“I’m so cold,” Stella says, and I cling more tightly to her arm. Usually she is hard and aloof for several days after she gets back, and I feel sick when I wonder who she’s been with and what she’s been doing. This time she is not hard at all; she is a lost little girl and I feel older than my fourteen years as I spout platitudes about how much she’s loved and how great she is. We stop at the edge of the water and she watches the wavelets splash over her shoes. I don’t think she’s listening.

When I’ve finished speaking, she says, “Do you ever feel like you want something so badly you’ll die if you don’t get it? But at the same time, you don’t exactly know what it is? Whether it’s a feeling, or a place, or a person . . . ?”

“I’m not sure,” I say. “Maybe . . .”

Stella nods, and I wish I could say something amazing and wise and helpful that would bring her back forever. At least we are here now, with our arms intertwined; I will have to make do with that. She laughs slightly as a wave breaks over our ankles, and I glance at her and laugh, too.

Chapter 3

3

The bay below the garden was deserted next time I went. I hadn’t noticed the cloud cover as I left the house; it was only when I stopped halfway down the cliff path and took in the vista that I saw how grey and choppy the sea was. It wasn’t weather for swimming.

It was disappointing; I’d been missing my old routine. Missing the sunrise over the water, and Stella’s cryptic cliffs, and calling out “Hi” to the woman in the swim cap. I hadn’t come for ages, because I didn’t like to think of Cory waking up and finding me gone, but he never did wake till eleven at the earliest, and today I’d decided to risk it.

No. Risk is too strong a word. If I’d grown wary of hurting Cory’s feelings over the last few days, it wasn’t because of anything he’d said or done. I suppose it was because his mother was ill, and because of the alcohol I’d smelled on his breath that strange morning, and because he seemed to get sad so easily and to love me so much.

I trudged back toward the house, pausing a couple of times to look round. I don’t know what I was hoping to see. The sudden appearance of a lemon-yellow sea, I suppose, and long ripples fanning out in the wake of my friend’s front crawl.