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Faith smiled as she sat down next to Charity, pebbles warm beneath her bare calves.
‘Ribbons. I like that. You’re not so useless after all, Charity,’ Hope declared, scribbling in her notepad as Charity stuck her tongue out at her.
‘I’ve got something to show you both,’ Faith said.
Charity opened one eye, squinting up at her sister. ‘Please not another type of snorkel? Because honestly, they all look the same to me.’
Faith laughed. ‘I promise it’s not.’ She looked over at Hope, impatient. ‘Come on, I want to show you both together.’
Hope put her hand up. ‘Wait, I have one more line to write.’ She finished scribbling then snapped her notepad shut, shouting, ‘Finished!’ Then she jogged over to them, pulling her swimming cap off and raking her fingers through her wavy red hair as it fell around her thin shoulders.
‘So,’ Faith said as Hope joined them. ‘You know we’re going to travel the world when we’re old enough?’
Charity and Hope exchanged a smile. Faith always came up with fun adventures.
‘As Daddy pointed out, we can’t visit every single country in the world,’ Faith continued. ‘That would take us a lifetime. We need a focus.’
‘I quite agree,’ Hope said as Charity nodded.
‘Well, I’ve decided what our focus will be.’ She took a deep breath, looking at each of her sisters in turn, drawing out the drama.
‘Oh come on, Faith, don’t torture us,’ Charity said, bouncing up and down on her toes in anticipation.
‘We should focus on visiting submerged forests!’ Faith declared. ‘I was looking through the photos from Mum’s field trip last week in Austria, they’re beautiful!’
Charity went still. ‘Submerged what?’
‘You never listen when Mum tells us about her trips,’ Hope said, rolling her eyes.
‘They’re forests that disappear beneath the sea over time,’ Faith explained.
‘Mrs Tate read a poem in class about a whole town that got flooded in Wales after I told her where Mum was going,’ Hope said. ‘You can still see the remains of its forests when the tide goes out.’ She flicked through her notepad then tapped her finger on a page. ‘Here it is. “When waves crashed on the sea-shore / with thunder in its wake / The bells of Cantre’r Gwaelod / are silent ’neath the wave.”’
‘So these forests are a bit like Atlantis?’ Charity asked.
‘Kind of,’ Faith said. ‘But minus the buildings. And they’re not just beneath the sea. You can find them in lakes and rivers too. There’s one in Austria that only appears in the summer when the snow melts. The water floods the trees, and even a park bench. I found a book in the library about them, and drew a map of all the forests I could find in it.’
Faith pulled out what she’d been hiding behind her back and laid it on the towel. It was a large and rather beautiful drawing of the world map, tiny illustrated trees dotted in different locations. At the top, in Faith’s pretty looped handwriting, was: ‘World Tour of Submerged Forests.’
The three sisters bent over the map, hair trailing across it, dark, red and blonde. They traced their fingers over the trees then all peered up at one another.
Charity smiled. ‘This is so cool, Faith.’
Faith’s pretty face lit up. ‘Isn’t it? I can collect samples from the trees as we travel. I’ll be a marine biologist by then anyway.’ She looked at Hope. ‘And you can write poems about them.’ Hope nodded, grey eyes sparkling. ‘And Charity, you can—’
‘Sunbathe after each dive?’ Charity suggested.
The three girls laughed.
There was the sound of crunching pebbles. They all looked up to see their friend Niall approaching. The top half of his wetsuit was around his waist, exposing the tanned skin of his chest. His face was very tanned too, his blue eyes even more vivid as a result. He looked like he’d grown up in the weeks since they’d seen him last. Faith supposed he wasn’t the annoying little boy they’d first met on this beach four years before. He was fifteen, after all, nearly a man.
She noticed Charity staring shyly at him, her cheeks flushing. Clearly Charity had noticed the change in Niall too. Hope on the other hand was oblivious, rolling her eyes as she always did when Niall appeared.
‘Come join us, Niall,’ Faith said, beckoning him over. ‘We’ve decided to do a world tour of submerged forests.’
Niall crouched down and looked at the map. ‘There’s a submerged forest off Busby’s coast, apparently.’
Hope looked at him cynically.
‘Seriously. A fisherman saw the branches of a tree during a storm.’
‘That’s hardly proof,’ Hope said.
‘But it’s something,’ Charity said, jumping up and shading her eyes as she looked out to sea. ‘I’d love to see it.’
Niall smiled at Charity. She bit her lip, looking away. Hope shot her a warning glance, but Faith smiled. It was nice, watching the way they were together. Niall was a good kid, despite his troubled background. It wasn’t his fault his parents drank too much and lived on the grim estate at the other end of Busby, was it?
He pulled a pencil from the small blue rucksack Faith always carried around with her and quickly drew a little tree over Busby-on-Sea on the map.
‘If we find it, it can be the first forest we visit,’ he said.
‘We?’ Hope replied.
‘Yeah, who else will teach you all to dive properly?’
The three sisters looked out to sea, the waves crashing and receding before them. Then Niall picked Charity up, throwing her over his shoulder and running into the sea with her as Faith laughed.
The happy memory dissipated. A tear slid down Faith’s cheek. She was so cold, so frightened. Her sisters would find her though. They’d see her bed was empty and they’d come looking for her. Then she’d tell them every little thing that had happened during the past few weeks and they’d figure it all out together, because that was what they always did.
No more secrets, she thought to herself.
She closed her eyes.
Chapter One (#ub46ec41e-2cb4-53d8-b1b8-7a8f9039b506)
Willow
In the middle of the Aegean Sea, Greece
August 2016
My friend Ajay reckons the Aegean Sea is named after Aegea, queen of the Amazons. My aunt Hope disagrees. She says it’s named after a famous sea goat.
I know which one I prefer.
In fact, I feel like I’m channelling a female warrior when I do dives like this, all swaddled up in my diving ‘armour’, ready to do battle with the sea and unearth its treasures. I feel it now as the dive boat we’re on bounces over the waves, the sea spreading out around us, the island of Rhodes just a shimmer of land behind us.
‘Nearly there,’ Ajay says, smiling at me. Without him, I’d have never got on to this wreck dive. I smile back, grateful.
One of the other divers who’s with us – an Australian called Guy, all blond hair and muscles – paces the boat, frustrated. ‘I might just jump off this boat and swim there myself if it doesn’t get a move on.’
The rest of the crew laugh.
I haven’t worked with Guy before but I’ve worked with divers like him, all bravado and testosterone. I can guarantee that by tonight he’ll be telling me stories of all the times he’s nearly died diving wrecks. Usually that’s a sign of someone who puts their ego above competence.
I throw Ajay a ‘where’d you find this one?’ look. He mouths back, ‘He’s good.’
We’ll see.
‘You dived a cruise ship before?’ Guy asks me.
‘Not a cruise ship,’ I reply, standing on my tiptoes as I crane my neck to see any sign of the site.
‘Willow dived the Russian tanker with me,’ Ajay said.
Guy looks me up and down. ‘Oh yeah? Pretty risky salvage dive. Big payout though, right?’
‘Not bad,’ I murmur.
That was a good job. I was in between contracts in Brighton at the time, whittling away the money I’d accrued from my last gig on a North Sea oil rig. I’d seen the tanker on the news and wondered if the commercial diving company Ajay worked for would be hired to salvage it. It looked like a risky dive, lots of wielding and moving of heavy equipment…lots of opportunity for that equipment to tumble on top of the crew. When Ajay called asking if I was free to work on it, I hadn’t hesitated. It wasn’t just the job, it was Ajay too. We’d clicked straight away when he was my diving instructor. He’s one of the good guys – and he never once tried it on with me after a few too many beers.
‘This job will be risky too,’ Guy says, eyes lighting up. ‘Why’s it been allowed to stay under for twenty years, anyway?’
‘The cruise company went bust so couldn’t pay to salvage it,’ one of the other divers shouts over. ‘The Greek authorities couldn’t afford it either.’
‘I heard a mystery benefactor stepped in to pay,’ Ajay says.
I look at him. ‘Really? You didn’t tell me that.’
‘Just found out this morning, Foivos told me,’ he says, gesturing to the old Greek guy captaining our ship.
‘How many casualties?’ Guy asks.
‘A hundred and eleven died,’ I say.
‘Rogue wave, right?’ Guy says. ‘Dived a ship in the Atlantic Ocean that was taken down by one of those. Must’ve been big news at the time.’
‘Very big news.’ I pick up my stabiliser jacket – or stab jacket, as we call them – checking it all over.
‘The rich dude who owned it died too, didn’t he?’ Guy continues. I give Ajay another look. This man talks too much. ‘Man, I can’t wait to get under.’
Ajay shoots him a look. ‘Remember to keep the excitement in check. Safer that way.’
‘Yep, you won’t get much diving done when you’re dead,’ I say.
‘You didn’t tell me what a firecracker we have on our hands,’ Guy says to Ajay. ‘Was she this bad when you were training her?’
‘Worse,’ Ajay says, smiling.
‘I am here, you know,’ I say.
Ajay looks contrite. ‘Sorry, Willow.’
‘You will be sorry when I kick your arse at table football tonight.’
Everyone laughs. This is what I’ve learnt working as a diver the past few years. Let them know when they’ve gone too far then lighten the tone, no hard feelings. The commercial diving world is tight and it’s hard to fit in, especially as a woman. I manage though, I’ve even made some good friends, my ‘tribe’, as I call them.
Guy catches my eye and shoots me a sexy smile, his blond hair hanging in his eyes. I ignore him. Ajay thinks I’m too fussy when it comes to men, comparing them all to my dad. But it’s hard when every time a man looks at me, I think of the way my dad looked at my mum when they were young.
One of my earliest memories is of us all sitting in our huge garden. I watched my parents gaze at each other beneath the willow tree I was named after. Then my dad noticed me watching them so he pulled me into his arms, telling me he loved me over and over.
I loved those summer days at the cottage. That memory of my parents still haunts me now.
We all grow quiet as the buoy marking the ship’s location comes into view. I take a deep breath.
Finally, we’re here.
I focus on the routine of preparing for the dive to calm myself, pulling the shoulder straps of my stabiliser jacket down so it’s nice and snug. Then Ajay helps me get my air tank on. I check my diver computer on my wrist, pressing the small buttons around its large clock face to set all the measurements up. Then I pull my weight belt up and grab my fins before walking to the edge of the boat and looking down at the calm sea. The ship is right under my feet, right here. I press the button to inflate my stab jacket, feeling it expand against my chest. Usually that feeling sends a thrill of excitement through me: time to head in and grapple with the sea. But I’m suddenly feeling apprehensive, even reluctant, to jump in.
Ajay squeezes my shoulder, looking me in the eye. ‘All set?’
‘She can handle herself,’ Guys says. ‘You said yourself she’s dived worse wrecks.’
‘This is different,’ Ajay says.
Guy nods. ‘Yeah, I guess the fact no one’s dived it since the rescue operation makes it more dicey.’
‘It’s not just that,’ I say, glancing at him. ‘That rich dude who owned the ship? That was my dad.’
Shock registers on his face. ‘No way.’
The rest of the crew are quiet as they watch me. I’ve been wanting this for such a long time, campaigning the Greek authorities to let me dive it as soon as I got my first set of qualifications when I was eighteen.
And now here I am.
I turn back to contemplate the sea. It’s gentle and aqua-coloured, tempting me in. I know how deceiving it can be, how in one moment it can turn into a death trap, like it did for my parents.
‘Ready?’ Ajay says, standing beside me as the rest of the crew line up.
I take a deep breath, channelling that queen of the Amazons, then put my snorkel into my mouth.
This is it.
I jump in before I can stop myself, the warm salty water splashing on to my face. My inflated jacket makes me bounce up and down for a few moments, then I start deflating the stab jacket and the weights around my waist pull me under.
The sound of the boat’s engine, birds squawking above, the rippling sea all disappear as I descend. There’s just the deep quiet, that special quality of silence that only comes with being underwater.
The colour of the water around me changes the further down I get, from aqua to green to deep blue then misty black. The warmth dissipates a little and everything seems to slow down.
