Page 6 of Someone in the Water
And then he steps out in front of her.
She half gasps, half screams, but there’s no one around to hear. She takes a step backwards, but he moves forward, his face inches from hers, his hot breath seeping through the mask.
‘Gimme your phone,’ he says, holding his hand out, his voice gruff and muffled.
His skin is tanned, rough. His arm is thin and sinewy. Lola stares at it. ‘What?’
‘Give me your fucking phone,’ he repeats, more slowly. ‘And money. You got money?’ He has an accent, but Lola can’t place it. ‘Now,’ he demands. ‘I have a knife; I’ll cut you.’
Lola’s eyes dart left and right, but no one is coming to help her.
What is she going to do without a phone?
But she can’t fight him.
With trembling fingers, she drops her phone, her lifeline, into his hands. But he doesn’t leave.
‘And money? I’ll search you,’ he threatens.
Lola’s face crumples. ‘I don’t have any,’ she whispers. And it’s true. She pays for everything on Apple Pay.
‘Bullshit!’ he hisses. ‘What’s in there?’ He points at her middle.
Lola follows the direction of his finger. She’s been wearing the belt bag for so long that she’d forgotten she had it on. Her tummy clenches as she remembers her mum giving her fifty euros.I want to see that back, but have it in case of emergencies. She has just lied to a thief, a mugger. What will he do to her now?
‘I forgot,’ she blurts out. ‘I’m sorry!’
‘Give me the bag,’ he orders.
‘No, I can’t …’
He shoves her in the shoulder. She stumbles backwards.
‘Give me the fucking bag!’
She has no choice. She fumbles with the clip, tears smarting her eyes. She hears the click of the belt opening, but so does he, because he reaches out and snatches it, scratching her arm with his jagged fingernail. He holds her gaze for a split second, and then he’s gone.
She stares after him, feels the trickle of blood run down her arm. Then a delayed panic kicks in, and she turns and runs. Not towards the room she has rented, where her backpack is, but to the beach. It’s always been her favourite place. And she needs it now. Somewhere to steady her.
Because that man hasn’t only taken her money and phone.
The key to her accommodation is in that belt bag.
And so is her passport.
Lola
26th July
Lola’s eyelids twitch as light seeps through. She opens one eye, then the other. The sun is rising over a hill in the distance and its rays are splayed out like the spokes of a wheel. She shivers, partly with the cold, but partly with anticipation of the heat she knows the sun will bring. Heat her body is craving after a night spent curled up in the sand.
She pushes to sitting, her muscles stiff and aching, and turns her head towards the sea. Ripples flow slowly towards the shore, barely even frothing before they disappear back into the sparkling blue water. Daylight, sunshine, it makes everything seem better. But it isn’t really. She still doesn’t have a phone, or a passport, or any money. The cut on her arm is stinging, her backpack is lying on a stranger’s bed at the wrong end of town, and her mum thinks she’s in Ayia Napa with her friends.
When Lola arrived at the beach last night, she didn’t plan to stay. She just couldn’t go back to that apartment straight away and explain her missing key, not to those men with beer on their breath, not after being mugged only one street over. It’s stupid to think that an expanse of sand with no lights or walls could feel safer than a bedroom she has paid for, but in that moment, it was the only place she wanted to be. Although the beach has always been Lola’s happy place. Which is probably why, when the adrenaline finally settled and her body sagged, she could curl into a ball, burrow into the sand, and fall asleep.
There’s movement to Lola’s right and she turns to watch a woman in a navy-blue swimsuit make a beeline for the water’s edge. She’s wearing a swim cap and goggles. Lola doesn’t know what time it is – for years she has relied on her phone for that kind of information – but it feels early. When the swimmer reaches a yellow buoy thirty metres out, she turns ninety degrees and starts swimming parallel to the shoreline, back and forth, length after length. Lola finds the sight of the woman calming, and by the time she returns to shore, Lola has made a decision.
She waits for the woman to dry herself down, then walks over to her.
