Summer at Tiffany's (32 page)

Sympathy was what she was hoping for. Surely even Suzy could see this wasn't simply unreasonable, it was downright unsafe? But Suzy just winked, helping her slot the oar into the bracket and holding the boat secure as Debs hopped in and everyone gripped their oars. Cassie took a deep breath and looked at how the other girls were holding theirs. They seemed to hold their outer hand – the one that was on the tip of the oar – facing them around the oar, the inner hand cupped over the top.

‘Ready?' Suzy asked, and at everyone's nod (except Cassie's), she let go of the boat, pushing it away from the harbour wall. Away from safety.

Cassie scrunched her eyes shut and automatically launched into the Lord's Prayer – the first time she'd recited it since school.

‘Right, girls, let's keep this tight,' Betsy said calmly as the boat floated freely on the water, lurching from side to side so that the dark water splashed threateningly over into their laps. Cassie winced at the shock of the cold and gripped the oar tighter, willing herself not to scream, before realizing the crew was already moving in a unified rhythm that righted their direction; within five strokes they had faced the boat into the waves, rather than side-on to them, so that the chop cut around them and the boat bobbed gently on the surface as they rowed.

Cassie forced herself to calm down. They weren't sinking; they weren't sinking . . .

She watched the team's steady rise-and-fall rhythm, knowing she couldn't just sit there like a lemon while they did all the work. She counted as they leaned back in unison, pulling the oars into them, before sitting up on the forwards push on the count of three.

‘Cassie, pick it up!' Debs said through her little tannoy, her eyes hidden beneath her cap but clearly seeing how Cassie struggled to fall into line. The principle of it was fine – down two, up two – but the weight of the water on the oars meant she found it hard to push them through and get back up in time, so that she was perpetually leaning behind as the others sat back up again.

Another gig – red – glided past, the crew a symphony in motion, backs straight, arms strong. Cassie could see Debs watching her and knew she must be able to tell that Cassie had never set foot on a gig before. ‘Oh God, oh God,' she muttered.

‘Twist your wrist on the forward push,' Jacqs murmured, from behind her.

What? Cassie stiffened in surprise – she hadn't been aware she'd expressed her panic out loud, but she did as instructed and the oar sliced cleanly through the water, like a blade through butter.

Oh!

‘Thank you,' she whispered back as she did it again and again, beginning to catch up with Sally's rhythm and maintain it. Their speed seemed to increase a little – or was that just her imagination? – and she felt a bolt of relief as she integrated into the team's coherent motion. This wasn't so bad after all, she thought, as she rose and fell with the others. She hadn't fallen in. She hadn't dropped her oar or hit anyone else's – although there was still time.

She clenched with tension again, concentrating so hard on not messing up that she was surprised when Debs gave the cue for them to stop rowing and drift.

She turned and saw the blue tug just ahead. Really? Already?

Jacqs reached over and patted her on the back. ‘Good going,' she said encouragingly.

Cassie beamed as relief and pride surged through her. Phase One was complete – she'd made it to the start line at least, now just the finish line to go – and as she stretched out her back and arms, she allowed herself the luxury of looking around at last.

She was amazed by what she saw: yellow water taxis chugging away at a distance, filled to capacity with spectators yelling out the names of their favoured teams – ‘
Swift
!', ‘
Shearwater
!', ‘
Bonnet
!', ‘
Hope
!' – as those on the smaller crafts did the same. There were so many boats on the stretches either side of them that from the shore it had looked more like a Normandy landing, but here, sitting amid them, it felt like a festival on the water.

It took a while for them to get the boat into position. No sooner were they in line with the tug's prow than they drifted forwards again as they waited for the last gigs to line up. Cassie sat on the boat, her hands gripping the oar tightly, nerves beginning to kick in again as she looked left and right. Padstow sat to their right (the place of pilgrimage for seafood lovers the world over) and Rock to the left (the postcode with some of the highest retail values in the country), but the sea mist had stripped them of clarity and all that she could really see was the vast channel that surrounded her on all sides and had seemed so menacing from the shore. Beneath them, she could just make out the pale shimmer of the drifting sandbank, called the Doom Bar and historically the undoing of so many vessels.

But not this one – this gig was buoyant and beautifully hand-crafted in the ancient tradition, these girls strong, and as they bobbed about, just like plastic water bottles on the sea, waiting for the off, Cassie suddenly understood exactly why Henry had put this on her list. Being on the water was what this place was all about – not buying olives from the deli or eating at Rick Stein's, or even paddling in the tame shallows of Daymer Bay or wave-jumping at Polzeath, but rowing out to the deepest, darkest depths when the wind was up, the sun was setting, the air was like cobwebs and the sea had a snarl to it . . . This place had a wild, savage beauty that either touched you or frightened you, and it was here that Henry's love of adventure had been moulded and nurtured. This – right here in the middle of the sea – was where he had become the man she loved.

‘Nervous?' Jacqs asked, tapping lightly on her shoulder.

‘You could say that,' Cassie confessed with a shy smile, twisting in her seat slightly. ‘Is this an important race?'

‘North coast friendly,' Jacqs said with a dance in her hazel-green eyes. ‘Of course, we say friendly. What we mean is, a fight to the death.'

‘Oh yikes,' Cassie managed to grin.

A bell rang somewhere and everything suddenly fell quiet, like the sky emptying of birds in the moments before a storm. The yells from the spectators stopped and Jacqs gave her a fist-bump. Cassie took a deep breath, her hands tingling from the adrenalin. This was it, then . . . The crews in the eight gigs all assumed identical positions, heads tipped down slightly, arms poised to pull.

The tug gave a long blast of its horn and suddenly the girls were rising and falling again in perfect synchronicity, Cassie a half-beat behind, as the gig began to move through the water to the cheers and toots of the supporters. At first the boat felt heavy, as though tethered to the seabed beneath them, but repetition rapidly brought momentum and within a minute the boat felt if not quite powered under its own steam, at least like it was rising out of the water and skimming across the surface.

Cassie kept up the pace, concentrating on the twist of her wrist as she realized she still had no idea exactly where they were rowing
to
. There was a huge rock at the mouth of the estuary, but they wouldn't be going all the way there and back. Would they?

It was probably better she didn't know, she decided, having to put all her concentration into just keeping up.

Debs was shouting instructions at them – ‘Heave', ‘Aft' – but before they'd even reached the distinctive hump of Brea Hill, at the near end of Daymer Bay, her arms were already beginning to burn. Usually, the most exercise her arms ever got was lugging heavy picnic hampers up and down her stairs, but this was a different kind of pain, the muscles burning but not seizing as they contracted and released over and over again.

She had no idea where they were in the race, only that she could see two other gigs from her back-facing position. That had to mean they weren't last, right?

‘
Speedwell
!'

‘Go, Cassie!'

Cassie turned her head only fractionally as she pulled back, but it was enough to see Suzy and Archie waving dementedly from a yellow water taxi as the gig cut past, Cassie beaming back with . . . exhilaration, she realized.

She had forgotten all about the cold wind as she took huge, deep breaths, trying to power her body on, and she knew her face must already be pinker than their crew tops. She stared grimly at Sall's back, barely aware of the way her right wrist instinctively twisted on the push forwards now or of how she clenched her core on the roll backs.

The first she knew of their route was when the rock island came into her peripheral view on the left-hand side of the boat – her worst fears confirmed.

‘We're at Newlands! Starboard double up! You can do this!' Debs hollered, the rock staying to their left as they coursed round it. The waves grew bigger in this expanse of open water and a shot of alarm jangled Cassie's nerves as the rough sea slammed into the sides of the gig and sprayed high into the air, drenching them all, but there was barely time to process it. They just kept on rowing, the rock staying to their left and then beginning to pull forwards in her vision until eventually she was staring straight at it, its bulk receding as they made their way back into the protected waters of the estuary and towards the finish.

Her muscles were screaming now, the fibres tearing minutely with every stroke, and her heart felt like a jackhammer. Every stroke hurt; she couldn't think, could barely see beyond the pain, but she knew they were getting close, as the number of taxis and boats around them increased again, short horn-blows bursting over the wind in encouragement alongside the cacophony of shouts and yells and cheers.

Cassie wasn't sure she had enough left for the finish. She had moved past exhaustion long ago, and yet somehow she kept moving in time, her body overriding her conscious controls like a computer outsmarting the technician; she groaned with every stroke, desperate to keep the pace, not to let down the team.

Behind her, she heard the long toot of a horn, followed by several shorter ones and a crescendo of cheers. The first boat had to be over the line. Was it much further? Could she keep going long en—

The blue tug shot past them, Cassie staring at it with a removed sense of recognition, her stomach taut and arms syncopated. It was a moment before she realized everyone else had stopped rising and falling and was slumped forward and back in their seats like felled skittles, that Debs had stopped shouting and was punching her arms in the air.

She wanted to ask if it was over, but there was no breath left in her to do it and she dropped her head onto her lap, her cheek by her knees and her eyes closed as she luxuriated in the exquisite feeling of not moving anymore. She felt her heart in her chest in a way she never had before. It pounded wildly like a boxer's fist, as if trying to show her not just that she was alive but
so
alive.

Henry's message was clear; she got it now: if she wanted to drift through her life – half asleep, uncommitted – she was with the wrong man.

Date: 09/7/15

From: Haycock, Neil

To: Fraser, Cassie

Subject: Message In a Bottle

Hi Cassie,

Thanks for your message for Henry, which we forwarded on 08/7/15. He has responded that he is very well and enjoying the views.

Conditions are set fair and they are proceeding at 34 knots. If you would like to track their progress on radar, they are 9°26'S; 159°59'E.

Kind regards,

Neil

Communications specialist,

Message In a Bottle Project,

Inmarsat

Cassie turned the page over, her elbows red and sore from lying on them so long, but she had to finish this chapter while she could. Suzy's incessant talking about Gem and Laird every time she sat down meant she hadn't got past Chapter Four and she was determined to finish a book on this holiday. This was a precious window of opportunity – last night's exertions had bought her a grace period from the list, as there were no surf lessons for her today (although Archie had disappeared off with Laird), but Gem had stopped by at breakfast, wondering if they could ‘chat' later about food for the wedding, and Suzy and Velvet would be back from the shops any minute.

She bit her lip, engrossed and swinging her leg idly in the air behind her, only vaguely aware of the feeling of the breeze on her bare skin. She certainly wasn't aware of the sound of footsteps over the stile at the bottom of the garden, or the soft crush of grass as someone approached.

It took a small cough to achieve that.

She looked up in surprise to find Luke standing with his board watching her.

‘You always did that,' he smiled, setting the board down on its end.

‘Did what?'

‘Swung your leg about when you were reading. I used to have to clear a swat zone when you were reading the papers.'

She laughed lightly, wishing he'd put a T-shirt on with his rolled-down wetsuit, but it was too hot for clothes today. In fact, she was in her full bikini today, for the first time, no wetsuit to protect her modesty (or hide her wobbly bits) because she'd assumed she had the place to herself.

‘Are the others still down there?' she asked, politely turning down a corner of her page and closing the book.

He nodded. ‘Arch managed to stand.'

‘No way!' she gasped jealously. ‘You're kidding me?'

‘No,' Luke laughed. ‘Although, you'd probably feel better if you'd seen it for yourself. I use the word “stand” in the loosest possible sense.' He indicated to sit down. ‘May I?'

‘Sure,' she shrugged. ‘Where's Amber?'

He pulled a face briefly. ‘Promise you won't laugh?'

She shrugged her acquiescence as he leaned back on straight arms, his torso long and perfect. He looked like he hadn't shaved for five days, his stubble denser than usual. It suited him. A beard would suit him, she thought idly.