Chapter 35 Amy
I’m standing on a clifftop dressed in neoprene and feel like I might throw up. It’s windy and wild, and our instructor, Scott, is telling us what fate has in store for us in his thick Devonian accent. Even the fact his wetsuit is rolled down to the waist to show his eight pack can’t distract me right now.
There’s plenty of jostling and back-slapping as we prepare to leap into the water. It’s so hard to work out what the men are really feeling – surely some of them are scared too? Eddie’s wetsuit bulges with his rugby player frame and Jay has removed the sunglasses he seems to wear inside and out. An ashen Geoffrey, squeezed into a too-small wetsuit, a brand-new price tag clearly on show, is pretending to be game. Below us a choppy sea smacks onto the rocks below. He is out of his depth. More at home in a knitted tank top, glasses atop his head as he reads seed catalogues. He’s definitely not brave – it took him four years after Dad died to ask Mum out and he’d been working as a part-time teacher at her school all that time. I give him a shaky smile and he nods.
‘Well, this is fun,’ he says, swallowing and craning his neck to see over the ledge.
I tug on my obligatory life vest, not comforted by it because Scott just made me sign something that definitely meant I couldn’t sue him if I died.
I step across. ‘Alright, Geoffrey – nervous too?’
‘Yes, Flynn, son, yes – well, no, all fun, isn’t it, all a bit of fun.’ He is growing paler with every passing second.
Is this what men do? Pretend to be OK when they are patently terrified? Do any of them actually want to jump off this cliff or are they just doing it to prove something to someone who doesn’t even exist, who they have created in their own mind: the Real Man? I feel Geoffrey could be my ally in this: we could bow out together.
Jay and Eddie jump together with wild whoops and then I watch, in horror, as before I can persuade Geoffrey to quit with me he follows them.
‘Got to be a man!’ he yells before disappearing into the sea.
My skin prickles as the wind whips around me, nudging me closer to the edge and their splashes and shouts. I would not have put money on Geoffrey flinging himself off a cliff. I wonder momentarily what else I don’t know about him.
‘I can’t do it,’ I say, shaking my head and wrapping my arms around my chest as Scott approaches me, a wide smile on his absurdly tanned face.
‘Sure you can, mate.’
‘I’m, I’m not that kind of guy,’ I insist. ‘You’re that kind of guy. I mean, I can see from listening to you you’re the kind of guy who wears shorts in winter, but I’m more of an indoor kind of guy …’
He interrupts my babbling by placing a hand on my arm. It’s a firm grip and I clamp my mouth closed. ‘It’s Flynn, isn’t it?’
I nod dumbly, gasping as a gust of wind jostles me again, the long grass tickling the tops of my bare feet.
‘Want to do it together, Flynn?’ he offers. His eyes crinkle. Even distracted, I can register he is absurdly hot.
‘Nope. Nope, I’d rather not do it at all really. Even with you. I mean, it’s kind; normally I imagine people are keen to do stuff with you …’
Scott freezes for a second before chucking his head back and laughing. ‘Alright, mate, I’ll tell you what, we’ll get this first jump out the way together, then once you’re in we’ll come up with a plan. Alright?’
‘Not really.’
He steers my unwilling body closer to the edge, the taste of salt on my lips as the day darkens, a cloud crossing the sky.
‘Three, two, one … and …’ Scott wrenches me along with him and we are over into nothingness.
I’m tumbling and then there is an almighty shock as I’m submerged in seawater. Whoops and shouts are all muted as I twist and fret in the water, darkness around me. Kicking to the surface, I splutter, gasping for air, swearing and spitting out salty water, blinking in surprise. The cheering, the exalted comments do boost me, and I tread water, looking at the faces of these men with their flushed cheeks and bright eyes. I can’t help feeling proud.
Scott’s wild hair is flattened as he swims away. ‘Come on then, lads, let’s go.’
An hour or so later, my new body aching, we’re in a cave: dark, dripping and seaweed coated. We’ve clambered, we’ve crawled, we have swum round large boulders in the sea whilst being smacked in the face by seawater. We have jumped off tall rocks, cliff edges and we are breathless and staring as Scott points to something beneath the surface.
‘Don’t fight it, Flynn mate,’ he says, beckoning me.
‘I’m fine! I’ll stay here. Wait for rescue.’
Scott just chucks his beautiful wet head back and laughs.
It’s just me and him in the cave and I want to crawl out onto this flat rock and cry amongst the limpets. I think with fury of Flynn in a luxury spa. Why don’t the men want hot tubs and saunas?
Stupid, sexy Scott ends up pulling me through the tunnel to get me out and the other men stare at me as I emerge in his wake holding my nose. Only Geoffrey smiles sympathetically.
Back outside the wooden building we’re all wearing matching hooded towels and sipping hot coffee from branded thermos flasks. The caffeine, the warm liquid, the towel around my wet head and cold ears all help to relax me, along with the knowledge that I didn’t die and that I achieved something. Begrudgingly I have to admit it felt good to be brave.
Scott raises his thermos to me. ‘Flynn mate, you did well, you did well.’
I like him a lot more now. I don’t even want to sue him a little bit.
‘Thanks,’ I beam, ‘I couldn’t have done it without you. You’re a lush instructor, so patient and attentive. Thank you s—’
A few of the men are looking at me.
Scott’s cheeks flood with colour and when he smiles I notice the smallest chip in one of his incisors, ‘It was all you, mate, all you.’
‘Alright, let’s get back on board before you two snog …’ calls Eddie, stepping across to the minibus.
There’s general talk as we all troop inside and settle in our seats. Relieved to be resting and returning to Flynn, I click my seatbelt across my body, zoning in and out of the chatter around me.
‘How about you, Eddie – long-term? Tanya seems nice,’ one man says.
‘And fit,’ another guy barks from the row in front.
My body freezes. Tanya. Not the most common name. But it can’t be.
Then something slots into place. The girl from last night, something familiar about her. I’d looked her up on social media in the past – of course I had.
Flynn would have said something, surely? Even with everything, he would have told me.
‘Yeah, she’s great.’ Eddie glances across at me as he says it. Then he twists in his seat, a slight smirk on his face, ‘I hope it’s not too weird, Flynn, was going to mention it on the WhatsApp group but figured you wouldn’t mind—’
I feel all eyes on me, Geoffrey scuffing a toe on the floor as the silence stretches on.
‘No, no,’ I say. ‘Not weird.’
The engine starts and the whole bus shakes. Nausea swirls within me.
‘We always had the same taste in women. Remember Penelope Harkness. Fit,’ Eddie says, resting his head back and laughing.
I barely hear him, questions bubbling up inside me. Before I can stop, some are spilling out. ‘That is great. So how are you guys getting on? Is she well? Did she say why she broke up with Fl— phew – broke up with me? Was it serious? I felt it was serious?’
‘Want to shine a light in his eye, mate?’ Jay laughs, lowering his sunglasses to peer at me over them.
‘Ha!’ I bark, too loud. The other men all look anywhere but at me. ‘Sorry, no, I just … wow, Tanya, that’s a blast, blast from my, from my past. Great. I can’t wait to see her, catch up …’
‘It is fine then,’ Eddie says, a small smirk. ‘You’re chill about it.’
‘It’s fine …’ I swallow, worried the words aren’t coming out, ‘fine … mate,’ I add. Trying to sound natural, normal. And not like my world is falling in. ‘Totally chill.’
Tanya. THE Tanya.
‘Chilled,’ I force a smile as Eddie twists back in his seat.
Tanya! What the hell is going on?