A Single Breath - Amanda Apthorpe

Australian Literary Fiction

A Single Breath by Amanda Apthorpe

Book excerpt

Chapter 1

Melbourne, Australia

The ceiling of the cabin sagged so low that I could measure its distance to my face with a wide-fingered handspan. A cold light from the bathroom cubicle ricocheted around the walls and reflected off the panels above my nose. Where they met, someone had picked at the seam like a child at a scab. With each pitch and toss of the ferry, diesel fumes seeped through its pores.

There was no sound from the bunk below. My sister, I assumed, was sleeping peacefully, but I needed the comfort of her enthusiasm. In the space left to me, I contorted my body so that my head and torso hung over the bunk’s edge.

“Madeleine. Are you awake?”

There was a low groan and the sound of the bunk springs creaking as she rolled over.

“What?” Her yawn was thick with sleep.

“What are we doing here Mads?”

No reply, just a soft snore at the back of her throat. I rolled back to stare again at the ceiling’s ragged seam. A dog barked in a cabin somewhere further along the deck.

In the darkness of what I feared would be our watery crypt, I doubted the wisdom of this journey.

Chapter 2

It had begun with the arrival of the first letter. What I remember about that day is tinted with soft shades of autumn. It must have been warm because I was sitting in my courtyard reading the newspaper. I looked up, drawn by a tone in Madeleine’s voice.

The air seemed to shimmer around her strong and solid body as she moved towards me. My own depleted frame would have cut that air like a dulled blade. Her arm was raised as if she was about to slap the letter, she held onto the cast iron table and her face was pinched with familiar concern. When I took it from her, I saw that my name and address were written in Indian ink in an old-fashioned hand. She sat as I broke the seal. Inside was a sheet of parchment paper folded over. As I opened it, a small stone rattled onto the table.

“What does it say?” Madeleine nodded towards the note and shuffled closer in the protective way she had adopted in those months. She picked up the stone and rolled it in her fingers.

The letters of a foreign language were written in the centre of the page.

“It’s not in English,” I said and passed it to her. She tried to sound what looked to be three words and shrugged as she handed it back. I studied it more closely.

“It could be Greek.” The envelope was face up and I took in the postmark.“ It’s been sent from Kos,” I said.

“Where?”

“A Greek island near the Turkish coast.”

My sister’s eyes shone in response. She was always eager for mystery, a trait that had led her into more daring adventures than I would ever contemplate. I picked up the stone and held it in one hand beneath the table. I returned to reading the newspaper, feigning a lack of interest in the letter but in truth I felt a small, quiet dread.

“What do you make of it, Dee?”

I looked up and met her eyes. “It’s probably another hate letter.”

She picked up the envelope and seemed to be measuring the weight of the words with a small movement of her hand.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s different from the others. Why be cryptic about hating someone?”

“Well, don’t read too much into it,” I said, flicking over a page of the paper with a finality that drew on my status as her older sister. The palm of my hand throbbed around the stone.

*****

That night I woke at 2.20. My mother had once told me that it was the hour that people are most likely to die. I had believed her, but in all my years of medical practice had not seen any evidence, though my work was normally concerned with life’s fragile start.

In more recent times, I had become only too aware that life’s beginning and its end hinged on a single breath, as though the rest was conducted in its pause.

It was another dream that had woken me and the memory of it continued to resonate. For a while, I lay beneath the covers, allowing it to filter through.

There stands a man, his hand outstretched to me. Snakes writhe at his feet as they slide from a narrow pink vein embedded in a marble pedestal. I watch in fascination, then in horror, as I realize that it is not marble, but the body of a lifeless woman. The pink veins become blue. I turn at the feel of another’s breath and see a woman, her hair braided. “Who are you?” I ask. She is about to speak her name…

By 3.30, I’d poured my third cup of tea. If I were Madeleine, it would have been peanut butter eaten by the spoonful to relieve anxiety. I wanted to call her but resisted. Aside from the late hour, I couldn’t bear her analysis of the dream and suspected that I already knew some of what she would say – the snake was my kundalini energy finally releasing. We thought differently, but what kept me at the table, breathing long draughts of tea-steam through my nostrils, was that Madeleine and I would agree on the significance of the dead woman.

At 4am, a two-week-old newspaper that I had saved was spread before me. I knew what was in there but had never opened it until that moment. At page five, I saw the small article, the shards of my life collected into 100 or so words. The gist of it read:Verdict not guilty; professional integrity restored; the plaintiff, struggling to reconcile the birth of his daughter and the death of his wife; the wife… dead from unforeseen causes.

I reread the article and said the wife’s name aloud – Bonnie – like an incantation. I wished that she hadn’t had a name so that it might hurt less.

Exonerated of all blame – did all she could…But the words didn’t provide me with any comfort.

“It wasn’t your fault!” Madeleine had said and her expression had been desperate with the fear that I could have a breakdown.

How is a person meant to come to terms with being implicated in the death of another?

Leaning on my old oak dining table, a favourite of the “glory box” I abandoned when Julian left, I got up, physically and mentally aching, and went to the bookshelf. A well-meaning friend had suggested that I record my thoughts after Bonnie’s death as a kind of therapy. I followed her advice, looking for anything that would ease the pain of it and the case brought against me by Bonnie’s husband.

I took the envelope that had arrived that day from my pocket. The stone dropped into my hand as I looked at the note. Although I couldn’t understand them, the words made me uneasy. I slipped it between the pages of the diary. From the drawer of the desk, I took out my jewelry box. Apart from a string of pearls and a jade scarab beetle, a souvenir from Madeleine’s trip to Egypt, there was little else inside. Before the stone joined them, I studied it as it lay in my palm. It was no more than two millimeters thick, but it felt cold in the warmth of my hand. It was either marble or quartz and had a thin, rust-red vein that made it blush.

At 5am and feeling soothed, whether by the tea or exhaustion, I climbed back into bed. I slept then, a dreamless sleep and longer than I’d slept for months. When I awoke, I lay beneath the covers as I had done so many mornings since Bonnie’s death.

Refreshed, I grew restless quickly and felt a return of an old eagerness to begin the day. I showered with a sense of purpose and felt a craving for a coffee and croissant in Chapel Street – I hadn’t done that in a long time. The gate’s click sounded a note of approval as it closed behind me.

At my regular café, I bypassed the pavement tables; the cooling autumn weather was beginning to creep into my toes. From a seat by the window, I looked out, regretting that I had missed the sun’s warmth and the hot, lazy days that had come and gone that summer when I’d barely left the house.

Deb came to take my order and smiled.“Haven’t seen you for a while, Dana. Been away?”

“Yes,” I lied but didn’t offer any more. She didn’t ask.

“Lucky you. I could do with a break… maybe the Greek Islands,” she whispered close to my ear before she left to seat a couple who had just walked in.

Before long, I found myself in the travel section of a local bookshop looking for a practical guide to Greece. The little I knew about Kos had come from my fruiterer, Kym, who would become misty-eyed when he’d spoken of the home he’d left 20years earlier. From his description, it sounded beautiful, as home does when you’re far away and feeling nostalgic.

There was nothing specifically about Kos, but I thumbed through the contents of a Lonely Planet guide and found it. “…third-largest island of the Dodecanese… five kilometers from the Turkish Peninsula of Bodrum…”I scanned its history. “Hippocrates, the father of medicine, was born and lived on the island.”Hippocrates.

There was a small grip of pain in my solar plexus that I could no longer distinguish as physical or emotional. I recalled how proud and emotional I had been when I swore his famous oath, and in particular the line: “I will follow that system of regimen, which, according to my ability and judgment I consider for the benefit of my patients and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give not deadly medicine…”

Bonnie’s stricken and pleading face swam in front of me, and I felt again the shock of the first hate letter that arrived in the days after her death: “EVIL. MURDERER.”

Chapter 3

Madeleine’s snore caught in the back of her throat, and I heard the springs groan as she sat up suddenly.

“Are you awake, Dee?”

“Yes.”

“Have you slept?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

My eyes rolled to the ceiling. “Mads, I’ve been thinking…”

“Yes?” Her voice sounded guarded.

“That we’ve made a big mistake.”

There was silence from below. An expert now at contorting in small spaces, I leaned down, inverting my head towards her. “Mads?”

“Why, Dee? Because the sea’s a bit rough?”

“A bit rough! No, it’s not that, it’s just… the whole thing is… crazy. Why are we here?”

“No, it’s not crazy. We’re meant to come.”

“Really. Please don’t tell me: ‘It’s our destiny.’”

“But it is.”

I leaned further over the bunk’s rail, “Oh Mads, come off it. Based on what? A letter we don’t understand. A small piece of marble that could be a chip off a headstone – a warning!”

Silence again, then the creaking springs as she got out of bed. She staggered to the bathroom trying to maintain her balance as the boat lurched sideways. As she shut the door, I was left in the darkness. I flipped on my back, feeling guilty that I was all but blaming my sister. After all, I was the one who had organised this trip.

*****

Outside the bookshop, I had paused to consider my next move and stepped aside to allow a mother with a baby in a pram to pass me on the narrow footpath. Tucking the Lonely Planetguide under one arm, I walked behind them, trying to prevent my thoughts from taking their familiar diversion into bleakness. Instead, the bright fluorescent lights of a travel agency drew me in and a friendly glance invited me to the counter. A young woman whose name tag read Karen finished tapping at the keyboard and swivelled to give me her attention.

“I’m thinking of going to Greece,” I said.

“Return?”

And then, surprising myself again, I answered:“One way.”

*****

When I told Madeleine what I had done, her reaction caught me by surprise.

“You’re leaving next Friday!” she said, unable to disguise the disappointment in her voice. She had been my constant companion in the preceding months, almost my carer.

“But you’re the one who suggested I go,” I reminded her.

“Yes…” Madeleine studied her fingernails.

“Oh, and by the way…” I tapped the table and spoke to her hands. “If you can arrange the time, there’s a ticket on hold for you, too.”

“Are you kidding?”

I smiled at the memory of that moment.

“No, I’m not kidding,” I said and touched her fingers. “I just want to thank you. You’ve been really great, Mads, and I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“You’re my sister.” Her eyes looked dangerously moist.

“So that’s a yes?” I said, as I went into the kitchen. I took a deep breath as I filled the kettle.

“Mm, let me think…” Madeleine called across the kettle’s hum.“If you insist.”

“I do.” I smiled into the two cups in my hand. “Your passport’s still valid?”

Her head appeared around the kitchen doorway. “Yes… I’ve got to go.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Home… to pack!”

Book Details

AUTHOR NAME: Amanda Apthorpe

BOOK TITLE: A Single Breath

GENRE: Contemporary Fiction

PAGE COUNT: 236

IN THE BLOG: New Literary Fiction Books