in the distance, moonlight catching on the curve of the hull and the tall line of the masts. She thought of their friends curled in their bunks, the light lapping of waves rocking them in their sleep.
‘Joseph’s dive,’ she said, trying to shake free of the thoughts of her father that still lingered at the periphery of her mind, and think of something light-hearted to talk about. ‘Wasn’t it brilliant?’
Denny grinned. ‘I love that he’s been on board for almost two months, yet he’s not breathed a word about being some Parisian diving god. He just let the rest of us get on with our hooting and gooning – and then ends the day with that manoeuvre. I was feeling pretty pleased I’d nailed the swallow dive until I saw that.’
‘Nailed?’ she said, an eyebrow arched.
‘Okay. Attempted.’
Lana rubbed the water from her eyes and said, ‘I was talking to Joseph earlier. He told me about his parents. They were killed in a fire.’
Denny nodded. ‘Only last year. There’s no one else either – no other family. I can’t … I can’t even imagine that.’
‘You’ve got a big family?’
‘Not huge. Just my parents and a brother. How about you?’
‘It’s just me and my father.’
‘Are you close?’
She made a small sound, somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. ‘Not right now.’
Denny waited, saying nothing. In his silence, Lana was horrified to find that tears had sprung up on her lower lids. She wiped at them hurriedly.
Denny swam nearer. ‘Hey, what is it, Lana?’ he asked gently.
She didn’t know whether it was the darkness cloaking them, or the anonymity of being at sea, or the open, intent way Denny was looking at her – but Lana found herself beginning to explain. She told him about the last time she’d seen her father, which was a few weeks before she’d left for the Philippines. She’d been kneeling on the floor of her father’s bedroom, when she heard the front door opening downstairs.
‘Lana? Is that you?’ he’d called.
She hadn’t answered. Hadn’t moved. She’d listened to the slow tread of his feet as he climbed the stairs, sliding his palm along the banister. The floorboards creaked as he crossed the landing to the doorway of his room.
‘Lana, what are you—’
He’d stopped when he saw his old leather suitcase open, and a Manila envelope in her grip. Her father lifted a hand to his throat, pinching at the loose skin around his Adam’s apple. ‘Lana …’
It scared her the way his whole face changed into something blank and fearful, and his voice sounded hollow, as if he were two people: the one she’d always known, and this new version of himself.
‘You … you …’ she began, but couldn’t seem to make her lips work. Her tongue had felt numb and thick in her mouth. She lifted up the envelope, which contained a letter from a Greek solicitor. ‘She didn’t die, did she? Not when I was three.’
Her father had closed his eyes, the muscles in his face slackening so that all his features dragged downwards.
Lana told Denny that she’d always believed her mother had been killed in a car crash – but that the truth was entirely different.
Her mother had walked out on them, returning to her homeland. She had been desperately unhappy living in England, and had found comfort in a Greek doctor who was on secondment at a hospital where Lana’s mother worked. When his contract was finished, she returned to Athens with him, saying nothing of the family she was leaving behind.
‘I tried telling you the truth at first,’ her father had said, his voice choked with emotion, ‘but you were too young to understand. Some mornings I’d wake to find you sleeping on the rug by the front door waiting for her to come home.’
Eventually her father decided they needed a fresh start, so they moved to Bristol, buying a small terraced house on a street that Kitty would move to a few years later. ‘When I took you for your first day at primary school, your class teacher asked that you tell her a little about yourself. Do you know what you said, Lana? You told her you were four, your birthday was in August, and that you didn’t have a mummy because she’d gone away to heaven. I was horrified,’ Lana’s father had said. ‘I’d no idea where you got that from – but your class teacher was already patting you on the arm, saying, “I’m sure your mummy is watching you from heaven.” You’d beamed then, the largest smile I’d seen in months. And so … I didn’t correct you.’ Her father had simply stayed silent, and from there, the lie strengthened and grew until it became so permanent that it seemed to be the truth. Later, when Lana started asking how her mother died, her father had come up with the story of the car crash.
Lana’s mother never wrote or phoned from Greece. Apparently she’d come back, just once, when Lana was sixteen. Lana had been out at the time and her father had explained to his ex-wife that Lana believed she was dead – and that he wasn’t prepared to undo that unless she was committed to establishing a regular relationship with her daughter. Her mother had cried, saying her new husband still did not know about Lana. And then she walked away for a second time.
‘I would never have found out the truth,’ she said to Denny, ‘except I discovered a letter from a solicitor that said my mother had passed away two years ago.’ She paused, shaking her head. ‘All those years I mourned her – but she was alive. And my dad knew.’
When Lana finished talking, her mouth was dry and the muscles in her legs were beginning to ache.
Denny was watching her closely, his expression fixed on her face. ‘I’m so sorry, Lana,’ he said, and she could hear the earnestness in his voice.
The only other person Lana had told the story to was Kitty, and she felt oddly exposed for talking like that in front of Denny. She pulled her gaze away, staring upwards. The sky was an ocean of stars and she felt the inconsequential nature of her existence – just a speck, floating. She allowed herself to be calmed by the idea that all the thoughts that consumed her, looming large in her mind, were – in the end – really nothing.
Gradually her breathing began to settle and she felt the water rise and fall over her chest with each exhalation. She wondered how far down the seabed lay – 100 feet, 200 perhaps? Seaweed and soft corals swaying below in the dark, fish feeding and resting, shells closing for the night.
When her gaze returned to Denny, he was still watching her, his hair flattened to his head. Moonlight glistened on his arms as they stirred the surface, his eyes on her.
‘Well, that’s my story,’ she said with a forced brightness. ‘What’s yours?’
A fleeting tightness passed over his face. Then he rolled onto his back, spread his arms at his sides, and let the sea bear his weight. ‘I don’t have one,’ he said to the sky, matching the brightness of her tone.
Lana pressed her lips together as she watched him, a strange feeling ebbing through her as if she’d just lost something that she hadn’t quite found.
