This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon Page B

was doing this. Even as he was inching his way down the icy ramp, clinging for dear life to the handrail, he couldn’t believe he was going to do this. His underwear was flapping in the wind, his chest hair all rigid and petrified. His balls were clenched. He was worried about his heart.
    Maybe this is how it ends, he was thinking. Maybe this is it. Behaving like some damn fool teenager. Plunging my fifty-year-old body into the icy water to impress a girl. Now, that would be a nice ending.
    “Come on in,” she was shouting, her voice rippling with laughter. She was floating on her back as if she were in the Caribbean. She was taking pleasure in taunting him.
    “Don’t tell me there’s something stopping you?”
    “Only the fear of death,” he roared back. He raised his arms over his head, took a big deep breath, and in he went.
     
    THREE DAYS HE’D been in the country and now here he was, swimming in the freezing-cold sea with his crazy cousin. The Martello tower, there it was, towering above him.
    “I feel like I’m doing the Ulysses experience,” he shouted, once he’d recovered from the shock.
    She was bobbing up and down beside him. Her hair was plastered to her head, her eyelashes long and spiky and her eyes big and bright. She looked like a seal.
    “Never got past the first chapter,” she roared back, her voice bouncing off the surface of the water. “Bit of a boys’ book, isn’t it?”
    Bruno lay on his back. He kicked his legs furiously to warm himself up. The splash he made was hugely satisfying. He started to feel a warm glow seeping through his body.
    The glow didn’t last. Just a few minutes later he began to lose all sensation in his legs. He wanted to pee but he couldn’t, his bladder seemed frozen solid. He plowed a rough front crawl back to the shore. He had to tread water for a minute until he found the base of the ramp by stubbing his toe against it. Hauled himself out by the rusty railing and staggered up the slimy stone in his wet underpants, his skin burning as it came in contact with the air. He dried himself off with the towel she’d given him and then he struggled into his jeans and sweater. The jeans kept snagging on his damp skin as he tried to pull them on.
    He sat himself down on the ground and leaned back against the base of the tower. Closing his eyes, he savored the watery sun on his face. Every so often he opened one eye and scanned the sea for Addie.
    “I’m not really your cousin, am I?” He could swear there was something flirtatious in the way she’d said it.
    “Second cousin once removed.”
    “Oh, we don’t really count that stuff here,” she’d said.
    And he’d smiled.
    He could see her head now, dipping up out of the water and then disappearing down again. Lola’s little head chugging alongside her. Behind them, sea and more gray sea. Above the sea, the thin horizon, and above that again, the sky.
     
    SHE WAS SWIMMING a short raspy breaststroke parallel to the shore. Every so often she would turn round to encourage the dog. The sight of the loyal little creature swimming along beside her never failed to move her.
    When she turned her head the other way she could see Bruno sitting up there in the sun. Without the hunting cap and the big coat he looked almost normal.
    This was the start of a romance. That was very clear to her. As soon as she got out of the water she would have to pick it up where they had left off before the swim. She would almost definitely sleep with him, probably later this very day.
    Suddenly she was exhausted by the thought of it all.
    She didn’t have the energy for someone new. She had no energy for all the questions she would have to ask and all the answers she would have to give. The enthusiasm and the self-belief to present herself one more time, to package herself and her history into something attractive and positive and lovable. She remembered that she hadn’t shaved her bikini line for weeks and suddenly she had no