Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Two
After they had gorged themselves and washed it down with a couple of glasses of champagne, Brian and Milly dozed on the loungers at the bow of the boat. Jack and Sofia cleared away lunch.
‘So, I lost the bet then,’ Sofia said, for want of something to fill the slightly awkward silence they had been manoeuvring around all day.
‘Oh hands down, she had a whale of a time.’ He looked at her expectantly. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of laughing at such a lame pun, but it was the lameness of it that tickled her.
‘I didn’t take you for the dad joke sort.’ She was trying not to look at him too much, instead concentrating on the plates in her hands.
‘You, Sofia Harlow, are famously a terrible judge of character, so I’m not surprised by that at all.’ He nudged his shoulder against hers playfully, and she almost lost her balance, squatting as she was with her hands full.
‘Careful!’ she squealed.
He raised a finger to his lips. ‘Shhhh, you’ll wake the kids.’ He gestured towards the front of the boat where Brian could be heard snoring softly and Milly’s Prada sunglasses had slipped halfway down her face.
‘All that excitement always wipes them out.’ Sofia shook her head, raising her eyebrows in the universal sign language for ‘what are they like!’
Jack chuckled, and then there was the silence again and only the sound of cutlery scraping against crockery.
After clearing his throat, Jack began speaking, but it came out strangled and unintelligible. Sofia giggled. ‘What was that?’ She had never seen him be anything other than in control of himself, and she was even more surprised to see him blush afterwards.
‘I don’t know, maybe you make me nervous, Harlow,’ he muttered and then added, ‘I never know when you’re about to throw a drink over me next.’
‘That was one time!’ She wasn’t ready to engage with the first half of that sentence; she was much more comfortable falling back on that tired joke of theirs.
‘I was trying to ask if you wanted to try the scuba kit? We could just swim over to that beach over there and have a go in the shallows?’ His expression was earnest.
‘Do you think we’ll have time?’ Sofia didn’t want to deal with grumpy guests or a grumpy Jack when the sacred schedule would need to be pushed back.
‘Yeah, they’re sleeping like babies.’ Jack winked at her. She was a little apprehensive about trying scuba diving. If she was being honest with herself, she had probably projected a lot of that onto Milly. Suddenly though, knowing she would have Jack to guide her through it, she felt fearless. As she slipped on the kit and pulled on the flippers, it wasn’t the thought of diving down that was tying a knot in her stomach, it was a niggling feeling that the thing she had been trying to ignore for so long was finally coming to the surface.
They tumbled into the water and swam towards the shallower end of the cove. Once Sofia could touch the bottom, Jack stopped them.
‘OK so first I’m going to teach you the signs, then I’m going to show you how to breathe.’ He was in instructor mode again, but now that they were doing something exciting, Sofia found she didn’t mind.
‘OK!’ she said and then realising she was getting ahead of herself, added, ‘sorry what do you mean by signs?’
‘Signs we do with our hands under the water to communicate, seeing as we can’t speak.’ She was finding it hard to take him seriously with his goggles on. He started making shapes with his hands. ‘So this means “danger”.’ He held his fist out straight in front of him. ‘This means “help”.’ He waved his arm up and down at his side. Another couple of gestures. ‘This one is “I’m OK”; this one is “Are you OK?” This one is “going up” and then this is “I’m going down”.’
Sofia was nodding along, but if she was being honest she was a little distracted. They had moved closer to the beach and now most of his chest was out of the water. The smattering of curls on his torso beaded with droplets of seawater were catching the light, and her attention. She willed herself to concentrate.
‘This is “hold hands”.’ He clasped his hands together in front of him, his expression earnest.
‘And why would we need that one?’ Sofia asked coyly.
Jack shot her a look. ‘Don’t be getting any ideas, Harlow. It’s only if you’re in distress and then I can lead you to safety.’
‘You do so enjoy the white knight role. I’ll see what I can do.’ She pouted her lips and batted her eyelashes. She was joking of course, but there was also something a little dangerous about how close she was stepping to ‘the line’ that thrilled her.
He pulled up his goggles and gave her a stern look. ‘Sofia, you have to listen – this is important.’
‘OK, OK! Sorry, Captain, do go on.’ She planted a serious expression on her face and he rolled his eyes.
‘This one is “you lead, I follow”.’ He pointed with both his index fingers to the left. She was on top of him, teasing him with her hands and devouring him with her eyes. She shook her head slightly. What was up with these intrusive dirty thoughts? She felt like a horny teenager.
‘Everything OK?’ Jack had seen her glaze over.
‘Yep!’ she said brightly.
‘OK last one, and this is the most important one really, so I’m going to get you to repeat it.’ He held his hand in front of his chest, flat, palm down, and moved it back and forth, as if polishing his chin. It all felt so absurd, Sofia snorted.
‘It’s no laughing matter, Sofia. That means “I’ve run out of air”.’ He seemed genuinely put out, but that just made it funnier. Jack waited for her giggles to subside, hands on hips.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said catching her breath. She stood up straight and mimicked the movement.
‘Good,’ he conceded, ‘ready to breathe?’ He reached behind her to grab the air hose. His cheek grazed her ear and her breath caught in her throat. There it was, that energy between them, so tangible that she had to scratch at the place where they had touched when he leant back. She noticed that his cheeks had reddened slightly.
‘This is the octo, short for octopus.’ He held up the mouthpiece, not looking her straight in the eye. For a moment she thought he might actually put it in her mouth. The idea of it felt overwhelming, but he placed it in her hand instead. She wrapped her lips around it, feeling it settle around her gums.
‘OK when you feel comfortable, take a big breath in, and then take it out to breathe out.’ She did as instructed.
‘Good,’ he said encouragingly. ‘One more time.’ This time he held her gaze, and as she breathed out, he let out a sympathetic sigh.
Goggles on, they repeated the exercise a few times under water. Sofia was impatient to get going, but Jack insisted on running through the signs once again.
‘We’re going to take it really slow, and stay where we can stand for a bit.’ Jack’s tone was stern. Sofia considered they were decent words to live by, but she was always eager to swim right into the deep end of things.
After some time paddling around, Sofia was itching to go further out. She signalled for them to go up. As they broke the surface she removed her goggles. ‘I can literally only see sand, Jack, surely we can go a little deeper?’
He was hesitant. ‘Usually people do about five days of prep before going out into the sea.’
‘Well I’m pretty sure Milly didn’t, and anyway, I’m a quick learner.’ She was determined to actually see something.
‘OK, fine, if you’re going to keep nagging, but stay close.’ Jack seemed to know he was destined to lose this battle.
Sofia beamed, pulled her goggles on and dived down. Under the water she turned her head to see Jack gliding along beside her. He gave her a thumbs up and she followed suit. Below her a school of tiny silver fish darted around erratically. As they approached the base of the cliff face she spotted a starfish, and then, to her mild horror, an eel.
She kept bashing Jack in the arm and pointing frantically at every new creature she saw.
At a certain point she began to feel like she had to drag a little harder on the octo. In the distance she could see what looked like a ray, and she was determined to reach it. She swam harder, and huffed harder. As she drew nearer, it occurred to her in a flash of panic, that she was probably running out of air.
Suddenly the peacefulness of the silent underwater world she had been enjoying morphed into something suffocating. Her mind went blank. She couldn’t remember any of the signals. Then it came to her, chin rub. She turned herself around and gestured as she had been shown. Jack didn’t react – maybe he hadn’t seen her. She tried again, but the energy of it was using up more oxygen. Her brain was telling her to go up, to get air, but now she couldn’t seem to remember which way that was, or move her limbs in the right way to get there.
Her vision blurred, and a strange weightlessness spread over her. Everything was getting darker.