The plain truth was that even if they were very different women, Elizabeth loved Jo. The idea of her going through what she’d watched happen to so many other women in the village over the last number of years was unthinkable. She went home that night and sat in her kitchen, dumbstruck. What could she say? But of course, she realised later, there were no words to make things better. If there had been they’d have come automatically, wouldn’t they?
What struck her later, more than anything, was the notion of having something to look forward to. She wasn’t sure what exactly could set the tune of a drum that Jo might want to march to, but she knew that Lucy was right. They needed to be positive now. Jo needed something to aim for beyond the path of treatment that would probably lie ahead. Perhaps the gurus would call it purpose, but at their age, she had a feeling that purpose was a bit boring and she preferred the idea of being propelled out of bed by something that made her heart sing. For her, for Jo and she suspected for Lucy now too, that was swimming in the deep waters under a star-filled sky.
She wasn’t sure if it was the whole experience of rushing along the beach in the altogether and feeling the water envelop her body in a way that was all at once intimate, thrilling and exhilarating. It might just be the simple physicality of the whole exercise. There was no denying the feeling that in some way, it was overwhelming. When she swam out far enough to feel as if she was being swallowed up in the vastness of the waves above her head, she felt as if suddenly she was at one with something far greater than she’d ever felt before. Crazy as it sounded, it was as if the sky, the ocean and the unfathomable depths below her all blended into one and she was as intricately linked to this vastness as she was to the tips of her toes or the tiniest molecule of DNA in her body.
There was, she knew, the link to Jo, also. She couldn’t forget the fact that her friend had walked down to that spot on the beach every night of her life, and tore off into the sea for a long swim. Of course, it turned out, in the end Jo was the more modest of them both – which seemed at odds with all they’d believed themselves to be over the years. Jo had been the one to wear a necklace of shells, whereas Elizabeth always favoured her pearls. Jo had discarded her bra in the 1970s and spent the last forty years with her boobs hanging somewhere around her waist, whereas Elizabeth stuck to a solid girdle to keep her shape in place beneath her smart skirts and cashmere twinset – well she had until recently at least.
Yes, they might well be chalk and cheese, but there was no denying that when Elizabeth lay back on the icy water, the giddy rush that went through her was as warm as any emotion and that made her feel as if they were connected by far more than just time spent in the same village.
15
Dan
It was one of those rare things, this place – always changing, so even though he’d stepped on the sand only minutes earlier, the disappearing sun, the incoming tide, the shadows of the clouds cast over the sea, it all made a hugely dramatic difference to everything. If this was in London, he’d have to cross four or five postcodes to affect such a profoundly different view. He would walk to the second open cave, he decided. It was less than half a mile along the beach, where the land almost turned back on itself to welcome the shallow, rushing river that fed into the sea in a blistering constant backwash.
The caves, which were hardly even that, were dug into the land, the sea lapping up a little further towards them in every storm. Dan imagined if he were a child he probably would have explored them and made them his own, secret – though not at all hidden, clubhouses. They had the potential, in a child’s imagination, to become the setting for mysteries and adventures. All you needed add to the mix were a couple of friends, an energetic dog and lashings of lemonade and spam sandwiches.
He was whistling the theme tune to the Famous Five by the time he reached the second cave. Dan picked out an enormous flat rock, just sheltered from a light breeze that was whipping up from the south-west. It was not the raw winds of other days, but it was enough to make him feel more alive than any saunter about London would have managed. The excitable cocker spaniel that’d joined him on his walk was now worn out; she flopped down at his feet and he rubbed her damp ears absent-mindedly.
Almost on the horizon, a boat bobbed along towards home, a spray of eager gulls dotting the skyline above it. Dan watched it as it made its way back to the pier, perhaps so the captain and his crew could make it home for dinner before darkness fell. It was almost hypnotic, that gliding movement, easing home after a long working day, so much so that when a giddy shriek cut through the silence of his little hideout, he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined the alien sound.