Danny listens while I talk without interrupting once or jumping in with his own stories about accidents, like people sometimes do. But perhaps this time I’ve talked too much, because he doesn’t say anything at all, for ages.
The sun shifts round the little beach so we’re in shadow again and it’s chilly. When I finally stand up, my legs hurt from being crouched down so long.
Danny throws a limpet shell into one of the rock pools. The rings spread out across the surface. ‘Can I ask you something?’ he finally says.
‘Of course. What?’
‘Why did you think it was your fault?’
‘Because if I hadn’t picked up the boat bungs he’d have seen them on the wall and realised he needed to put them in. Because me following him to the house and then hiding in the lane made him even more angry and upset. Because I should have stopped him going out on the boat, and told someone straight away. Isn’t it obvious?’
‘No.’ Danny frowns. ‘Still doesn’t make it your fault. I don’t see that. He was responsible for what he did. Not you.’
It sounds as if he’s blaming Joe, but I know he doesn’t mean it like that, and he’s trying to be kind to me.
‘We all felt like it was our fault. Gramps did, Evie, too. They were supposed to be looking after him. But I was the one who knew what was going on. So it was more my fault than anyone else’s.’
I hesitate. Shall I tell Danny the rest? I’ve come this far, I might as well tell him everything.
‘To begin with I felt sure it was my fault. Lately, I’ve started wondering something else. Something worse.’
‘What?’
‘Whether Joe did it on purpose. Meant to do it.’
‘Like . . .’
‘Deliberately. It wasn’t an accident. He made it happen. Didn’t do the safety checks. All that.’
‘But why? Why would he do that? That’s just crazy, Freya.’
‘Is it? Really? Because otherwise it just makes him stupid. And Joe definitely wasn’t stupid. He knew about boats, and safety drills, and weather conditions. About tides and winds and currents and the rocks in the bay.’
‘But what would make him do such a thing? I mean, you’d have to be really, totally desperate, to want to drown. To take your own life. That’s pretty extreme. If that’s what you’re saying.’
Danny’s words sound so blunt and horrible. But that is the heart of it. What might have happened, to push Joe that far? Is finding Sam and Huw naked together enough? Even if she was the first girl he’d fallen in love with, even if he was totally head over heels besotted with her? He’d only known her a couple of weeks. I rake through everything I can remember. Did he seem, like, fed up? But I hardly saw him, those last weeks. And before, he was talking about his plans: leaving home, that course, adventures. It’s not like someone who’s going to take his own life, is it?
‘I’m trying to work it out,’ I tell Danny. ‘That’s why I keep going over and over it in my head, what exactly happened, remembering everything bit by bit, trying to make sense of it all. Kind of looking for clues. It’s like there’s a piece missing.’
Danny fiddles around with a piece of seaweed. He chucks pebbles at a rock. He gets up and wanders down to the sea and stands staring at it for the longest time.
I shiver. ‘Shall we go back?’
He nods. When he turns round his face is in the shadow. I can’t see his expression.
‘I’m sorry I landed all that on you,’ I say. ‘I know it’s pretty heavy stuff.’
‘Don’t apologise,’ Danny says. He sounds almost fierce. ‘I’m glad you told me.’
‘Thanks.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘Listening.’ I shrug. Now it’s me who’s embarrassed.
‘Sorry if I didn’t say the right things.’
‘You did fine. There aren’t any right things, in any case.’
We start the climb back up the rocks. ‘You won’t tell anyone about any of this, will you?’ I say. ‘Not about the secret beach, and not about Joe, either.’
‘OK.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
As we clamber over the rocks and along the ledge, through the passage between the wind-carved boulders, it seems as if each twist and turn takes us back into something more ordinary and everyday. It’s a relief. The heavy feeling in my heart begins to shift. By the time we get back to Wind Down we are talking about the usual things: having another barbecue, and whether or not to go snorkelling on Bryluen. We go through the wicket gate into the top field. His sister Hattie waves from their tent.
‘Want to come back to ours for tea?’
I nod.
The kitchen stinks of fish.
‘There you are!’ Evie says. ‘I was beginning to wonder.’
‘I had tea with Danny’s family,’ I say.
‘That’s nice.’
‘Yes. What are you cooking?’
‘Crabmeat. Sorry about the smell.’ Evie lifts a pan from the stove and puts it on to the table. ‘Gramps has been asking for you.’
‘How is he?’ I feel bad that I’ve hardly thought about him all day.
‘Much better. Still needs to rest, but he looks brighter. Go up and see him.’
He smiles when I put my head round the door. ‘Hello, stranger!’
His face still looks grey against the white pillow. I go right in and take his hand.
‘You’re all wind-blown,’ he says. ‘You smell of the sea.’
‘That’s the smell from the kitchen!’ I say, wrinkling up my nose. ‘So, are you better?’
‘Getting there.’
‘Do you want anything?’
‘You could bring me up some honey,’ Gramps says.
‘What, on toast or something?’
‘By itself, with a spoon.’
‘Hang on, then.’
Jars of honey from Gramps’ bees are lined up along the shelf in the kitchen cupboard. They glow in the evening light, as if each pot is full of sunshine. I take out one that’s already been opened and carry it up to Gramps.
He takes sips of it from a spoon. ‘Like medicine,’ Gramps says, smacking his lips. ‘It’s healing, that honey. Those bees know a thing or two.’
I stay there a bit longer, to keep him company. He closes his eyes after a while and I’m about to tiptoe out when he says, ‘This fine weather won’t last.’
‘No?’
‘Make the most of it, while you can.’
‘I am. I might go snorkelling with Danny.’
‘Danny?’
‘One of the boys camping this year. The one who looks a bit like Joe.’
Gramps opens his eyes. They’re all pale and rheumy. ‘You be careful.’
Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned Joe. Gramps’ voice sounds shaky and old, suddenly.
‘It’s not natural, breathing underwater,’ he says.
‘It’s perfectly safe,’ I say. ‘You don’t go deep, like diving. You have the mask and tube. You know that, Gramps.’
He tuts.
‘But I won’t do it if you don’t want me to.’
Gramps dabs his hand in the air, trying to catch at a fly that’s buzzed in through the open window. He sighs. ‘Don’t take any notice of me,’ he says. ‘I can’t keep you wrapped in cotton-wool for ever.’ He sits up a bit more against the pillow. ‘I think about him every day, you know,’ he says. ‘I go over everything I said to him, those afternoons I was teaching him to sail.’
‘Oh, Gramps!’ I’ve a lump in my throat.
‘I’ve gone over and over it in my mind that many times. It doesn’t make any sense. I can’t work out why it went so badly wrong. How he could have forgotten everything, like that. What made him so . . . so careless.’
Evie comes in with a tray. She takes one look at Gramps. ‘You’ve worn yourself out, Bill! Better let him get some rest, now,’ she says to me.
I lean over to kiss his papery cheek.
Gramps smoothes my hair. ‘Life’s precious, remember,’ he says. ‘Make the most of it. Don’t take any notice of me.’
Instead of going to my room, I sit in Joe’s, writing in my notebook. It sort of brings him closer, sitting with his things round me. My pen scratches a tiny figure in mid-jump from one rock to another. Did I see him, this morning? And if I did, what does it mean? Is he really here, on the island? Not a ghost exactly. Not just a memory . . .
I was so sure at the time, but already it’s beginning to seem like something else I might have imagined. I’m glad I didn’t tell Danny about it.
I think about all the things I did tell him. I don’t know what came over me. But it was OK, really, how he reacted and everything. It’s weird to think how just one summer later there’s a whole new set of people here who never knew Joe. Matt and Izzy as well as Danny. Life goes on. It just does. There isn’t any other way.
But the mystery is still there. Why Joe made all those mistakes. Like Gramps said.
Did he do it on purpose? Is that possible?
It can’t make any difference to him now. But I really, really want to understand what happened that night. To find the missing piece in the jigsaw.
There must be something I’ve forgotten, even though I’ve gone over and over it all, bit by bit, what happened last summer.
I look round the room, as if it might be hiding something. If only Joe had kept a notebook, like me, with all his feelings written down. Or written letters or something, anything, to show me what he was feeling like, last summer. There aren’t even emails or texts or anything. Nothing left behind. No words at all.
So who might know? Who might he have talked to?
The answer is staring me in the face.
All the times I’ve come in here, and yet I’ve never noticed it before. I only see it now because I’m lying on Joe’s bed, where he’d have lain, seeing as if through his eyes. Above the door frame there’s a tiny photo propped up, like one you get from an instant photo booth at a station or somewhere.
Samphire.