8 October
The cold black shock swallows me whole.
My T-shirt billows up to hug my face, waterboarding me.
What have I done? I’m going to drown and die.
Don’t breathe in. Soon as you get water in your lungs, you’re sunk. The average person can last for eighty-seven seconds before the chemical sensors in their brain trigger an involuntary breath. Aren’t you glad we stored these handy facts?
I try to move my arms and legs, but the sea exerts too much coercive force. I may as well be a mannequin, bobbing around at the whim of the current. Can’t even tell which way is up or down. The water pressure makes it hard to keep my eyes open, but I have to try.
How many seconds have gone already? How long do I have left?
I really don’t want to die.
I especially don’t want the people left behind to think I killed myself.
Izzy! Oh God, Izzy, I’m so sorry for everything.
Most of all, I don’t want my mother to have the satisfaction of thinking she finally drove me to this.
When I manage to yank my shirt back down from over my face, I see a light.
A small glow, rising from the depths to hover right in front of my face.
This must be the light I dove down here to find. Scott’s soul. What the fuck made me think that? Insane trance logic. God, I’m so scared.
When I grab hold of this light, a hard rectangle fills my hand. Scott’s phone. Christ, this light has been coming from the handset’s torch.
Priorities. Look around. My newfound torch illuminates a couple of feet ahead. Tantalisingly close, there’s a vertical pole, one of the pier’s support beams.
I try to swim in that direction, but the current has other ideas. Pinning my arms to my sides, it jerks me way over to the left and then back again.
Please, please, give me one chance. Even though it’s more than I deserve.
Careful what you wish for. Look out, here comes that pole. Fast.
My upper body collides with the metal, bashing my nose and knocking off barnacles. Wrapping both arms around the pole, I grab hold of bolts I can’t see.
Incensed by my insolence, the current attempts to haul me away.
How many seconds left? How long before my lungs fill with water and I become another stiff on a mortuary slab?
At least you know there’s an afterlife.
Fuck that, brain. Ain’t going there yet.
I hook both legs around the metal, then monkey myself upwards.
Why don’t you let go of the phone? That would help you to grip.
Inch by inch I climb. My entire being screams for oxygen. I need to get my head above water soon, or any moment now my brain will prise open my mouth and it’ll all be over.
The intense cold suggests I’m already dead. When you can’t feel your physical self, you may as well be just a soul.
Somewhere above me, up beyond the roiling surface of the sea… is that a dim smear of moon?
No, these are two lights, and they’re roving. Please don’t let them be the beckoning lamps of the hereafter.
Don’t stop. Come on, you’re almost there. Keep going. Do this for Izzy, if no one else.
When the urge for air overwhelms me, I picture Izzy in pieces at my funeral. I picture the tears streaming down her face, as she tells an endless procession of shrinks how her best friend killed herself and she failed to intervene.
My head bursts out into the exquisite and priceless night air.
Spluttering, I grip the pole like it’s a child. I can still barely breathe and the cold has sunk fangs deep into my bones, but I’m alive.
What might be any period of time later, someone yells that they can see me and my phone-light torch.