You’re not supposed to swim this time of year because the whalers come in close to feed on the mackerel. I drag the boat out to the water and it makes grooves in the sand, and I think that might be the last they’ll know of me, deep large footprints in the sand and the surprising strength of a fifteen-year-old girl. I row until I’m just past the reef, and I drop the small anchor, feel it catch and the boat turns in a circle. No one can see me out here, so I take my T-shirt off. I fix myself up with the goggles, which make my eyes bulge because they’re too small, and I fix the snorkel to the side of my face, bite down on it. I sit lightly on the side of the boat like scuba divers do, thinking I’ll go in backwards, but the boat nearly capsizes, so in the end I just jump out like a mad kid. The water is warm and clear. Butterfish scoot in and out between each other. I dive down to the sea floor. It is not deep, not deep deep black blue which would be frightening. The seabed is soft and sandy, and when I feel it with the flat of my palm, white sand billows up, sparkling gold and silver and floating like dust motes in the small swell. Prawns with long moustaches walk the water around me and I look up and see a flock of birds so clearly my goggles fog. The sharks fly with the urgency of ice melting. There is no thrash, no gums bared and raw-meat teeth, no rolling eyes and fat green blood-cloud. I only have a few moments before I have to go up for air, have to rise up between them, but I don’t move for what feels like the longest time, not until my eyes feel like they might start to bleed from the pressure. One bubble at a time I let my breath out. They feed in this quiet way, occasionally darting forward a few feet to swallow a small fish, barely opening their wide mouths, sucking soup from a spoon. They sing to each other — it is just the pressure in my ears, the sound of needing to breathe, of course it is, but I can hear a high-pitched ticking, a noise like air let slowly out of a balloon, and I imagine it’s their song. When the last air bubble has left my mouth, I let myself float to the surface, coming face to face with a dozen of them, and they do not care, they don’t want me, and only turn in a tight circle when I put out my hand to touch them, turn in a tight circle and fly away. When I break the surface, I breathe in and in and out again, and there’s a sharp pain at my temple, and black spots appear and then disappear from my eyes. It’s now, looking down, that I feel uneasy, and I see how far I have gone from the boat in coming up, not keeping my eye on its shadow, and I lap across the top, with those great birds underneath me, watching me like I have watched them, hearing the beat of my heart, the mess I make of the top of the water. One of them brushes gently against my foot, but it doesn’t bite, there is just, when I pull myself into the boat, the smallest of grazes, and I lie in the bottom of the boat, jumping with sea lice, feeling them moving underneath me, and I get the feeling that nothing matters all that much any more. When I close my eyes, I see smoke-blackened people with hard eyes and red-licked lips and I know I will visit Denver and talk him out of his sleep.
The buses are running, out-of-town buses mainly, because the depot went up. There are people on board who don’t belong, who fumble with change and can’t understand where the stops are. The cars were part of the problem, I’ve heard it said in so many different ways, the explosions, the reignition. The bus is crowded, and the grapes I found at Four Square are pressed against my shirt. I hope they are seedless. I watch over his shoulder as an old man blows his nose into a white handkerchief, and what comes out is black. The man stares at it a moment before folding the handkerchief and putting it back in his pocket. It’s inside of us all.
As we leave town, the ash becomes less thick, but it still draws my eye, it still creeps in. A lot of people get off with me at the hospital. There is not much talking. I hang around in the lobby trying to work out where to find him. The place feels like a maze. I don’t want to ask at reception, so in the end I follow signs to ‘Burns Centre’. It’s visiting time, and there are people in there with no hair, in bed with flowers around them. A lady has a bandage over one eye, and a doctor stands by her bed while her husband locks his hands in front of him with nerves. Incredibly lucky, is what the doctor is saying, and from behind her bandage the woman smiles. Denver is not there, and I walk the squeaky aisles feeling lost.
A policeman is sat outside a room, and this is how I know I have found him. The policeman is one of Dad’s friends, I’ve seen them at the pub together, but I don’t know his name. He nods at me with a look of confusion when I say hello.
‘I’ve come to see Denver,’ I say and he blinks.
‘No visitors, I’m afraid. Just family — as if they’d come.’ I shift legs. The man’s eyes fall on the grapes. ‘He can’t swallow, love,’ he says. ‘He won’t be swallowing down anything any more — the throat is gone.’
How can a person’s throat be gone? I think — it must be a figure of speech. How would the head connect?
‘Reckon he’s got his own punishment being left in a state like that — no eyelids, no lips. Not enough skin to see him through the grafts.’
Lead weight gathers in my belly. ‘Please,’ I say. I’m not sure what it is I’m pleading for, but it has some effect on the man. He squints at me.
‘You’re John Whyte’s daughter.’ I nod and he sighs. ‘Look, I’m going to assume you’re as good a bloke as your old man. I’ve got the toilet to use, while I’m gone you can do what you like, just don’t touch him.’ He picks up a paper he’s been sitting on. ‘Leave those grapes outside, and remember — I know exactly who you are.’ He puts his thumbs into the space between his stomach and belt, ‘And if a nurse comes in, I didn’t see you.’
I put the grapes down on his empty seat. ‘Thanks,’ I say.
He walks away, his shoes squeaking on the floor. I open the door to Denver’s room, where he is encased in a plastic cover, like a small tent. There’s a smell in the room, at the same time familiar and so alien that the breath stops in my throat — the deep-fat fryer.
A machine pumps air into the body inside the plastic. The sound is calm and regular, a steady wheeze. I can only catch glimpses of Denver’s body, dark patches of pink between white bandages. If he is awake I wonder what he knows, this new order of things, no arms or legs to use, just flesh, cooking while he sits inside it and stares at the ceiling through the tent. My mouth is bone-dry. There’s the smallest sound from the tent, like a squeal, the noise of fat spitting in a pan. The thing under plastic lives, and I wipe my palms on my thighs and move closer.
‘Denver?’ I am waiting for an answer that won’t come. ‘It’s Jake.’ Somewhere a series of beeps sound. The pump feeds him air. ‘I’ve come to say I’m sorry.’ I move closer and try not to look at his face. His eyes are covered over with pads of cotton, so he cannot even stare at the ceiling, but I am glad not to have to meet the gaze of the eyeballs. In the moist cave of his mouth is a thick plastic tube. It is impossible to tell which of the other tubes carry urine or pus or drugs, all of them are Dettol-brown. I breathe in through my mouth to avoid the smell, but I still get the taste.
‘I don’t know if you can hear me,’ I say like they do on the TV. ‘I just wanted to say that I didn’t mean for this to happen.’ I leave a long pause like he might respond. I can’t remember any more what it is that I expected to happen. ‘And I want you to know that if you wake up, I’ll tell them it was me, I won’t let them hurt you.’ It had sounded so heroic when I’d practised it in my head. But in my head, Denver was still a complete body, maybe with a few scars about him, maybe even an oxygen mask over his face for the smoke inhalation. He was not this wet wound of meat. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say again. ‘It’s all my fault, I never thought it would get so out of control. The fire—’