The Invitation(101)

I have to ask it. ‘How did you know?’

‘I suspected it, before I left Genoa. I knew it, when I returned, and saw the two of you, how you were with one another.

‘I had just learned that the treatment had failed – and there you were, looking like the future come to mock me. But I could never have hurt her.’

He paused, took another long draught of his drink. ‘So, there it is. My confession. I was a weak man, a liar. But I was not a murderer.’

He died three weeks later. Strange to think that he was already on that journey the first time I met him, though death had only marked him so visibly for its own in that final phase.

He had been a bully and something approaching a criminal, but perhaps not a monster. In my mind, I had made him into one. It had been easier to imagine him thus.

And the worst part of it was that, in spite of myself, I believed him. I believed that he had not done it. Which meant that I was forced to confront the idea that she had not wanted the future we had discussed together. That she had taken her own life. If she had done so, I refused to think it might be because of him, because of his bullying. Was there some part of her that had been broken all those years ago in Spain, that had not healed?

It was not the ending that I would have written for her, had I that power.





PART SIX





43


Her


Forgive me. I know it will be difficult to understand, but I have to do this on my own. For so long I have been a weak, frightened person, incapable of independent action. You have helped me rediscover whom I was before. It is important that you know it. It is how I have found the courage to do this.

We can’t do it together. Firstly, because it would be more dangerous for both of us if we did. And secondly, because from this moment on, I know I can’t let myself be reliant on another person again. It wouldn’t work. I know that, in the end, you would come to resent me. If we meet again, it must be as equals.

I drag myself up the wet sand. I am nearly out of the reach of the water, though it feels as though the last of my strength may finally desert me before I am able to quite crawl to safety. A curiously hard thing, this saving of oneself. And it feels as though it would be easy simply to stop, to let the waves reclaim me. That last part of the swim: I could not have foreseen the difficulty of it. Unimaginably hard. All of my preparation, the hours of swimming I have put in over the last few months, had not readied me for it. In the end only the desperate animal need to survive had forced me on. My mind, in that last stretch, had begun telling me to give in.

It is the darkest time of the night, though the city is permanently lit, and many of the boats in the harbour have kept lamps alight. Impossible to tell which is the yacht from this distance. It had been quite easy to slip away, in the end.

As the party had continued at the bow of the boat I crept to the dark stern, made my way, quickly, to the ladder.

I am certain that no one saw me. Everything was exactly as I had hoped it would be, save for one exception. As I crept to the edge I trod upon a piece of broken glass. The sound had come before the pain, and to me it had sounded catastrophically loud. I remembered the champagne-bottle skittles, the man sweeping frantically for the shards. Clearly, one had made it beyond the reach of his broom.

I used the hem of my dress to mop at where I thought my blood might have stained the wood, but it was too dark to see properly. It would have to do – there wasn’t time to be too diligent about it. And no doubt I was not the first on board to have sustained such an injury from the glass – it could be anyone’s blood, an inevitable remainder of the evening’s chaos.

The pain from my foot came only when I entered the water, and the salt bit at it. But the cold was more painful. I had not been prepared for it, and had to fight not to cry out with shock.

*

The sun umbrellas are silent sentinels.

I am very, very cold. My teeth chatter together so violently that I think they might crack. It feels as though the chill has permeated right through to the centre of me, that I may never get warm. Perhaps the cold will kill me. There would be some terrible irony in pulling oneself free of a death by drowning only to perish on the beach.

The beach is deserted, but I hallucinate movement in the shadows. If someone saw me, they would raise the alarm and everything would be ruined. I must leave this place absolutely unseen. I half-crawl along the sand, dropping low whenever I imagine the presence of some silent watcher. I am almost delirious with cold.

I am wearing only my underwear, but I swam with my dress tied about my waist like a belt. Now, crouched behind a stack of beach loungers, I pull the sodden fabric over my head. To walk through the streets like this will at least attract less attention than if I were half-naked. In the meagre glow of the street lamps, hopefully, the black fabric will not be obviously wet. As I stumble further up the beach I find, by a stroke of luck, a pair of sandals – discarded on the sand by some careless sunbather and, a little further on, a scarf. A dampish towel – I rub myself dry with this; a man’s jersey – I put this on for warmth. The scarf I tie about my hair, to conceal the colour of it. Thank goodness for the film festival, which has drawn the carefree crowds, forgetful of their belongings.

I walk through the deserted streets. The sandals are a little large and my feet slip in them, which I am sure gives me an odd, shuffling gait. My wounded foot throbs dully against the sole – but it does not bleed much now. The salt water has sealed the injury into a pale, puckered fissure.