Swimming at Night: A Novel by Lucy Clarke Read Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t for you, though?”
    “I guess not.” She had missed the sea with a deep ache and found her dreams were filled with beaches and empty horizons.
    “Is that why you wanted to go traveling?”
    She stretched the sleeves of her sweater over her hands andthen wrapped them round the mug to keep warm. “I was ready for a change.”
    “It’s been a tough year. You deserve a break.”
    Do I? she thought. It had been Katie, not her, who stayed stoically at their mother’s side throughout her illness. Mia had closed her eyes to the beakers of pills, the clumps of hair in the shower tray, the new gauntness in her mother’s cheeks—because it was easier. Anything was easier than watching her strong, capable mother wilt. She felt the hard little pebble of guilt that lived in her stomach and she reached for the hip flask, putting her lips around the cool metal mouth.
    Finn slung his arm around her shoulder. “You okay?”
    She nodded.
    “Listen, Mia.” His voice was serious and she glanced up. “When your mum was ill, I know we weren’t hanging out so much—but you did know I was there for you, didn’t you?”
    “Course,” she said, embarrassed by his earnestness. They had never broached the subject of the four strained months when a wall had reared up between them, stacked with hard bricks of resentment and cemented by Mia’s silence. She wasn’t sure she was ready to now.
    Sensing that, Finn pulled his arm back and said, “So tell me about Mick. When did you decide you wanted to see him?”
    “I found a photo of him when I was clearing out Mum’s wardrobe.” In the picture he was standing onstage with a band in front of a banner that read BLACK EWE . The band looked as if they’d just finished a set, their faces red and glistening with sweat. A man with long black hair that had turned damp at the temples stood in the center, holding a guitar loosely at its neck and staring intently at the camera. Beside him, Mick looked exuberant and fresh in a fitted suit and pointed brown shoes that turned up at the toes. Hehad no instrument to hold like the others, so he had shot a double-handed finger-gun at the camera and cocked his head to one side with a wink. It was a gesture that Mia would never have made, far too assured for it to look natural on her, yet she liked the picture as she saw a similarity between her and her father in the strong shape of their noses and possibly the curve of their lips, too. “I suppose seeing the picture made me curious.”
    “You haven’t been curious before?”
    “Not really. Well, maybe a little,” she conceded, thinking of a comment her grandmother made years ago that had always stuck with her. Mia had been in the bath, the water turning brackish from the mud caked to her knees. She wriggled and protested at having her hair washed, her grandmother eventually snapping, “Such an awkward, independent thing, aren’t you?” And then adding under her breath, “Just like your father.” The illicitness of that name had lingered in the steamy room for a long moment. Long enough for the comparison to settle deep into Mia’s thoughts.
    Finn tilted his mug to his lips, finishing his drink. “How come you haven’t talked to Katie about your visiting him?”
    Mia thought for a minute. “Sometimes when people give you their opinions, they can end up becoming your own. I didn’t want that.”
    A car pulled into the campsite, the headlights briefly illuminating them before the engine was cut. A couple got out and began staking out their tent by flashlight.
    The few sentences they’d just shared were the most Mia had admitted to anyone, even herself. For now, that was enough. She reached across for Finn’s mug. “I’ll wash up.” Then she hopped from the picnic bench and disappeared to the water tap.
    Later, after she’d brushed her teeth, spitting the paste into a bush, she climbed into the tent with Finn. It was pitched with the shadowof a scrub-covered hillside in the