seemed to dance for them, a living thing that swayed and rolled and breathed. There were no edges to it, no signs of it furling or peeling back to expose the blue beyond. Instead it kept on rolling in in plumes of changing density, a totemic warning stick in the shallows occasionally winking back into focus momentarily, then disappearing again. Even to him, the sense of isolation was eerie. There were no passing boats, no sounds of shrieking children skating across the water, and it could have easily been the middle of November, deserted and abject.
‘Should we . . . go back?’ Bell asked him cautiously, her voice low. He knew she was trying not to alarm Linus, who kept looking back at them both, but she, too, was like a doe, all big eyes and run instinct.
‘No. We need to just sit tight,’ he replied. ‘It will pass.’
She turned away again, biting her lip, and he noticed the mist’s dampness was like a sheen on her skin, the wispy tendrils at the base of her neck beginning to darken, the fluttery sleeves at her shoulder beginning to droop.
He looked quickly away, finding Linus already watching him. He smiled reassuringly. ‘It’s okay, Linus, we’re perfectly safe here.’
‘But what if it doesn’t go?’
‘It will. We just need to be patient. My father used to say to me birds fly not into our mouths ready roasted.’ They sat in silence on the still water, all waiting. Waiting. The sense of expectation – of something having to happen – settled heavily upon him. This had been his idea after all. It was his fault. Fifteen minutes passed. Twenty . . . His eyes fell on something beyond his son’s shoulder.
Linus turned and saw a dot of blue begin to grow, the mist beginning to thin and peel back. Emil saw his son’s body soften with relief, a small laugh escaping him now that the worst of the danger was seemingly past. ‘That was so cool!’
Bell laughed too as the landscape became less hostile and more friendly by the moment, the reasserted sunlight highlighting now caramel-coloured rocks covered with yellow sedum and violet beach pea, wild bilberry and lingonberry bushes, fir and alder trees – and a sheer ten-metre escarpment that had Linus almost leaping from the boat in excitement and Bell grabbing him by the arm.
Within minutes the sea mist had gone without trace, as insubstantial as candyfloss, and both Linus and Bell were stripping off their clothes and leaping in without hesitation, both of them joyous. So ready to be happy. He looked away as she leapt, refusing to look again at the last body he had touched, the only woman he had known in eight years. He refused to remember the yielding feel of her in his hands . . . They surfaced laughing, enjoying the cool as they trod water and looked around them again, before doing some playful duck dives and backward rolls.
Emil looked on, feeling a stab of envy at their closeness. He could see how Linus’s gaze always tracked back to Bell like a safety buoy, and he felt his position as the third wheel keenly again, his confidence having disappeared like that mist . . .
‘Aren’t you coming in?’ Bell asked, as though it was that easy. As though happiness could be grabbed with a single leap.
‘I thought I’d film Linus doing some jumps first.’
‘Oh. Okay.’ She gave an easy shrug.
‘Cool!’ Linus exclaimed, looking more lively than Emil had ever seen him. It was clear neither one of them was bothered whether he joined them or not.
‘So is there a path up there?’ she asked, straining to see.
‘Yes. Climb out below the bushes and you’ll see it runs behind. It’s narrow, though, in places, so –’
‘Okay, I’ll go first and he can follow me,’ she said, hardly able to wait. ‘Come on, Liney.’
He watched them swim off, their wet, darkened heads like seals’ as they moved further away. Their voices carried as they got to the rocks and he watched their limbs scramble and climb as they hauled themselves from the water. Within minutes they were standing on the shallow ledge that had always been his jumping-off point as a boy. This was his place; he had brought them here; and yet he felt shut out from it. An observer of a private moment.
He held up his phone and watched them through the zoom lens. They were holding hands, peering over the edge – checking for