Anybody Out There?
Page 37

My indicator said I still had twenty-five minutes of air left but nothing was coming out; my tube must be blocked. So I tried my octupus arm—my spare tube—and felt the first tickle of fear when nothing came out of that either.
I stopped Mr. Codependent and signaled No air. (A slicing action at the neck that the Mafia use when they talk about “taking care” of people.) It was only when I went to grab his octopus and take a lovely mouthful of oxygen that I noticed there wasn’t one! No extra air tube! The gobshite! Even in my shock, I knew what had happened: he’d detached it in order to demonstrate his lack of codependence. In his head he’d probably been saying proudly, I walk alone; I depend on no one and no one depends on me.
Well, that was just tough because, seeing as he’d abandoned his spare tube somewhere, he’d have to give me a go of his own mouthpiece. I pointed and signaled Give it to me, but as he went to take it out of his mouth, he panicked. Even through his mask, I could see it. It was like when Bilbo Baggins had to hand the Ring over to Master Frodo. He knew it had to be done, but when it came to actually doing it, he couldn’t.
Codependent was too scared to leave himself without air for even a few seconds. One hand guarding his air tube, he jabbed toward the surface with the other: Go up. To my horror, he started swimming away from me, still protecting his air supply.
The others had gone on ahead, I could see them disappearing into the distance. There was no one to help me. This isn’t happening, please God, let this not be happening.
I was forty-five feet beneath the surface and I had no air. I felt the full weight of all that water pressing down on me. Up until now, it had been entirely weightless, but all of a sudden it might kill me.
The terror was so bad I felt like I was dreaming. Surface, I thought. I’ve got to get to the surface. I stared upward. It looked a very long way away.
Diving upward, my legs kicking, my lungs bursting, I raced up, up, up, breaking all the rules, thinking, I’m going to die and it’s all my own fault for going on a cut-price scuba course.
Every fifteen feet I was supposed to hang around decompressing for two minutes; never mind two minutes, I didn’t have two seconds.
I kicked past a surprised shoal of clown fish, praying to break the surface. My blood roared in my ears and images flitted into my head. Then I realized what was happening—my life was flashing before my eyes. Fuck, I thought, I’m definitely going to die.
My life didn’t flash sequentially, but highlit unexpected stuff, things I hadn’t thought about for years—or ever. My mother had given birth to me and I thought, What a nice thing that was to do. What a generous act. Next person to appear in my head was Shane: I’d stayed with that bloke for far too long.
Why did I have to die? Well, why not? There were six billion people in the world and I was as insignificant as everyone else. They were dying all the time, why shouldn’t I?
Mind you, it was a shame because if I got another shot at my inconsequential little life, I’d…
Just when I thought my head was going to burst, I broke the blue line that separates the two worlds. The noise and the glare hit me, a wave slapped me in the ear, and I was tearing the mask off my face, gulping in glorious oxygen, amazed not to be dead.
The next thing I remember, I was lying on the deck of the boat, still heaving desperately for air, and Aidan was bending over me. His expression was a mixture of horror and relief. I made a monumental effort and managed to speak. “Okay,” I gasped. “I’ll marry you.”
23
In the darkness, I woke with a bump, my heart beating fast and hard. The light was switched on before I knew I had done it and I was superalert and awake. I was on the couch. I’d nodded off there in my work clothes because I’d kept postponing the moment when I had to go to bed alone.
Something had woken me. What had I heard? The sound of a key in the door? Or had the front door actually opened and closed? All I knew was I wasn’t alone. You can tell when someone else is in your space; it feels different.
It had to be Aidan. He’d come back. And although I was excited, I was also a bit freaked. Out of the corner of my eye, over by the window, I saw something move, something fast and shadowy. I whipped my head around but there was nothing there.
I stood up. There was nobody in the living room, nobody in the kitchenette, so I’d better check the bedroom. As I pushed open the door, I was sweating. I reached for the light switch, almost paralyzed with terror that a hand might grab mine in the dark. What was that tall narrow shape over by the closet? Then I hit the switch and the room flooded with light and the dark, ominous shape revealed itself as our bookshelf.
Hearing my own gaspy breathing, I turned on the bathroom light and pulled back the wave-patterned shower curtain with a violent swish. No one there either.
So what had woken me?
I realized I could smell him. The tiny space was filled with him. The panic was back and my eyes scudded around looking for—what? I was afraid to look in the mirror, in case I saw someone else looking at me. It was then that I saw that his wash bag had slipped off the crowded shelf on to the tiles. Things had tumbled out and a bottle of something had broken. I crouched down; it wasn’t Aidan I could smell, it was just his aftershave.
Okay. So how had the wash bag fallen? These apartments were old and rickety; someone slamming their front door could generate enough shock waves to nudge an overhanging wash bag off a ledge onto the floor in someone else’s apartment. No mystery there.
I went to get a brush to clean up the broken glass, but in the kitchenette another smell awaited me, something sweet and powdery and oppressive. Nervously I sniffed the air. It was some sort of fresh flower. I recognized the scent, I just couldn’t…and then I got it. It was lilies, a smell I hate—so heavy and musty, like death.
I looked around fearfully. Where was it coming from? There were no fresh flowers in the apartment. But the smell was undeniable. I wasn’t imagining it. It was real, the air was thick and cloying.
After I’d tidied the broken bottle away, I was afraid to go back to sleep, so I switched on the TV. After a trawl through all the lunatics on the cable channels, I found Knight Rider, an episode I hadn’t already seen. Eventually I drifted back into a half sleep, where I dreamed I was awake and Aidan opened the door and walked in.
“Aidan, you came back! I knew you would.”
“I can’t stay long, baby,” he said. “But I’ve something important to tell you.”