She glanced down in sick horror and saw the plane sinking, sinking, sinking down to who knew what monstrous depth. She turned, and kicked for the surface. She knew she wouldn’t make it. Her lungs were exploding with pain. Soon she would have to suck in that last, fatal breath. And Redmond was gone, swept away; he must be dead.
Despair grabbed her as she swam upward. She could see nothing, hear nothing but the bubbling rush of the sea. The current buffeted her. Soon she was too tired even to kick. Her limbs were frozen with the cold. She stopped moving and hung in the water, rising inch by inch. Heart bursting, lungs screaming, she surrendered. She lifted her head and opened her mouth and gave herself up to death.
But when she breathed in, she breathed in air.
She was on the surface, the wind knocking her from side to side, the churning waves tossing her left and right, slapping her in the face.
Orla gasped in mouthful after mouthful of incredibly sweet salty air. Shivering, sobbing, she looked around her. The moon was still up there, still casting its placid silvery glow over the turbulent white-capped sea.
She was alive.
But where was Redmond, where was her twin?
She tried to scream his name, but all that emerged was a breathless croak. The sea was too cold, the currents too powerful, constantly dragging at her, numbing her, filling her mouth with sickeningly strong salt water.
From time to time, over the pummelling waves and the relentless power of the sea, she could make out a low shape to her left, an outline of black against the dark grey of the skies. A long way away. Two hundred yards, maybe?
It took a while before she understood what it was.
‘Oh shit.’ She wept with weak gratitude, spitting out water, shivering with shock and cold.
It was rocks.
It was land.
Minutes later, the sea flung her on to the shore. Scraped and bloodied by rocks, she lay there as the foam surged over her, trying to lift her head, failing, gulping down mouthfuls of salt. She was gagging, vomiting, coughing. Slowly, painfully she dragged herself up the beach until at last she was lying on wet sand, and the water couldn’t reach her any more. Its roar, like an angry lion, filled her head. But she had survived. By some miracle, she had been spared.
Finally she was able to raise her eyes, look around her. The moon plunged behind clouds and then emerged again, illuminating the landscape. What she longed to see, prayed to see, was another form lying here – Redmond, her twin, her life.
There was no one.