The Girl Below(100)

She collapsed back onto the bed, eyes not quite closed, and for a whole minute I thought she was dead, that the sight of so much money had killed her. But it hadn’t; holding my hand in front of her mouth, I felt shallow, rasping breaths.

When Elena appeared for her shift, I tried to explain that Peggy had been upset, and perhaps ought to be moved back to her room, but Elena misunderstood, and instead gave Peggy a medicinal nip of ouzo—“No tell Peepa,” she made me promise—as well as an extra dose of morphine. Watching the tiny pump do its work, I thought of my mother, how she too had been hooked up to one of those near the very end.

In Elena’s room, behind the curtain of my sleeping platform, I discovered that one of the photograph albums had a pocket exactly like the one Peggy had described. The pocket wasn’t empty—other bits of paper had been stuffed in there too—but I crammed in the cash and ignored them. I had to return the album quickly to the suitcase before anyone noticed it was missing. I’d have to tell someone about the money too, but I wasn’t sure whom, or when would be the right moment. I knew I should tell Pippa about the money, but I also thought it might be better to wait until the others weren’t around.

When Pippa returned that night, I was exhausted and had a new respect for the stress she was under. Not only did Peggy require constant attention but she had also turned against the one person who really cared for her, and that could only have hurt Pippa deeply. She would be braced for grief, conscious at every step of the loss she was about to suffer. At least when my mum was dying I’d been oblivious to what I was about to go through, and directly afterward, too immature to feel anything but numb. But had that really been any better? Instead of grieving and getting over it, I had run away to the other side of the world, gotten into bad relationships, taken drugs—really pushed myself to the edge—then wondered what was wrong with me. It should have been obvious what was wrong with me. It couldn’t be more obvious now.

With everyone on a round-the-clock vigil by Peggy’s bedside, we ate and slept in irregular patterns, and household routines disappeared. Shortly after Pippa got home from her walk, I went to bed while it was still light and fell into a feverish sleep. Later on, I woke to the sound of voices chattering, plates clunking, but felt too tired to get up and eat. The crypt was particularly hot and airless that night and I stripped down to just my knickers and covered myself with a sheet. The events of the day were a blur and sleep came on strong, blitzing all thoughts and replacing them with crooked nightmares of fishing for bullets in a flooding cave.

I was in such a deep sleep that later on, when a hand tapped me gently on the shoulder and a voice whispered softly in my ear, I thought I was dreaming. I couldn’t make out any of the whispered words, but the delicate breath they were carried on sent a secret voltage to the base of my spine. From there, the current spread to my arms and legs then fizzed to the ends of my fingers and toes. I had never experienced a dream quite like this, and then I realized it wasn’t one.

“Why did you run away from the beach?” said the whisperer.

I opened my eyes halfway, enough to confirm his outline, kneeling by the bed. I was lost without my glasses but didn’t reach for them; absurdly, I didn’t want him to see me in spectacles. “You can’t be here,” I said. “You have to go.”

He took off his T-shirt and put a finger to my lips. “Shhh.” He smelled of the sea, of sunscreen, and I knew he hadn’t showered since he’d been in the ocean. He lay down next to me on the mattress and, very carefully, as though either one of us might detonate, he rested one hand lightly on my shoulder. Next to my ear, he exhaled, a tiny puff of air that was a fuse to my nerve endings. His body next to mine was molten, too pliant, and on the other side of the sheet, I floundered.

“I’m serious,” I said. “Your parents will kill me.”

“No one saw me coming in here,” he said. “They’re too busy with Peggy.”

He shifted his weight, slid a hand under the sheet and down past my shoulder blade. When he reached the rise of my breast and an attendant nipple, he timidly went around it. For a moment his mouth hovered in front of mine, awaiting permission, and in that second or two of sweet, urgent breath, everything was written, and everything came undone.

“Please,” I said, on a sharp inhale. “Please don’t.” But his mouth inched forward, and my hand sought the downy cleft on the back of his neck, and finally his lips settled on mine. He tasted of summer fruit, nectarines and cherries, all the joyous, uncomplicated times in life that I had forgotten about, and rolling toward him on the stiff, horsehair mattress, I was a girl of sixteen again, having my first kiss—finally—with the boy of my dreams.