“What?” Dr. Finch, rooted to the ground, stares at her. “Are you fucking insane? You’re not going back up there. It’s nearly dark.”
“Nearly”—Bea lifts the elastic, finding the winch—“But not quite.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Oh, come on,” Bea snaps. “Don’t be such a dick.”
“Society rules,” Dr. Finch retorts. “You’ll get me kicked out. Dammit, you’ll probably get me disciplined.”
Bea swears to herself. She wants to fly, wants to feel free again. It’s all she’s ever wanted—a legacy left by a peripatetic childhood ruled by strangers who sent her mamá to the dungeon of Saint Dymphna’s while interning Bea in a dozen different foster homes, from which she tried to escape over and over again.
“You’re such a bloody coward.”
“And you’re bloody suicidal.”
So what if I am? Bea wants to say. Surely it’s commendable not to cower from death but to leap into its jaws with a warrior’s cry. Her maniacal, manic mamá at least taught her that. Bea opens her mouth, about to tell him so, then thinks better of it. “Piss off.”
Dr. Finch glares at her.
A taut silence stretches between them—the catapult pulled too far, ready to snap. With one last, reluctant glance at the grounded glider, Bea drops the elastic to her feet. She eyes him instead: the thin limp frame, weak-featured face, slightly anaemic pallor of the overeducated, affected scruffy hair and stubble growth to suggest that his mind is on more elevated subjects than personal grooming. What a prick. Bea wishes she had immediate access to a better option. Sadly, right now, she does not.
“So,” Bea says. “If I can’t fly, then I need the next best thing—is your wife expecting you home?”
Afterwards, Bea lies across the sofa in Dr. Finch’s office, while he scrambles about for his clothes—acting as if he can’t quite imagine how this happened, as if that means he can later claim that it didn’t actually happen at all. She scans the titles of his textbooks, searching for anything by her favourite philosopher.
She doesn’t want to be here anymore. She wants to be in the air or, if she can’t, reading a book. An escape. An alternative world. She’d been wrong. The orgasm, especially as it’d been executed by the inattentive Dr. Finch, was a pathetic echo of flight. She should have stayed in the air. She should have stolen the plane. Next time she will. Next time she won’t come down.
1st October
Thirty-one days . . .
5:31 a.m.—Liyana
The first dive is always the finest. The moment she slices the water and slides under. That is it. Her peak moment. A singular rush of joy floods her veins like a morphine shot as Liyana dives, arms like an arrow, moving so fast and free that she feels no longer solid but liquid.
“I hate being human,” Liyana often says. “Imagine gliding through water all your life instead of stumbling through air.”
“You moan like a beached whale,” her aunt Nyasha often replies. “Or that mermaid in that film you—”
“Madison,” Liyana would always interrupt. “Splash. Yeah, except the blond hair and blue eyes, I wish I was.”
Liyana allows herself this joy once a month. She “borrows” her aunt’s membership, walking the half mile to the Serpentine Spa on Upper Street, and swims for an hour. No more, no less. Then she leaves and doesn’t return, no matter how much she wants to, until the next month and the next permitted trip. The enforced limitation is a regretful but necessary discipline to keep the inevitable aftermath of sorrow at bay.
“So why do you go, vinye?” Nya asks. “If it makes you sad?”
“The same reason you chase men who make you miserable,” Liyana replies. “Because if you didn’t, you might as well be dead.”
Almost five years ago Liyana spent six hours a day in a swimming pool. Then, swimming had anointed her only with joy, much like her aunt’s new (and fifth) husband had Nya. At ten she’d won enough trophies to fill an oak cabinet; at thirteen she was set for Olympic stardom. Then came the accident that beached Liyana for a year, casting her forever back into amateur waters. Now swimming brings joy and sorrow in equal measure. The first dive is still the finest, the final always the saddest. And then Liyana leaves, before the longing to stay becomes too overwhelming. It’s already difficult enough to let go after only an hour. And in the following days the scent of chlorine clings to her skin no matter how she scrubs, twisting her guts and stinging her black eyes, bright as stones on the seabed. When at last it leaves, her skin—dark as the depths of the ocean—is parched again until the next month.
Underwater, as her torpedoed self slows, Liyana opens her eyes to the lengths of shimmering blue ceramic tiles, shaped into a sea serpent of two curling mosaic S’s. She is poised to flip, to kick off from the tiles and push to the surface, when she sees a glimmering in the corner: a stone, bright white as a skull. It’s as big as her fist and, as she glides towards it, Liyana thinks of Kumiko’s face. Kumiko, her skin pale as bone within curtains of black hair like a waning moon in a midnight sky.
“If I’m the moon,” Kumiko had said, “then you’re the night sky, curling round me.”
Liyana laughed. “All right then.”
“No, I’m not the moon.” Kumiko leaned forward. “I’m the teeth in your dark, wet mouth.”
Kumiko touched her lips to Liyana’s. Slowly, Liyana kissed her. “You’re trying to distract me.”
Kumiko smiled. “Is it working?”
“I’m trying—I want to draw you.”
“I want to fuck you.”
Liyana laughed again. “You’re not very ladylike, are you?”
Kumiko pulled back. “By whose definition?”
“Well . . .” Liyana tapped her pen to her teeth. “You’d certainly better not talk to my aunt like that.”
“That depends”—Kumiko’s smile deepened—“Does she look like you?”
“Right,” Liyana said, setting down her pen. “You’re definitely not meeting her now.”
Kumiko rolled her eyes. “Like I ever was.”
“You will,” Liyana said. “I’m just . . .”
“Waiting for the right time,” Kumiko said. “I know, I’ve heard your spiel enough times I could recite it back to you.”
“Please,” Liyana said. “You’ve got to—”
“Give you time,” Kumiko finished. “Yeah, yeah. Yada yada . . . You know what? You need to stop being so ladylike and grow some balls—or boobs, or whatever the fem equivalent is—and stop being such a fucking coward.”
Liyana surfaces clutching the stone. Shaking the water from her hair, she looks up into the face of a man. She frowns and folds her arms over the poolside edge. He gazes down at her.
“I thought I’d have to call the lifeguard,” he says.
Liyana’s frown deepens into a scowl.
“You can hold your breath for a really long time,” he clarifies. “It looked like you might not come up.”