He smiles and starts shedding his clothes. He is so fast it is as if he can’t wait to get into the water. He takes everything off, and, naked, strides into the waves as I stare at him, bronzed, strong and so perfectly beautiful. When he gets to hip level he raises his hand in a wave and plunges in.
I step in myself. It is so clear it practically compels you to dive into it. When I get waist deep I start throwing handfuls of frozen breadcrumbs. It is a shock to me to see the sudden burst of activity. In seconds all the crumbs are gone. Fascinated I throw another handful and this time I submerge my head to look at them. They are small and silver with black patterns, and utterly beautiful. When all the crumbs are gone I swim for a bit and then I go to lie in the sand. I can see Jake is still swimming out.
I close my eyes and let the sun dry my skin. But after a while I find I am unable to relax. I sit up and I can no longer see him. In a panic I rush to the water’s edge. I can just about make him out. My eyes become riveted to his powerful arms as he goes farther and farther out to sea. When he is just a dot on the horizon my throat constricts with fear. What if a really strong current sweeps him away?
Jake
With every stroke my mind becomes clearer and clearer until it sparkles like crystal. All kinds of scenarios play in my mind. I am sitting at the back of a white transit van, wiping blood from a baseball bat. I am sitting in the dark in someone’s apartment and when he comes in and puts on the light he nearly has a heart attack to see me there. And me smiling at him as if he is a long lost friend. That’s the thing you learn as a debt collector. People are fuckers—they will cry poverty, until they are threatened with physical violence. Yeah, he paid.
Images of Billy Joe Pilkington come into my mind. His cold, empty eyes. Billy’s a legend on his turf. His reputation is one of fearlessness and ruthlessness. His name usually only comes up as a whisper when there is talk of violence and mayhem on the streets, in certain parts of London.
They call him the bat, the bat that came straight out of hell. Nobody has ever dared to cross him. Nobody has dared defy him and lived to tell their story. Nobody except for me. But that was a long time ago when I had nothing to lose.
I know I am never going back to that life. It is clear what I need to do. No turf war. Not while I am alive. Carefully, I weigh all the options open to me, all the situations that could arise. Each one of them calls for a true truce. We’ve had an uneasy truce for too long.
In the distance I can see a yacht. People are sunning themselves on the deck. A woman is standing in a bikini, a hand shading her eyes against the afternoon sun.
She starts waving to me. I stop and turn to look at the beach. I could have gone farther, but I can see Lily standing at the water’s edge. I cannot see her face, but I can tell by the tense and fixed way she is standing that she is worried about me. I turn around and start to swim back toward her. As soon as I am standing on the sand she runs to me. She does not say anything, just hugs me tightly.
‘I’m so sorry. I’ll never put my phone on silent mode again,’ she almost sobs.
I lift her out of the water and lay her on the sa
nd. The sea has rejuvenated me but has made her tense and frightened. Her eyes are wide and bright. I place my wet palms on the insides of her thighs—they are warm and gritty with sand—and part them. The sun shines down on us, warming my back. Droplets of sea fall on her face; it is already a lovely shade of gold. Her nipples taste salty when I bite them. She pulls at my hips and screams for more. I force more of me into her. Our coupling is frantic, urgent and wild. There are no sea breezes, but watched by the sea, the sun and the rocks it is the perfect fuck.
Afterwards, we dress and go up the steps hand in hand. I have never felt closer to another human being. Then Dominic calls and I know that once again I will be wiping blood from my body.
Lily
Evening descends and from every corner night fragrances rise. Every living thing, the grass, the trees, the flowers, the people all bring into the leisure of night their own scent.
And that crowd of odors surrounds us as we sit in the open-air restaurant that Jake has brought me to. I raise my glass of wine and take a sip. It is perfectly chilled. I lick the beads of condensation off the glass. They have their own taste. I look up and he is staring at me. I blush.
‘Tell me about your childhood,’ I say to cover my sudden gaucheness.
‘Until my father…died, I was happy. We never had much money because he was an incurable gambler. I remember that my mother kept debts with everyone, even with the butcher who provided her with the cheapest cuts of meat, but even so we were truly a happy family.’
I look at him with surprise. How accepting he is that his father was a gambler. There is no condemnation, no anger, no feeling that he has been deprived. Only a strange and impressive loyalty to family.
‘What about you? What was your childhood like?’ he asks.
I had it all down pat—an alcoholic father, a downtrodden mother, everything, the whole shebang, at the tips of my fingers—but I found I couldn’t say the words. I didn’t want to lie to him! I blinked in surprise. What the hell? I was going to fuck up my first assignment. Make him suspicious.
‘I’ll tell you about my family another time,’ I say, and wanting to distract him I reach out and touch his fingers. Immediately, they move to clasp mine.
I look at our entwined fingers and an old, tired ache of once when I was insane breaks into me and eats at my bones. Its return makes me angry. How pathetic. Sentimental fool. There is no one here I can call my own. This man will never be mine. He will never share my pain. I am here to do a job. I am here to crush him, not to long for him as one does a beloved. I am here to save other people’s sons and brothers from dying unnecessarily because of men like him. I look up at him.
‘Are you all right?’ he asks.
This time I won’t allow myself to dissolve in my own grief. This time I will recognize myself. It is simple. It is beautiful. I am not lost. I am strong. I can do this. I smile. Harden my heart and speak.
‘I’m fine. You want to know about my family? Let me tell you about them. My father was an alcoholic. I’m not sure if he is still alive. And my mother was a downtrodden, weak woman. She let him beat her and me. When I was fifteen I ran away.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says softly, and begins to stroke the inside of my wrist. The movement is gentle and tender, and suddenly I feel like bursting into tears.
‘I’m so sorry I asked,’ he says.
I look at him. There is an expression of such caring tenderness in his face. Oh, the irony. He thinks I am upset to remember my past. That makes me feel worse. I shake my head. ‘It’s OK. You said you wanted to come here to think. Have you managed to?’