The Girl in the Mirror(13)

“Do you recognize Solomon?” she asks. Does she mean the dog? No—the looming shape ahead merges with my memory of the name.

Solomon, our dinghy. An antique rowing dory, crafted from New Zealand kauri, painted black to match Bathsheba. It waits for us in the shallows, quiet as an ambush.

It’s not the most practical tender. There’s no room to mount an outboard on its fine stern. I’m amazed Summer and Adam haven’t replaced it with a motorized dinghy. Summer is no oarswoman.

My hand grips Solomon’s gunwale, and as the smooth timber warms my skin, I feel my childhood shimmering around me in the night. All the best moments, before Dad died. I learned to row in this dinghy, long before Summer or Ben could. And then we kids went everywhere in Solomon. We were free to explore beaches and coves, streams and caves. I was in charge.

And now Solomon belongs to Summer. I’m surprised to see my sister’s dug the dinghy’s anchor firmly into the sand against the rising tide. She was always useless at that sort of thing—but perhaps Adam did it.

“Can I row?” The words slip out of me.

“Of course,” Summer says. “Twinnie, you’re the skipper now! Adam and I know what a great sailor you are. I’ve told him how when we were teenagers you were always out racing around the buoys with those blokes from the yacht club. We wouldn’t dream of giving you orders. While you’re here, Bathsheba is your ship.”

Two weeks or more of murmuring orders to Adam. I could get used to that.

Summer stows my suitcase in Solomon while I retrieve the anchor. We throw our shoes on top of the suitcase and push the dinghy into the calm water, cool and soft around our ankles.

“You get in now. Sit in the stern,” I say, holding the dinghy steady for her. Summer obeys. She’s more agile than she used to be, but Solomon still shudders as she clambers to her seat.

I steer Solomon into deeper water, hitching up my skirt. Summer’s right to put me in charge. I can’t help but take control, the thousand habits that keep us safe at sea flooding back into my body like muscle memory. Take Solomon deep, don’t let the bottom scrape the sand. Get everyone else in the dinghy first, keep the fine bow seaward. I could do this even if waves were crashing around us; I used to relish the challenge of launching a dinghy in surf, but the Andaman Sea is a millpond tonight. Still, good to keep up my seamanship. I push my feet against the seabed and alight in my rowing seat in one movement, grabbing the oars and pulling away from shore. I glance over my shoulder and see four or five anchor lights a few hundred meters away. No doubt the highest of these shines from Bathsheba’s masthead.

“Wait!” says Summer, but it’s too late. We’re in deep water already.

“What?”

“That’s our last touch of land for two or three weeks,” she says. “It feels like we should do something, say goodbye.”

“Our last touch of land?”

“We leave at first light,” she says.

My blood surges. No more tedious Tarquin, no more noisy traffic, no more sex tourists and child whores. I was excited to be coming to Phuket, but there’s nothing for me here anymore. I’m ready to leave. Tomorrow, I’ll be free. Tomorrow, it’ll be me and the sweet blue ocean. Me and—

“We?” I say. “What do you mean, we? Don’t you mean Adam and me?”

“Oh, I can’t believe Adam didn’t tell you,” Summer says. “There’s been a last-minute change of plan. We didn’t account for Thai bureaucracy. Seems they need a legal guardian to stay with Tarky to consent to any further medical procedures, and Adam is his only living guardian. So Adam has to stay.”

She has ripped away my reason for coming here, and I can’t say a word.

Summer’s face is in darkness, silhouetted against shoreside lights, but she must be able to see my expression. I turn to face the bow, as if trying to pick out Bathsheba’s form among the flock of anchored yachts.

“You’re upset,” Summer says, “but don’t you see how much better this is? I mean, you and Adam barely know each other. What would you do out there for weeks on end?”

Adam’s not coming. From the slump in my heart, I know it was he who lured me here. Two or three weeks alone with Adam, breathing his smell, gazing into his abyssal eyes, thrilling to his voice.

And yet it would have been agony. Brotherly jests, clumsy gallantry, me close to bursting with forbidden desire. It’s not like he was going to dump Summer just because I sail better.

Summer said “we,” so she must mean that she and I will be sailing, but there’s no way she is happy about this. Summer relies on Adam to keep her safe at sea. Sailing is hard physical work, and Summer, for all her grace, is a poor yachtswoman, slow and blundering.

I know what they want me to do. I assume a blank expression and turn back to Summer. I keep pushing the oars through the silky water.

“You want me to sail Bathsheba on my own, don’t you?” I ask.

“You’ve always said that you wanted to,” says Summer.

She’s right. I have always bragged about my seamanship, and it is possible to sail Bathsheba single-handed. But a solo voyage means being on watch twenty-four hours a day, catching snatches of sleep where I dare. It means weeks of utter solitude, utter isolation.

Perhaps this is what I need. Leave my sister and her perfect life behind. Face my demons out there in the blue void.