a bag of muffins from the bakery next door (I love this village thing), and the smell of fresh coffee was heavenly.

“Did you see it?” I asked, and she nodded, making a gruesome face.

“Not a pretty sight. She was kind of…” Maria waved her hand as she picked up her coffee, “…bloated. Like the pilot in
Castaway.
Only not so bad, it was probably only a couple of hours she’d been under high water.”

Luke put down his muffin. “And I’m done with breakfast.”

Maria grinned without a trace of contrition. “Sorry. Did you never see a drowning victim when you did your med training?”

He shook his head.

“Lucky you—”

“I thought she was hanged,” I interrupted.

“Yeah, that’s the consensus. They’ll find out after the autopsy whether she was alive when the water came over her. Probably not. I mean, a rope like that would probably asphyxiate her before the water could do any damage. Hey, you wanna go to Newquay today? I feel like going surfing.”

We both stared at her.

“What?”

“You see a body that’s been in the water all night and you want to throw yourself under ten foot waves?”

“
On
the ten foot waves,” Maria corrected. “The idea is not to go under them.”

“Sounds fun.” Luke said, surprising me. “Sophie, you coming?”

What I wanted to do was sit at home and read my book, but I kept thinking about the dead woman a couple of hundred yards away. No. I didn’t want to be on my own today.

“Sure,” I said, “but we’re not going to Newquay. I know somewhere much better.”

Watergate Bay is no more than a beach with a caravan park and a couple of hotels attached. There’s a car park, some public toilets, a beach café and a lifeguard stand. That’s pretty much it. But the waves are the best you’ll find, and my brother Chalker and I used to spend hours pretending we could surf when we were kids.

Luke and Maria hired wetsuits and boards, but I took one look at the ferocious waves and decided I didn’t want to end up like the pub cave girl. I dug out my book from my huge bag, and me and Norma Jean settled down with some hot chocolate (for me, not her, silly) in the café, which was a helluva lot more upmarket than I remembered. Call it the Jamie Oliver effect.

I sat by the window, watching Luke walk down to the water with his board. He moved beautifully, elegant and sinuous like a cat. He turned and said something to Maria, and she laughed, and he laughed too, and I nearly spilt hot chocolate over myself. I really have to get over him. I really do.

It was hard to keep track of which ones they were after a while. There were half a dozen other surfers out there, all seemingly expert, as were Luke and Maria. They cut through the waves, skimming over and down the steep slopes, somehow keeping balance and not
sinking
, as if they all weighed nothing at all, as if the most natural thing in the world was to stand on an elliptical piece of fibreglass and fly over fierce, deadly waves.

You have to love England. December plus Atlantic equals fucking freezing. Yet half a dozen nutcases were
surfing
out there.

I saw one dark-haired figure fly off into the air and come to a rolling landing on the beach, her board nearly knocking her out. But she was on her feet again and laughing—Maria, it couldn’t be anyone else, and two more surfers rode up to her to see if she was okay. The three of them—not including Luke—made their way back up the long beach where I’d spent many teenage hours reading under a beach umbrella with Norma Jean for company. While outside my little world of windbreaks and fleecy jumpers, rain fell, and my dad tried to persuade us to go walking across the cliff tops. He got no enthusiasm from anyone but Norma Jean. English summers. Can’t beat ’em.

The door opened and in a blast of air and laughter, one as cold as the other was warm, Maria and two other wetsuited people came in. They both had the tanned, happy look that comes right next to the word Australian, and even though they looked slightly bewildered at having to wear wetsuits to surf, they looked pretty happy as they propped their boards by the door and strolled over to the bar.

“Sophie!” Maria trickled over and rummaged through her bag for a fleece. “You sure you don’t want to come out and join us?”

I looked at the light rain that was starting to mist up the big café windows.

“I think I’ll pass.”

“It’s really good out there…”

Images of the dead woman I still hadn’t even see yet flashed across my mind. “Isn’t it dangerous with the waves so high?”

She laughed and shook herself like a dog, spraying me and Norma, who didn’t look very impressed.

“Not if you know what you’re doing. Matt, Carly, come over here and meet Sophie.”

Carly fell instantly in love with Norma and got her wetsuit coated with blonde hairs as she sat down and played with the dog. Norma’s not at all nervous of strangers, especially if they tell her she’s pretty and tickle her tummy. She’s such a hussy.

Matt was tall and broad and tanned and had a Heath Ledger smile. Hmm, I thought. Definitely not bad.

“How come you’re so brown?” I asked, looking ruefully at my own pasty skin.

He laughed. “Guess it gets permanent after a while. Nah, we’ve only been here a couple of weeks and don’t forget it’s summer in Oz…”

“I know,” I said, “my parents are there.”

We talked for a while about where Carly and Matt were from, about where my parents and Chalker would be visiting, about the differences between Bondi and Newquay, as they ate big, fat burgers and I got through my seventh Diet Coke. As they got up to go back to their beloved waves, Maria leaned down to me and said, “You have to tell him, you know.” She nodded at the Diet Coke.

“But why?” I wailed. “Why does he have to know?”

“Because sooner or later he’ll find out and he’ll be really hurt you didn’t tell him.” She fondled Norma’s blonde pointy ears. “Come on, Sophie, you know I’m right.”

I slurped miserably at my Coke and said nothing.

“If you don’t tell him by the time we go home—and I mean back to the cottage today—I’ll do it for you,” she threatened.

“Call yourself my friend?”

“In this, consider me a colleague.”

I scowled.

“Sophie…”

“All right, I’ll tell him!”

She grinned and straightened up. “Good, because he’ll be here in five minutes,” she said, looking out at the beach where a familiar, sexy walk was making its way towards me.

I looked around in panic. Apart from the toilets and the upstairs bistro, there was nowhere I could go to hide. And he’d find me upstairs or, more than likely, hammer on the toilet door until I came out.

Damn it. I suppose I have to tell him.

He came to fetch his bag, greeting me with a plain “Hi”, and disappeared in the direction of the gents to get changed. When he came out, five minutes later, dressed in faded jeans and a charcoal sweater that made him look plain lush, I watched him go to the bar, order a pint and then come back over to sit opposite me. By this time, I’d shredded two whole paper napkins, and my heart was thumping so hard I was amazed it wasn’t sticking out of my chest like on a cartoon.

“Are you done for the day?” I asked politely.

“Yeah. I’d forgotten how knackering surfing is. Plus, it’s bloody freezing out there.”

“Maria seems to be enjoying it.”

“Maria,” Luke said drily, “is not out there for the waves.”

I frowned.

“Didn’t you see her with her Aussie buddy?”

“Matt? Oh. Yeah, he was cute,” I said, just to see how Luke would react.

He took a drink of his beer and said nothing. I was slightly disappointed.

“So what d’you reckon about that girl, then?” I asked.

“What girl?”

“The hanged girl. This morning.”

He shrugged. “Christmas suicide. God knows I feel like it sometimes.”

Oh, that’s cheerful.

“You don’t like Christmas?”

He shrugged. “It’s tacky, boring, expensive and I usually get bullied into spending it with some aged relative who makes no attempt to hide the fact that they, like the rest of my family, despise me.”

I’d have argued with this had I not already met Luke’s great aunt Tilda, who was a rich old cow who stuck her nose up at me and was barely civil to Luke. His parents died when he was quite young, and he was shuffled from relative to relative, unwanted and unloved, a textbook case of an unhappy childhood leading to a man who makes everyone want him, then ignores them when they do.

You see?

He looked at the collection of mugs and straws and glasses and general non-alcoholic debris on the table.

“You taken the pledge or something?”

I shrugged. “I have to drive back.”

“You can have
a
drink and drive.”

“You know I hate doing that.”

“Then I can drive. Or Maria, if she ever tears herself away from her new boyfriend.”

I gazed out of the window, where someone I thought was Maria was flying along a wave, looking so happy and free I smiled for her.

“No,” I said, “I’m okay. You hate driving Ted anyway.”

Luke settled back in his chair and looked at me, and I started to get hot under my pretty little sweater.

“What?”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

I made a face. “This may come as a surprise to you, Luke, but I don’t have to tell you everything. We’ve been broken up for four months now and that’s as long we were together. I don’t have to tell you anything.”

Still that level blue gaze. Luke said nothing, but his face said
bullshit
.

I swallowed nervously.

“Well, okay, apart from this.”

Chapter Three

Luke didn’t look nervous or excited, but there was a certain tightness to his face that I knew meant he was impatient.

“Remember in September, when I got stuck with that needle?”

“Vividly.”

Hah! I got you there. You were pretty sure I was going to tell Luke I’m pregnant.

I think he did, too.

“And how you told me I needed to go get it checked out or it could get infected?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Yes.”

“Well…it sort of did get infected. And, um, formed an abscess.” I pushed up my sleeve to show him the nasty red scar on my inner arm. “And, uh…”

“There’s more?” Luke said, his face like stone.

“Blood poisoning,” I said in a small voice.

Okay, but listen. It really wasn’t my fault. Someone attacked me with a hypo that contained a lethal dose of heroin, only the needle broke off and got stuck in my arm. I didn’t even get remotely stoned. But I did get a nasty infection. It turned into a really, hundred-percent disgusting abscess, oozing and stinking and everything. You don’t want to know how bad it looked.

Or how bad it felt. I was sick as a parrot. Remember when I said I saw him a month after we broke up? Well, he didn’t see me. I was in the passenger seat of Maria’s car, waiting for her to pick up some papers, on the way to the hospital for a check-up. I felt too bad to get out of the car.

Luke was staring at me and I was starting to wish I’d done this in a more private place. There were only a couple of people in the café, but that was enough.

“But,” he eventually managed, “Karen said you were fine.”

“Yes, well.” I shrugged. “That’s because I told her to.”

Luke stared some more. “Why?” he said, after a lot of thought, looking confused.

“Because I didn’t want you to know,” I said slowly.

“Why?” he repeated, looking even more bewildered.

“Because…” A lot of reasons, most of them too complex even for words. “I knew you’d react this way.”

“Do you still—I mean, is it—Christ, Sophie, septicemia can
kill
you…”

“But it didn’t,” I said gently. Anyone notice how I’m being the calm one here?

“And the abscess?” He was staring at my arm. “I’ve seen people lose limbs—”

“Well, I’ve still got all mine. Luke, it’s healed. It went all icky, it oozed, it swelled, it tunnelled—”

“
Tunnelled
?”

“But it’s healed now. Honestly. And the septicemia is all gone away.”