Page 69 of A Convenient Fiction

He dived deep, the water closing over his head. A flash of memory—Neville’s body sinking into icy darkness—nearly caused him to recoil. But he pressed on, down, down into the murky depths.

It was silent as death under the water, the only sound the rapid pounding of his heart. He swam until his pulse roared in his ears. Until his chest burned for want of air. He needed to breathe. But if he needed air, then so did she. And she must be here somewhere. She must be here.

He felt about with his hands, moving blindly in the water. This is what it had been like to go into the sea after Neville. This feeling of burgeoning panic. Of lungs struggling for breath, and a sob building in his throat, as again and again he dived into watery darkness.

Laura had called him a coward. A spectator standing alongside the road of life. Never risking anything. Never feeling anything.

But he felt something now. It gave him a strength he didn’t have. He prayed it was enough.

He dived deep one last time.

As he reached out, a drooping swathe of wool connected with his hand. And miraculously…there she was. Laura. Suspended in the depths of the water.

For a fraction of a second, he thought he must be hallucinating.

And then he gathered her in his arms and kicked with all of his might toward the sunlight.

They broke the surface together, Alex gasping for air. But unlike the day he’d pulled her from Talbot’s Pond, there was no indignant sputtering from Laura. No calling him a lummox and telling him he was trespassing.

She was lifeless, her face as white as bleached bone.

Cold fear surged through his veins. He made for the shore, swimming halfway on his back, pulling her along with him.

A small crowd of onlookers had gathered to watch. As Alex dragged Laura up onto the sand, he vaguely registered the presence of Henrietta and George. Teddy was there as well. Yardley must have helped him down from the jetty.

“Laura!” Teddy cried.

“Is she dead?” Henrietta asked.

“She’s not breathing,” George said.

A stranger shouted for an attendant to fetch someone from the coast-guard station at the summit of the cliffs.

“It’s too late,” a woman exclaimed. “She’s been drowned.”

The sound of Teddy’s voice cut through the roar of chatter: “Do something!”

Do something.

The same words Alex had uttered on the beach so many years before.

But there was no Justin Thornhill to save the day this time. No Tom Finchley to assist him. It was up to Alex alone. And this time, this time, he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.

He rose up on his knees. “Get back!”

Some in the crowd obeyed him. Others remained where they were.

Alex leaned down over Laura. He put his hands on her wool-clad midsection and pushed upward to force the water out of her lungs. Once, twice, and then again, to little effect.

Desperation made him reckless—heedless of the crowd. He might even have cursed a time or two, commanding Laura to wake up. All the while, his mind raced over his limited options for reviving her.

In Marseilles, he’d once seen a sailor resuscitate a man with a pair of bellows. But Alex didn’t have any bellows, nor was there time to have someone fetch a pair. In place of them, he did the only thing he could think of. He bent his head and covered Laura’s half-open mouth with his own.

The gasps from the crowd reached a fever pitch.

Laura’s lips were cold as ice. He exhaled into her mouth, giving her as much breath as she might have received from one pump of the bellows.

“This is outrageous!” a woman said shrilly.