He stood, wiping water from his eyes. He stared at me, and he didn’t have to say anything because I already knew. I’d tried to tell him.
“Can I get another hug?” I asked. “For longer than thirty seconds this time?”
He held me, and I closed my eyes and leaned against him.
“Don’t freak out,” he said into my ear, “but I have a knife.”
A sickening sensation popped like a bubble in my chest, and bile chased up my throat before I swallowed it down again. I didn’t pull away from him. I didn’t want to look him in the face for this discussion. “How big is it?”
“It’s my multitool,” he said. “It’s got a saw blade too.”
I started to shake all over.
“I can’t—” He cleared his throat and started again. “I can’t shift the rock, Natty. It’s too heavy.”
“Okay.” I gripped the back of his shirt tightly. “How would... How would that even work? I mean, we’d still have to wait for the tide to turn.”
“A tourniquet,” he said. “I’ll cut my shirt up. It’ll buy us some time, right?”
Us, he said, like we were both staring down the nightmarish idea of having a foot sawed off. Then again, I wasn’t sure I’d want to be in his shoes for this either. There was a joke there about him at least having two shoes, courtesy of the part of my brain that was suddenly hysterical, but I didn’t say it. I was pretty sure that if I’d tried to say anything I would have thrown up.
“My radio’s on the beach,” he said. “As soon as I can swim out of here, I can call for a chopper from the mainland. They can call Red Joe too, have him get here with his medical kit in the meantime.”
I didn’t like the odds of that—but I didn’t like the idea of just standing here waiting to drown either. But at least waiting to drown didn’t come with the excruciating agony of having my boyfriend cut my foot off. Dominic rubbed my back as he held me, and didn’t say anything else. It was my turn to catch up to him, and to the heavy realisation he’d come to—if I wanted to live, I didn’t have any other choice.
“This is a terrible idea, Dominic,” I said.
“I know.” His voice rasped in my ear. “But it’s the only one we’ve got.”
The water was up to my heart now, each tickle against my skin reminding me that we were running out of time.
Dominic pulled away before I was ready to let him go and tugged his T-shirt off. “Hold my torch?”
It was like being asked to hold the noose for the guy who was going to hang you, but I reached out with a shaking hand and took it. Held it so the light shone on Dominic’s hand as he produced his multitool and levered the blade out. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to look at the knife as it tore into the wet fabric.
They said drowning didn’t hurt, and I was ready to believe that again. Ready to ask Dominic to just stay with me until he couldn’t anymore, and then to let me go. I didn’t want to die—but I was so afraid of how much that knife was going to hurt. But then, before I could open my mouth?—
“Natty! Natty!” A broad figure surged out of the black water. “What the fuck are you doing standing there like a bloody lump?”
Nipper Will, as subtle as always.
“He’s stuck!” Dominic yelled back.
Nipper Will splashed through the water towards us. He was taller than me. I’d always wished I was the same height as him. Now I really fucking wished it.
“His foot’s caught,” Dominic said. “Right foot, at the ankle. It’s wedged between two rocks. I can’t move it on my own.”
Nipper Will looked at the long, torn lengths of T-shirt hanging limp as seaweed from Dominic’s left fist, and the knife in his right. Then he looked at me, face blanched with horror—or maybe that was just the torchlight. “What bullshit is this, Natty?”
I laughed—or sobbed—at his tone, because he made it sound like this was just any other day he was pissed off about something I’d done. Left the milk out of the fridge so it went bad, or buggered off somewhere with Button John instead of doing my work, or something. Just the latest thing he was annoyed about, and tomorrow things would be the same as they always were. God, I wanted that to be true.
“Put your bloody knife away, copper,” Nipper Will said. A wave bumped him closer—it tickled my collarbones and my breath caught. We were running out of time. Will put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed, and then disappeared under the water. A moment later I felt his big hands closing around my ankle. He didn’t wrench though—he just felt, and then he let go. He stood again, spitting out water. “Well, this is a fucking mess.” He looked at Dominic. “I reckon we can shift it. Natty, give me that torch.”
He went down again for another look, and I lifted my chin as another wave pushed more water into the cave.
“I don’t want to die here,” I said, and Dominic reached out and held my hand.
“You’re not going to die here,” he said.
