Lucy Clarke - A Single Breath

In her childhood summers when her father was still alive, they would come to this beach every morning to swim together, her father making lunging rotations with his long, bony arms in a backstroke. She had loved those swims when the water was calm and the early sun glanced off the surface. But today the sea is something darker, forbidding.

She scans the rocks for Jackson, eyes watering in the wind. He must be here; it’s the spot he always fishes when they’re visiting her mother. But now all that breaks the grey wash of sea and sky is the lifeboat. Even as she tells herself that it could be on a training mission, her knees are bending, carrying her forward into a run.

The flask bounces against her hip and her boots flick up sand. Her breath comes in warm, quick clouds and she feels restricted by the layers of her clothes – her jeans unyielding against her knees, her coat buttons tight against her breastbone.

When she reaches the base of the rocky outcrop, she finds a dozen or so people gathered there. Her gaze moves over them and then travels up the length of the rocks, where waves charge, tossing white water high into the bruised sky. The air is heavy with the smell of salt.

She can’t see Jackson.

Eva hurries towards a man zipped into a waxed jacket, his steel-grey eyebrows ruffled by the wind. ‘Why’s the lifeboat out?’ she asks, trying to keep the panic from her voice.

‘Someone was swept off the rocks.’

Her heart lurches. ‘Who?’

‘A fisherman, they think.’

For a moment she has a feeling of relief because she knows her husband is not a fisherman: he’s a 30-year-old brand marketer for a drinks company. But then the man is saying, ‘Young, apparently. But maybe he’ll stand more of a chance against the cold.’

Eva feels all the air leave her lungs as if someone has grabbed her hard around the ribs. She drops the flask and yanks her mobile from her pocket, ripping off her gloves to dial. Her fingers are clumsy with the cold but she turns her back to the wind and keys in Jackson’s number.

Pressing the phone to her ear, she paces on the spot waiting for him to pick up .

‘Hi, this is Jackson,’ his voicemail says, and her heart stalls.

Dropping the phone into her pocket, she stumbles towards the rocks. A wide red sign reads DANGER, KEEP OFF. Her scarf flies behind her as she clambers over the wet boulders, the cry of wind filling her ears. Her breath is ragged, and spiked thoughts pierce at her, making her mind whirl. She tells herself to focus only on where she is putting each foot, placing one carefully in front of the other.

Ahead something colourful catches her attention. She picks her way over barnacle-lined rocks until she is close enough to see it.

A green plastic tackle box lies open, wedged between two rocks. She recognizes it instantly: she bought it for Jackson last Christmas to house the lures and weights that were gradually filling up his bedside drawer. Now salt water fills the trays, so that two bright blue lures float inside like dead fish.

There is a loud, shattering boom as a wave smashes into the rocks. Icy spray slashes the side of Eva’s face and she drops to her knees, clinging to the rock with numbed fingers.

‘Hey!’ someone shouts. ‘Get back!’

But she cannot move, cannot turn. She is frozen, fear leaden in her stomach. Her face smarts with the cold and the back of her head is wet. A slow trickle of water seeps beneath her scarf.

Seconds later, she feels the pressure of a hand on her shoulder. A policeman is standing over her, taking her by the arm, encouraging her to her feet. ‘It’s not safe,’ he shouts above the wind.

She shakes him off. ‘My husband!’ she cries, her words coming out in gusts. ‘He was fishing! Right here!’

The policeman stares down at her. There is a patch of dark stubble on his jawline, no larger than a thumbprint, which he must have missed when shaving this morning. Something like fear pricks his features as he says, ‘Okay. Okay. Let’s get onto the beach.’

He grips her arm, helping her stand. Her legs tremble as they move slowly over the wet rocks, him glancing over his shoulder watching for waves.

When they reach the sand, he turns to her. ‘Your husband was fishing here this morning?’

She nods. ‘His tackle box – it’s on the rocks.’

The policeman looks at her for a long moment without blinking. ‘We had a report earlier that a man fishing was swept in.’

Her voice is small: ‘Was it him?’

‘We can’t be sure yet.’ He pauses. ‘But it sounds like it’s possible, yes.’

Saliva fills her mouth and she twists away. The grey-green sea swills with current as she searches it for Jackson. She swallows. ‘How long ago?’

‘About twenty minutes. A couple reported it.’

She turns, following his gaze towards a middle-aged man and woman in dark blue parkas, a golden retriever at their feet. ‘Was it them? Did they see him?’

The moment he nods, Eva staggers past him.

The dog’s tail wags frantically as she approaches. ‘You saw my husband! He was fishing!’

‘Your husband?’ the woman says, distress clouding her narrow face. ‘We saw him, yes. I’m sorry—’

‘What happened?’

The woman twists her scarf between her fingers as she says, ‘We’d seen him fishing when we walked past earlier.’ She glances at her husband. ‘You said it looked dangerous with those waves, didn’t you?’

He nods. ‘When we turned to walk back, we saw he’d been swept in. He was in the water.’

‘We called the coastguard,’ the woman adds. ‘We tried to keep sight of him till they arrived … but … but we lost him.’

They must be mistaken, Eva thinks. It couldn’t be Jackson. ‘The man you saw – what was he wearing?’

‘Wearing?’ the woman repeats. ‘Dark clothes, I think. And a hat,’ she says, touching the back of her head. ‘A red hat.’

*

Sometime later, Eva’s mother arrives. She drapes a blanket over Eva’s shoulders and teases a fleecy hat over her short hair while asking questions in a low voice: How long has he been in the water? What has the coastguard said?

Eva watches the lifeboat making a search pattern, as if drawing a square in the water, and then working outward so the square gets larger and larger until at some point the lifeboat is so far away she wonders if it is even possible Jackson could have swum that far.

She wants to focus on anything but the freezing grip of the sea, so she cushions herself with the warmer memory of Jackson surprising her last month when he’d turned up at the hospital after one of her late shifts, holding a bag containing her favourite dress and a pair of gold heels. He’d told her to get changed because he was taking her out.

She’d slipped into the locker room, her heart skipping with excitement, and swapped her uniform for the black silk dress he’d chosen. She’d dabbed on some lipstick and smoothed back her dark hair, and the other midwives whistled and cooed as she came out, giving a little twirl.

Jackson had taken her to a blues bar in north London where the room was lit by candles and the rhythm of the double bass rocked through her chest. She’d leant her head against Jackson’s shoulder, feeling the atmosphere soak through her, washing away the strains of the day. They drank cocktails they couldn’t afford, and she danced in high heels that gave her blisters, but she hadn’t minded: she loved Jackson for his knack of taking a normal day and carving something beautiful from it.

The loud drone of the coastguard helicopter cuts through Eva’s thoughts. The sea beneath quivers and trembles. The white and red colours look bright, optimistic almost, against the darkening clouds, and a ripple of anticipation spreads through the growing crowd.