Page 74 of Obsession Under the Southern Stars

I nod, retrieve them from the locker, and kick off my deck shoes. Joel does the same, wrapping both pairs of shoes up in a towel and putting them in the bag first. Why’s he doing that? It’s just going to be more weight for him to tow. But I don’t argue, concentrating on tugging the flippers on.

Lightning cracks, and my heart skips a beat as I think about it striking the water while we’re in it. Water’s a conductor of electricity, right? What are the chances we could end up like fried chicken? Holy shit. My hands are shaking now as I tug at the flippers, but I attempt to hide it from Joel as I know he’s worried enough.

Once we’re both ready, he leads the way to the dive platform. “Stay close to me,” he shouts. “The life jacket should give us a bit of buoyancy. It’s not easy to swim in them, though. Do breaststroke if you can, or backstroke if you get tired.”

“Okay.”

He grabs me by the back of my neck. “I love you.” He kisses me, just once, hard, crushing his lips to mine.

He releases me, and I go to say something, but at that moment another wave hits the boat. It pitches to the right, and I lose my balance and fall off the dive platform into the sea.

Water goes over my head, and for a moment I have no idea whether I’m the right way up or which way I’m facing. I cough and splutter, splashing my arms in panic, but the life jacket tips me upright, and I gasp a lungful of air.

“Zoe!” Beside me in the water, Joel grabs my upper arm and turns me around. “Are you okay?”

I nod, still coughing. “I’m all right.”

“Christ, I thought I’d lost you.” He points to the island. “Come on, let’s start.”

Swimming in a life jacket is much harder than I thought. I can’t move my arms properly, but doing the crawl—which would be the fastest way to swim—means turning face down,and the life jacket wants to keep me face up. I do my best to do the breaststroke instead. I wasn’t lying when I told Joel I won awards for it at school. But that was in a pool, with the only motion from other kids splashing about in the lanes next to me. It’s so much harder in a heaving sea, where the waves lift you up and then plunge you down, or occasionally break over your head. Time and again I’m half-drowned, and Joel grips my arm more than once, heaving me back to the surface. The flippers help, a little, but the waves toss us about so much I start to wonder whether we’re moving at all.

It’s more exhausting than I anticipated considering it’s such a short distance. My muscles start aching only minutes into the water. Also, gone are the gorgeous, warm waters we snorkeled in on the beach; here the ocean feels icy cold, and soon I’m chilled to the bone. The waterproof jacket I’m wearing beneath the life saver is pointless, and I half wish I’d ditched it before getting in.

It’s scary, too, when lightning forks across the sky. I try not to look up. I can’t stop it hitting the water. All I can do is swim as hard as I can, even if it doesn’t feel as if we’re making any progress.

Slowly, though, the island gets closer, and when I realize that, energy surges through me. “Come on!” I yell, and Joel increases his pace to match me.

The two of us head for a tiny bay, taking care to avoid the rocks that we can see to the right. Even so, suddenly I hear Joel exclaim and stop swimming for a moment.

“What?” I shout, but he shakes his head and starts again.

We’re nearly there. We’re not going to turn into Kentucky Fried Chicken, and we’re not going to drown. Tears prick my eyes as the beach looms out of the gloom, and then seconds later I put my feet down and feel sand beneath them.

“Joel!”

“I know. Come on.” He reaches out and takes my hand, and together we wade ashore, then both collapse onto our hands and knees on the dark sand.

It’s not safe here, though; waves are lashing the shore, and I struggle to fight one as it washes over me, as if thetaniwhahas grasped my ankle and is attempting to draw me back to the ocean. Joel heaves me up by the hand, and the two of us stumble higher up the beach to above the water line, then turn and collapse onto our butts on the sand.

“We made it,” I say, my chest heaving. “I didn’t think we were going to.”

“Me neither.”

“I thought we were about to discover Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe.”

“Yeah, one lightning strike close by and we’d definitely have frizzy hair.”

I shiver as rain continues to pour down on us. It’s showing no sign of letting up. Clearly, we can’t stay out here in the open. “What now, do you think? Should we go into the trees?”

“Yeah, we’ll head up the slope.”

He unties the waterproof bag; of course, I forgot he was towing all that extra weight. He managed to keep the bag, swim, and make sure I didn’t drown several times. The man is a marvel.

“Take your life jacket and flippers off,” he says. We both take off the jackets, then sit and tug the flippers off. He opens the bag, takes out our deck shoes, and hands mine to me. They were soaked when he put them in, of course, and hard to get on, but I realize why he brought them now as I look behind me at the slope leading up from the beach into the trees. I couldn’t have walked on all the dead branches and undergrowth in my bare feet—it would have crippled me.

“Are there any houses on the island?” I ask, tossing the flippers and life jacket aside. There’s no point in taking them with us, I guess.

“On the west side, but that’s several kilometers away. There is a DOC hut on this end, though.”

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