Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
It was the thought of seeing Bridget again that swung it, of course.
I didn’t imagine us falling in love and getting married.
I just wanted to see her. I wanted to watch films with her like we did when we lived down the hall from one another.
I wanted to talk for hours through the night until one of us realised that the sun had come up.
The moment I see her again is just as I hoped it would be.
The group doesn’t feel the way it used to, and Clara almost dying doesn’t help, but when I get to spend the day with the girl that I instantly realise I’ve never stopped loving, it’s easy to overlook those comparatively minor problems. Especially when Bridget comes up to dinner, and we toast her for saving Clara’s life.
The wind whips her dress around, and she is breathtaking.
I think that even Ryan and Tom look at her differently, whereas Ade pretends that he hasn’t noticed.
Her eyes lock on to mine down the table and – though it’s probably egotistical, chauvinistic and deranged – I let myself believe that I’m the one she’s come here to see.
I know it’s too good to be true, so when Tom makes a scene, and we have to sit listening to Sasha’s genuinely sad tale, I think, Yep!
This is pretty much how I expected my big night to go.
As sorry as I am for them, another part of me wants to diminish Tom’s suffering.
A much more selfish part of me says that he’s a tourist. He’s not an alcoholic after a few months of daily drinking.
He still has his money from ten years in the City and a rich family to fall back on if his investments don’t pan out.
That very mean instinct within me insists that he isn’t an addict until he’s woken up on a dirty mattress in a lightless squat (preferably in Croydon).
As if to underline this point, when I wake up the next morning, we find Mick dead in his bathroom.
It all feels so inevitable. The plane ticket in the post, a yacht that would take me a thousand lifetimes to save up for, Bridget: all of it was stacked up to show that people like me and Mick are not allowed nice things.
It’s clear from the beginning that Ade won’t turn the boat around for the sake of a dead junkie. He bites his lip as though he’s struggling with his emotions, but no matter how much he cared for his friend, he’s never going to change his plans.
“That’s why there was no booze on board, right?” I say as I take Mick’s legs and we move him onto the bed. “You were trying to save him from himself.”
“Well, that’s part of it, yeah,” he replies, and I wonder whether he knew everything about us before we came.
Was Ade following me while I was following him?
He couldn’t buy a copy of Rolling Stone or go to the NME’s website to find out what I was up to, but there would have been ways to check.
He could have called my parents as a concerned friend when I was at my worst. Perhaps that’s why he sent the money when he did.
It happened a second time, just after I got out of jail and needed to piece my life back together.
He didn’t put it in my bank that time. I had a letter from his lawyers saying that, because of a court case that had uncovered copyright infringement relating to the band’s early musical output, I was due ￡10k in compensation.
Ade always loved being the leader. Whether it was of the band or our group of friends, he called the shots. We could turn back to Mauritius right now to ensure that Mick’s body is dealt with faster, but that would mean giving up on whatever entertainment he’s organised for us.
Perhaps I’m being unfair. Perhaps he really does want to do right by Mick, but we’ve started on a journey, and he obviously feels we need to see it through.
Either way, I should handle it better. When we meet back up with the others to talk things over, I hate that I lose my cool and storm off like… well, like Tom, I suppose.
I go down to the cinema and root through the library of movies to save myself from jumping overboard. I’m just about to put on the action masterpiece Con Air when I hear the door open and there she is. I watch Bridget through the glass for a moment and, even in the dimly lit cinema, I’m hypnotised.
“I’ve chosen a movie just for you,” I lie, then hurry to find something she’ll like.
And somehow, it works. We sit right next to one another in the cinema and, when I put my hand on the armrest between us, she takes it in hers.
My body burns, and I know that I haven’t felt this way in years.
Isn’t it insane that there are states we can only experience in such specific circumstances?
The best food in the world couldn’t make me feel this way, nor could all the money in Ade’s bank.
The physical manifestation of love as it fizzes through you is something that many people will never enjoy, and others will spend their lives chasing.
It is unique and addictive, and I would fly around the world any number of times to find it – to find her.
She puts her head on my shoulder and, as reluctant as I am to move my hand from hers, I stretch my arm out around her.
Eighteen-year-old Jake would have messed this up.
He would have desperately tried to move things on and made a fool of himself but, if nothing else, I’ve learnt to take my time.
She drifts off into a pretty dream, and I sit watching her.
I can only see about half of her face, but it’s worth any level of discomfort to be so close.
I barely notice that the film is on, though my thoughts of Bridget and me bleed into 1950s Rome.
For a moment, I’m the suave older journalist and she’s the nymphlike princess.
We look at one another lovingly over café tables and run away from our responsibilities together.
For a moment, life is a fairy tale. I desperately want to hold on to it, but I know that my eyes are drooping, and it won’t be long before they close altogether.
The feeling of waking up without her is agony.
I want the day to pass quicker so that dinner comes around again.
I go back to sleep to make it happen. When I finally leave the cinema, I can feel a change in the air.
The sea that surrounds us – that was pretending to be our friend until now – has been whipped up by the wind.
The rain will soon fall. There’s a nip of cold hidden in the warm breeze, and a storm is coming.
I shouldn’t have wished my day away. When dinner does arrive, Tom makes sure to ruin it again, and even the joy of jumping about to old music with my friends can’t pick me up again when I see Ade and Bridget cuddling up to one another.
I’m back at that party in Ade’s flat when I was twenty-one.
My throat feels like it’s closing in on itself, my brain has apparently stopped working, and I can’t even quit the band in protest this time because I already did that a decade ago.
Before I can spiral into the darker realms of my imagination, Ryan suggests that we leave them to it.
I grab a fake beer and, once we’re outside in the lashing rain, I tell them to go to their cabins without me.
I can see that Clara’s concerned I’ll do something stupid, but I tell her not to worry, and then I go off to do something stupid.
I go back to where I was happiest on board.
I climb the stairs to the upper deck where we had dinner last night, but it’s not the same.
The chairs are tied down to prevent them from sliding about, and sitting on the table doesn’t look too appealing.
Perhaps it’s the illusion of drunkenness that sucking on a beer bottle provides, but I feel no fear as I move one level higher despite the constant rocking of the ship.
Why I decide to pull myself up to the highest point to stare death in the face, I can’t say.
But for a few minutes, I don’t think about my daughter or Mum and Dad and how they would feel if I fell to my death in the endless black ocean.
I feel the spray and the rain on my face and, for a short time, there are no consequences to my actions.
I stand up there with my arms wrapped around a steel cable and feel like a surfer riding a wave.
It’s less exciting when I realise that I have surprisingly good balance and I’m not in any danger, but I don’t go back down because I feel strong up here.
I feel like I’m in control for the first time in my life, but when I finally hear the musical strains of Bridget’s voice, she says, “You idiot, you could fall to your death.”
I pretend not to hear and take a slug from the beer that is now 50 per cent rainwater. She shines her torch in my face to make sure I pay attention, but it’s only when the ship’s captain turns on a gigantic xenon searchlight that I know something’s wrong and climb down.
In the light of a torch beam, I can see Bridget’s panic even through the rain.
I’ve had plenty of chances to feel stupid this week, but this is the worst so far.
All my selfish thoughts fly from my head, and I feel like I’m to blame for the storm, Ade’s sad expression and whatever else has gone wrong.
I manage to get to the main deck without dying, and he grabs hold of me to whisper something so that Bridget doesn’t hear.
“It’s Sasha. We can’t find her.”
His words hit me harder than I would have expected.
The last five years of my life have been centred around calm and stability, and it’s impossible to imagine anything so dramatic coming to pass.
I need to get my head around the idea that he isn’t talking about someone on TV, but our friend.
Our well-meaning, kind-hearted friend, who came across as a bit spoilt sometimes but always tried to make people happy.
It’s all too much to process. I don’t feel steady on my feet anymore, and the constant tilting and correcting of the ship only makes that worse.
I press on after Bridget all the same. I want to keep her within sight to make sure nothing bad can happen, to make certain that she won’t meet whatever fate Sasha has, but someone has to go to down to the beach club, and so I squeeze her shoulder and duck under the chain at the top of the stairs.
There’s no one to find down there and, as I return to the platform, I predict the look of distress on Bridget’s face almost to the muscle. She stares down at me, Clara close at her side, and I struggle to produce a word.
“There’s no one here.”
My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It’s hollow and tinged with anger.
As if the psychodrama of this reunion wasn’t bad enough, we have a dead body and a woman overboard.
The rain runs off Tom’s face as he grips the railing on the floor above me.
I climb back up to the main deck, sure I’m not the only one who remembers that the last time we saw Sasha alive was when she went off with her husband.
Ryan pulls me away from the others as we continue the search. “I keep thinking about what happened to Clara.”
“Clara?” I parrot him. If there’s one person I haven’t worried about this evening, it’s her.
“When she fell overboard,” he explains, but that feels so long ago that it might as well have happened when we were at university.
I realise that we’re standing out in the rain, so I take a few steps towards the overhanging roof behind the main suites. “What’s that got to do with Sasha?”
“With Sasha and Mick,” he says. “Don’t you think it’s strange that Clara should spontaneously fall overboard? It seems to me that a death, a disappearance and an attempted murder are too much of a coincidence.”
“It’s a bit early to talk about murder, isn’t it?”
“Maybe.” He pauses, clearly distressed. “And I don’t know that he was responsible, but when I got to the spot where Clara had fallen from the ship, Ade was standing nearby.”