Deep Blue Sea

by Tasmina Perry

  Something about that glass made prickles pop out on Diana’s arms.

  ‘Julian?’ she called, moving through the house, switching on lights, opening doors. She was actively worried now. Had he gone out? But why would he, at this time of night? And anyway – how? He had certainly drunk far too much at the party to drive.

  The car, of course. She had to check on the car. She went to the back door and slipped on the first footwear she came to – Julian’s scuffed-up old walking boots, which felt cold and over-large on her bare feet. She fumbled the keys into the lock and stepped out into the garden, the fairy wonderland of the party now cloaked in dark shadows and strange shapes. It was cold, and a light frosting of dew had settled on the lawn. Keep going, she told herself, clumping along the path that led towards the large brick garage at the back of the grounds. If his car’s gone, then you’ll know. But know what, exactly?

  The door to the garage was closed but unlocked. ‘Julian?’ she called as she poked her head inside. She could make out the outline of the two cars that they stored here – her own silver Range Rover runabout and Julian’s dark blue Mercedes, which at least meant he hadn’t driven anywhere.

  Now she was puzzled. Shaking her head, she resolved to call him on his mobile and then go back to bed. She closed the garage door and turned back to face the house. It was then that she noticed a crack of light from one of the lower-ground-floor rooms.

  It was a part of the house she rarely went to. There was a utility room down there, an overspill dressing room, and a small, sparse library – they had moved most of their book collection to Somerfold – where Julian kept his drum kit and collection of vinyl. She hurried inside and took the stairs to the basement. Like the rest of the house it was still and silent, but down here, it made her feel especially anxious.

  She pushed open the library door and stepped inside. The room was in semi-darkness, bathed in low silvery dawn light from a gap in the curtains. As she turned to look for the lamp switch, she gasped in disbelief at the sight in front of her. Julian was kneeling slumped on the floor, a noose attached to a bookshelf tied around his neck.

  She didn’t even hear herself scream.

  2

  ‘So how did that feel?’

  Rachel Miller squeezed the water from her dark hair and looked sideways at the handsome Canadian standing beside her on the boat.

  ‘Incredible,’ he grinned, unstrapping his air tank and putting it down on the deck with a clank.

  ‘You know this is the second best dive site in the world after Cairns,’ said Rachel.

  The man raised his eyebrows. ‘Yeah, I think you told me that when I made my booking.’

  ‘I just like to remind people,’ she teased, giving him her most flirtatious smile.

  ‘I think I’ll go downstairs to change.’

  ‘I hope you haven’t peed in your wetsuit,’ she shouted after him.

  He looked back at her quizzically, and as the split-second chemistry between them evaporated instantly, she cursed her lack of grace.

  Just as well, she smiled to herself, before taking a slug of water from the bottle beside her. It was unprofessional, verboten even, for instructors to fraternise with the clients, although playful banter with good-looking men in wetsuits was definitely one of the perks of the job. She wiped her damp, salty brow with the back of her hand and sat down with a contented sigh. Today’s diving group had been her favourite kind: young and up for fun, plus they were all PADI-certified divers, so she had been able to take them out to the more interesting dive sites that surrounded the Thai island of Ko Tao. Out by Shark Island they had seen batfish, barracuda, spotted rays plus shoals of angel fish and all sorts of coloured coral and sponge. There were certainly worse ways to earn a living.

  ‘Hey, Liam.’

  Rachel looked up at the sing-song voice and the accompanying giggles: three of her clients, pretty gap-year students who had switched from damp wetsuits to skimpy bikinis and were loitering on deck watching her business partner Liam hard at work sorting out the swim fins into the right buckets. She could hardly blame them; Liam was tall, blond and muscular from leading daily dives on the reef. Still, it didn’t do to encourage that sort of thing.

  ‘Everything all right, girls?’ said Rachel, walking over as Liam disappeared below deck.

  ‘I can’t believe you get to work with him every day,’ whispered the most attractive of the trio.

  ‘That’s my husband you’re talking about,’ said Rachel evenly.

  ‘Seriously?’ gasped the girl. ‘Oh God, I didn’t know, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Just kidding,’ laughed Rachel. ‘However, he is my business partner, which means that for an extra fifty bucks I can make him strip down to some really tiny Speedos. What do you think?’

  Just then Liam reappeared, triggering gales of laughter from the girls.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ chuckled Rachel. ‘Nothing at all.’

  The boat chugged back to Sairee Beach, Ko Tao’s main landing point and the base for the diving school. As the island came into view, Rachel couldn’t help but smile. Even though she had lived there for almost three years, she was still captivated by its sun-washed beauty. Ko Tao lacked the dramatic karst scenery of Thailand’s Andaman Sea islands, but it was still Paradise, boasting long stretches of white sand, lush forest and crystal-clear waters.

  Sairee Beach wasn’t even the prettiest side of the island. On days off, Rachel would jump on her battered moped and head into the Robinson Crusoe territory of the island’s quieter east coast, where palm trees stooped over the sugar-white sand and the air smelt as if you had fallen into a bottle of frangipani-scented cologne. ‘Not a bad place to have your office,’ she whispered to herself.

  Slowly the smile drifted from her face. She might be in Paradise now, but there was a time when she’d thought she was in hell. In another life, and a million miles from this spot, Rachel had been a journalist, associate editor on London’s Sunday Post and not yet even thirty. She was flying: at the top of her game and feted in all the capital’s smartest watering holes. And then the sky had fallen in. The phone-hacking scandal had swept through Fleet Street like fire through dry wood; Rachel had barely had time to draw breath before she was shown the door. First she had been put on leave, and then summarily dismissed. Just as she had thought it couldn’t get any worse, she had been arrested and her flat searched.

  Thanks to a good lawyer, she had escaped prison, but overnight she had become a pariah, a newspaper Icarus who had flown too near the sun then crashed and burned.

  So she had come to Thailand. No, fled to Thailand was closer to the truth. At first she convinced herself that it was just a much-needed holiday, a time to lie low and regroup. She had always loved the sea and was drawn to Ko Tao by the diving. But then she met Liam, a fellow fanatic who wanted to set up a dive school. And slowly, very slowly, she had felt her life pick up.

  She was snapped out of her thoughts as the boat bumped against the pier and Liam nimbly jumped out and began to tie it off.

  ‘Tell all your friends,’ said Rachel as she helped the divers down to the weathered planks. ‘Though July is our busiest time and I’m making no promises I can accommodate them even if they say they’re friends of yours.’

  ‘Bye, Liam,’ cooed the girls, waggling their fingers and their behinds as they walked off into the village.

  ‘We’re not that busy, are we?’ said Liam out of the corner of his mouth.

  ‘I like to keep an illusion of being in demand. Just like you, in fact.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What do I mean?’ laughed Rachel. ‘You didn’t notice those girls coming on to you all day?’

  ‘No, I was too busy watching you flirting with the beefy Canadian.’

  ‘I don’t flirt with the custome
rs,’ said Rachel with mock-offence.

  ‘Rach, you always flirt with the customers.’

  She put a hand on her hip.

  ‘If I did – and I’m not saying I do – you have to admit it’s good for business. We’re almost booked up until the end of the season.’

  ‘So you’re flirting for my benefit?’ he replied drily.

  ‘You know sometimes I think you should have stayed a lawyer.’

  She liked to tease him about his life back in England, as it seemed so removed from the laid-back beach bum he so resembled now. The short scruff of stubble, the sun-bleached dirty blond hair and the dark tan that brought out the bright blue of his eyes all said ‘surf dude’, and yet in Liam’s former life he had worked for a Top Five commercial legal practice – a rising star who had given it all up on the verge of being made a partner. She had never probed too hard about what had made him swap the brogues for the Havaianas, but she had often wondered if there was any more to it. A breakdown, or a relationship gone bad, perhaps? But then maybe he had just hated it. It was so easy for the offspring of successful white-collar parents to become funnelled into ‘respectable’ professions, only finding out too late that the rat race wasn’t for them.

  ‘And why should I have stayed a lawyer?’ he said, his voice calm and level. He was an expert at winding her up by never getting wound up himself about anything.

  ‘Because confrontation is your middle name.’

  ‘Says she.’

  ‘Call a truce, Rumpole, and buy me a drink. We need to talk.’

  ‘Sounds ominous,’ said Liam, pulling on his shirt. ‘Better make it a double.’

  They went to one of the bars at the quieter end of the beach and Rachel took a wicker table outside with a view of the sea. The evening throng had not yet come out to play, but she still knew plenty of people in the bar and she didn’t want to be overheard.

  Liam returned with a bottle of Kingfisher and a Fanta. Rachel took long, eager sips, grateful for the clinking ice. It was past five o’clock and the sun was beginning to sink, but it still had to be thirty-five degrees at least.

  ‘So how many bookings have we got tomorrow?’ she asked.

  ‘Party of eight on the learn-to-dive package. Honeymooners and some of their friends, I think.’

  ‘Well, that’s another marriage that’s doomed before it starts,’ said Rachel dismissively. ‘Taking your friends on honeymoon. Who does that?’

  Liam looked at her as if he were observing a small, disobedient child.

  ‘They got married on the island. If a bunch of mates have come all the way to see you get married in Thailand, you’re not exactly going to shove them on a plane as soon as you’ve said “I do”. Or isn’t that the way you work, Little Miss Sunshine?’

  Rachel shrugged and finished her drink.

  ‘I just wonder why some people are daft enough to spend fifty grand shipping all their friends and relations out to Thailand when they could buy a sports car or a loft conversion or something.’

  ‘You’re such a romantic,’ he grinned.

  Her eyes challenged him across the candlelight coming from the small hurricane lamp on the table.

  ‘Just because I happen to think that weddings are a mug’s game? Marriage is an antiquated institution and if you believe otherwise you are a romantic fool.’

  ‘But of course you’ll be happy to take their business. Talking of which . . . you wanted to discuss something.’

  Rachel took a breath. ‘You know that we’re rushed off our feet and it’s not even July? Well, I’ve been thinking.’ She paused, not sure how he would react. ‘I’ve been thinking that we should expand.’

  Liam lifted his beer and took a thoughtful swig.

  ‘Well? Say something,’ she said nervously.

  ‘I’ve been thinking the same thing.’

  ‘Really? Great!’ She leaned forward. ‘Listen, I heard last night that the Sunset Bungalows are up for sale. Now you know as well as I do that they’re in one of the best spots on the whole island, it’s like a stone’s throw from the main drag, and if we can do them up . . .’ She was dimly aware that she was babbling, and as she spoke, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror behind the bar and almost laughed out loud. The last thing she looked like was a businesswoman. Her dark hair was cut into a choppy bob, her thin vest showed off a tattoo of a dolphin and, frankly, her wide-eyed enthusiasm made her look more like a madwoman than Karren Brady. Even so, Liam looked intrigued.

  ‘Jim’s selling up?’ he said, rubbing his chin.

  ‘Moving back to New Zealand.’

  ‘How do you know all this stuff? I only spoke to him yesterday and he didn’t mention anything to me.’

  Rachel grinned. ‘I keep my ear to the ground.’

  ‘Old habits die hard, huh?’

  ‘We should buy them,’ she said determinedly.

  ‘The bungalows?’ said Liam, frowning. ‘I admit they’re in a good position, but we run a dive school, Rach. What do we want with a load of bungalows?’

  She put her glass down. ‘They’d be part of the dive school, Liam. That’s the beauty of it. We could position ourselves as the premier dive resort on the island, selling dive packages along with accommodation. Just think how amazing it could be: we’d provide cool little boho-chic crash pads, along with food, diving tuition and a PADI certificate thrown in. We’d clean up in this part of the gulf. I think we should set up a free-diving operation too.’

  ‘Now there’s a big surprise,’ he teased.

  Rachel supposed she deserved that one: free-diving was her latest obsession. And it was an obsession, it had to be; free-diving wasn’t for the faint-hearted. Diving without oxygen tanks to see how deep you could get, your lungs burning, the pressure hurting your ears, pulling at your limbs. It was dangerous and a little bit crazy, but to Rachel it was like an addiction. She had been taking instruction for the past year – diving in the deepest part of the gulf every time she could – from a mad Frenchman called Serge, and had almost got her teacher’s certificate.

  ‘I thought you came to Thailand for a simpler life,’ said Liam.

  ‘I did, and I found it, but this seems like too much of a good opportunity. Come on, Liam, don’t say you’re not tempted.’

  ‘Tempted in a masochistic sort of way.’

  ‘Just think about it . . .’

  He paused for a moment, as if he was weighing up what she had said.

  ‘Even if we were prepared to take it on – and I’m not saying we should – how could we afford it? A plot that size, with twenty bungalows and beach access, it’s got to be fifty million baht minimum.’

  Rachel pulled a face. It was the one stumbling block to her plan.

  ‘I was kind of hoping you might have some savings,’ she said hopefully. ‘Come on, you were a hotshot lawyer.’

  ‘Not that hotshot. And I’m enough of a lawyer to know there are restrictions on foreigners owning property in Thailand, and they’re pretty strict about the legislation.’

  ‘Well Jim managed it, and he’s a Kiwi. Come on, I’m sure your huge legal brain can find a loophole.’

  He was laughing gently, shaking his head.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked, inordinately cross.

  ‘Oh, just that you come all this way to escape from something, but the truth is, we all bring it with us. You can’t get away from it, can’t get away from what we are.’

  ‘And what am I exactly?’ she replied quietly, unsure that she wanted to hear his reply.

  ‘You’re ambitious, Rach.’ He held up a hand before she could interrupt. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with that. I just thought you wanted to take your foot off the gas.’

  ‘I’m not like you,’ she said softly. ‘I didn’t choose to give it all up.’

&
nbsp; She stared out at the dramatic sunset, which was pouring ribbons of peach and purple light across the water.

  ‘Well, at the very least we should take on another member of staff.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ he said, holding up his beer bottle and clinking it against her glass. ‘We’ve certainly got more work than the two of us can handle at the moment. Do you have anyone in mind?’

  Rachel nodded absently, distracted by her phone buzzing in her pocket. She gestured towards the bar and held up her empty glass to Liam as she lifted the phone to her ear.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, but there was only a crackle at the other end. ‘Anyone there?’

  There was a pause, and then a voice. A voice she hadn’t heard in years. It made her heart pound and her lips dry.

  ‘Mum?’ she said, trying to sound more casual than she felt. ‘How are you?’

  Another pause.

  ‘Can you talk.’

  Not a question, Rachel noticed. A demand, impatient and impersonal. Sylvia Miller was thousands of miles away, but she still had the power to make her daughter feel ten years old.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, looking at Liam before standing up and walking out of the bar and down on to the beach.

  ‘What’s up?’ she said, knowing how lame it sounded. She just didn’t know what to say. It had been such a long time since she had spoken to her mother.

  ‘Julian’s dead.’

  Just like that. No preamble, no build-up: boom. Just like her mother. Unconsciously, Rachel drew her hand to her chest as if she was trying to hold herself together.

  She couldn’t process it. He was dead? How?

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He . . . he took his life yesterday.’

  By now Rachel’s head was spinning. This was absurd.

  ‘He killed himself? Julian?’ She was shaking her head. ‘Why?’