Deep Wate - Sarah Epstein Page 0,58

– protect Henry – because at that moment Mason felt like he was no longer inside his own head.

Beside him Tom gasped. It barely registered. Mason watched the birds dipping and swooping in the mangrove shallows on the opposite shore. He didn’t even hear his brother hit the water.

‘Bloody hell,’ Tom said, clutching Mason’s lower arm and squeezing. They both looked down at the blue-green water erupting with bubbles. Somewhere, distantly, Mason heard yelling. Chloe. Calling his name, and Henry’s.

Henry surfaced below, an eruption of hacking coughs and flailing arms. The memory of baby Henry in the bathtub sliced into Mason’s consciousness, how still and quiet it had been, the tiny bubbles clustered around Henry’s nose, clinging to his eyelashes like diamonds. How different this was now, so much noisier and messier, as the water tried to claim his brother again.

The cool silence of their tiled bathroom stretched around him, the calm fascination of standing over the tub and finding his brother’s tiny face blinking back at him, his natural instinct to hold his breath kicking in. Mason had let the bath fill too high, he’d got distracted. Six-month-old Henry had only just learned how to sit up by himself. And now here he was lying on the bottom of the tub.

He just slipped under.

I didn’t do anything.

I was going to help him.

It was his mother – she’s the one who made Henry cry, the way she pushed Mason aside and yanked Henry out of the water so fast it shocked him. The way she clutched him too tight and jiggled him up and down. The way she almost dropped him because he was slippery.

‘Mason,’ Tom said now. ‘Come on.’ He whacked the back of his hand against Mason’s chest. It brought Mason back into himself, as though yanking him awake.

Behind him he heard quick footsteps across the rock. He turned to find Chloe barrelling towards him, Raf and Sabeen not far behind.

‘Help him!’ Chloe screeched, pausing long enough to wrench off her sandshoes. She flung one at Mason, the rubber sole hitting him on the side of the face.

And then she was leaping, fully clothed, over the edge, into the water. She slung an arm under Henry’s arms and around his chest, clutching him to her as she frog-kicked them both over to the shallows.

The German girls whispered to each other and slunk off the rock. Raf and Sabeen had already done a U-turn and were now running down the trail leading to the picnic ground, towards the reservoir where Chloe was dragging Henry onto the bank. Tom lingered by Mason’s side for a moment. Mason couldn’t look at him. Instead he bent down to retrieve Chloe’s sandshoes.

‘What happened?’ Tom asked, sounding mystified.

Mason didn’t answer. He stayed down until Tom turned and hurried away.

I’m not a good person, Mason thought. I didn’t deserve this day.

He walked down off the rock, through the picnic ground, along the bank of the reservoir. His friends were gathered around Henry, a couple of adults from a nearby picnic hovering to see if there was anything they could do. His brother was soaked through, but he was sitting up and nodding. He was okay. Chloe had made sure of that.

Mason hung back a few metres and placed Chloe’s sandshoes down carefully in the sandy dirt. Then he turned and started the long walk home to go and put his mother back together again.

Now

Outside Shallow Vintage Wares, Tom’s grandfather is nursing a cup of tea and leafing through the local newspaper. He’s sitting in the same rocking chair as Henry in the photo I’m using on the new posters. I’m itching to talk to Raf and Sabeen about what I saw last night at the Weavers’ place, and had to wait until school finished. Raf hasn’t been reachable since then, but Sabeen texted me fifteen minutes ago insisting I meet her here straightaway.

‘Hi Uncle Bernie,’ I say, reaching down to give him a hug. ‘It’s okay. Don’t get up.’ I crouch in front of him, one hand resting on the arm of the rocking chair.

With months between visits, it’s obvious to me how much older Uncle Bernie’s looking all of a sudden. I’m sure Tom’s noticed it too. It’s probably why he’s panicking so much about helping out while he’s here. The shop might be getting to be too much work for Bernie and Rose, especially now that Rose has become more forgetful.

‘How are you, poppet?’ Bernie pats the top of my hand with his