Swimming at Night: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

shrug she hadn’t intended. She wanted to tell Katie that she loved her, or say how much she’d miss her, but somehow she couldn’t find the words. It had always been that way for her. Instead, she lifted a hand in wave, then turned and left with Finn.
    *   *   *
    Pressing her nose against the window, she watched London disappearing beneath the white wings of the plane. They rose through a layer of cloud and suddenly the view was swallowed. She sank back in her seat, her heart rate gradually slowing. She had left.
    On her lap rested her travel journal. She’d bought it at Camden Market from a stall that sold weather vanes, maps, and antique pocket watches. She’d been drawn to the sea-blue fabric that bound the cover and the thick cream pages that smelled like promises.
    She opened it, clicked her pen against her collarbone, and wrote her first two lines.
    People go traveling for two reasons: because they are searching for something, or because they are running from something. For me, it’s both.
    She tucked the journal into the seat pocket alongside the laminated flight-safety procedures, and then closed her eyes.
    *   *   *
    As the plane descended over the Sierra Nevada range, Mia gazed at the clouds drifting below. They looked soft and inviting, and she imagined diving into them, being caught in their fleecy hold, and floating with the air currents.
    “Not as comfy as they look,” Finn said, as if reading her mind.
    Finn Adam Tyler was her best friend and had been since they’d met, age eleven, on the school bus. Four weeks ago she’d called him at work to tell him she was going traveling. She was sitting on the kitchen worktop, her heels dangling against the fridge door. When he answered, she said only, “I’ve got a plan.”
    “What do I need?” he’d replied, a throwback to their teenage years when a plan, if conceived by one of them, had to be adhered to by the other.
    She grinned. “Your passport, a resignation letter, a backpack, and a typhoid jab.”
    There was a pause. Then, “Mia, what have you done?”
    “Reserved two round-the-world tickets: America, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, Vietnam, and Cambodia. The flights leave in four weeks. You coming?”
    There was silence. It had hung between them long enough for her to wonder whether her impulsiveness had been a mistake, whether he’d say of course he couldn’t just up and leave his job.
    “So this typhoid jab,” he’d said eventually, “is it in the arm or the ass?”
    She looked at Finn now: his knees were pushed against the seat in front, a newspaper spread on his lap. The mousey curls of the schoolboy she’d known had now been cut short and rough stubble shadowed his chin.
    At the end of their row a voluptuous woman with dangling gold earrings unclipped her seat belt and stepped into the aisle. She moved towards the toilets, gripping the backs of headrests for balance. Mia turned to Finn. “I need to talk to you.”
    “If it’s about that last meal you didn’t get, I swear, I thought you wouldn’t want to be disturbed.”
    She smiled. “It’s something important.”
    Finn folded the newspaper over and gave her his full attention.
    A few rows in front the faint whimpering of a toddler started up.
    Mia tucked her hands beneath her thighs. “This may sound odd,” she began uncertainly, “but after I booked our tickets, Irealized that there was another place I needed to visit on this trip.” She should have talked to Finn about it sooner, only she was afraid to voice the idea in case she set in motion something she wasn’t ready for. Sometimes she wasn’t aware that an idea was brewing until it suddenly popped into her mind and she acted upon it. “I’ve booked us an extra stop.”
    “What?”
    “After San Francisco, we’ve got a flight to Maui.”
    “Maui?” He looked blank. “Why?”
    “It’s where Mick lives.”
    She waited a beat for him to place the name. It had been a long time since he’d