Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 78

‘There it is,’ she said.
They agreed that Selina would do most of the rowing. Polly would steer. The two girls looked at one another, both pale.
‘We can do this,’ said Polly. Her teeth were chattering. Selina nodded, her chin taut. She leapt into the boat as Polly held it.
Polly had been steeling herself for the onslaught, but even so the pressure and the low temperature of the deluge took her by surprise, and she gasped as the torrent of salt water unleashed itself on her. She started to bail immediately.
Selina was incredibly strong. The churning water would have been far too much for the little engine, and they set forth against the waves with sheer force alone, Selina grunting and pulling on the oars with all her might. Polly attempted to help, but she needed to steer to make sure the sea didn’t carry them away.
‘Left!’ she shouted. ‘Bear left! I mean port! I mean… No. I do mean port. It has the same number of letters as left. PORT!’
‘Left is fine!’ screamed back Selina.
Standing up, Polly took the brunt of every smashing wave as they ploughed on, and for the first time she truly understood what Tarnie had once told her: that it was possible to drown at sea without ever going beneath the surface of the water.
She shone the light ahead and around, but could not get a fix. Please, please let them not be too late. Let this not be in vain. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. There couldn’t be nothing left of what had been there: the day trip, the family, the little boat. People didn’t just disappear into the sea.
Except if there was one lesson she’d learned from living in this strange and astonishingly beautiful part of the world, it was that they could, and they did. The sea was beautiful, it was life-enhancing, but it did not belong to you. It was not there to be tamed: the ocean was wild, and she would take what was hers.
Selina was growing exhausted as they advanced slowly against the oncoming wind, and Polly was trying to shout encouraging things when she saw it.
‘There!’ she screamed, stretching up and nearly toppling in. ‘There!’
There was hardly anything: no sail left, no mast at all, nothing except a stripy cushion, of all things, bobbing up and down in the water.
‘Go there!’ screamed Polly as it floated away from them. ‘There!’
‘It’s just flotsam,’ said Selina. ‘Just the wreckage. It’s nothing, Polly, just garbage. Let’s keep looking.’
‘No!’ said Polly, sure she’d seen something. ‘No, go on.’
Selina sighed, thrashing hard with her oars. Polly reached out for the cushion, perilously far over – and just at the very second she did so, Selina said something.
‘WHAT?’ It was a struggle to hear anything above the wind.
‘I know,’ said Selina, looking straight at her, out of breath. ‘Just in case… in case… I know about you and Tarnie.’
Polly shook her head, spraying water around her.
‘Jayden told me, last night, when we got drunk. Then I went and did that to your van. I’m sorry.’
‘You did what?’ Polly turned back to the sea, her heart pounding. ‘You wrote on Nan the Van?’
Finding the cushion as it bobbed up and down in the waves was tricky, but Polly trained her light on it, and as she finally caught it in the beam, she saw underneath it a flash of orange, and a glimpse of something that could only be hair.
‘THERE!’
Newly invigorated, Selina took off through the dense rain, the waves battering them again and again. Polly’s throat was raw with salt water, the inside of her nose felt scoured; her eyes stung and she could hardly keep them open.
‘THERE!’
They were drawing closer now and a final burst of adrenalin from Selina managed it. Polly leant over the prow, and Selina held on to the back of her oilskin, absurdly too big, with her teeth, whilst continuing to row for their lives.
‘Seriously, you’re telling me NOW?’
Selina couldn’t speak with the oilskin in her teeth, but muttered something that sounded like ‘Sorry about the van.’
The large cushion hit the front of the boat. Underneath it, fingers clinging, white and unfeeling, to the zipped end was a man, his nose and mouth barely above the water. Hanging on round his neck, eyes closed, so that Polly was at first gripped by a terrible fear, was a small boy.
The man was so exhausted he didn’t see them, didn’t acknowledge their presence even when Polly shone the light full at him, then away again, not wanting to blind him.
‘Get the boy first,’ said Selina.
Polly had to pull hard to get the semi-conscious child to untether his grip. The man didn’t even notice. Together they pulled the boy into the boat, then unzipped the waterproof safety bag with the silver blankets, and wrapped the little fellow up tight. Selina checked him for vital signs.
‘He’s breathing,’ she said. ‘But we’d better hurry.’
Polly made several attempts to prise the man from the cushion; he would not, or could not, let go. Finally she stood up and shucked off her oilskin, then put her lifejacket back on over the wetsuit.
‘I promise I didn’t know he was married, Selina. I promise.’
Then she turned round and dived into the formidable sea.
Polly fought panic in the rise and noise of the waves, managed to cling on to herself, let her life jacket bring her up. She grabbed the man from behind, and, with a strength she had absolutely not known she possessed, heaved him up, with a wave, to break over the boat. Selina grabbed him, letting him drop gracelessly into the bottom of the boat like a sack of potatoes.
‘I HATE THE SEA!’ Selina was yelling. Then her eyes widened as she saw something coming up behind them. ‘POLLLLLY!!!!!’
Polly scrambled into the boat just as a particularly huge wave picked it up as if it were a surfboard and sent it plunging straight towards the coastline.
‘PORT! LEFT! PORT! LEFT!’ screamed Selina, hand on the tiller, desperately trying to steer a course between the rocks. Polly scrambled up, drenched, and held the light up, but it was unimportant now. Selina could not control the boat, and they were being pushed along so quickly by the force of the water that everything now would be down to luck.
Polly made the mistake of glancing behind her into the dark. At first, and oddly, it was like there was a thick black curtain appearing behind her, or a vast gaping maw; something, at any rate, so unnatural, so unspeakable, that her mouth fell open.