The Wife Before Me(87)

Nicholas rang. She saw his name on the screen and allowed his call to go to message. His words slid like oil over her and away again. She exited the roundabout after the Dublin turn and headed for Mason’s Pier.



* * *



Twenty-five years since she had been there, yet her surroundings were heartbreakingly recognisable. She drove to the holiday home her parents had rented for that fateful week. The cottage was still thatched and the jutting window in the loft bedroom where she used to sleep was exactly as she remembered. One night she had woken to a roar of thunder. She had stood on a chair to watch as flashes of lightning skimmed across the waves. Five years old, her fearlessness taken for granted until it was destroyed. She drove on into the seaside village. Like the cottage, Mason’s Hook was unchanged, the wending main street with its colourful shops, the cars parked any which way outside them. Past the village, a quietness fell. No houses broke up the stark descent along the cliff road to the pier.

Memories churning, she fought back nausea as she approached the slipway. In those moments before her car reached the water, she entered a dreamlike trance. A child running along the pier. Her mother struggling with a beach umbrella. A ball bobbing on the white-fingered waves.

Amelia shuddered and gripped the steering wheel, her palms slick with sweat. The fury of his fists. The kicks that left her gasping for air as she lay doubled over on the floor. The mark on her left breast where he, a non-smoker, had branded her with a cigarette. The nights he had held her and wept, promised to change; and, for a time, how possible that had seemed.

The tyres still had traction on the slimy slipway. It was not too late to change her mind. The life she was leaving behind and the future she faced clashed in an instant of doubt. Then she was composed again―or was it numbness that steadied her resolve? She was unable any longer to understand the signals her brain was sending to her. She felt a change in tempo, an almost imperceptible movement as the wheels began to lose their grip on the downward slope. The ocean had turned red. Tongues of fire, kindled by the setting sun.

She was aware that she was sinking, but not fast as she had expected; or maybe time had slowed so that she could enjoy a few seconds more of this rapturous sunset. She wondered if her car could straddle the ocean like a flat-bottomed boat. Could it carry her beyond the horizon where she had always imagined her mother lived in a dazzling, parallel universe? This fantasy was fleeting and water began to lap against the windows. Soon, she would be unable to see anything except cascading bubbles evaporating into the fathomless depths.



* * *



For months, she had prepared herself for these final moments. Alone on Kilfarran Strand, furrows of wet sand squiggling under her toes. Gannets and guillemots beating their wings against the sky. Terror slicing through her as the sand shifted in its rush to meet the incoming tide. A scampering wave sliding away before it reached her bare feet. Bracing herself as the next wave splashed over her toes. Telling herself, three steps… three steps will be enough for today. Enduring the shock each time she was buffeted by a fresh wave even though the sea, running dizzily past her, was still no higher than her ankles.

Back at Woodbine, showering. A residue of sand left on the floor of the cubicle. Frantically spraying it away. Down on her knees to check if she had missed a grain. He was at a business meeting but he might have been looking over her shoulder, demanding to know why she had been standing up to her ankles in the petrifying sea. Sitting back on her hunkers, thinking it would be easier to fling her body against the walls of a padded cell than to continue living this existence.

She changed beaches regularly. Each one threw up a new challenge. Each one buoyed her confidence. She had never been able to imagine herself swimming yet her father had told her many times that she had been like an eel in the water before the accident.

Leanne had kept in touch, letters flying back and forth, insistent that Amelia did not change her mind. The die was cast, she wrote, if you’ll excuse the pun. Her sense of humour was dark and, sometimes, all Amelia could do was laugh at the absurdness of it all. It was never going to happen, yet she had kept swimming, knowing that if she could conquer this fear, anything else was possible.

Thinking about Leanne always brought tears. They had fused with the waves and were washed away by the sea.



* * *



A beach ball hurtling. A woman’s screams. Her mother’s arms reaching for her. To be enfolded in her embrace again. This time she would reach Amelia and they would be together at last. A joyous reunion, a glorious new beginning in a sphere where the sun never set and happiness was their eternal reward. This vision was dangerously close and enticing, as her car lurched and continued its downward plunge.

Amelia grabbed the red boot she had left on the passenger seat and smashed the window. Water surged around her, assaulted her eyes and nostrils, lifted her from the driver’s seat. Her body flailed, free-falling, an astronaut in space. She clung to the steering wheel and willed herself to remain focused as the return of a familiar panic stabbed her.

The car door was jerked open. A figure was beside her, round-helmeted and sleek as a seal. Was he a figment of her imagination or a knight in shining armour? She released her death grip on the wheel and was lifted upwards, her lungs straining against the pressure to breathe. Then, with what seemed like an explosion of splintering glass, Amelia surfaced into the light.

She was swept forward by the incoming tide towards a curvature of rocks. A sliver of sand was visible under the overhanging cliff. The diver, swimming stroke by stroke with her, encouraged her when she slowed or showed signs of panic. The waves were rushing to claim full possession of the cove when they staggered ashore. He supported her up steps cut into the cliff face. Down below them, the waves rolled over the sand and obliterated their footsteps.