Page 7 of Someone in the Water
‘Excuse me, do you speak English?’
The swimmer looks Lola up and down. Lola waits to be judged for her dishevelled appearance, but the woman’s face softens. ‘Sure,’ she says in an Irish accent. ‘Can I help you out with anything?’
‘Do you have a phone I could borrow?’
The woman hesitates, just as Lola would have done if the conversation was reversed. A stranger asking for one of her most private things. ‘You don’t have your own then?’ she finally asks.
‘I did, but I was mugged last night,’ Lola explains, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice.
The woman’s expression transforms. ‘Oh my God, that’s awful. I’m Amy. And of course you can borrow my phone. Come on, my gear’s over there.’ She points to a large palm tree near the beach entrance with a bag resting against its trunk. As they walk towards it, Amy starts looking around. ‘Who are you here with? Do they know what’s happened to you?’
‘No, I’m … Can I call my mum?’ Lola asks, shifting the conversation. ‘She’s in England but I can get her to call me straight back.’
‘Listen, you can call Timbuktu if it means getting the help you need. I would offer to come to the police station with you, but we’re leaving today, just getting one last swim in before it’s back to Dublin with its freezing water and constant drizzle.’
‘Oh sorry, I’ll be quick,’ Lola says, reaching for Amy’s proffered phone. When her mum demanded that Lola memorise her phone number a few years ago, Lola thought she was catastrophising. But now she’s grateful. She listens to it ring, then her heart sinks when it clicks into voicemail. She waits for the beep and starts talking. ‘Mum, it’s me. Listen. Something’s happened. I’m okay, well, kind of. But I don’t have my phone. A lady lent me hers, to call you, but she can’t stay long. I guess it’s early in the UK, you’re probably still asleep. But if you get this soon, can you call me?’
Amy gives her a sympathetic look. ‘Do you want to try someone else?’
Lola shakes her head. None of her friends, not even her Grams, catastrophise like her mum does, so she doesn’t know anyone else’s number.
‘How about we go to the beach café for a coffee and try again in a bit?’ Amy says. ‘I’m good for another half an hour or so, and you look like you need warming up even more than I do.’
Lola smiles her gratitude, but inside she’s flailing. What happens if her mum doesn’t pick up in half an hour either? When Lola left home on Friday, her mum told her not to call her. But yesterday, she changed her mind. She always goes weird around this time – she calls it her insomnia winning the battle over her sanity. It’s why she takes herself off every year, to save Lola from seeing it. What if she has flipped out too badly to notice Lola’s voicemail?
An hour later, Lola promises Amy that she has a plan B for about the twelfth time, and demands that Amy go back to her husband who, by the sound of his messages, is getting increasingly worried that they’re going to miss their flight home. Amy sighs, still conflicted, but then gives Lola a tight hug, pushes forward a napkin scrawled with her number, and runs in the direction of the road.
Once she’s out of sight, Lola lets her smile sag. She has called her mum six times on Amy’s phone and has left two voicemails. It’s not even eight o’clock in the UK, so her mum has every right to still be asleep. But she supposedly can’t sleep – that’s why she goes AWOL every summer – and aren’t mums meant to have a sixth sense when their kid is in trouble?
Not that it matters anymore. Now that Amy has left with the phone, her mum can’t call her back anyway.
Lola pushes out of the café chair and straightens up. She needs to go back to the apartment. Explain about the stolen key. Hopefully Celine will let Lola use her phone and her mum will pick up this time.
Forty minutes later, Lola knocks on the apartment door. She took a longer way back so that she could avoid the narrowest streets, but there was no shade on the main roads, and she’s beginning to wish she’d chosen a more hydrating drink than coffee. And said yes when Amy offered to buy her some breakfast. After only managing half a basket of fries for supper, she’s starving, and she still has no money. When there’s no answer, she knocks again. And again. It takes a full five minutes before Lola finally accepts that no one is home.
She closes her eyes and leans her clammy forehead against the cool wall. She doesn’t want to cry. She thought she was doing the right thing, coming to Corsica, finding out what happened to her mum so that she can understand her better, help her overcome her demons. But everything has gone wrong so far. And she doesn’t know anyone here.
Except.
Lola pushes away from the wall, stares at the scuffed paintwork. There is one thing she knows. Not a person, but a place. Hotel Paoli. Twenty-one years is a long time, but not a lifetime. And the purpose of this trip has always been reliant on someone remembering Frankie Torre. Lola thinks about her daydream – the welcome with open arms, the heavily discounted hotel room – and heads back outside.
Frankie
26th July
There’s shouting. Silhouettes of men. I stare into the distance, but I can’t make out where the sea ends, and the night sky begins. The only clue comes from the weak moonlight, drifting between clouds, streaking the water. I shift my gaze closer. Who is on the beach with me? They’re both silent, sleeping. But I can’t see their faces. Now I can hear a distant droning sound. Is that a boat?
I jerk awake. Blink. My neck is twisted and stiff, my cheek stuck to the tabletop. Sunlight floods through the window, and my laptop screen is black in front of me – asleep or out of power. I’m in The Wolf Den, I remember. And the droning noise is my phone buzzing. I grab it, arch my back to sit up.
‘Hello?’ I say, my voice thick with sleep.
‘Mum? Thank God! Why did you take so long to answer?’
Lola is in trouble. That is as clear as an air-raid siren blaring in my ears. I suck in a breath and hold it as I swipe the mouse on my laptop to bring it to life. It’s connected to my phone – something Lola set up for me – and it lists six missed calls and two voicemails from a mobile number I don’t recognise. The missed calls were all made between six thirty and seven thirty, and I curse my body, my mind, for keeping me awake all night and then sending me into the deepest sleep at dawn.
‘I’m … I’m sorry, I’m here now,’ I stutter. ‘But what’s happened? Why aren’t you calling from your own phone?’
‘I was mugged last night,’ Lola says, her voice jittery. ‘He didn’t hurt me, but he took my phone, and my belt bag, which had my money and passport inside, and my room key. I slept on the beach, and—’
