The Drowning by Valerie Mendes Page B

Imogen and Morvah as they slowly realised something had gone terribly wrong. How Imogen said,“I’m so sorry,Jenn. If I’d known you were worried about Benjie, I’d have stopped him wandering off.”
    And she remembered the moment she’d first seen Meryn.
    He’d been the second lifeguard up at the hut. Quickly and calmly he’d taken down Benjie’s details. He’d relayed them over the megaphone, his husky voice steady and precise; calmed her trembling body when she’d almost fainted; told her so gently not to panic . . . and then, all those dreadful minutes later, told her they’d done everything they could, that the incident was now out of their hands.
    She remembered how Meryn had been stripped to the waist, wearing only the bright red shorts of the lifeguard. Fine dark hair rippled across his arms and over the lean firmness of his chest. His skin was burnished by the sun and wind to the colour of an autumn leaf.
    Meryn Carlyon.
    Had she sought him out on the beach, afterwards, the next day, the following week, to thank him and his fellow lifeguard? Had she bothered to think about him once during the nightmare weeks that followed?
    She’d simply taken his help for granted, not given it a second thought. Yet that afternoon must have been almost as much of a nightmare for him as it had been for her.
    At the end of the week, when Jenna had given up hope of seeing Meryn again, a battered postcard arrived for her: a photo of a fishing boat graced one side of it and a hastily scrawled message the other:
Hi, Jenna! Greetings from north Norfolk! A friend of mine works at a hotel called Captain’s House in Cromer. I’ve come to stay with him in his fisherman’s cottage for my last few days of freedom before I start a new job. But I haven’t forgotten that coffee on the house.
Hope to see you soon.
Meryn
    “Who’s that from?” Dad asked, tying on his apron. “All I ever get is bills.”
    “Just someone I know.” Jenna slipped the card into her skirt pocket. “Would you mind if I left early this afternoon?”
    “And where are you off to?”
    “We’ve given the Cockleshell a face-lift.” Jenna frowned at herself in the large new mirror they’d hung on one of the walls. “I reckon I could do with one too.”
    “You look beautiful as ever to me.”
    Jenna hugged him so abruptly his glasses went all skew-whiff.
    “You would say that, wouldn’t you? You’re my dad.”
    She dashed to the bank and took out some of her savings. Then she walked resolutely into the hairdresser’s.
    “Don’t cut it all off,”she told them. “But I’d like a fringe for the first time ever, and take the rest to here . . . to shoulder length.”
    She shut her eyes. Snip,snip went the scissors as her hair dripped on to her forehead. With each snip she thought, Out with the old and on with the new. New look, new me. The results were startling. Jenna stared at herself in the mirror. Her face looked softer, her eyes darker, her mouth more clearly defined . . .
    Delighted, she raced around St Ives. She bought three pairs of trousers and six bright, single-colour tops; new underwear; a wide leather belt; pink nail varnish, some new make-up, a bottle of perfume; leather ankle boots to match the belt; a bag to replace the one that, lying on Eva Simons’s plush leather sofa, she’d suddenly noticed looked crumpled and worn; and a new loose cuddly red jacket, for when the nights grew cold.
    When she got home,Dad said,“Wow! Is that my Jenna? I did quite a double-take.”
    “Well, I thought, What’s the point in my having long, classic-looking dancer’s hair if I’m never going to dance again?”
    The glow of pride and admiration in Dad’s eyes faded into pain. “Never say never,” he said.
    “Why not?” Her hair fell soft and thick on to her shoulders. “Because never is exactly what I mean.”
    As she flicked the CLOSED sign into place on Wednesday afternoon, Meryn Carlyon came running up the Digey.
    He’s here.
    Jenna felt