Swimming at Night: A Novel (32 page)

There was a knock at the door. She moved across the polished wooden floor and opened it to find Finn holding a tray of food and a bottle of red wine. “Thought you might be hungry.”

The smell of steaming rice and fresh spices filled the room. “I’m starving.” She made space on the dressing table and he set down the tray.

The wine glugged as he poured it. He handed her a glass. “So how’s the journal going?”

“I’ve barely stopped reading.”

“What did Mia make of Bali?”

“She thought it was beautiful. Loved the beaches. The people. The food.”

“She’d always wanted to go to Indonesia.”

Had she?
There was so much she didn’t know about her sister. Would never know.

“Was Noah pleased to see her?”

“Surprised, I think. And maybe concerned at first that she’d come for him. But yes, he was pleased, too.”

“Did she seem happy?”

She thought for a moment. There were clear flashes of happiness as intense and bright as the sun, like when she was describing an afternoon spent sitting in the shade of a palm tree with Noah, eating ripe mangoes, the sweet juice dripping down their chins. But there was a distinct shift in the pages following Noah’s surfing accident, as if her thoughts had become a mirror to his darkened outlook. Many entries seemed overshadowed by her anxiety about their relationship. Wasn’t that the way with love: the intense highs of being adored and adoring someone, followed by the aching lows of self-doubt?

“It’s difficult to answer that until I’ve read it all.”

“How far have you got?” Finn asked.

“I’m only a week or so away . . . ”

He nodded and she thought she glimpsed something concerned in his expression, but he turned and began laying out their plates. “I got us nasi goreng. Hope that’s okay?”

“Perfect.”

“They’ve forgotten cutlery,” he said, lifting up a napkin. “I’ll grab us some.”

After the door shut, Katie moved to the bed and pulled the journal onto her lap once again. She flipped through the pages. Yes, there were only a handful left. She took a sip of wine and began reading, unable to wait.

I’ve done something terrible. I was desperate; there was no other choice. I couldn’t ask Katie for the money as there’d be too many questions—so I e-mailed Finn. I asked to borrow a grand. I said it was to pay for a flight to come and see him, so we can sort things out. And, Jesus, I really want to sort our shit out. I’ve hated being apart. It feels like part of me is missing. And there’s so much I need to explain.

If he sends through the money, I can get my passport back. And then I hope, HOPE, there’s enough left over for a flight to find him.

Katie closed her eyes.
Oh, Mia. How could you? After everything you’d already put him through, you then asked this of him. And what about me? Somehow it manages to sting that you went to him first. What happened: Finn said no and that’s when you called me? Your second choice?

She jumped when Finn returned, holding two sets of cutlery. “A waiter was coming along the corridor with them.” He moved to
the dressing table and picked up a plate. “I’ll serve before it gets cold.”

She wondered why he hadn’t told her that Mia had e-mailed him asking for money. Perhaps he was embarrassed that he’d refused her.

“Here,” he said, passing her a plate.

She took it and felt the give of the bed as he sat beside her, drawing one knee up. She watched him scoop forkfuls of rice and vegetables into his mouth. “Finn?”

He looked up.

“Did Mia contact you when she was in Bali? About borrowing money?”

He stopped chewing, swallowed. “Yes, she did.”

“But you didn’t lend it to her?”

He put down his fork. His expression grew serious. “She told me she wanted the money for a flight. She wanted to meet to sort things out. So I booked her a ticket myself.”

“Oh, Finn!” Even after everything Mia had done, he had still extended his generosity, offering her a second chance. “You were so good to her.”

He rubbed a hand back and forth across his brow. “That’s the thing, Katie,” he said in a flat tone that frightened her. “I wasn’t good to her at all.”

*   *   *

The room felt too hot. His T-shirt clung between his shoulder blades. He stood and moved to the balcony doors, flinging them open. The warm evening breeze rushed in, lifting the edges of the curtains. He drew the air deep into his lungs, tasting the sea in it.

“Finn?”

Slowly, he turned. Katie was sitting on the edge of the bed, her feet pressed together. Her plate had been pushed aside and she was staring at him with wide, watchful eyes. He ran the heel of his hand over his forehead again, not knowing how to begin. He needed to be honest with her. The journal was back in her possession; she would find out anyway.

“I got Mia’s e-mail,” he began. “It was obvious things in Bali weren’t great and that’s why she was coming back. But I didn’t care: I just wanted to see her. It’s pathetic how much I wanted to see her,” he said, shaking his head. “I was worried she’d change her mind, so, instead of sending her the money for a flight, I booked the ticket myself.”

“But she never got on the plane,” Katie said.

“I waited at the airport for six hours. There was some holdup with the flight.” He remembered buying an Australian newspaper and reading it cover to cover, testing himself on facts about cricket and the discovery of a new site of Australian rock art dating back 15,000 years. He had wanted to think about anything except for the niggling doubt that she wouldn’t come. When the delayed flight finally arrived, he’d scanned the weary crowd, but she wasn’t amongst them.

“I checked her details with the airport staff. They told me she’d never boarded the flight. I wanted to believe there’d been a mistake with her ticket, so I went to one of the Internet pods in the airport to see if I could get in touch. There was a message from her. Just a sentence. That’s all she’d bothered to write.
‘Finn, I can’t come back just yet. Sorry.’ ”

He shook his head. “She used me, Katie.”

“She couldn’t fly. Jez had her passport.”

“Jez? Noah’s brother?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

“There was an incident over here with the police. I’ve just been reading about it. She was caught with marijuana on her. Jez bribed the police so they wouldn’t arrest her.”

“Shit.” He ran a knuckle beneath his chin, back and forth.

“It was a lot of money. He kept hold of her passport until she could pay him back.”

“That’s why she needed a grand?”

“Yes, but she did want to meet you, too. She wrote that. She hoped there’d be enough money left over for a flight.”

Finn felt the blood drain from his face. “God, that makes it worse.”

“What worse?”

“When I knew she wasn’t coming, I was furious. I e-mailed back. I should have waited. Cooled down.” He recalled the way his fingers bashed at the keys like a storm being unleashed.

“What did you say?”

“When Mia found out Harley was her father, she was completely spun out.”

“I know,” Katie said, “because she was scared she was like him.”

He fixed his gaze on her: “And scared she would
end up
like him. I tried reassuring Mia that she was her own person, nothing like Harley. But there were all these traits Mick described that she was convinced she shared.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“In my e-mail, I wrote . . . ” He hesitated. His jaw felt tight and there was a hard pulse in his head. The dark, barbed thing that had been buried deep in his chest felt as though it was clawing its way into his throat. “I wrote,
‘If you’re not careful, Mia, you could
end up alone, wondering what happened to everyone in your life. Just like your father.’ ”

His fists hardened, like two stones. “Then two days later, she’s dead! She’s fucking dead! Suicide. That’s what they said. And all I could think of were those fucking words:
‘Just like your father.’ ”
He pressed his fists hard into the wall, feeling the tension in his forearms. “I never got to tell her how sorry I was.”

“Was it you?”

He dropped his hands, looked around.

“Was it you,” she repeated, “who sent the moon orchid to Mia’s funeral?”

“What?”

“Somebody sent a flower to her funeral.”

He looked blank.

“There was a note with it. All it said was,
‘Sorry.’ ”

He shook his head. “No. But I
am
sorry. I am so fucking sorry about it all. I should never have let her go to Bali alone. I should have told you where she was. And that money she needed—I should’ve given it to her, not bought a fucking plane ticket!” He squeezed his head between his hands. “What I wrote—God, it was callous—I hate to think that she believed it . . . or that she was thinking about those words when—”

“Don’t! Don’t you dare say it!”

Finn hung his head. He’d been carrying this guilt for months and it had grown into something larger than him. “Katie,” he said, his voice quiet now. “I need to know how Mia felt when she got my e-mail.”

He crossed the room and picked up the journal from the bedside table. The sea-blue fabric glimmered beneath his fingers. He thought of all the times he’d seen Mia writing it: the journal
balanced on her knees as they drove through California; spread out on the floor of their tent as she wrote by flashlight; her blowing sand from the spine after writing it, propped on an elbow on the beach.

“It’ll be in here,” he said, offering it to her. “Please, Katie, I need to know what she wrote.”

(Bali, March)

M
ia sat very still. Her back was rigid. Her hair hung in front of her shoulders like a dark scarf, and her bare feet were resting on the low wooden bar that ran beneath the computer desk. Only her eyes flickered across the screen as she scanned Finn’s e-mail a second time.

Then she blinked, which seemed to release her from the stillness, and suddenly she was moving, pushing back the chair, grabbing her bag, and bursting from the Internet café.

The night was balmy, the street lined with tourists and Balinese stallholders selling their wares. Mia wove through the crowds with her eyes down. A tight wheel of anxiety was beginning to spin deep within her. With every step, Finn’s e-mail rotated in her thoughts, gathering momentum. She did not see the stride of each of her tanned feet, a delicate silver chain dancing on her ankle. All she saw, as if scorched onto the insides of her eyelids, were his words:
“If you’re not careful, Mia, you could end up alone, wondering what happened to everyone in your life. Just like your father.”

Her breath felt short, harder to grasp. Traffic fumes and the heavy sweetness of rotting fruit filled her throat. A man passed, smoking a clove cigarette, and she swerved away from the cloying smell, the pavement seeming to tilt beneath her. She knocked into a thin boy spinning a yo-yo from a finger, who stared at her through large, curious eyes.

She began to run. The road was uneven, a deep rut jarring her pace. A pair of feline eyes watched suspiciously from the back of a parked car as she raced on, skirting broken pot plants and sagging trash bags. She ducked into a side street leading to the hostel. She flew in through the entrance, past the reception desk, and along the darkened corridor.

She reached her room and stopped. Her stomach was knotted tightly, her pulse skittering with anxiety. She realized that she couldn’t go in; she couldn’t be alone.

She retraced her steps and found herself in front of Noah’s door. It was unlocked and she slunk into the warm darkness, trying to steady her breathing.

His voice, sleepy and questioning, asked, “Mia?”

“Yes,” she told him, gently pressing the door closed with her fingertips. “It’s okay. Go back to sleep,” she whispered, slipping off her clothes and sliding into bed beside him. Her heart was racing. She wanted to press her body into the warm curve of his and let her heartbeat slow into his rhythm.

But she lay still, her arms tucked at her sides like wings, her ankle lightly touching his leg—just enough to connect them. He murmured something—a question perhaps, or a reservation—but she made no response and simply waited until she heard his breathing shallow as he was drawn back towards the comfortable folds of sleep. She sighed, relieved. Above, the ceiling fan cut through the warm air, and she began counting the strokes to stave off thought.

By the time she’d reached thirty-two, Finn’s e-mail had clawed its way back into her mind and settled there. She imagined him typing the message, the pale light of his computer screen bleeding the warmth from his eyes. He had chosen his words carefully, stripping her down to her bones to reveal what she feared most: ending up like her father.

Mia could taste the bitter truth in his warning. She felt the symmetry of her and Harley’s lives running through her veins like blood. He had been caught in a spiral of self-destruction, driving away the people who loved him—just as she was. She bit down on her lip as she thought of the hurt she’d caused Finn. It was cruel of her to have left him for Noah, but unforgivable to lie that she was coming back. She wanted to put her face next to his, nose to nose, and tell him how sorry she was. But she knew it was too late for that. Through the open window, she could hear traffic and voices, and beyond that she caught the faint rhythm of waves breaking.

She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d drifted into sleep, but she woke to a sharp blow across her chest. She lurched from the bed, winded. Noah was flailing, his powerful body thrashing beneath the sheet like a trapped animal.

“Noah!”

A string of mumbled, unintelligible words spilled from his mouth as he writhed, caught in the grip of a nightmare.

She backed towards the wall and groped for the light switch. The fluorescent bulb fizzed into life and she shielded her eyes from the glare, blinking.

He seemed to shake himself awake, yanking the sheet from him and staggering to his feet. His body glistened with sweat and he was breathing hard. He spun around, his eyes wide and startled. “What did I do?”