Ben was at the top of the stairs in his pyjamas, face bleary and hair ruffled.

‘Was that Sam?’ he said.

‘Yeah.’

‘What did he want?’

‘Just returning Logan’s clothes.’

Ben rubbed at his scalp. ‘Everything OK up the road?’

‘I think so,’ Ellie said. ‘Put some clothes on, I want us to go for a walk together.’

45

That first step on the bridge, the thrum of the traffic shuddering through her feet, like a homecoming. She kept walking, Ben at her side. It was rush hour, cars and vans, trucks and buses filling all four lanes, thudding past in a blur, a mass of metal and plastic, humanity on the move. Ellie slid her hand along the railing, the vibrations of the bridge running up her arm. A couple of cyclists overtook them heading to Fife, as Ellie felt Ben’s hand slip into hers. She turned and saw him smile. They walked on without speaking, the roar all around them, a gust of wind trying to throw them off balance. It was squally out on the firth, if it settled a little it could be a decent day for sailing.

Ellie’s pace slowed as she approached the middle of the bridge. She felt Ben’s hand tighten in her own. He hadn’t been up here since Logan jumped, didn’t see the point. They had their own ways of dealing but maybe that was changing, maybe there was a way forward together.

She stopped when she reached the spot, hesitated, then turned.

‘Is this it?’ Ben said, raising his voice over the noise.

He’d seen the footage, but only once. Said he never wanted to see it again, then weeks later confessed that he regretted ever watching it, couldn’t get it out of his mind.

Ellie nodded. ‘This is it.’

Ben watched the cars storming past. ‘It’s so exposed.’

They both looked out to sea. The sun was up, no clouds. The colours of everything seemed ultra-sharp, like the world had finally been pulled into focus. Ellie felt as if she could almost see the rusty paint flaking off the rail bridge from here.

Ben turned and looked back at the Ferry. He was squinting, searching for their house. His face relaxed when he spotted it. He looked straight down at the drop.

‘Jesus,’ he said, lifting his head back up. He turned to Ellie. ‘I still can’t believe he did it, you know. I expect him to walk through the front door every day. I wake up in the morning and think he’s going to need shaking out of his bed again.’

‘I know,’ Ellie said.

They both had their hands flat on the railing. She moved hers until it was touching his.

‘Nothing helps, does it?’ Ben said.

Ellie shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Why do we try?’

‘What else can we do?’

Ben looked down. ‘Jump?’ He turned to her. He wasn’t serious, but a tiny part of him meant it, she understood that.

‘We aren’t brave enough,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t go through with it.’

Ben stared at her for a long moment, their eyes locked.

‘He was a brave boy,’ he said. ‘Our boy.’

Tears filled his eyes. Ellie felt the same coming to her.

‘We have to keep living, don’t we?’ she said.

Ben wiped at the wetness on his cheeks. ‘Yes.’

They were both silent for a while, hands touching on the railing. Ellie wondered if there were any of Logan’s atoms here, on the railing, perhaps a single molecule of him rubbed off on the bridge before he went over. Or not even a part of his body, a fleck of rubber from the sole of his trainer, a thread from his hoodie.

She’d come here every day looking for a second chance. Finding Sam wasn’t what she had in mind, but it was something. She’d tried to help. She felt needed for the first time since Logan died, and it felt good. She was in charge of her life again, responsible for others. She had no idea how to recapture that control.

She turned to Ben.

‘I’ll stop coming up here if you stop with the conspiracy theories,’ she said.

Ben didn’t speak, kept looking at the water.

Ellie followed his gaze and spotted something. She imagined for a moment it was a porpoise, a sign from the universe, but she couldn’t make it out.

‘I’ll try,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll try.’

46

Swim until you can’t see land.

The song ran through her mind again as she pushed her arms through the soupy water, kicking her legs, feeling the burn from yesterday in her thighs and arms, the tension in every muscle. Her breathing settled as she got used to the rhythm of the strokes, and she began to feel at home in the water.

She wasn’t aiming for anywhere, just heading into the Forth, powering through the choppy waves, feeling the ebb and flow, the tug of the tide underneath. The beat of her heart was a drum in her ears, the gulp of her breathing, in out, in out. As her head lifted to the side she could see the road bridge towering over her, legs in the water, its span defying gravity, the grey towers reaching to heaven.

She dived under and pushed downwards. She imagined seeing the wreck of the Porpoise drifting slowly back up, its mast magically upright again, breaking the surface and reaching skywards, signalling its existence to the world. She imagined Jack coming back to life, wriggling free of his bonds, slipping the knots used to weigh him down, laughing as he propelled himself towards land to tell his story.

She stroked and kicked, ever downwards.

She imagined a splash above her, the thunk of a body hitting the water and plummeting past her. Logan, her little baby, come to join her on the ocean floor. She pictured him reaching the bottom of his dive then opening his eyes, his body still intact, smiling at her then swimming over, embracing her, pulling her with him to the surface.

She couldn’t see anything around her any more, she was deep enough that the sunlight didn’t penetrate.

She stopped swimming for a long moment.

Then she pushed upwards, shoving herself towards the surface, flexing her feet like a propeller, making her body as sleek and streamlined as possible. Her lungs ached and she longed to breathe, but she held her mouth clamped shut as she came closer to the surface. She could see it now, the light glimmering up there, the sun beaming down on the planet, and she craved to be part of that world, to stand on the shore and soak up the energy like a lizard on a rock. She stroked and kicked, stroked and kicked, the shimmer of the surface closer and closer, her lungs burning, the oxygen in her blood thinning and dispersing, her muscles screaming.

She broke the surface and gasped in air, felt the molecules enter her lungs. As long as she kept breathing she was a part of the universe. She took a deliberate mouthful of water, swallowed it, imagining atoms from Logan’s ashes slipping down her throat, being absorbed into her blood, her heart, her bones.

She looked at the shore. She was a long way out, but she could make it back. On the beach in front of their house she could see Ben holding a towel. He had a hand shading his eyes, searching for her.

She threw an arm into the air.

Waving not drowning.

Then she began swimming back to shore.

Also by Doug Johnstone

The Dead Beat

If you’re so special, why aren’t you dead?

The first day of your new job – what could possibly go wrong?

Meet Martha.

It’s her first day as an intern at Edinburgh’s The Standard.

Put straight onto the obituary page, she takes a call from a former employee who seems to commit suicide while on

the phone, something which echoes events from her

own troubled past.

Setting in motion a frantic race around modern-day Edinburgh, The Dead Beat traces Martha’s desperate search for answers to the dark mystery of her parents’ past. Doug Johnstone’s latest page-turner is a wild ride of a thriller.