Mae wasn’t sure how she got to the gates.
One minute she was walking towards home, the next she was on Ocean Drive, staring at the solid wood, the number thirteen, the sprawling glass beach house behind.
Abi’s father led her through to a galleried kitchen, the picture windows filled with breaking waves. She looked around for some kind of trace, anything that hinted at the family whose table she used to eat at, whose daughter was closer than a sister. She found nothing.
Luke Manton drank straight from a bottle of vodka, his voice mechanical, the words so leaden they fell from his mouth and shattered on the perfect stone floor.
‘It’s supposed to lessen it. Less than a month to go. People live through worse. Kids get cancer. You believe in heaven, Mae?’
‘No,’ she said, cold.
Laid out on the counter were stacks of photographs.
At the window she saw the obligatory telescope.
‘Money.’ He waved a hand around like he was answering a question. ‘Maybe it made Lydia happy.’
Lydia Manton drove Abi the short distance to school the day she got her new Benz, stood at the gates the day she got her new lips.
The phone rang and he moved into the hallway.
Mae grabbed the vodka bottle and drank, that familiar heat warming her throat and her cheeks. She picked up photos. Some were from holidays over the years. A young Abi smiling in front of a caravan. A more recent shot, Abi standing on a large terrace, an infinity pool disappeared into crystal ocean behind her.
‘That was Abi’s personal trainer,’ Luke Manton said as he came back in.’ ‘Everyone calls, like there’s anything left to say.’
Abi had a trainer. Mae wondered what had happened to the girl that used to eat a whole tub of ice cream when they watched a movie, the girl who dressed in worn jeans and didn’t so much as glance in a mirror before she left the house.
Mae picked up a brochure. ‘The bunkers, will they work?’
He drank again. ‘Nowhere in Europe. Maybe we should’ve gone before they closed the borders. Maybe none of it matters.’ He pressed the bottle to his forehead like he was fighting a fever. ‘They wouldn’t … We didn’t see her till they got her to the hospital. But was … I know this is difficult, but was she okay? When you found her, was she –’
Mae thought of the blood by Abi’s head. Her leg bent, the life gone from her eyes. ‘She looked peaceful.’
He nodded like he saw through the lie but was still grateful, then fished out a photo of Mae and Abi, insisted she take it.
‘Do you know where Abi was, on the night?’ she asked.
‘She said she was going to see you. I’ve been going through her things. She was messy.’ He smiled. ‘Lydia was always telling her to tidy her bedroom. I found this in there.’ He held it up.
The memory flooded her mind with such force she felt herself drowning. She and Abi walking along the beach at sunset, arms around each other, each carrying a bucket of shells. Most were broken crowns, shards stripped of colour. Abi would thread them, Mae would make the sign. Each summer they sold them to summer people from a small table by the marina. ASTEROID CHARMS.
‘You can take it. Please, Mae. She’d have wanted you to have it.’
Mae took the bracelet and held it tightly. ‘Has Theodore stopped by?’
‘No. Just the other kid. With the … the scars.’
‘Sullivan Reed.’ She wondered at his connection to Abi.
‘Last night. He didn’t come in, just stood in the rain and looked at the house.’ He drank some more. ‘A month. I don’t even think I can make it through that.’ He cried then, his shoulders shaking as he buried his face in his hands.
Lydia Manton breezed into the room, trailed by a strong smell of bleach. She stripped off rubber gloves, her cheeks slightly red like she’d been scrubbing away the pain. Luke shrugged off his wife’s hand. The sound of his cries followed Mae from their home. Whatever was coming could be no worse than what they had already been through.
She headed towards the beach and threw the bracelet into the sea.
And then she lay back on the sand and watched the day bleed out above her.
Mr Starling told them to watch every sunset like it was a gift, to grasp every minute as tightly as they could. At the marina she saw a dozen others doing the same, couples holding hands, a little boy on his father’s shoulders.
The last blazes of the last days of June. When it was time, when the water drowned the last rays of sun, she looked across the twilit coast and watched the boy from the white house ghost back into her life.
In his dark suit and tie, he stopped by the water’s edge and kicked off his shoes. And then he looked up at the sky, and he walked into the water.
Ankle deep.
Knee deep.
Mae sat up.
He dived into a wave.
She glanced around but saw the beach empty, the marina now quiet. As she got to her feet and crossed the warm sand, starlight met the waves, so dazzling she lost sight of him.
Again she looked around wildly for someone to help.
He emerged by the buoys. And then he sank.
She scanned the water, mentally counting off seconds, each one lingered, each one told her it had been too long.
Mae kicked off her shoes, then stripped off her jeans and T-shirt.
The water was cold. She moved with purpose. A West girl, swimming in the sea was her childhood.
She cut through gentle waves with silent grace, dropped beneath the water and powered her way towards the buoy.
She looked around, treading water, the shore lights blinked. Mae dropped again, the salt burning her eyes as she felt the pressure build in her ears. When her lungs started to hurt she swam up.
Another dive and she pulled herself deeper.
For a moment their eyes met, the water like ink, she reached a hand out but he just watched her.
She grabbed a fistful of his shirt, felt his hand on hers but kicked hard.
He coughed as they met the air, the moonlight finding his flawless face.
She clutched the buoy with her free hand and fought for breath.
He coughed again, then took his own weight, reached around the buoy and breathed.
In the half-light his skin almost glowed.
‘Can you swim?’ she said.
He nodded.
They swam together, she kept him by her side.
When they made it to shore they collapsed on the sand.
They lay side by side.
The stars opened above them like some kind of show.
‘What the hell was that?’ she said, still panting.
He turned to look at her.
It was then she realised she wore only her underwear. This time he leaned in, and he kissed her so hard she lost all the air in her lungs.
She pushed him, her hand on his chest, her eyes blazing as water dripped from her hair.
Behind them the town shone.
Above them the sky fell a little lower.