by Lauren North
CHAPTER 46
Saturday, March 31
8 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY
The weather is glorious. We wake up to bright sunshine and clear skies. It takes almost an hour of digging around in the garage to find the beach bag with the buckets and spades. Jamie and I are both wearing last year’s faded summer clothes—a red T-shirt and denim shorts for Jamie, and me in an ASDA George dress with spaghetti straps that keep falling down my shoulders.
Dregs of last year’s sand rustle in the beach bag when I chuck it in the boot, and I feel a sudden pang, a void inside I can’t fill. Last year we all went to the beach together. The three of us—a family.
The time we went to visit your mum, I bet.
Probably, but I don’t want to think about that today, or you, in fact. With a deep breath I force the sadness away. I’ve made a picnic of Jamie’s favorite foods for the beach—jam sandwiches, Party Rings, and Monster Munch—and I remembered pound coins for parking and ice creams so we don’t have to traipse half a mile to the nearest cashpoint. I made pancakes for breakfast and didn’t drop them on the floor; the car is packed up and ready to go. I want to make a new memory today. A good one.
We’re in the car about to pull out of the driveway when Shelley’s white Mini pulls in.
“Shelley.” Jamie’s voice bounces with joy. He waves from the back seat.
Shelley grins and waves back and I feel something drop inside me. I forgot I’d made plans with Shelley. She turns off the engine and jumps out of the car wearing white cotton shorts and a yellow T-shirt. Her legs shimmer with a faint tan and show none of the stretch marks and blotches of my own legs.
Seeing Shelley makes me think of the notebook and her name written in it over and over. I think of the button I found by the tree and the hot chocolates she insisted on making, the eyes of hate staring at me from Jamie’s bedroom, and the lullaby that I still find myself humming.
The thoughts flash before my eyes—snapshots of something just out of reach, but whatever it is, it’s not enough to override the relief I feel seeing Shelley, the warmth I feel knowing she’s come to see me, that I matter to her, to someone.
I wind down my window, kill the engine, and smile. “Hi.”
“I was on my way to the pool and thought I’d see if you wanted to come for a swim, but you look like you’re off somewhere.” She leans closer and when I glance in the wing mirror I see Jamie pulling a silly face at her.
“We’re going to Frinton,” I announce like it’s a holiday to Hawaii. “I’ve got buckets and spades and a picnic.”
Shelley looks surprised but then beams. “What a great idea,” she calls as she jogs back to her car. “I’ll follow you.”
I want to shout back, tell her I’m sorry I forgot we had plans and it’s just me and Jamie today, our day, our new memory, but Shelley is already in her car, and Jamie is whooping in the back seat, making the car jig about.
It’ll still be a good day, I tell myself, ignoring the disappointment curdling in my stomach with my breakfast. I’ll still be present, and Jamie will enjoy it, which was the whole point anyway.
* * *
—
A warm breeze blows from the sea and lifts the hair from my neck as Shelley and I lug the picnic and the beach bag down a flight of uneven concrete steps. I can taste the salt in the air, the smell of the beach and my childhood. I have beach towels tucked under my arm, threatening to drop at any moment, and my arms are full and aching to be empty.
“Do you think we’ll need the cricket set and the tennis bats?” Shelley asks.
I laugh and turn my face to the sun. “Sorry. It’s the bag I always take to the beach. I never think to look in it and decide what we’ll need or not. I just grab it. There’s probably still the inflatable ring in there Jamie used when he was a toddler.”
The tide is out, leaving a long stretch of soft yellow sand that darkens near the shoreline. It’s not yet ten and the beach is still quiet, with only a few families scattered here and there and dog walkers throwing sticks and balls into the sea for their dogs to fetch.
We find an empty stretch between two groins. The dark wood fences slope all the way to the sea and make me feel as though this beach, this patch of sand, these waves are ours and only ours. The feeling doesn’t last long and by the time we’ve rolled out the towels another two families are setting up their own areas on the beach.
There’s a boy about Jamie’s age among the families and before I’ve even unpacked the spades and buckets, Jamie is barefoot and racing across the sand with the boy and his football.
The void inside threatens to peel open again watching how grown-up Jamie is. He would never have run off to play like that last summer, or even a few months back. It’s another reminder of how content he is living in the village. Suddenly I’m glad Shelley is with us, glad I have someone to talk to, a friend while Jamie is busy with his.
“Is it too early for lunch?” Shelley asks from the towel beside me. She puts her hands to her flat stomach and dips her head back. Her hair is glowing white in the bright sunshine. “I thought I was going swimming so I didn’t have any breakfast.”
“How about a Party Ring?” I rustle in the cool box and pull out the thin blue pack of biscuits.
“Oh my God, Tess. These used to be my favorite biscuits in the whole world.” She laughs and rips them open, eyeing the different-colored rings as if she’s choosing an exquisite dessert instead of a sugar-filled biscuit with a hole in the middle.
“What else have you got in that box?”
“Pickled onion Monster Munch and jam sandwiches.”
She throws her head back, and her cackling laugh carries across the sand and right out to sea. “You’re hilarious, Tess.”
I smile and glance over to Jamie, wondering if he wants a biscuit. The football has been forgotten. Instead he’s kneeling in the wet sand near the shore with the boy and a girl who I guess is his sister. Three heads are bent in concentration, and they appear to be digging between puddles of sea water, creating an elaborate maze of rivers. Jamie is using his hands to scoop out the sand and I bite back the urge to call out to him to grab a spade, or to take one down to him and join in. He’ll hate me for interfering.
Shelley and I sit in a comfortable silence and watch the tide draw slowly in.
“Are you all right about you and Tim separating?” I ask.
Shelley sighs. “I think so. We haven’t spent time together properly for years. I’m so used to being on my own that it doesn’t feel any different. I texted him earlier to check he’s OK. We got to a point when we stopped celebrating Easter and Christmas. It was just too hard to celebrate them, you know? But I still wanted to make sure he was all right.
“I’m sure I’ll be angry one day about his affair, but right now I feel indifferent. Maybe it’s shock that he’d do this to me after everything we’ve been through together, but I feel like it’s been the push we both needed to end things.”
I nod and stare at the rhythmic motion of the waves. Every day is hard without you, Mark, and I know Christmas will be even harder, but with Jamie here we’ll celebrate somehow, I know we will.
“Fancy a swim?” Shelley asks, lifting her sunglasses and wiggling her eyebrows at me.
I laugh. “Are you kidding? The sea will be freezing.”
“It’ll do you good.”
Shelley stands up and wriggles out of her shorts and T-shirt. She’s wearing a simple black swimming costume that highlights the dip of her waist, and the curves too. I’m wearing an old tankini underneath my dress. The elastic has gone from the bottoms and I can feel them sagging around my bum.
I make a face and start to shake my head but then Jamie is racing up the beach and swiping his goggles out of the bag. He’s grinning at Shelley as he strips to his swim shorts.
“Come on, Mummy.” Jamie’s squealing voice carrie
s up to me as he races toward the water. He wants me to be with him, I think with a burst of love. And why not? It can’t be any colder than the ice I’ve felt inside me these past months.
New memories, I remind myself, leaving my dress bunched on the sand and jogging after Jamie and Shelley.
The sea burns my skin with cold. My feet are numb before I’m even up to my knees, and I’m already stopping, preparing to turn back, but Jamie has jumped all the way in and Shelley is just ahead of him, drawing her arms up and over her head in long, smooth strokes. I wade further in until icy waves lick the skin around my navel.
Go on, Tessie. Remember who you used to be.
I sob as I drop in the water. Tears are pricking the edges of my eyes, but I kick with all my might and swim forward until my body and my mind are numb and I no longer feel the cold.
“I told you it would do you good.” Shelley laughs, swimming up beside me.
I shake my head, my teeth chattering too much to speak.
The beach seems a long way off now. Jamie hasn’t followed us out as far and is jumping in and out of the waves, his shouts and laughter carrying in the breeze.
I force my arms up and out of the water in long sweeping arcs and swim after Shelley. I’m sure my crawl is nowhere near as elegant as hers but it feels good to be moving. We swim lengths, back and forth in line with the groins on our stretch of beach. Every other stroke my head swings to the side and I clock Jamie splashing in the waves. My arms tire quickly and I begin to slow, increasing the time between each stroke and the glance at Jamie.
Then he disappears.
I stop swimming, choking on a mouthful of salty water that stops me shouting out. My eyes scan the sea and the beach, but he’s nowhere.
Where’s Jamie? The question presses down on me as if the water is squeezing me tight. I lurch forward and force my arms and legs to move. The numbing coldness makes every desperate movement feel sluggish but I kick as hard as I can, my head jerking left and right, willing Jamie’s blond hair to bob out of the water, but it doesn’t.
I reach the spot where I last saw him and stand. The water isn’t as deep as I thought. It’s only up to my knees. I turn and spin with soft squelchy sand beneath my toes, looking everywhere.
“Tess?” Shelley shouts out.
Then out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of Jamie on the beach and feel the weight lift as I breathe again. He must have run out when I wasn’t looking. I wade out of the water, shivering as warm air tickles my skin.
“Are you OK?” Shelley asks, following me onto the dry sand.
I smile and shake my head. “Yes, sorry. I just thought . . . Oh, it doesn’t matter now. Let’s have some lunch.”
CHAPTER 47
By midafternoon, the river maze Jamie built with his new friends is swallowed by the sea and hazy gray-yellow clouds blow over our heads. The day is still warm but the sun is now circled in an eerie pinkish ring that makes the sky feel wrong somehow, and I can’t help but keep staring upward.
Shelley follows my gaze. “It’s sand from the Sahara apparently.”
“What is?”
“The yellow in the sky. It’s sand blown in from the hurricane. It’s a bit apocalyptic if you ask me.”
I nod but say nothing. The truth is, I feel it too. The sense of something coming, not a foreboding but an end, an answer. The pages in my notebook are filling up. My own cryptic clues. Where will they lead? I can feel the answer, like a word on the tip of my tongue.
The family with the two children are packing up to leave and Jamie races up toward me and plonks himself down by my legs. His hair is a mess of crazy curls, a shade darker from the sand and the salt that’s dried in it. He’s smiling from ear to ear, and when I stare into his crystal-clear blue eyes I realize we’re going to be OK, he and I. There is joy ahead for us still. It won’t be the same without you, Mark, but it will be something.
Jamie lifts his foot and stomps on a sandcastle I made. He laughs and so do I. “I think we’ll be bringing half the beach home with us,” I say, reaching forward to brush dry sand from Jamie’s legs.
Jamie shrugs and when I turn back to Shelley she is staring at me with wide eyes and a face so pale I wonder if she’s ill. She glances at Jamie, then back to me. Jamie sticks out his tongue, making a silly face, but Shelley isn’t smiling now, she isn’t pulling faces. She looks emotional.
“You must miss him so much,” I say, thinking of the son she lost. It never occurred to me how hard it must be for Shelley to see Jamie and me together. I feel a twinge of shame.
“What?” Shelley blinks, staring for a long second at Jamie before focusing back on me. “Oh . . . every day.” She swallows, and tears glisten in her eyes.
“Of course. I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”
“No, it wasn’t.” She shakes her head and smiles. The sadness shifts and the Shelley with the grinning face who knocked on my door nearly two months ago is back. “How are you feeling, Tess? Everything OK?”
“Um.” I nod. “I guess.” It seems as though her question has another meaning that I can’t decipher. I pause and think of the menacing threat of the voice on the phone, the man in the lane, the secret project, the figure in the garden, someone in our house, eyes watching me, the loan from Ian you didn’t tell me about. The questions and clues I’m so close to answering. I think of the days I couldn’t get out of bed, and the days I cried and cried. I think of Jamie sitting beside me in the sand and the perfect day we’ve had.
“I think I’m still a bit shaken from the other night, but I’m getting there. It’s like you said—low tides and high tides,” I say, staring out to the sea where the color is dark, almost black. “I’ve been sorting some of the finances out.”
“That’s good.” She’s looking at Jamie now and it’s clear from the expression on her face that she’s missing Dylan. I run the sand through my fingers and I think about Shelley’s son and her desire to be a mother again.
The thought unnerves me and I stand suddenly just as a gust of wind sprinkles us with salt water. The sea is inching up the beach. The place where the family were sitting before is underwater now, and I watch a forgotten spade bob in the waves.
“We should go,” I mumble, throwing things into bags and looking around for my flip-flops.
* * *
—
The weather turns quickly. By the time we’ve packed up and made it to the cars the sky is as dark as night, and a strong wind buffets against the open driver’s door. Jamie is in the back seat, his eyes half-closed.
“Thanks for today,” Shelley says.
“I’m glad you could come. It’s been fun. I certainly won’t be forgetting that swim for a while.”
Shelley smiles but there’s something off about her expression and I wonder if she’s still thinking of Dylan. “Tess?”
“Yeah?”
Rain spatters in fat drops from the sky.
“I’d better go. I’ll call you later,” I shout over a rumble of thunder, diving into my car and starting the engine before I get soaked through, before Shelley can say whatever it is she wants to say.
Jamie is asleep before we’ve turned off the coastal road. I glance at the sea a final time. Dark green waves are smashing and frothing against the groins. It’s hard to believe it’s the same sea I swam in today. Rain is pattering down on the windscreen and I flick on the lights and wipers and head for home.
CHAPTER 48
It’s not yet four p.m. but the sky is inky black with storm clouds by the time we’re almost home. Jamie is still asleep and the only noise is the squeak of my windscreen wipers and the roll of my tires on the wet road.
Dread is turning like sour milk in my stomach at the thought of the dark house, the empty rooms, the ringing phone. Will his gravelly voice be waiting for me on the answerphone? Will I smell the odd cologne again? I shiver and
flick the indicator, turning off the A12 and onto the country road that winds down into the village.
I’m so busy worrying about the house that I don’t hear the rev of the engine at first. It’s like the 4x4 comes from nowhere—a huge monster of a thing with a metal grille as high as my back windscreen and tinted don’t-mess-with-me windows that drives up close behind me. It’s like it was waiting by the turning for me.
It looks like a Land Rover or something similar, but it’s too dark to be sure.
I stop breathing. Panic is clenching every muscle in my body and roaring in my ears. It’s him, I’m sure it is. The man in the black baseball cap with his menacing threats. “I know everything about you, Tess.”
I’m scared, Mark.
It’ll be OK, Tessie. I promise.
Every part of my being wills my foot to hit the accelerator and race away, but I can’t give in to the mounting fear with Jamie asleep in the back. Instead I hunch forward, my hands gripping the wheel as I peer ahead for any sign of another car and help, but the road ahead is empty.
I ease off the accelerator, praying the monster behind me will whip into the other lane and fly up the road, praying he’s just an impatient wanker wanting to get by, praying I’m wrong.
But I’m not wrong. The 4x4 slows too, closing the gap between my boot and his silver grille until my entire rear window is blocked by its huge mass. It’s so close that I can’t see it in my wing mirrors.
The purr of his engine is reverberating through the metal frame of my car and I’m sure at any moment he will simply tap the accelerator and run us off the road without a moment of thought.
He flicks his lights from low to full beam. Two spotlights brighter than the sun fill my car’s interior with piercing light. I yelp from the pain hitting my eyes and the sudden blindness of it. The road ahead has gone. All I see is white light. I shove the rearview mirror away and the rebounding light out of my eye line.