by Lucy Clarke
When we pulled up at the house Sarah now shared with Nick, she cut the engine, then reached across and squeezed my fingers hard. ‘Nick and I. Are you sure?’
‘I’ve told you a thousand—’
‘I know. But I want you to look me in the eye and tell me. Not over the phone. Not by letter. Face to face. Are you certain?’
I pulled up her sunglasses, and pressed the tip of my nose against hers, staring her right in the eyes. ‘I’m certain.’
She exhaled with relief.
‘Anyway, bit late for me to change my mind, don’t you think?’ I said, pointing to her bump.
Sarah had talked to me about Nick from the start. When I’d called from a hostel in Goa, she’d told me about their first drunken kiss at The Rope and Anchor. Later, I think I was travelling north into the mountains, when she told me, ‘There’ve been more kisses, Isla. If I told you I thought I was falling for him, how would you feel?’ I was thousands of miles away, hiking through rice terraces, sleeping on overnight buses with my head on the shoulders of travellers I’d only known for hours. My relationship with Nick was a fond, warm memory. I cared about him deeply – but I didn’t ache for him. ‘I’d be happy for you both,’ I’d told her, and meant it.
By the time I phoned Sarah again, three or four months later, she told me that Nick had proposed. ‘He laid a picnic rug on the beach, and when he opened the hamper, there was a ring box inside! We’re engaged.’
Engaged. The word caught me off-guard, like a fist in the stomach. I managed to catch my breath and smile as I said, ‘Congratulations.’
At seven months pregnant, I knelt on the beach, scooping my hands into the damp sand. The sun was warm on my back, and I could feel the weight of the baby shifting within me.
I made two large holes, sculpting them smooth with my palms. ‘Done!’ I called to Sarah, who was walking towards the shore carrying a jug of cordial and a bowl of strawberries. In her bikini, her bump protruded so neatly it looked as if she’d swallowed a beach ball. I carried wide, and everyone told me I was having a girl because of the extra width at my hips, and the new thickness to my thighs.
I lay our beach towels side by side, covering the holes I’d dug. ‘You go first.’
Sarah, who was eight months pregnant to my seven, put the tray down, then knelt forward, gradually lowering herself on to the beach towel, her rounded stomach disappearing into the bump-sized hole. She made a low sound of pleasure at the back of her throat. ‘I will love you forever for this.’
I positioned myself next to her, my bump fitting snugly into the groove beneath my beach towel. It’d been months since I’d been able to lie on my front. At night, the only way I could get comfy was by lying on my right-hand side with a pillow gripped between my knees, and another wedged beneath my bump.
For a while, the two of us lay in silence, enjoying the bliss of stretching out flat. I lazily flicked the crescents of sand from beneath each of my fingernails, and every so often I’d feel the baby kick, a powerful little jab just below my ribs.
Sarah and I were spending most of our time at the sandbank. Nick’s parents had bought a holiday home in Spain, so had gifted their beach hut to Nick and Sarah. I’d picked up a part-time job waitressing but, whenever I wasn’t working, I’d be at the beach hut.
Sarah turned her head towards me, her cheek pressed into the beach towel. I could see the gold flecks in the green of her irises and smell strawberries on her breath. ‘You, Isla Berry, are a genius. Thank God you’re home.’
I grinned and squeezed her fingers. Sarah and I both looked up at the sound of Nick’s voice. ‘I’m looking for two pregnant women. I know they headed this way. Have you seen them?’
‘Nope. Not seen them,’ I said.
‘Now stop blocking our sun,’ Sarah told him.
He stepped aside, then stripped off his T-shirt and looked out over the water as if contemplating a swim. Then, as if he thought better of it, he patted his stomach and said, ‘Reckon you can make me one of those sand holes?’
It would be easy, I’d thought back then. The three of us would be best friends. We could make it work.
And maybe we would have done if Samuel had stayed in my life. If Marley had, too. Maybe, when they left, the space I carved for Sarah and Nick became too big – held too much weight – and it set the balance all wrong.
Or maybe it wasn’t my fault at all.
Maybe it was Sarah’s.
10. SARAH
DAY TWO, 11.45 A.M.
After the police leave, I step out on to the deck, my legs trembling. A sharp caw sounds above, and I glance up to see a solitary gull gliding, beady eyes watchful.
‘Shall we walk?’ Nick says from behind me.
I nod quickly. I can’t bear to sit and wait in that hut for one more moment.
As we move off, we pass Joe and Binks’s hut. Binks is dozing in her deckchair, her mouth slightly ajar. Next to her, Joe is squinting at a crossword that he holds at arm’s length. The normalcy of the scene is disorientating – like stumbling out of a darkened cinema into the blaze of the foyer.
‘Hello, both!’ Joe chirps.
Binks wakes at the sound of our voices, lightly touching the corners of her mouth. ‘Sarah. Nick.’ Binks would hate anyone to catch her dozing; at seventy-seven years young she still takes her grandchildren kayaking, and swims several lengths of our bay each morning.
Nick pauses in front of their deck, and I can sense he is about to tell them about Jacob. I push my hands deep into my pockets, somehow unready for this to become public.
‘Don’t know if you saw the police at our hut earlier,’ Nick says, ‘but Jacob’s missing.’
‘What?’ Joe sits forward in his chair. ‘Since when?’
‘He didn’t come back to the hut after a beach party on Sunday night.’
I can see them calculating that it’s now Tuesday morning. Joe gets to his feet, knees clicking. He stands with a hand on the deck railing. ‘What do the police say?’
I lift my shoulders. ‘That most missing people come back of their own accord.’
‘They’re going to make some enquiries,’ Nick follows. ‘You haven’t seen Jacob since Sunday night, have you?’
Joe and Binks look at each other. ‘Sunday night?’ Binks repeats. ‘It was Jacob’s birthday, wasn’t it? We saw you all out on the beach having that lovely barbecue in the afternoon. We commented on it, didn’t we? Thought how nice it was that Isla joined you – what with it being the anniversary.’
There it is. Anniversary. The word that Nick and I haven’t been mentioning. The word we didn’t bring up in front of the police, because surely it is just a coincidence that Jacob disappeared on that day.
Everyone who’s been on the sandbank for long enough knows about what happened seven years ago. Joe and Binks were there on the shoreline – they saw the lifeboat out in the water, felt the sand lifting around them as it was caught in the updraught of the coastguard helicopter.
Everyone remembers because what happened rocked the whole beach hut community.
‘No, we haven’t seen Jacob since that evening,’ Joe confirms. ‘But he’ll turn up. Course he will.’
Binks asks, ‘Is there anything we can do to help?’
‘The police are taking care of things for now,’ I tell them. ‘Like you say, I’m sure he’ll be back before we know it.’ I say it with such ease that no one would guess my hands are shaking within my pockets.
The sandbank ends at the base of a wooded headland. We follow the weaving path of steps that are shaded by a canopy of rangy trees, ferns and brambles. I count the steps. I’ve always worked well with numbers. If I feel my thoughts starting to unravel, I count things – the number of tiles on one side of a shower, the bricks in a section of wall, the number of flowers on a patterned skirt.
Ninety-eight steps.
By the time we reach the top, the muscles in the backs of my thighs feel warm. The view sweeps open around us, the harbour lying silent beneath
a heavy grey sky – just a whisper of brightness remaining on the horizon. The air, dense with moisture, hangs above the landscape, compressing it. I can feel the weight of it, as if it’s squeezing the breath from my lungs, muffling the songs of the birds, quietening the sea. The purple tips of heather are still in the windless air, and the scent of gorse and ferns is thick. From here, the huts look no more than monopoly pieces. I can’t help but wonder if Jacob is down there, stowed away in someone’s beach hut, or camped out in the woodland.
I’d had such high hopes about this summer, imagining our family playing cards by candlelight late into the evening, or laughing around a barbecue cooking fresh fish. I pictured Nick with a tan, finally losing that pinched expression that has settled around his eyes. The beach hut, I’d thought, would be the answer. When mothers from Jacob’s college asked about our summer plans, it was hard to explain why we chose to spend it in a beach hut, where the fickle British weather is master of our days. There are things I love – that sense of freedom when my shoes are kicked off, my feet pushed deep into the sand – and there are things I loathe, like the grit of sand in the bed, and cooking on a temperamental two-ringed hob. But what brings us back here, summer after summer, is that the beach hut unites our family. The three of us are enclosed in one space; there are no doors to hide behind; Jacob can’t disappear to his room, or have his attention absorbed by the television. For a few weeks of the year, we step out of the rush of our normal lives and live outside-in, letting the rhythms of the weather and tides rule our days.
Our first weekend in the hut this summer had been beautifully warm. Jacob was in a bright mood – probably because college would be a distant memory for the next eight weeks. I’d been swimming and was pleased that I wasn’t quite as unfit as I’d imagined. As I was about to wade out, I saw Jacob jogging down the beach in his swim-shorts. ‘Mum! You’re actually in the sea!’ he laughed. With the sun on his face, he looked happy, handsome. ‘Stay in?’
I hadn’t planned to; I was already chilled to the bone, but it was such a rarity that Jacob wanted my company that I said, ‘Okay.’
As he bounded into the water, I dived down to the sea bed and kicked my legs up in the air, performing a wobbly handstand.
When I surfaced, Jacob was laughing at my poor attempt. I smiled with my teeth together, then squirted water in his face, a trick I used to love playing on him when he was a boy. Jacob slapped his hand across the surface, sending a spray of water towards me.
Laughing, I splashed back at him.
Jacob rushed forward, gripping my shoulders, and ducked me under.
I hadn’t expected his strength or the sudden weight of him. Salt water shot up my nose and burst into my mouth. I writhed beneath his grip.
I could only have been under for a matter of seconds, but when Jacob released me, I surfaced gasping, hair pasted to my face.
He reared back, the laughter gone. He lifted his hands in the air. ‘Sorry, Mum. Are you okay? Sorry …’
I wanted to tell him, It’s okay, I’m fine, but I couldn’t catch my breath to speak.
We stood in the shallows facing each other. Then, without a word, Jacob turned and waded out.
‘Jacob!’ I called after him. ‘Stay! I’m fine …’
He didn’t turn back. He jogged up the beach and disappeared inside the hut.
By the time I was out of the sea and had made my way into the beach hut, Jacob was gone, leaving puddles of salt water on the floor and a damp towel thrown over the deck railings.
‘Should we have told the police about the anniversary?’ Nick asks.
I don’t turn, but I know my husband is looking at me. ‘I didn’t think it was important,’ I say. The words sound like a lie – and I wonder if they are.
‘Jacob might not show it,’ Nick says, ‘but he still takes it hard.’
A sudden image pops into my head of Jacob and Marley with their crab nets and buckets, sitting on the jetty, mud-streaked legs hanging towards the water, scoring the size of the crabs they caught. That was a nine and a half. Look at its claws. It could tear boats out of the sea.
‘He blames himself,’ Nick says.
My blood freezes. I’m not sure I’ve heard right.
‘He doesn’t talk about Marley, does he? But I’m certain he still thinks about him. Marley shaped his life. What other seventeen year old would happily use a pair of binoculars to study birds? He does it because it’s his link to Marley.’
‘He was ten,’ I say. My voice is a whisper.
‘I know. I know that. But Jacob probably feels guilty: he made it – Marley didn’t. Isn’t there some disorder that people who live through a tragedy can suffer?’
‘Survivor guilt,’ I say, having looked into it some time ago. Signs of it can include anxiety, depression and guilt, linked to an experience where an individual survived a traumatic event when others didn’t. ‘I don’t think Jacob suffers from it. He’s never struck me as depressed or particularly anxious.’
‘Maybe not, but then would we even know? Jacob’s not exactly a sharer, is he?’
‘We’d know,’ I say.
‘Has he talked to you about Marley recently?’
My mouth turns dry. I shake my head.
‘He hasn’t mentioned his name in front of me – not for a while. But then,’ Nick shakes his head, ‘I never bring up Marley. Maybe I should. Maybe we should both be talking about him more. We don’t want what happened to seem like something that should have to crouch in the shadows. It was a desperate, desperate tragedy, but really it’s up to us to keep celebrating Marley’s memory, isn’t it?’
I manage to nod.
‘We should ring Isla.’
I start. ‘Why?’
‘Jacob’s close to her.’
The comment stings in a way it shouldn’t.
‘Jacob’s confided in her in the past,’ Nick continues. ‘They often talk together about Marley, don’t they?’
It was true. Sometimes I wondered if it wasn’t good for Jacob. He would share a memory of Marley, and I’d watch the way Isla’s face would light up with gratitude as if he’d given her the greatest gift.
Nick continues, ‘I heard him this summer reminiscing with Isla about that time he and Marley found that old windsurfing board washed up in our bay.’
‘When they cited scavengers’ rights,’ I add.
Nick smiles to himself. ‘The boys were so close.’
My heart clenches. Could Marley’s anniversary really have triggered Jacob’s disappearance?
‘Maybe Isla can think of something that’ll help us,’ Nick says. ‘Jacob might have mentioned something to her.’
‘I’m not sure if her mobile works over there.’
‘Course it will.’
Isla has been living and working in Chile for the past four years. She originally went there on a hiking holiday to Patagonia – but fell in love with the country and ended up working as a teacher at an international school. When she’s away, we rarely ring each other. We tell ourselves that ours is the sort of friendship that’s unchanged by long distance: when she’s back, she’s back. But I can’t help wondering whether, like me, Isla feels a sense of relief when we part. Summers on the sandbank have always had an intensity to them, our friendship blooming in the heat, living in each other’s pockets for the summer stretch. When autumn arrives and the huts are swept out, boarded up ready for the winter, we each disappear back to our own lives, and I like that – the flow of the seasons mirroring our friendship.
I was definitely ready to see her go this time.
‘Are you going to call her?’ Nick asks.
I think of the things we said to each other before she left. But with Nick at my shoulder, I can’t hesitate. I take out my mobile and turn so my back is to the wind. ‘What’s the time difference in Chile?’ I ask. ‘It could be the middle of the night.’
‘I’ve no idea. Isla won’t mind. This is important.’
I nod. Press Call.
There
is long pause, and then the phone begins to ring.
I glance at Nick. He’s watching, expectant.
I wait, a hand pressed to my other ear to block out the wind.
In my head I am silently pleading: Don’t pick up.
11. ISLA
Sarah’s name flashes across my mobile like a warning. I stare at the screen dispassionately. I can imagine what she’s going to say. In truth, I’m surprised she’s waited this long.
Eventually my voicemail intercepts the call. Sarah leaves a message, but rather than listening to it, I return the phone to the drawer. I don’t want to hear her voice. I don’t even want to think about her – because right now I’m back in a comfortable, warm place of memory. I’m with Marley. My beautiful newborn Marley, with the sweet scent of milk on his skin, a tiny pink fist gripped around my finger. All I want to think about is the moment he burst into my world. My light, my joy, my son.
Summer 2000
As the next contraction crashed through my body, I dragged my focus to my breath. I pushed the air from my open mouth, then sucked a new breath deep into my lungs. In. Out. In. Out. My fists were clenched rocks at my side, my skin licked with salt.
The contraction subsided, like a wave petering out. The midwife resumed rolling a pair of dark-green flight socks up my calves. ‘The anaesthetist won’t be long now.’
I pressed my lips tight, nodding.
Right then – more than anything in the world – I wanted my mother.
I’d been labouring for forty-two hours, but the baby’s head had become jammed in the birthing canal. His heart rate was dropping with each contraction, and there was no way of pushing the baby out naturally.
‘You’ll stay with me?’
The midwife took my hand tight in her own and said, ‘I’m going to be there until the moment that baby is put in your arms.’
I felt the next ripple of pain building and pulled my focus back to my breathing, jamming my fists into the bed as the full contraction ripped through my body.
When I was finally wheeled into the operating theatre, there was a room full of people in scrubs and masks. I didn’t care that I’d envisaged giving birth in a water-pool with calming music playing. All I wanted was my baby safe in my arms.