A Single Breath. Lucy Clarke

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       PROLOGUE

      Pulling his hat down over his ears, Jackson glances at Eva, who is curled in bed, the duvet tucked under her chin. Her eyes stay closed as she murmurs a sleepy noise that means, Don’t go.

      But he has to. He can’t lie next to her feeling the way he does. He’s been awake for hours staring into the empty darkness, thinking, thinking, rolling back through his decisions and their consequences. He needs to get out of this house, feel the sting of winter wind on his face.

      He lifts a corner of the duvet, just enough to expose Eva’s bare shoulder where he places his lips. He breathes in the smell of her sleep-warmed skin. Then he smoothes the duvet back down, picks up his fishing gear, and leaves.

      The beach is wild and empty in the gloom. It’s one of those English mornings he’s still getting used to when dawn never fully breaks and the lamps stay on indoors all day. He paces into the wind, jigging his shoulders to keep warm.

      Reaching an outcrop of rocks that stretches right into the sea, Jackson pauses. He watches the waves come plunging and rolling towards the rocks, breaking in an explosion of white water. He waits for a lull between sets and, when it comes, he climbs onto the rocks and hurries across them, making his way towards the very end of the outcrop. That’s where the fish will be biting as the current runs the hardest. He’s nimble-footed from a childhood spent running barefoot on the rocks and cliffs of Tasmania. He used to launch himself from them into the sea, bellowing and whooping before the water swallowed him.

      He makes it to the end before the next set hits, the rocks behind him disappearing beneath a surge of foam. Strong gusts whip the spray off the backs of the waves and the air is alive with moisture. He turns from the wind, crouches down and opens his tackle box. Christ, he wishes he’d worn gloves. It’s freezing out here. Spray hits him in the back of the neck and it’s icy. His numb fingers make him clumsy and he drops a lure and has to scrabble between the rocks to get it. Second time around he manages to thread it with more success.

      Eventually he casts out. The motion, once familiar and soothing, gives him no relief this morning. His thoughts too closely match the desolate seascape that broils beneath an angry sky. Standing on the rocks – his body starting to chill – he has the looming sensation that everything is starting to unravel. It is as if he’s shedding his skin layer by layer until the sharp bones of who he really is will be visible to everyone.

      The vibration of his mobile phone startles him. He holds the fishing rod with one hand while he grapples in his coat pocket with the other. It will be Eva. He pushes away the lethal, dark thoughts, letting his brow soften as he imagines the timbre of her sleep-clouded voice saying, Come back to bed …

      Already he’s thinking that he will – that he’ll forget all this. If he jogs he’ll be there in ten minutes. He can slip back into the warmth of their bed, press his body against the curve of hers, and remind himself that it’s real.

      But when he presses answer, it’s not Eva’s voice at all.

       1

      As she leaves the shelter of the headland, the full force of the wind hits Eva. Her hair whips back from her face and she hugs the flask of coffee tight to her chest. Clouds of sand gust along the shoreline, sending a tangled knot of fishing line pinwheeling along the beach.

      A woman passes in the other direction, her purple coat flattened to her back by the wind. The fur-trimmed hood is pulled tight to her face, making Eva wish she’d thought to wear a hat. She’d forgotten how raw the weather is on the coast; in London it is muted by buildings and watched from behind windows.

      She and Jackson had driven to Dorset last night for her mother’s birthday. It was a rush to get out of the city; Eva had been delayed at the hospital trying to turn a breeched baby, but still managed to wrap her mother’s present and clear the sink of their breakfast things before Jackson barrelled in late and exhausted from a meeting that had run over. The whole week had been like that: grabbing meals at different times, tension from work stalking them home, falling into bed too late and too shattered to talk. She’s pleased to have this weekend just to slow down.

      Ahead, the rocks where Jackson will be fishing come into focus. Huge sombre boulders stretch right out into the sea. She wonders if he’s caught anything yet. It wasn’t long past dawn when she’d felt the give of the bed as Jackson slipped out from under the covers. She’d heard him stepping into his jeans, pulling on a sweater, and zipping up his coat. He’d leant over the bed and pressed a kiss on her bare shoulder. Her eyes had opened just enough to see him disappear through the doorway, a red woollen hat pulled down over his ears.

      Just beyond the rocks she sees the flash of a boat. It disappears momentarily into a trough and she thinks the conditions are too rough to be out on the water today. She squints against the wind and sees it rise again on the crest of a wave: an orange lifeboat. She wonders whether there’s been an accident, and as soon as she has this thought, a slow trickle of unease seeps through her body.

      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