‘Is everyone coming tonight?’ Rob asked me as we headed down the hill on one of those rare nights in Wellington, warm and still.
‘Yep, everyone’s coming,’ I replied.
‘Nice one. Yeah, should be a fun night…as long as Joel doesn’t go on about that bloody accounting system at his work again,’ he half laughed.
I knew he would bring that up again. It wasn’t even that bad, but for some reason Rob couldn’t let it go.
‘Yeah, that did go on a bit, but it was kind of interesting, I guess. He obviously knows a lot about it, right?’ I said.
Silence.
‘Sometimes it’s interesting to hear what people know a lot about—you learn something, don’t you think?’ I carried on. ‘And please don’t say anything to him if he does start talking about it; we don’t want to ruin the evening!’ I tried to say this lightly but it fell flat.
He looked sideways at me, ignoring what I’d just said to him, then asked, ‘So tell me, what do you know a lot about, then?’
Maybe he’d had more than a few beers before we left the house—he usually had if he brought up the fact I hadn’t been to university and only worked part time in a florist. The rest of the walk passed in silence.
Later in the evening, when the dishes were done and put away, the second port bottle demolished, voices sloppy and loud with alcohol, someone suggested we head over to the beach for a swim. Might have even been me. Skinny dipping. Yes! Let’s do it. Geoff gathered a huge pile of towels.
Marie and I ran across the road, barefoot, holding hands and laughing, half cut. There were no cars on The Esplanade this late and we picked our way down the path through the dunes, grey sand under our toes with the warmth of the day still holding in the sand. We threw our towels down by the dunes which hid us from the road and peeled our clothes off, quickly, before someone suggested that night swimming in the cold water of the South Coast was not such a good idea. Rob was first off with his clothes and ran into the water, the street lights allowing us a clear view of his bum cheeks disappearing under the sea.
I peeled off my clothes and walked down to the water’s edge, feeling the sea at my toes. I saw the faces of my friends, heard their laughter, saw Rob in the water screaming, ‘It’s alright once you’re in!’ I took three steps into the sea and then dived under. My breathing stopped and the shock of the cold water made me feel instantly alive. I surfaced and saw the lights on the fishing boats swinging gently and the stars in the sky above sparkling down at us. It was too cold to stay in long and we got out of the water quickly, all walking to our jumbled pile of clothes. We wrapped ourselves in towels and tried to make sense of the chaos of clothes on the sand.
‘I brought whiskey; pass it round!’ roared George, shoving the bottle in my direction. I took a big swig, the liquid burning my throat and tasting of manure. I passed the bottle to the nearest hand—Joel’s—and he whispered in my ear, ‘I fucking hate whiskey,’ and proceeded to have a huge gulp and then let out a shout.
In the half light, it was hard to see which clothes were mine.
‘It’s like a potluck of clothes,’ I said, laughing, holding up someone else’s jersey.
Our voices spilled over each other, laughing and euphoric from the cold water. We got dressed clumsily, cold hands not quite dry. My jeans stuck around my ankles and sand grazed up my legs.
‘I’m going to leave my undies wherever they are—a gift to the beach!’ shouted Marie, sticking her legs into her long woollen skirt.
As a group we started moving back up through the dunes and towards Marie’s house. We ran back across the road, the stones on the asphalt digging into our cold feet. Marie turned on the hose at the front door and hosed our feet one by one as we went into the house. We towelled off our feet, taking sips of wine in between jumping up and down trying to get warm.
It took a while to realise I couldn’t see Rob anywhere and even longer to realise he wasn’t in the house at all.
‘Has anyone seen Rob?’ My voice came out a croak, so I cleared my throat and tried again.
‘Hey, has anyone seen Rob?’
‘I didn’t see him come back,’ said Greg. ‘Is everyone else here?’
‘Where’s Beth?’ asked her husband, Joel. ‘I can’t see her either.’
Time stopped briefly, a pause in conversation where we looked at each other and wondered whether to be worried.
Then we all heard laughter outside, coming up the brick path through the white gate: Rob and Beth, shoulder to shoulder, wrapped in towels and carrying clothes. Rob’s towel was around his waist, his chest and broad shoulders a perfect partner to Beth’s petite dancer’s physique. A picture-perfect couple, I thought jealously.
‘What happened to you guys?’ I asked from the front door.
A look between them.
‘Oh, I couldn’t find my top,’ Beth laughed, too loudly. ‘Rob had to help me; it was dark.’ She tittered drunkenly and lurched up the path. I hadn’t noticed how pissed she was before we went swimming. Rob brushed past me and didn’t make eye contact. He called out to Greg in the kitchen.
‘That was fucking cold, mate; pour me a wine!’
I grabbed my wine glass from the kitchen and walked into the lounge, away from Rob, away from Beth. The evening reached its natural conclusion quickly after that. No one could warm up properly. The wine petered out and Ubers were ordered, thank yous and hugs and farewells and cries of ‘see you tomorrow for our swim’ shouted into the air as we headed off.
The next morning, light fell in through the windows and over the bed. I blinked my eyes open, feeling the effects of the alcohol. I felt sluggish, my eyes scratchy. I lay quietly and noticed Rob was already up, his side of the bed empty. I looked at my watch. 8:35. Shit. Our swim was scheduled for 9am on Sunday mornings and I had to somehow get my alcohol-bloated body up, drink water and force myself into my wetsuit, which seemed to shrink every time I put it on.
Something unpleasant sat underneath my brooding hangover, creeping into the corner of my mind. I looked out at the hills opposite my bedroom window. The slips across the city looked like scars and I could see houses perching perilously close to the edge of new cliffs formed by rain forcing the land down. Rob. Beth. Rob. Beth. What happened last night between them?
I thought things were fine with Rob, most of the time, and surely that’s all you can hope for when you’ve been together for 20 years. We used to tease him about his wandering eye but he always brushed it off, and I had no reason to doubt him—until last night. Beth however…we all had our suspicions about her. Always with a top that was a bit too low cut. ‘You’re very tits forward today, Beth, ha ha,’ we’d say. We noticed our husbands would all be first to get her a wine, pull out her chair, surreptitiously glance at her body. Someone should have said something to her ages ago, really. We all talked about it behind her back.
When I got up, I noticed Rob’s running shoes had gone, so there was no opportunity to ask him about last night before our swim. I got all my stuff together and headed down to the beach, expecting to see at least six others from our swimming group but only Beth was there. Her wetsuit was on half way, the black arms hanging empty and loose by her side, bikini top too small. I got out of the car and she looked straight into my eyes, eyebrows slightly raised as if to say, ‘And what?’
‘Where is Marie?’ I asked her.
‘Haven’t you checked our WhatsApp this morning? Everyone else has bailed—they’re too hungover. Looks like it’s just you and me,’ she said with a snaky smile.
I looked out at the ocean, calm enough, but I could see a decent swell out the back hitting the island from the south.
I told myself I wasn’t going to say anything. It didn’t matter.
‘What happened with Rob?’ I asked. I couldn't help it. I wasn’t going to say anything. And then I did.
‘What? When?’ she asked.
‘Last night. What happened with Rob?’ I repeated.
‘Nothing! He helped me find my top, that’s all!’ Beth said, her voice slightly raised.
‘You were gone for ages.’
‘What are you actually asking me?’ Beth asked.
‘I’m asking what happened with you and Rob,’ I said.
‘Yeah, and I’m saying nothing happened. What do you think we did? Hook up in the sand dunes?’
‘No, of course not. I don’t know.’ I turned away and busied myself zipping up my wetsuit and putting on my swimming cap so she couldn’t see my face.
I didn’t know what happened with her and Rob but it was something. And I was pissed off. And hungover. Pissed off with her, pissed off with Rob. I wanted to punish her. I wanted her to feel how I felt.
The island was a few hundred metres offshore and stretched out longer than it was wide, which you couldn’t really see from the beach. We’d swum around it before, usually as a big group and with someone on a kayak because conditions could get a bit wild in the dark water out the back.
‘We should go round the island today. What do you reckon?’ I asked.
‘Oh yeah, maybe. Just the two of us?’ she asked.
‘Should be fine, it’s pretty calm out there and I need to burn off some of the alcohol from last night,’ I said.
‘OK, let’s do it,’ Beth said, never one to turn down a challenge.
Our swimming group was used to swimming in the sea. We swam when the sea was foaming, a washing machine that churned us around and spat us out. We swam with water chop slapping across our faces, offshore winds doing their best to keep us away from the beach. In our early morning swims, large grey gulls dive-bombed us while fishing boats putt-putted out through the channel. In winter, we swam in an ocean framed by snow on the Remutakas to the north-east and the Kaikouras on the other side of the Cook Strait to the south, our fingers and toes white with cold, all blood moved to our vital organs.
Beth and I started this one off slowly, with none of the usual chat that accompanied most of our swims, ducking under the water. We made our way towards the buoy in front of the island, a smooth swim to begin with, the sunlight filtering down through the depths, soft dim light shining through the ocean. I knew we would have to be careful around the back of the island: the swell was always bigger than it seemed from the beach. We cut around the left-hand side of the island where the rocks became too steep and slippery to climb up on if we got into any kind of trouble.
Once around the back of the island, the current and the swell got stronger, pulling us out into the ocean and at the same time pushing us in towards the rocks. For a while, we swam motionless, in a washing machine of waves from every angle. I had grown up around the ocean and had been swimming in the sea my whole life. I was a much stronger swimmer than Beth, and I knew I could cut through the two rocks that jutted out into the strait, swimming sideways to the swell and finding a way out of the churn. So I just went. I took off away from her, my arms strong, and clear green water sluicing off the back of my hands. I kicked hard and moved fast, away from Beth, her bullshit and whatever happened with her and Rob.
I left her out there. I didn’t wait, I didn’t check if she was OK. I swam through the rocks and around the side of the island, not looking back. I cut a line to the beach, sighting the building on the shore to keep straight, eyes out every fifth stroke, not checking to see if she’d made it out or had to cling on to the side of the island, unable to climb out, scared, alone. I swum hard, stroke after angry stroke, for myself, for Rob and what he did or didn’t do.
And this—this is how we fail. We misread situations and then we make choices. We don’t actually forgive, not our husbands and not our friends, and we don’t forget, ever. Like a broken plate glued back together, you can always see the cracks if you look hard enough. I ruined swimming for myself by not waiting for someone who was supposed to be my friend, because of something that probably hadn’t even happened with my husband.
I hauled myself out when I got to the shore, panting. My muscles ached after the exertion of the swim and I walked to my car, stripped off my wetsuit and wrapped myself in my towel. I drove home, fast.
Rob’s running shoes were outside the front door when I got there.
‘Rob?’ I called as I walked in the door.
‘Up here,’ he called down from our bedroom. I walked upstairs to our room, not knowing what I was going to say when I got there.
‘Do you still love me?’ I asked as I walked into our room and saw him lying on the bed.
‘As much as I ever did’ he replied.