She wasn’t even sure what this was – rowing out into the night with a bottle of spirits. Or maybe she did know. After all, she’d woken months before on her bathroom floor, cheek pressed to the linoleum, vision blurred. She remembered that place. The terrifying truth was that she was only ever one twist of a pill bottle away from it; one step from a cliff edge; one dive into the deep.
She splashed through the shallows – the party loud enough to swallow her escape – then hauled herself over the side of the boat. Grappling with the oars, she began to row. At first, she moved jerkily, with short, uneven strokes, but soon enough a pleasing rhythm mellowed through her arms, water dripping silver from the oars. She watched the glow of the beach fire and the silhouettes of the others fading in her wake.
She rowed for some time, the moon lighting a path that led her away from the cove.
When her arms began to tire, she set down the oars. There. She’d drift, let the currents decide.
She lifted the bottle of vodka to her lips and took a heavy gulp, the alcohol burning her throat. Then she laid the blanket across the foot of the boat and arranged herself on top, making a pillow of her arms.
The stars. All the stars.
At home, if she woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep, she’d step out onto the little balcony of her flat, tip her head to the sky, searching for the few stars that the city lights hadn’t muted. It made her problems feel small. Life and the universe and all of it so large and looming, while she – with that black stone of sadness lodged in her chest – was so small.
Exhaustion crashed over her. It was so tiring to pretend. Sometimes when she was at the supermarket or waiting in a traffic jam, she’d look around her and think: How many of you are pretending to be happy, to feel normal, right now? Or is it only me? She was out in the world walking and talking and cooking and eating and showing people in a thousand different ways that she was okay. But she wasn’t.
Ed had told her she was depressed. His solution was a gym membership – as if her sadness could be physically exercised from her. Then, after the sleeping-pills incident, he insisted she see a doctor. She went through the motions, taking the prescription for antidepressants to the pharmacy, knowing those pills wouldn’t touch her lips.
A drug couldn’t make her happy.
Only Sam.
Out here in the boat, she was free to think about him. She liked to save her memories throughout the day, storing them up, like the way she’d save chocolate as a child, wanting to enjoy the sweet, creamy flavour alone.
Now, she let her mind roam towards him. She thought of his fondness for stopping in the street to talk to other people’s dogs, crouching as he rubbed behind their ears, saying, ‘All right there, mate? That good?’ She thought of how he liked to wear socks in bed, even in summer. My feet like cosy. She thought about his love of board games. Not just Monopoly and Scrabble but old games, ones she remembered vaguely from childhood, like Mouse Trap and Operation.
She was smiling as she remembered how Sam would arrange the games on their coffee table, a second stool pulled close to house retro snacks: cheese and pineapple on sticks, Frazzles, Bombay mix. He wasn’t a man for olives and hummus – and yet Eleanor, for all the joy good food gave her – relished the synthetic hit of a Frazzle, the way it melted and clung to your tongue. Other couples enjoyed going out for dinner, hosting kitchen suppers, watching live theatre, but they liked games and snacks. And that was precisely what she missed about Sam – how he made the ordinary feel extraordinary.
She lay in the boat, feeling it rock beneath her, knowing there was a bottle of vodka to drink, a thousand memories to lose herself in. The warm glow of the beach fire had slipped from view altogether, so now it was only her and the sea.
65
Bella
Bella reached into the cooler, her dress clinging to her damp, salt-licked skin. She pulled out the first thing she found: a bottle of ouzo. She untwisted the cap and pressed it to her lips. The hot, menthol hit of aniseed washed down her throat. Yep, much better.
She tucked the bottle under her arm and weaved towards the beach fire, where Lexi was sitting with Ana. Always Ana. She was like Lexi’s bloody shadow. She was wearing a striking red dress, braids loose over her shoulders. She had some nerve to be here when Bella knew her sordid little secret.
Bella flopped down on Lexi’s other side, grinding the base of the bottle into the tiny pebbles. Her hair hung wetly at her back, seeping into her dress. She shivered.
‘You’re freezing,’ Lexi said, unwinding the red wrap from her shoulders and draping it around Bella.