by Lucy Clarke
‘Possibly a drawer or cupboard closing. Maybe I dropped a book or a bag, perhaps. I really can’t remember.’
He nods, expressionless. ‘Jacob did slam the door though?’
‘Yes!’ I laugh, shrilly. ‘He slammed the door on his way out. He’s a teenager. Life is full of drama. I’m not sure how this helps us find him?’
PC Roam says gently, ‘All we’re trying to do is understand as much as we can about Jacob’s state of mind that evening. Build the picture as vividly as possible.’
‘We’ve had reports that Jacob’s behaviour can be disruptive at times,’ PC Evans says.
‘Excuse me?’ Nick’s voice is sharp.
‘I understand there was a complaint about vandalism – glass bottles thrown against a beach hut.’
Nick’s jaw clenches tightly around his words as he tells them, ‘It was once. At the start of summer. There was a beach party – they’d all been drinking. Jacob said afterwards they didn’t realize anyone was in the beach hut. He apologized to the owner, removed all the glass.’
‘We’ve also spoken to the college, who’ve told us there were some attendance issues.’
‘Yes, but that was just Jacob acting up,’ Nick says. ‘He’s bright. College doesn’t always stretch him. His grades haven’t slipped – did they tell you that?’
‘Yes, we’ve seen his reports.’ A pause. ‘Would you describe him as troubled?’
‘No, not at all!’ I say reflexively.
‘And yet Cassie Tyler’s statement, when we spoke to her on the way here, referred to Jacob as crying on the rocks, saying, “I’m not a good person. You’re better off without me.”’
She told them that?
I can see the thoughts stacking up in the police officers’ minds: Jacob’s a troubled teenager with a disruptive home life, who was depressed over Marley’s death, and felt trapped by Caz’s pregnancy.
The police don’t think Jacob’s missing: they think he’s killed himself.
When the police leave, Nick tells me he’s going for a walk to clear his head. It’s a relief: I’m not ready to have a conversation with him that has to include the question, Is it possible our son was unhappy enough to kill himself?
I boil the kettle, then fill a bucket with hot water and detergent. Crouching on my hands and knees, I scrub the hut floor, leaning the weight into my shoulder. I drag the sponge back and forth, the skin on my hands turning pink. Do the police really think I haven’t considered the possibility of suicide? Of course I fucking have! I’ve thought of every single possibility, looping them around and around in my brain until my head is so tightly knotted I can barely function.
I’ve done my research, pawing through article after article on the Internet, as if words and facts can give me back some control. But they don’t. They make it worse because now I know that 1,800 missing people are found dead each year – and that three quarters of these are male, and most often the cause of death is suicide.
I clench my fingers into the wet sponge, nails digging into the damp flesh of it. I picture Jacob sitting hunched on the rocks, sobbing, I’m not a good person.
I will not – cannot – allow the possibility of suicide to take root, as otherwise I’ll be forced to consider what it truly means: that Jacob could be dead – and it’d be my fault.
The floor is scrubbed raw. I push myself to my feet, knees red and dented. I rinse out the sponge in the sink, and balance it on the edge of the washing-up bowl, deciding to tackle the hob next. But I make the mistake of pausing – and in that moment my energy drains away with the swiftness of a plug being pulled. I feel it swirling out of me as my knees begin to give. Tears rise over my eyelids.
Before I can stop myself, I’m crouched on the damp floor, sobbing, gasping.
Jacob! Oh, Jacob!
I just want to know. I NEED to know what’s happened to you!
‘Sarah?’
I lift my head and find Lorrain standing in the doorway of the hut, her palm pressed to her chest. ‘Oh Sarah!’ She moves towards me, placing her large hands under my elbows, steering me to the sofa. ‘It’s all right, now. It’s going to be all right,’ she says, settling beside me, patting my knee with a hand.
‘Was it you? Did you tell the police about the glass bottles?’
‘Bottles?’
‘That Jacob threw. The police knew about it.’
‘Course it wasn’t,’ Lorrain smiles easily. ‘As if a few shards of glass would make me blink. You never knew the mischief my twins got up to!’
I haven’t met her twenty-five-year-old sons yet, although she’s fond of telling people, They’re both gay, can you believe it? The both of them!
‘Listen sweetie, you’re going through shit right now, but it’ll all work out okay. You’ll see. Now, what did the police say?’
I’ve only known Lorrain since the start of this summer, so I’m not sure whether she’s fishing for gossip, or whether I can trust her. ‘I think they … they are considering the possibility that Jacob … well, that he may have … committed suicide.’ The words sound strange and alien as they leave my mouth.
‘What would they bloody know? Nothing! A fun-loving boy like Jacob? Absolutely not!’
Suddenly I love Lorrain for her beautiful optimism.
‘Don’t give that nonsense a second thought! He’ll turn up.’
She has no knowledge basis to make this assertion on, but I let myself believe it anyway. I wipe my face dry with the back of my hand.
‘You eating? Sleeping? Remembering to drink water? Let’s pour you a glass now, shall we?’
She bustles towards the sink, pumping water into a glass. ‘Here you go. Drink it back. No use you making yourself ill.’
I take the glass obediently.
She gives me a little squeeze on my shoulder and says, ‘I’ll leave you to it – but you know where I am if you need me.’
I watch her move away, grateful for her visit. As I glance through the window, I catch her pausing on the beach, turning back to look at me, something sharp and inquisitive in her expression. Then, just as quickly, the look is gone, and she turns and walks on, leaving me wondering if I imagined it.
I shake my head sharply and the movement refocuses my gaze. I catch myself in the reflection of the window and barely recognize the woman looking back at me. There are deep bags beneath my eyes that bloom like bruises, and my hair hangs lank and unwashed. The lines etched across my forehead seem deeper, permanent. I run a knuckle beneath my eyes, wiping away the traces of mascara, but it does little to improve things.
Leaning in closer, I angle my head slightly, noting something oddly familiar in my expression. I can’t quite grasp what it is. I’ve a strange sense of déjà vu, as if I’ve lived this moment before.
I am about to turn away, when I realize.
My whole body turns rigid.
It’s not me who’s lived this moment before: it’s Isla.
My expression is a mirror of hers, seven years earlier, as she pressed her face to the window looking for Marley.
I think of PC Evans’s words: ‘Just to get this straight, Jacob’s best friend, Marley Berry, went missing from this bay. Then on the same day – seven years later – Jacob also goes missing, from the same spot.’
No! I tell myself, my head beginning to shake from side to side. Jacob’s disappearance has nothing to do with Marley.
‘Nothing,’ I whisper at my reflection. ‘Nothing …’
18. ISLA
A tipping point is the moment at which a series of small incidents become significant enough to cause a larger, more important change. It’s that exact moment where everything hangs suspended between the before and after. The hinge that turns your life from something you once recognized and understood – into something startlingly different.
Again and again I return to the events of the day I lost Marley, searching them from every angle. Would it have been as simple as removing one incident, changing one small word or action, and the tip
ping point might never have arrived? What if Samuel hadn’t been there that morning? What if the tide had been coming in, not out? What if Isaac’s boat had been closer to Marley rather than Jacob?
I remember it in fragments – glass-sharp pieces that slice. I can’t remove any of those shards. I can’t go back and unwind. It’s impossible to stop the moment when my whole world tipped.
Summer 2010
Marley raced into the beach hut, cheeks flushed, sand clinging to his bare feet. ‘We need to make a flag pole for the sand fortress,’ he told me breathlessly, salt-mussed hair wild around his face.
I rummaged at the back of a cupboard, pulling out a pack of wooden skewers that we used for toasting marshmallows. ‘Would one of these work as the pole?’
Marley grinned, knees bending with excitement. ‘Yes!’
Samuel, who’d been staying for the weekend, found a blue-and-white napkin for the flag, and a thinning roll of Sellotape to secure it with.
‘Just a minute,’ I said, before Marley made to disappear again. ‘Sun cream.’
Marley rolled his eyes at Samuel, before planting himself in front of me. I pasted the cream across his smooth back, his shoulder blades like sharp little wings beneath my hands. I spun him round, then dabbed cream across the bridge of his nose and cheeks. ‘Hey,’ I said, catching his hand, ‘I’ve got something for you.’
He wrinkled his nose as I kissed the tip of it. I watched him run down the beach, the taste of sun cream and salt on my lips.
Then what? How many minutes passed before I checked on him again? Maybe twenty? Twenty-five? Did I really leave it that long? Was I so swept up with new love that I didn’t pull my gaze away from Samuel?
If I’d known what I do now, I would have watched Marley every moment. No; I wouldn’t have let him leave the hut. I would’ve held on tight, pressing my face into his neck, breathing in the warm scent of my baby.
‘I should really get back,’ Samuel told me, scooping up my hair in one hand, and placing a kiss at the nape of my neck.
I shivered with pleasure.
‘I’ll try and get back down here in a night or two.’
‘I’d like that.’
I’d fallen in love with Samuel for many reasons. For the way he kissed each of my fingertips as if they were the most beautiful hands he’d ever seen. For the boyishness of his laugh. For the unashamedly passionate way he talked about flowers. And then I fell in love with him again when I introduced him to Marley. They were friends from the go. They went on bug hunts and made dens; they ganged up on me, knowing where my ticklish spots were. Sometimes Samuel would take him to work with him – he was a landscape gardener – and Marley would help him pull out weeds, holding them firmly by the base and shaking free the loose soil.
Samuel slung his bag over his shoulder, pushed his feet into flip-flops and said, ‘Tell the little guy I said bye.’
I raised myself on to tiptoes to press a kiss to his lips. The soft give of his mouth made my stomach flutter. His fingers moved through my hair, pulling me deeper into him.
‘You are undoing me,’ he whispered against my lips.
I stood on the deck to watch him leave, admiring the long stretch of his legs as he moved across the sand. There was a smile on my lips as I replayed Samuel’s suggestion that, when the contract on my rented flat ended in autumn, we should think about moving in with him. ‘Marley will love having a garden,’ he’d said. I’d told Samuel that I’d think about it, but I could already feel myself edging towards saying, Yes.
I see it, the life I could have had. It’s tantalizing, like a heat haze on the horizon, shimmering and beautiful, but just out of reach. There would have been a family home with a striking garden, vegetables grown ourselves. Later, there’d have been a simple wedding, a bunch of wildflowers as a bouquet, Marley dressed in slacks and a loose, open-necked shirt carrying the rings. Maybe there would even have been another baby – I was young enough, then. It was a life that would have been filled with laughter and love and happiness.
But instead, I wasn’t watching—
I let my focus slide. It was only for a few minutes.
That’s all it takes.
I looked out towards the sea. A small crowd were gathered on the waterline and I idly wondered what they were doing. Just beyond them, Robert was gutting fish, gulls circling above the bloodied soup. I’d heard him bragging about his haul of mackerel earlier, and seen the pinched expression on Neil’s face, who’d returned with an empty catch bucket.
Someone in the crowd began hurrying towards the huts. It was Diane. I’d never seen her run before and there was a clear urgency in her jerking, rushed movements – the awkward gait of someone unused to moving quickly. ‘Neil!’ she yelled. ‘Boat keys! Get your boat!’
A moment later, Neil stepped from their hut holding a beer.
‘Children! In the water!’ Diane yelled, breathless.
My fingers sealed around the deck railing. Marley!
I scoured the beach, spotting the sand fortress he and Jacob had been building near the tideline. Buckets and spades lay abandoned on their sides, a wilting flag flapping in the breeze. Panic bubbled in my throat. I glanced across to Sarah’s hut, hoping the boys were there, but it looked abandoned – a washing-up bowl planted on the deck, a pair of rubber gloves discarded haphazardly.
The crowd on the shoreline shifted, and I saw what I’d missed before: Sarah was at the edge of the group, further forward than the others. She had her back to me, but there was something odd about the way she was standing. Then I realized: she was up to her knees in water, the hems of her summer trousers soaked.
My blood ran cool. It’s our boys out there.
I raced down the beach, my breath short. Reaching Sarah, I gripped her elbow, turning her towards me; her face was white, eyes wide.
‘The boys.’ She took a breath. ‘They’re in the water.’
Fear spread down my spine, a fingernail dragging across the bone. ‘Where?’
‘I can’t see them … the current. They’re caught in it. The coastguard’s been called. There’s a boat already looking for them.’
‘They were meant to be making a fort. That’s what they were doing. Why did they go in the sea?’
Sarah was silent.
In the bay, Neil was dragging himself on to his boat. A moment later the engine roared to life, the smell of petrol mixed with the salt breeze.
My hand found Sarah’s, our fingers gripping tight, the hearts of our palms sealing together.
A seagull screeched overhead, the sound cutting from the sky like metal against metal. The murmur of concerned voices came from behind us on the shore, and then one voice sliced through the rest: ‘Found?’
Sarah and I both turned. Diane was staring in the direction of Neil’s boat – her mobile pressed to her ear.
I watched her with the focus of a hawk as she nodded slowly. Her gaze shifted to Sarah and me. ‘They’ve found one of the boys.’ She hesitated. ‘They’re still looking for the other.’
‘Who?’ Sarah and I asked together.
Diane shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
I was only vaguely aware of mine and Sarah’s hands unclasping – maybe I loosened my grip, or perhaps she let go of me. I tucked my hands deep into the pockets of my dress, my fingers twisting around a loose tissue I found there. Beside me, Sarah’s fingertips lifted to her hairline.
I prayed that it was Marley who was safe. He was the stronger swimmer. I’d taken him to swimming classes since he was four months old, holding his little body close to mine as we dipped and splashed in the pool, singing nursery rhymes about crocodiles and rowing boats. Last summer he’d outraced me for the first time. This summer he was twice as fast. He was a strong, confident swimmer. He would survive. He had to.
I’d chosen.
We both had.
I’d chosen Marley’s life over Jacob’s.
The lifeboat was vivid orange. The colour seemed both dramatic and urgent, but also
reassuring as the hull boomed against the waves, men in bright suits and helmets scouring the water.
‘Everything is going to be fine. Both boys will be fine,’ Sarah said in a strangled voice, keeping up a steady stream of narration. ‘There’s three boats out there now. More on the way. They’ll find them both. Look, Robert’s going out, too.’
I looked towards the spot on the shoreline where he’d been gutting fish – the catch bucket now gone. Had he found time to put the fish in his fridge before getting in his boat to search?
‘Isaac’s coming to shore,’ Sarah said, pointing towards the dark-navy fishing boat, which had been the first one circling out there. ‘He must have one of the boys.’
We watched in silence as the boat drew nearer, our gazes locked on that vessel. The sun was high in the sky, illuminating Isaac standing at the helm. A second figure was hunched beneath a towel or blanket at the stern, head lowered.
Beside me, Sarah gasped. Suddenly she was lurching forwards, stumbling through the water. ‘Oh baby! My baby!’
Jacob, not Marley.
No, no, no! That couldn’t be right.
I kept staring at the boat, certain Marley must be on board, too. They should be together! I watched as Isaac placed a hand at Jacob’s back, steering him gently towards the side of the boat where Sarah was opening her arms to him.
‘Marley!’ I shouted, wading forwards. ‘Where is Marley?’
Isaac lifted his head. I know he saw me, heard my question, but he looked away.
A cold pain pushed through my veins. ‘Where is my son?’
But there was no answer.
I shook my head, pressed my hands over my mouth. ‘This can’t be happening,’ I whispered. ‘This can’t be happening.’
Events unreeled around me, as though I was a spectator of a film that wouldn’t stop.
Eleven boats joined the search. Ross Wayman re-routed the harbour ferry to help. The coastguard helicopter churned above the sea for hours. They searched until the final blush of daylight had disappeared – and resumed again at first light.
I didn’t get to see my son brought back to shore hunched beneath a blanket, wet hair pasted to his head, like Sarah did.