Summerwater Sarah Moss (microsoft ebook reader txt) 📖

and ice creams and cake in the afternoons and then dinner, and two swimming pools even though it was right on the beach and loads of hot girls lying around bored on sun-loungers. They had barbecues, he said, in the evenings, chefs in their white hats out on the patio, all the burgers and steaks you could want. It was unbelievable, Amir said, the food and the girls, and a really good gym so Amir had basically spent the whole two weeks working out, surfing, eating and chatting up the girls and barely even saw his parents. Even if you discount at least the more exciting half of what Amir says he did with the girls, which Alex does, at least half— he hears the wind coming before it strikes, has time to brace but it’s a near thing. Fuck.

Pushing deep into the dark water, driving the kayak on, he sees the gust flying down the loch, battering trees and pummelling the waves.

Fine, he says, be like that, bring it on, motherfucker, and a small voice at the back of his mind asks what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, cursing the weather up here, the weather that boils up out of the mountains, over the sea, down from the actual Arctic, is he out of his tiny mind, alone in the middle of one of the biggest lochs in Scotland, nowhere to hide, you could drown out here, easily. They’d never find your body though the red kayak would wash up sooner or later, upside down, probably, nosing the shore as if it might drag itself out and up to the lodge and meanwhile his body drifting down, down a long way here where the hills slope so steeply into the loch, there’s probably hundreds of metres of water below him and pike and all sorts, mostly as far as he knows drowned people fill with gas and rise again but not if the pike have bitten and torn flesh from bone, must be dozens of the dead lying below him and the red kayak, young men running for home before a rising wind, eye on the weather but late, too late. Another gust hits and the kayak twists under him. Dear God, he says, if you let me get off the water safely today I promise I’ll never – never, uh – never laugh at Kayleigh Ward again. He doesn’t even do it to her face, or not exactly, only when the others are, and if she was all that bothered she’d wear normal clothes, wouldn’t she, do something about herself? Right, boat straight again. Those pike will have to wait. His shoulder’s really hurting now, tight and achey. He wriggles a bit, can’t afford to stop and stretch it properly because only the forward movement is keeping the kayak stable amid increasingly chunky waves. Come off it, he thinks, you’re not exactly crossing the Atlantic mate, it’s only a loch. Not that you would cross the Atlantic in a kayak. Not that you’d get out of sight of land if you tried, nor probably even off the beach, not in a wind like this. Anyway it’s rubbish, the drowning thing, he’s got his life jacket, hasn’t he, and he’s in his wetsuit, won’t get hypothermia either, and he can swim, pretty well actually, could probably tow the kayak to land from here if he had to, it’s not that far, to those trees over there, and he doesn’t have to, does he, he’s doing fine, still paddling.

He changes sides again. Ow. Going to be stiff as a corpse tomorrow. Will they let him have a bath, use up all the hot water and shut everyone else out of the bathroom for an hour? He could have a good wank. It’s been days, even when he’s pretty sure Becky’s asleep, some things you just can’t with your sister in the room. The rain’s heavier, hammering on the hull and he can hear it hissing into the loch as well. He licks water off his face, moves to wipe his nose with the back of his hand but what’s the point. There’s that tree again, not far now, and some other nutter out there, camo coat but the trees’ green is so bright you can still see him, could be a hiker but he’s not on the path and keeps stopping. More like just someone else who can’t stick being indoors another five minutes, or one of those poor buggers camping, fuck all you can do in a tent all day, wouldn’t you just go home? The town at the end is veiled by rain, the world with the red kayak at its centre contracting. But not below, he thinks, that distance stays the same, to the rocks and grabbing weeds at the bottom where the bones lie. Does it make any difference, down there, what the weather’s doing? Do the fish even know about wind?

His hands are going numb. Doesn’t matter, of course, he can still paddle. But still. Feet too, come to think of it. He’d do better in a drysuit but they wouldn’t buy him one, what do you want that for, we just spent all that money on the wetsuit, we’ve nowhere to keep it and do you think we’re made of money? He can get a job, now. A National Insurance number came a few weeks ago and he took it up to his room and looked at it, re-read the letter. How do they know about him, the National Insurance people, how do they know his name and where he lives and when he turns sixteen, have they been watching him all these years? They shouldn’t do that. You should be the one who tells them, here I am, I’m ready now, you can count me. Though probably some people never would, would rather skulk in the woods or up the mountains, cooking squirrels and rabbits over a fire – not that you