Soul Beach

steps increase to jogging speed. I push forward, faster and faster, until I run into the water and splashing begins, in my ears and on the screen, the droplets like tiny seed pearls in the sun.
    ‘Ah, Florrie, you never were much of a swimmer.’
    I jump. Really jump, on the screen. Weird. I’m sure I didn’t actually move my mouse.
    ‘Where are you?’ I ask.
    ‘Look up.’
    I peer up towards the jetty, and the sunlight hurts my eyes. ‘Can’t see you.’
    ‘Yes, well, I know what that feels like. It’s been a whole bloody week. What kept you? I won’t accept anything less than a red hot date.’ Her voice is teasing, but I hear the hurt beneath the bluster.
    ‘That question I asked about . . . what happened.’ I stop. I daren’t say another word. ‘I breached the rules, didn’t I? Even though I didn’t even know there were any.’
    ‘Yeah. If it’s any consolation, I checked it out. You’re not the first it’s happened to.’ She chuckles. That chuckle made four million people call premium rate phone lines to vote for her. I’d forgotten how sweet it sounds. ‘It’s their little joke. They make the rules up as they go along.’
    I decide not to mention Sam’s pep talk. ‘ Yes, I’m beginning to work that one out.’
    ‘Be careful, Florrie. Take it gently. If you’re banned again, it’ll be for good, and I don’t know if I could cope with being on my own here for ever.’
    Her voice breaks on the words for ever . The sudden desperation makes me want to cry, but I need to stay in control. ‘But you do know that you are, um, no longer alive?’
    ‘Of course,’ she hisses. ‘But I don’t want to talk about it.’
    ‘What do you want to talk about, then? The weather? My A Level coursework?’
    ‘Don’t be angry with me, Florrie. None of this is my fault, is it?’
    I gulp. ‘Of course not. But I feel so frustrated. I can’t see you. I don’t know where you are. I don’t know how you are.’
    There’s a long pause. Beneath the sound of the waves I am sure I can hear low chatter, like a theatre audience waiting for the play to begin.
    ‘OK. You want to know, yeah. About what happened?’
    I hold my breath. Does this make it OK, now, for her to tell me? She did initiate the conversation, after all, which must be within the rules of the Beach.
    Never mind the rules, am I ready for this? For six months, we’ve had to cope with not knowing about her last few hours on earth. Not knowing if she struggled, if she felt pain. And will I be able to cope with knowing what no one else knows? But this could be my only opportunity, and the question of who took her life from her has haunted me for so long: I have to ask.
    ‘Who was it, Meggie?’
    ‘Who killed me?’
    I wait for the screen to go black. To be hurled back into cyber-oblivion. But it doesn’t happen, so I repeat the question. ‘Yes. Who killed you?’

16
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘ What ?’
    ‘I don’t know how I died, sis. Or who killed me, if somebody did. I don’t remember.’
    Of all the things I thought Meggie might say, this is the one I hadn’t considered. ‘You were murdered,’ I say, gently, and then I gulp, because what if even saying that is a rule breaker? What if any moment now this beach disappears in a tsunami of oblivion, washing away any trace of my sister?
    But I can still hear her breathing beside me.
    Breathing . The killer smothered the breath out of her and yet here she is . . .
    ‘I had sort of figured that one out, from listening to the others here. ‘Natural causes’ doesn’t cut it round the campfire on Soul Beach, put it that way.’
    I’m still trying to make sense of any of it. ‘So does everyone have amnesia?’
    ‘No. Most people can talk about what they were doing before it happened. Or even how it felt . . .’ she tails off. ‘I’m the odd one out. All I remember is going to a party with Tim. A masked ball, big night out, you know. Well, not as big I wanted it to be. We had a row.’
    ‘A big row?’ I can’t imagine Tim rowing with anybody. He was always so . . . gentle. I wonder if Meggie said something to provoke him. Maybe that’s disloyal, but, as her little sister, I know how infuriating the ‘songbird’ could be behind the scenes.
    ‘No. I don’t think it was. I mean, all relationships, they have their ups and downs. But not big enough to . . . Is that what people think? That it was him?’
    What am I supposed to tell her? ‘Nobody knows.’
    She sighs.