Mia moved unsteadily along the shoreline, the vodka still whirling in her system. She wished she’d brought the bottle so she could finish it, drink until she blanked out. A deep sadness that had been hovering close by for weeks settled in her chest.
She dragged her feet through the damp sand, thinking about the night in Maui when Noah pulled her from the water. He’d needed to rescue her because he hadn’t been able to save his brother. His guilt was as dark and cavernous as hers.
Jez and Noah had thrown punches.
She and Katie, words.
She could still hear the voice of someone who’d crowded in to watch the fight, saying, ‘Aren’t they brothers?’ as if being siblings could make a difference to the amount you could hate.
She felt exhausted, depleted by all that’d happened. She turned from the beach and made her way back to the hostel. When she reached her room, she found the door ajar, as if someone had recently been inside. She nudged it wider and quietly stepped in.
A mosquito net hung like a ghostly shadow over the bed and, beside it, a wicker lamp was glowing. Had she left it on? She moved cautiously inside, surveying the room: her backpack was still there, yet she could sense that something was different.
Then it clicked: her travel journal. It rested on the low bamboo desk where she had left it open, except now her pen was lying across it, the lid off. She stepped closer and could see there was writing – not hers – slurred across a previously blank page. The words weren’t neat and precise; these were scrawled and slanting forward.
She leant nearer still and saw a dark smudge across the bottom of the page.
Blood.
It took several seconds for the words to come into focus. Then they rushed at her, knocking her off balance so she had to reach a hand towards the edge of the desk to steady herself. Panic rose in her chest, its hot bloom reaching towards her throat. ‘Please, God,’ she mumbled. ‘Please, no.’
With one swipe she tore the page from her journal. Holding it close to her, she fled the room barefoot and vanished into the night.
*
Mia stuffed the torn page into her back pocket to free her hands as she scrambled along the cliff path. The soles of her feet were bruised from unseen stones and tough tree roots, but she raced on, knowing every moment counted.
‘Hey! You okay?’
Startled, she spun round.
A couple were standing at the lookout point several feet off the path. They were staring at her.
She was out of breath and her face felt too hot. She imagined how she must look: a lone woman running barefoot at night.
The man stepped forward, asking, ‘Do you need help?’
‘No,’ Mia said. She ducked her head and ran on, disappearing through the dense foliage that shrouded the upper cliff path. She had to push her way through twisted, gnarled branches that scratched her bare arms and legs.
It was minutes before Mia saw moonlight spilling in between a gap in the trees, and then she knew she was almost there. She hauled herself up a final incline and reached the top, drenched in sweat.
Noah was standing near the cliff edge like a sentinel of the ocean, his feet shoulder width apart, his back straight. She had found his note written hurriedly on a page of her open journal, a few sparse words of despair, and beneath a smear of blood – his? Jez’s? – staining the page like an omen.
‘Noah,’ she said, quietly announcing herself.
His head turned only a fraction.
‘Don’t do this.’ She thought of her father, the young man with the intense gaze in the photo of the band. What if someone had found him in time – a neighbour, a landlord collecting rent – with a kind, carefully placed word that could have changed everything?
How many thousands of people must consider a moment such as this – a cliff edge, a rope from a ceiling, the roof of a tall building, a loaded gun – desperate to stop the rushing sense of despair that fills your ears and your mouth with the bitter taste of hopelessness? Mia had. She’d pictured the exquisite point of blankness when all the rushing, speeding guilt and hurt just stopped dead. Dead. She began moving forward …
‘Don’t!’
She froze. She was 10 feet from him now, close enough to see the flower of blood on his dark T-shirt blooming from his wound.
‘Go away,’ he commanded without turning. She understood his guilt; she’d always been able to, it was part of what bound them together. She’d walked away from the people she’d loved – from her mother’s bedside, from her life with Katie, from Finn – because walking away was easier than sticking right there where the people she cared about could look into her eyes and see her fear. But she wasn’t going to walk away from Noah. ‘I’m not leaving you.’
‘I don’t want you here.’
‘Why did you come to the beach tonight?’ Mia asked him.
‘What?’
‘You said you were leaving Bali, but you didn’t. Why?’
His fingers clenched into fists at his side. ‘I … I couldn’t leave.’
‘Because of Jez?’
‘Yes,’ Noah admitted. ‘And because of you.’
‘I meant it when I told you I loved you.’
He dropped his head. ‘It doesn’t make any difference…’
Mia began to tell him that it did, but then realized he was still speaking.
‘He drowned because of me. I shouldn’t have let him go out … he wasn’t ready.’
Johnny.
‘The waves were too big. I didn’t even see him get knocked down.’
‘You tried to save him.’
‘No. Not hard enough.’ She could see his shoulders shaking and she thought he might be crying. ‘He was face down when I got to him. Already dead. I swam back with his body.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
But he didn’t hear her. ‘Jez was right. And I hit him for it. I wanted to kill him,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘I’m my father…’
‘You’re a good person, Noah,’ she told him because she believed it, and she needed him to believe it too. ‘You’re not your father.’ Just like I’m not mine. She understood that now. She wasn’t defined by Harley’s dark legacy, but by her own actions.
‘I can’t live like this…’
The despair in his voice frightened her. She was breathing hard and could feel the vodka still swirling in her system, numbing the edges of her thoughts. It was important that she was lucid – that she said everything right.
‘Johnny’s death was tragic – a tragic, terrible accident. But do you think he would want this for you?’
She waited, but Noah didn’t respond.
‘What would he say to you right now, if he could see you?’
Noah grabbed the base of his head. She caught a flash of his tattoo; she’d once thought it beautiful, but now felt as if the black ink was seeping into his bloodstream and poisoning him.
‘If he was anything like you, he’d tell you to get away from the edge,’ she said.
‘What does it matter? He’s dead!’
Bile filled her throat. She breathed deeply; she had to concentrate, draw Noah back from the edge. ‘What about Jez?’ she said, forcing her voice to be level, calm. ‘If you do this, he’s on his own.’
‘He’ll be better off.’
‘He loves you—’
‘No.’
‘I saw it, Noah. He came in the surf after you. He was terrified he was going to lose you.’ She continued, ‘His last memory will be of fighting you, blaming you for Johnny’s death. And everything you’re feeling right now will be transferred to him. You wouldn’t just be taking your life – you’d be taking his, too.’
She watched, horrified, as he inched his feet towards the cliff edge. The movement loosened a stone that rolled forwards, then dropped into darkness. She listened for the sound of it reaching the rocks below, but there was none.
‘I’m sorry,’ Noah said simply.
Panic flooded her. Her senses sharpened to a point: she could feel the corner of a stone pressing into the arch of her foot, taste salt drawn by the wind from the ocean, hear the tread of her feet as she propelled herself forward.
‘Mia, no!’
But already she was at his side. She waited until she felt steady, certain. Then she forced herself to look down. Moonlight glinted off her toe rings and, an inch beyond her feet, the cliff stopped and air began. Darkness stole the depth but she could see the ghostly shadows of the granite boulders below, where waves shattered.
There were no bargaining chips left except one: ‘If you do this, Noah, then I will, too.’ Slowly she raised her head and turned to look at him. His lip was split and there was blood dried to his cheekbone.
‘Don’t be stupid!’
She stayed very still, fighting the wave of fear that was rising up in her body.
‘Get away from the edge!’
‘When you step back, so will I.’
‘You’re bluffing.’
‘You know I’m not.’ From her pocket she carefully took out his suicide note. She raised it in the space between their bodies. ‘You never wrote this, Noah. You never came here. Take it. Then we step away. Tonight never happened.’
She waited. A cool breeze curled around her hand, making the page flutter. ‘Take it, Noah.’
Time seemed to pause. The world was reduced to just the two of them on the cliff edge. She could hear the rapid inhale and exhale of breath, only to realize it was her own. Sweat beaded across her top lip. She willed him to take the page, to end this now.
Then the air shifted and she was aware of Noah’s arm, solid and strong, rising. His fingers stretched towards hers where she held the page. She felt the gentle release in her hand as he removed it.
The relief was immediate. The tension that had held her knees rigid now released, and she felt them bend an infinitesimal amount: just enough to tilt her fractionally forward. Time slowed. Her hand stroked the air in front of her body searching for balance, but there was only darkness, emptiness, and her arm swung through it. The momentum caused her to hinge forward from the waist, her other arm beginning to swing, too. Her bangles clinked: she was a breathing windmill whirling on the breeze.
Her weight rolled onto the balls of her feet, her heels peeling from the cliff so she was on tiptoes. She heard the grind of stones as Noah lunged towards her, felt the brush of his fingertips reaching for her.
But she knew it was too late.
She was aware of him calling her name, but already she was far away. She felt the cool rush of wind against her face, saw the brilliant glimmer of the stars, and heard the hypnotic call of the waves as she fell towards them, her body as light as a tear drop.