A Single Breath. Lucy Clarke

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      ‘On Wattleboon? There aren’t any.’

      ‘Then I’ll go back to the mainland.’

      He glances at the clock on the dashboard and sighs. ‘Last boat ran quarter of an hour ago.’

      She’s unable to think about this problem; the one inside her is absorbing all her thought.

      He grabs his mobile phone from the dashboard and climbs out of the truck, swinging the door shut. She watches through the windscreen as he calls someone, pacing up and down as he speaks into the phone.

      Eva doesn’t move. She’s remembering the night she and Jackson spent at a B&B in Wales. They’d been showering, steam curling from their wet bodies. Jackson had run the bar of soap over Eva’s middle, telling her how much he wanted to have children with her. Two, he’d said. Two girls.

      There is a strange, incredible irony that, as Jackson was being dragged down towards his death by freezing waves, a new life was being made inside her.

      She muses on this idea until the truck door opens and Saul says, ‘You’ve got a place to stay. There’s a shack down my way you can have tonight. The owner’s outta town. We’ll get your car in the morning.’

      ‘Right.’ She doesn’t know if this is what she wants, but she doesn’t have any other option.

      She fetches her bag from the hire car while Saul strides down the beach to collect the cool-box he’d left out.

      The truck shifts as he clanks it in the back. Then he climbs in and guns the engine.

      *

      Saul knocks the truck into a lower gear as he turns onto the track leading to the bay. He sees Eva grab hold of the handhold as they bounce along, evening sun slanting through the thick branches of the gums. He’s supposed to be up at Duneback Point meeting a couple of friends for a barbecue. Saul was bringing the fish. He’ll have to call them, tell them he’s not going to make it.

      ‘This is it,’ he says, yanking up the handbrake at the track’s end. He climbs out and leads the way through a clearing in the trees onto the beach.

      The shack is nestled into the sand, a stone’s throw from the water. It’s been here since he was a boy and he tries not to think about who used to live here. The current owner, Joe, did a bit of work on it a couple of years ago after a big winter gale half buried the place in sand. Joe dug it out, replaced the windows, and made a deck at the front that’s perfect for sinking a few beers on a summer’s evening.

      He climbs onto the deck and hooks the key out from under a cluster of pebbles. He unlocks the place and walks in, the smell of mildew and damp salt hitting him. He pulls up the blinds and cranks open both windows to let the breeze in. He hopes Eva isn’t too prissy as the shack isn’t in the sharpest condition. But when he glances around, he sees she’s just standing on the deck, staring out to sea.

      He pulls out some of the junk cluttering the living area: canvas chairs, a grill, a fraying windbreak, and puts it all on the deck to make some space. ‘It’s basic,’ he tells her, ‘but there’s a bed in the back room and the sofa folds into a bed, too. There’s a shower – an outdoor one – but the water runs hot. I’m just gonna check the gas is on.’

      He goes around the back to the gas locker and is pleased to find it is all connected. He checks the shower, too, and finds a big huntsman spider sitting in the shower tray along with a collection of leaves and sand. ‘Sorry, mate,’ Saul says as he scoops up the spider and chucks it onto the beach.

      Back in the shack, he runs the tap and the water tank seems to be working just fine. He offers to bring some food from his place, but Eva says she’ll be okay, and he gets the impression that she just wants to be on her own.

      ‘I’ll come back in the morning. Run you to your car.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      ‘If you need anything, my place is just up there,’ he says, pointing to the other end of the bay.

      He says goodbye and climbs down from the deck, relieved to be on his way. Then he remembers he hasn’t checked whether there was any bedding. When he turns back, he sees Eva has already sunk down onto the sofa, her head cradled in her hands.

      When Dirk had told Saul what he knew on the bleak afternoon of Jackson’s memorial service, Saul had slumped back in his seat, stunned. He’d said right then that he didn’t want anything to do with it, didn’t even want to meet Eva.

      Yet here she is.

      He sees her shoulders begin to shake as the tears come. He takes a step towards the shack, then hesitates. Something tells him it’s cleaner not to get involved. So Saul ducks his head and walks on.

      *

      Later that evening Eva manages to fall asleep, but she wakes hours later gasping into the pitch black. Disorientated, she struggles free of the covers, her skin damp with sweat. She flails for a light switch, but her wrist bone connects with something hard and the crash of broken glass fills her ears.

      Finally she finds the light. A glass has smashed, water pooling over wooden floorboards. She can’t place the room she’s in. Her gaze darts around, then halts on a large driftwood mirror at the end of the bed. The image reflected back is of a woman with ghostly white skin, her eyes sunken in shadow, her face gaunt.

      Then Eva remembers: she’s in Tasmania.

      Jackson is dead.

      She is carrying his child.

      She leans against the bedroom door, feeling the coolness of the wood through her T-shirt. Her head bows into her hands and she closes her eyes, battling against tears.

      The quiet in the shack rolls over her, only the low murmuring of the bay audible. Somehow the near silence feels wrong, smothering. Her jaw tightens as she strains to catch some sound. Anything.

      Panic spikes over her skin as she realizes what it is she’s listening for: Jackson’s breathing.

      She is expecting to hear the soft draw of air in and out of his lungs, which was the rhythm she fell asleep to every night. The absence of it fills her with a crushing loneliness. She wraps her arms tightly around herself, feeling the rapid thud of her own heartbeat. But there’s no comfort in it, so she crosses the room and digs in her suitcase, pulling out a red-checked shirt.

      It was Jackson’s favourite, the one he’d change into when he got home from work, pushing the sleeves up and leaving the collar wide open. It was a shirt so loved that he didn’t mind that it was missing two buttons or that the collar was starting to fray.

      She pulls it on now, her fingers drawing the fabric tight to her body, and picks up her phone.

      She is contemplating calling her mother. She’d like to hear her familiar voice right now; it’d be mid-morning in England and her mother would be at home, perhaps ironing with the radio on, or putting something in the slow cooker for dinner. But then Eva pictures herself saying, I’m pregnant – and realizes she’s not ready to make that call. Not yet.

      She fetches a blanket and walks out onto the deck. The air СКАЧАТЬ