Chapter 36
Helena floated on her back, the water cradling her head. The cold felt deliciously anesthetizing.
She let the fizz and clicks of the ocean fill her ears.
Her breasts felt swollen and tender, and it was bliss to float there, naked.
She tried to picture herself pregnant—well, she was pregnant, but to picture herself really pregnant.
Swollen belly straining at her top; tits so huge that they needed a whole new set of underwear. She didn’t know how it made her feel.
Hell, she was too knackered to know how anything was meant to feel.
As she floated, her thoughts drifted to her mother.
Grief was like that—pockets of memory bubbling to the surface unbidden.
Her mother had always loved to swim, and throughout the summers of her childhood, they’d holidayed in North Devon, renting a seaside flat for a week, her mother swimming each morning in all weathers.
She’d float on her back, lipstick on, body surrendered—and Helena used to love seeing her that way: relaxed, still, held by the sea.
This is where I will sprinkle your ashes, Helena found herself promising. At dawn. Her mother’s favorite time of day. Pleased with the decision, she rolled onto her front and swam to shore.
Her skin was puckered with goose bumps as she waded out, nipples like bullets. The sun had been swallowed by cloud now and she shivered. She had no towel, so she used the back of her fleece to dry herself, then pulled on her only fresh top.
Liz and Maggie were already dressed, arms hugged to their bodies, stamping their feet to stay warm.
Joni was the last one out, her expression beatific as she walked up the beach.
She lifted her hands, squeezing the water from her dark rope of hair.
A tattoo of tiny birds inked the inner skin of her wrist. A new tattoo Helena had never seen stretched from hip to pubic bone.
There had been a time when she knew each of Joni’s tattoos and what they meant—but that closeness had evaporated.
Joni always had the power to lift and drop you like a wave.
“Look,” Maggie said, turning and pointing out to sea, brows pulled together.
Everyone followed her gaze. A brooding army of rain clouds was marching in from the horizon.
“We should set up camp,” Liz said.
The last of the sunlight had been swallowed and now darkness was pulling close, and with it, a rising wind. Helena’s gaze skirted away to the sea, the tips of waves beginning to whiten and crest. The air held an earthy sweetness of approaching rain.
—
Helena used the heel of her hiking boot to stamp the final peg into the ground. Then she stepped back, assessing the tent, a knot of worry squirming in her stomach.
“Are you sure this is a good spot?” she said to the group. “Aren’t we too close to the mountain?”
They had set up camp at the bottom of the trail, where the mountain met the beach. Maggie hadn’t wanted to walk a step further than necessary, campaigning that they’d be in the right place to hike out in the morning.
Helena peered up at the steep, earthy slope.
“There’s nothing overhanging us,” Joni said with a shrug.
“We can’t pitch the tents on the sand,” Liz said. “The pegs wouldn’t hold.”
Helena felt the first drop of rain fall from the sky, plump and heavy. One landed on the back of her hand, another on her cheekbone.
“Time to get inside,” Liz said, disappearing into her tent with Joni.
Maggie dusted the sand from her pack, then heaved it into the tent. She grimaced as she crawled in after it.
“Y’okay?” Helena asked as she zipped shut their tent.
“Just my back,” Maggie said.
A gust of wind shouldered the tent, blowing the fabric against them.
They both did their best to make the tent cozy, inflating their mats, unrolling sleeping bags, making pillows of their coats.
There would be no camp-stove dinner tonight, so they each took out a breakfast bar, knowing that would have to suffice.
Helena shuffled into her sleeping bag and nibbled at the dry, honeyed oats while listening to the rain, which had begun to pour in earnest.
The light had leached from outside. She felt the low flutter of anxiety she always experienced as day became swallowed by night. Helena flicked on her torch. She pulled her phone from her pack, checking it reflexively for messages—but of course there was still no signal.
“Nothing?” asked Maggie, who was raising and lowering her shoulders to release the tension in her back.
Helena shook her head, pushing the phone back into her bag.
They were both quiet for a time, listening to the strengthening wind.
“Earlier, in the woods,” Helena said, voice raised above the elements, “what did you make of Erik being out there?”
“I don’t know . . . It was like, like he knew where I’d be.”
“You think he was following us?”
“No. I don’t know. Maybe.” Maggie looked down at her lap. “It was just the way he was suddenly there, staring at me. The way he called me Karin. And then . . . he disappeared when you all turned up.”
Helena watched her closely.
Maggie looked toward the tent door. “Do you think he’s still out there?”
“We’re safe,” Helena said, reaching for Maggie’s hand and squeezing, just as another gust of wind hurled itself against their tent.