Back to real story now

Kartik stares at me as I smile through the darkness. There is something like disgust in his eyes. But I cannot care for him right now, because my perfect Fee is crying.

She, too, is gazing at me strangely. Almost thanking me. For what? For protecting her? For saving her the humiliation? I don't know.

"Kartik." There is almost a plea in my voice as I watch him move. His eyes remain locked onto mine. But I love him and Fee and I want to drift away with them both. And I don't know how to do that and so I suppose this is the next best thing,

"Gemma, have you been drinking?"

The answer to that, surprisingly, is no. Felicity seems to have an endless stash of alcohol, brandy and whisky, and, my favourite, rum, hidden somewhere in the school, and we have been, I will admit, drinking regularly. But not tonight.

The locket weighs me down as I swim towards him. It is the only thing I have not removed. It hangs, heavy as water soaked linen, against my chest, and I stand next to my Felicity. The water covers me from my stomach downwards, and my dripping curls fall over my breasts, yet still I blush.

He has seen you before, Gemma.

I know this to be true. Yet before he was not looking at me like this. There was love in his eyes. There was tenderness.

"Gemma, stop acting like a fool." He seems to be ignoring Felicity entirely, which is never a sensible thing to do. I can feel her bridle next to me, her indignation rising to the surface and melting into something else entirely. Indignation can be vulnerable. Anger less so.

"Kartik, I want you to come and swim with me."

"I don't want to swim."

"Then go away." This is Felicity; her eyes hard and sharp like shards of ice. Kartik seems ruffled, and glances this way and that, and it stings me how her words have an effect on the man who professes to love me.

"Gemma..." he is pleading, but I am angry and wilful and selfish, and I turn my back. Felicity stays still, her front towards him, daring him, testing him, oh what fun our game's become.

"Swim, Kartik." My voice is huskier than usual, and I can feel him bend and break under my will. Under my power.

Oh what strength and oh what power

Breaking bones and burning flowers.

The song is something that I recognise, but I know not where from. Kartik gives me one last glance, imploring and disgusted, and then shrugs. Relents.

He removes only his cloak before wading into the water. His loose cotton shirt billows around him, and then becomes drunk on the lake water and floats giddily down. He swears, mumbles something about the temperature, and then dives, like the sleekest of fish, under the glassy surface. His hair is dripping, his curls plastered into submission, when he reappears, shaking his head and swearing louder. Felicity giggles, high and girlish, and we swim over to him together.

"Gemma..." he is still pleading with me, and I am still ignoring him. He can no longer hurt me. I will not let him.

Felicity ducks down under the water to, her pale skin glowing eerily through the ripples. It unnerves me, and I am glad when she resurfaces some yards away. Rivulets of water spiral down out of her hair and across the gentle contours of her body. I gaze, unable to tear myself away, at her hard and dangerous beauty. Kartik sees me, and something flickers into life behind his eyes, and then he has me in his arms.

"Gemma, what are you doing? What game are you playing?" he is shaking me, and, once more, like so many other times when I have needed to feel real, my fingertips brush my locket and I am glowing and smoking and feeling.

"Kartik, Kartik, my beautiful darling Kartik." I giggle into the darkness surrounding us. Felicity seems nonchalant, floating on her back some way away. She is no longer here. It is like I am punch drunk and giddy, and Kartik is trying to hide me. Hide me all away.

"Kartik, love me. Please."

"What?"

"Love me. Now."

"I do..."

"Show me. Prove it."

"How can I do that?"

"I think you know exactly how to do that." My voice does not falter or waver. I need to know what it feels like to be loved, just once more. Just once more, and then I can forget him and everyone else and marry a man called Charles or John or something safe, and live in a nice house in the city with two girls and a boy and perhaps a basket of kittens, and I can go to lunch at the prestigious clubs, can wine and dine with the finest of people, can dance, lit by twinkling candlelight and slowly broken by insipid conversation and portentous announcements of marriage and death and who cares about a thing because I have a gypsy boy and he is all I need.

And he is real.

And that is the end of it.

"Miss Doyle, I must assume that you are not suggesting what I think you are?"

"I am suggesting that indeed."

His face is a mask of shock and uncertainty, as he looks between Felicity and I. I wriggle until I am pressed against his body, until he can feel my every rise and fall, until he can smell my scent and taste my lips and glide away with me on fragile sugar spun dreams that have not a hope in the world of surviving, but that will never truly die.

And he loves me.