Marie wakes from a dream in the grey light of early morning. She’s swimming in the sea, alone and at night, towards the shimmering path of the moonlight. It slips and slides away from her towards the horizon across the dark surface of the swell, always out of reach. The image is so vivid she can see it in her head still. She knows without turning that Will’s side of the bed is empty. There’s no warmth at her back. She reaches her hand across the cool sheets as if they will reveal where he is. Cold.

"I missed you," she says when they’re washing up together later that morning. She’s opened the back door and the sound of the sea is unusually loud, blowing up from the cove below. Summer is on the turn and it’s nearly autumn. The chill seeps in and he shuts the door. Somehow he keeps his back to her all the time.

"I was here before breakfast, you shouldn’t wake so early," he replies, as if that’s enough. She wants to say but doesn’t, that waking up alone is the worst part. Far worse than going to bed on her own, when she can think to herself - He’ll be in as soon as I’m asleep, all I have to do is not think about it and to go to sleep. But the cold bed is irrefutable, bears witness, cannot be denied.

"I’m going to go for my last swim of the summer today," she says.

"Do you want me to come with you?" he asks. She doesn’t.

"Only if you want to." She waits, sure that he will let it go.

"You go, I’ll watch you through the telescope," he says. On the beach she sheds her clothes slowly and deliberately, anticipating the cold before she feels it. Along the sand there are still a few people, remnants of the season, mostly older couples and one family with a small child, too young to be bound by school term time. The sun is weak and the little boy is wearing a fleece over his swimming shorts. He’s intent on his mission, to bring the sea up the beach a bucketful at a time to fill the moat of his little sand rampart. He runs to and fro in a brisk rhythm, sure as only a three year old can be that he will prevail.

She wonders if Will is watching her. She feels the telescope prick her back as she pulls the costume up under her skirt, through the waist band and over her shoulders, displacing her bra discretely. In a former time she would have put on a show for him, a subtle drop of the strap off her shoulder, looking back up to the house flirtatiously, sure he would be laughing. The water is cold folding around her calves as she wades forward, beyond where the waves break, the swell starting to lift her, wetting her between her legs, then up her front. She turns to face the beach and feels the next bigger swell rise as high as her neck, lifting her off her feet, and she lowers her shoulders in, gasping a little, letting the water take her weight, rolling her face under to become part of the element, and once she’s wet all over turns and strikes out to sea with a steady strong breast stroke. No panic, only the peaceful, hypnotic beat of heart, lungs and body in motion, all attuned to the break and shingle drag of the waves behind her on the beach. Seaweed strokes along her legs under the water and she feels caressed. She wants to be embraced by the sea and imagines herself to be one of its creatures.

"I didn’t expect you to eat in. I have some fish," she says, hoping he will say he’s got somewhere to go.

"Fish sounds fine, do you want me to do a salad?" They fall into their familiar allotted roles. He cuts red peppers and spring onions into strips and washes a lettuce, then breaks it with his thumbs into a bowl. She unwraps the fish she bought from the stall on her way back from the beach, peeling the pinkened paper off its scales. It smells fresh and its eyes are red and clear. She looks into them one by one and wonders whether fish love the sea as she does. She takes a knife and begins to scrape the scales off, admiring their iridescence and their stickiness. How perfectly Nature looks after her creations and fits them for their natural habitat. She is adept at filleting, and taking her sharpest knife slides it along the back bone, producing a translucent, pinkish white fillet and slaps it onto the wooden top. Then she turns the fish and does the same again along the other side. She lines the fillets up side by side and strokes them. They feel cool and silky. She slices a paper thin slice off one of them and eats it raw. It slithers between her teeth, her throat accepts it and she swallows. She cuts another one.

He has not come home all day. This is new and seems to her to cross into different territory. She waits until late and the house is still without him. She sits in the window until the darkness falls and the lights prick out round the cove. She sees the night fishers going out with the powerful sweeping lights on their boats, watches them all the way out to the open sea. The wind is getting up, it rattles the sashes like someone trying to get in. She doesn’t feel like eating without him; she runs herself a bath and sits in hot water in the cold room, shivering a little and watching the iridescence on her legs from the oils in the water. The window steams up. She dips her flannel into the bath water and sucks it, remembering being a child, feeling desolate. The water gets cooler, then cold, and still she sits. Then at last she rises and wraps herself in her aqua blue bath sheet and tucks it in to itself at her waist. Catching sight of herself in the mirror she sees herself misted, the swell of her breasts above the blue towel, her damp hair straggling down long in strings. She takes hold of a hank of hair and begins to apply her large tortoise-shell comb.

Later she closes the door behind her and steps out in to the wind. She starts out fast, then slides a little on her flip flops and nearly loses her footing but goes on at the same pace, reckless. At the bottom of the main street she comes to the jetty and the stone slope to the beach where the boats come down on their trailers. In the dark she might miss her footing but she doesn’t and in a moment she is on the sand, with its litter of shells and pebbles. She feels bladderwrack squishy underfoot and reaches down and picks up a piece of dark green lava weed. Feeling a strong urge to taste it she holds it against her lips, letting her tongue gather the flavour without actually putting it in her mouth. It tastes of salt and something akin to spinach. She realises suddenly that she hasn’t eaten all day and her stomach churns over at the salt. At the edge of the water after a moment a wave breaks higher and covers her feet, wetting the hems of her jeans. The cold thrills through her; she reaches down and catches a little of the sea water in her fingers and licks it. It’s strong and she has to fight back gagging in her throat. She looks around slowly and deliberately. There is no-one about. The voices and laughter from the pub are blown away by the wind and there’s no sound of boat engines, they’ll still be far out despite the weather. The men risk worse than this. She pulls her coat from her shoulders and puts it carefully on the sand, not quite folded but deliberately placed. She unbuttons her jeans and takes them off adding them to the pile, then her black jumper. Then she takes off all her underwear, her silver chain and her earrings, lastly removing her ring, placing them all on the clothes. She stands facing the sea, the wind blowing her long hair back from her forehead and whipping it behind her. Her arms are rigid with the effort of denying the cold. She moves slowly forward into the water, step by step until she is up to her waist. Then she sinks slowly, her hair taking on its own life, catching the fluorescence of a myriad tiny sea creatures, and she begins to swim, out towards the harbour wall, her shoulders occasionally turning visible above the water and her feet flicking at the end of each kick, just breaking the surface like a tail.

June 2007