Girl Heart Boy: No Such Thing as Forever (Book 1) (15 page)

And so it went on. We won, but only just. Rich was a good winner, thumping Cass on the back and telling her it was a close thing and we’d been lucky really, which was true. It’d been great. Bright and gusty and fun, and, as if it had been waiting for us to finish our
game, the temperature dropped and the sky started turning grey just as we trooped back to the hostel for lunch. A perfect morning.

After a distinctly non-Seven-Go-To-Devon-y lunch of limp sandwiches and Tesco Value crisps, everyone decided they were gagging to play the slot machines on the seafront. Needless to say, it wasn’t me or Cass who suggested it, although Cass seemed enthusiastic enough. I couldn’t think of anything more depressing, so I stayed behind to sit in the hostel lounge, drink tea and read magazines in front of the fire. At the last minute Ash changed her mind about going, making some joke about going for a swim instead. So the rest skipped off to waste their money, leaving me to an old
Woman & Home
magazine, and Ash to annoying me. I could feel her presence in the next chair like an itch. I knew she wanted something before she even opened her mouth.

‘Sarah?’

I sighed. ‘Hmm?’

‘Can I ask a reeeeally big favour?’

Another, bigger sigh. ‘What?’

‘Will you come swimming with me? In the sea?’

My mouth dropped open. She’d been serious about that? ‘No, freako, funnily enough, I won’t.’ I pointedly turned back to my magazine.

‘Oh come on, please,’ wheedled Ashley. ‘Don’t be a wuss. It’ll be exhilarating.’

I shook my head. ‘No way. I’m not bloody swimming in the sea in late October. Anyway, I haven’t brought my swimming costume. Obviously.’

‘Well, just come with me then. Please, Sar.’ She looked at me beseechingly.

I threw down my book. ‘Bloody hell.’

She clapped her hands. ‘Yay! Thanks, babes.’ I harrumphed, but got my coat and followed her out of the door.

‘Why would you even want to do this?’ I asked as we stumbled back down the path to the beach. ‘It’s freezing. And we live in Brighton, for God’s sake. Does that not have enough sea for you?’

Ash shrugged happily. She was skipping along beside me like a little kid. ‘I’ve just always wanted to do it. When I was little I saw something on telly about those people who go swimming in, like, arctic temperatures and, I dunno, it just looked amazing … Like –’ She stopped skipping to grasp for the right words – ‘like they were cheating nature. And Brighton’s not special enough for that.’

I shoved my hands into my pockets grumpily. ‘It’s not bloody cheating nature … it’s just mental. Why d’you want me there, anyway?’

Ash linked her arm through mine. ‘Dunno. Just
suddenly wanted someone to mark the occasion. C’mon, Sar, this is one of my ten things to do before I die. Be happy for me.’

Surprised, I turned to her. ‘You’ve got an actual list?’ Ash nodded. ‘What else is on it?’

Without pause, Ash reeled them off. ‘Round-the-world trip, perform at Glastonbury, write novel, have sex with girl, get married, have children, have general anaesthetic, fly plane, learn to cook.’

I mulled over those for a minute. Sex with a girl? Interesting. General anaesthetic? Weird, but I could sort of see her thinking. I rubbed my eye. ‘You want to get married and have children?’

Ash smirked. ‘I knew you’d pick up on that.’ Her expression was light, but her mouth was tense. This list business was obviously no joke, then. I altered my expression accordingly.

‘I can’t help what I want, can I?’ she said. We walked in silence for a few seconds. ‘It’s like …’ She stopped. ‘Do you believe in God?’

I shrugged. ‘Dunno. I suppose so.’

‘Well, I’ve thought about it a lot,’ she said. ‘It’d be nice to believe in heaven and all that, but I don’t. I can’t … It’s the same with the marriage-and-children thing. I’d rather not want them, but I do.’

I smiled at her. ‘Blimey, you’ve really thought this through.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘“Blimey”?’

‘Piss off.’

Ash chuckled and resumed her joyful skipping, while I trudged along behind her and mulled over what I’d have on my list. I knew what’d be at number one, anyway.

‘So what happens now?’ I asked, as we walked across the beach. The lunchtime downpour had turned the sand heavy and dark, and the sea was metal-grey and choppy. It looked about as inviting as you’d imagine. Ash was stepping out of her jeans and pulling her jumper over her head, revealing her plain black swimming costume underneath. She jumped up and down on the spot.

‘You sit here and marvel while I conquer the waves, obviously.’ She shivered, laughing giddily. Her excitement was infectious. My stomach felt tense, like waiting for exam results.

‘Go on, then,’ I said, laughing. ‘Swim like the wind!’

‘WHOOOOOO!’ Ash threw her arms in the air and ran into the waves, the echo of her call twisting and bobbing on the air currents. She swam hard for a few metres then turned and waved. I waved back, then laid my coat on the wet sand and sat down, putting Ashley’s coat round my shoulders for warmth. There were a few surfers further along the water, but
I couldn’t see any boats. I shivered. I couldn’t think of anything worse than strapping myself to a surfboard and throwing myself to the freezing waves, although that’s more or less what Ashley had done – minus the surfboard. The mentalist.

She was ploughing up and down parallel with the shoreline now. I could just make her out. Visibility was pretty rubbish. The horizon seemed really close, and the sea and sky kind of merged in a drizzly haze. I pulled out my ponytail elastic, tried to smooth back the hair that the wind had whipped into a tangled frenzy, and put the elastic back in, tight as I could. My gaze wandered along the shore. It took me a few seconds to find Ashley this time. She was swimming on her back now, I thought. I could just make out her arms slicing through the water. Then she stopped.

I stood up and walked to the water’s edge. Was she looking this way? I waved, but she didn’t wave back. Why wasn’t she swimming any more? Squinting, I tried to work out what she was doing. I saw her face, small and pale above the water, and then it disappeared under the surface, before bobbing up again. Something in the angle of her head made me feel nervous, like she was struggling to keep her mouth and nose above water. Suddenly a poem we’d studied in English popped into my head. It was
about a swimming man waving at onlookers on the beach. Only he wasn’t waving.

I must have thought something – made some kind of decision – but I can’t remember doing either of those things. My memory of it is that I just instinctively tore off Ashley’s coat, waded out until the sea was deep enough and dived in. The shock of the freezing water made me gasp, but I kept thinking of something I’d read somewhere: the average person drowns in under a minute.

It felt surreal to be in the sea in my clothes, my nose full of the same salty, seaweedy smell as every seaside holiday I’d ever been on. It was like a bad dream. It was almost like I was watching myself, although the cold and the waves were real enough. The current pulled heavy at my legs, my sodden jeans weighing me down. It felt like I was dragging sandbags behind me – my legs must have been next to useless, and in fact afterwards my arms ached for days – but fear pushed me forward. As I got closer I could see Ashley’s eyes wide and unseeing and her mouth twisted with pain as she fought with something under the surface while simultaneously trying to keep her mouth above water. Every time the water swelled she swallowed a mouthful and retched. Telling myself not to panic, there aren’t any sharks in Devon, I swam up to her, the waves strong but not
overpowering. Ash hadn’t seen me, and in the few seconds it took me to reach her, the waves pulling me back slightly with each forward stroke, I quite clearly saw her give up. She closed her eyes – and I shouted – but she was already sinking beneath the swell. I lunged towards her and grabbed her shoulder. By some miracle I caught hold of the strap of her swimming costume. I yanked it and pulled her up enough so I could get my hand in her armpit, then I hauled her head above the surface.

‘Ashley!’ I barked, hardly recognizing my own voice. ‘Open your eyes.’ She did as she was told, and stared at me dully. I trod water and offered a short prayer of thanks that she was beyond fighting. It was using all my strength just to hold her up. ‘It’s OK. You’re OK,’ I shouted. ‘Just roll on to your back. I’ll do the rest.’ She ignored me, closing her eyes again. ‘NO!’ I tried to shake her but the water made it impossible. It was like a nightmare. ‘Ash, please, just DO IT,’ I implored, whimpering with frustration and fear. I swam behind her and tried to use my natural buoyancy to push her body back on top of the water. Still she didn’t respond, so I quickly pulled one hand away from where I was supporting her shoulders and yanked her hair, hard. Her head jerked, and she at last got the message, leaning her head back so the rest of her followed.

I started for shore, holding on to her with one hand and paddling with the other, dredging up memories from when I was ten and had to swim in pyjamas for my life-saving badge. I thought I should talk to her to tell her it was OK, but I didn’t have the strength. She was too exhausted to do anything but comply anyway. I muttered the same words with each stroke, like a mantra to get me to shore. Less than a minute. Less than a minute. Part of me noticed that Ashley was feeling heavier and less responsive, but it almost seemed irrelevant now. Less than a minute. Less than a minute. Less than a …

‘Sarah, I’m coming!’ Jack’s voice. I dared to look round. The shore was closer than I thought. I tentatively lowered my leg, ready to summon enough strength to lift it back up if the water was still too deep. I almost cried when my toe touched sand. Jack was with me in seconds. Grunting with effort, he lifted Ashley up out of the water and waded into shore. Her head lolled horribly and her hands flopped loosely by her sides. Jack dropped to his knees at the water’s edge and laid her on the sand, taking a second to pull her arms and legs straight so she was flat on her back. I watched, mute with terror.

‘Get my coat – and take your wet clothes off.’ His voice was steady. I half crawled, half ran across the wet sand to his coat and thrust it at him. He took his
phone out of a pocket and handed it to me. ‘Call an ambulance.’ Then he quickly rubbed Ashley down with his coat before turning it over and covering her from the waist down. I was shaking so much I dropped the phone. Swearing, I scrabbled for it then closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing in, breathing out as I pressed the Emergency Call button. When I opened my eyes Jack was bent over Ash, giving her mouth to mouth.

‘An ambulance is on its way. I’ll stay on the line,’ said the call handler. I felt almost calm. For now at least, I was just about in control.

‘He’s doing CPR,’ I said, in answer to the handler’s question. ‘He’s trained. He’s a lifeguard at the swimming pool.’ My chest shuddered with grief and fear and pride as I watched Jack, the sweat patches spreading across his back as he breathed for our friend, forced her to stay alive.

The call handler said something. ‘They say to tell you you’re doing a really good job,’ I told Jack. He nodded slightly. He was checking her pulse again.

There was a rushing in my head, but I could hear the waves continuing to break on to the shore, and Jack’s breathing, and the call handler’s occasional words.

And then Ashley convulsed, her eyes springing open, and Jack was suddenly animated. He pushed
her on to her side and she retched, tears spilling as her body strained to get rid of the seawater and God knows what else. The coughing was raw and horrible, but she was breathing.

When he was sure there was no more to come, Jack carefully placed her in the recovery position. Then he sat back on his haunches, dropped his chin into his chest and cried.

I ended the 999 call. According to Jack’s phone it had lasted exactly two minutes.

As the ambulance arrived I realized for the first time that I was shivering uncontrollably.

I don’t remember much of what happened immediately after that. Ashley and I were both taken to hospital, me with mild hypothermia, Ashley with, well, whatever you call the after-effects of nearly drowning. Jack stayed behind to find the others. Cass told me afterwards that he broke down in tears as soon as he started telling them what had happened, and for a few awful seconds they all thought one of us had died.

When I woke up there was none of that
Where am I?
stuff you read about. I knew instantly I was in hospital. Where else could I be? But even so it felt like I’d woken in a different dimension where it was night, but not night. The people in the five other beds in the
room all seemed to be asleep, but the place was bathed in a kind of half-light and weird disembodied noises punctuated the silence. A sort of low-level humming and beeping, with the occasional squeak of shoes on shiny plastic floor.

‘Oh hello, you’re awake.’ A nurse was checking a clipboard that seemed to be attached to the foot of my bed. She came up beside me and took hold of my wrist to check my pulse. Her hand was cool and dry. I didn’t want her to let go.

‘What time is it?’ I asked, but it came out as a husky whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again.

‘Just gone three a.m.’ The nurse put a cuff on my arm and pressed a button on a digital monitor. The cuff inflated, squeezing my arm. The nurse made a note of the readout. ‘Your blood pressure’s one hundred and one over sixty-five.’ She gave me a brief but warm smile. ‘That’s good … How are you feeling?’

‘Uh, OK I think,’ I said, mentally checking myself over. ‘Just really tired.’

The nurse bundled the cuff up with the monitor and nodded. ‘Go back to sleep. Your parents are here, you can see them in the morning.’

Mum and Dad? I tried to sit up but the nurse touched my shoulder. ‘Not now, Sarah. Go back to sleep. They’ll be here when you wake up.’ I fell back down on the sheets. Sleep was creeping up from my
toes like warm water. I clenched my fists. Not the best analogy.

‘Where’s my friend?’ I mumbled.

‘Look to your right.’

I turned my head just enough to see that Ashley was in the next bed, her dark hair fanned out on her pillow, the blankets rising and falling as she slept.