by Lucy Clarke
Following my gaze, Jacob said, ‘Remember those moon walks you used to take me and Marley on?’
I smiled. ‘I’d let you stay up late and we’d tramp over the headland.’
‘No torches. That was your rule.’
‘So your eyes could adjust,’ I said. ‘Plus, it made you eat your carrots.’
Jacob laughed. ‘You used to make a flask of hot chocolate and we’d sit up on the bluff listening to the crickets and natterjacks. You’d tell us those stories about the smugglers.’
I felt the warmth of the memory. Jacob and Marley loved interrupting to ask questions about the smugglers, wanting to draw out any horrible, boyish details – like the fights on the boat, the ghastliness of the living conditions, the spookiness of the night runs they’d make.
‘I miss him,’ Jacob said.
I turned, looking squarely at Jacob. In the glow of the lantern, I could see the seriousness of his expression, the sadness that lingered in his eyes.
‘Me, too,’ I said softly.
‘Seven years tomorrow.’
I nodded. ‘And your birthday, too.’ There was a pause. ‘Is it hard – that it’s on the same day?’
‘It links us, doesn’t it? The dates. I like it.’
I hadn’t thought of it that way. Looking at Jacob I wondered if I’d underestimated the loss he’d suffered.
Jacob said, ‘D’you remember crabbing? We’d tie bits of bacon to string and spend hours dangling them from the quay.’
‘Marley used to name every crab.’
‘They were such good crab names – like old men: Alfred, Billy, Egbert, Frank. I’d tip my bucket of crabs back in the harbour, but Marley used to place each one back in turn, waving them off. ‘Nice to meet you, Harold! Send my regards to Marjorie! Crawl safe, Albert!’
I could feel the first prick of tears in my lower lids. Jacob seemed to sense the moments when I needed to talk about Marley – and those when it was too much.
‘So anyway,’ he said, changing the subject, ‘I wanted to ask you about Chile. I can’t believe you leave tomorrow.’
‘Me neither.’
‘You planning to do much travelling?’
‘Hopefully – if the van’s engine is still going. I’ve got a fortnight before I start work, so I’m hoping to drive south, go hiking in the mountains.’
‘Patagonia?’
‘I’m not sure I’ll make it that far. But I’ve heard about a beautiful national park where I might start. The trails hug the coastline and you can camp out on the beaches.’
‘So you wouldn’t sleep in the van?’
‘Most of the time, yes. But I’ve got a tent, too. It’s just a one-person thing, more like a bivouac. Last summer I hiked to a mountain lake. It took me eight hours, but when I got there – this lake – God, it was something else, like a blue jewel tucked into these wild, dusty mountains. No one else there. I spent the night right by the lakeside. Watched the sun go down.’
‘You had it all to yourself.’
I could see that it sounded romantic to Jacob – and it was – but as I’d lain in my tent alone, all I’d been able to think of was how much I wanted someone to share it with.
‘Maybe I’ll visit, sometime.’
‘I’m not sure your mum would be keen on the flight.’
‘I meant on my own.’
His gaze held mine squarely, watching my reaction. His eyes travelled over my face, resting on my mouth. I finished my wine and said, ‘Thank you for the company, Jacob. It was just what I needed.’
As I moved to stand, Jacob noticed the birthday card I had propped at my side.
‘Is that for me?’
‘Oh yes. Thought I’d leave it here in case I didn’t catch you tomorrow.’
‘Can I open it now?’
I hesitated. ‘Sure.’
He tore open the envelope and pulled out my homemade card. As he looked at it, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. I’d used the photo of him and Marley, which Sarah had removed from the frame, and made a small collage of things I’d found on the beach; a shell, a sliver of sea glass, a thread from a rope.
‘Isla, I love it!’
‘There’s something inside.’
He opened the card and pulled out two tickets – day passes for a festival on the Isle of Wight, where I knew one of his favourite bands was performing.
‘Seriously?’ he beamed.
‘Yes, seriously. Thought you and Caz might fancy it.’
He threw his arms around me. ‘You are amazing. Thank you!’
He turned the card over and studied the front of it again. ‘This is why Mum said you wanted the photo.’
I hesitated. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Mum said you’d asked for the photo back.’
Sarah had told Jacob that?
Something dark and cold slithered through me, stealing the warmth from the evening. Jacob must have asked why the photo of him and Marley had been replaced – and she’d told him I’d wanted it. But it was a lie: it was Sarah who no longer wanted a picture of Marley in their beach hut.
The gin bottle was where I’d left it on the side. I rooted around in the cupboard beneath the counter but I was out of tonic, so I drank it with soda and a dash of elderflower cordial to sweeten it. It tasted surprisingly good. I poured another.
I slouched on to the sofa with it and lit a roll-up. I only smoked occasionally – and almost always outside, but I couldn’t make myself move – couldn’t see the point. As I smoked, I watched the candlelight flickering over a framed photo of Marley I kept on the driftwood shelf. The evening sun was warm on his features; he squinted against it, holding a shell towards the camera. I’d seen the photograph so many times that the memory had become worn and frayed, losing its original shape. I let the features of his face blur as I tried to reimagine him as a teenager, Jacob’s age. I pictured dark skinny trousers, thick-tongued trainers and band T-shirts, his blond hair grown long and falling in front of his eyes. I would love to see who he’d have been now. Even if he’d turned into a sullen thing, I wouldn’t care. I wanted those slammed doors, those moody grunts, the heap of dirty laundry. I had missed out on all of that. I wanted the good and the bad. I wanted anything. Just one more chance to press a kiss to his cheek, to breathe in the smell of his hair. I would give anything – do anything – to hold him in my arms one last time.
I finished my cigarette, then wobbled to the kitchen to pour another drink, realizing how hard the alcohol had hit me. I couldn’t remember when I’d last eaten a proper meal. I stood there, gin and tobacco sour in my throat, letting the tears roll down my face. In another three years, Marley would’ve been dead for as many years as he’d been alive. The thought terrified me.
There was a knock on the hut door. Jacob stepped inside holding up my scarf. ‘You left this.’
‘Oh,’ I said, wiping at my cheeks. ‘You needn’t have—’
Jacob’s face creased with concern. ‘Shit, are you … okay?’
I didn’t trust my voice. I nodded, tears dropping from my chin.
Jacob moved closer. ‘Isla?’ His expression was desperately pained. He looked awkward, uncomfortable – every bit the teenager. I wanted to smile for him, reassure him everything was okay, but then he reached out and wrapped his arms around me. I could smell the sweet boyish scent of sweat lifting from his skin, and I clung on to him, my fingertips digging into his hard muscles. Tears ran from my face, trailing down the neckline of his T-shirt. I could feel the warmth of his skin against my cheek and I closed my eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Isla. I’m so sorry,’ he whispered over and over, his grip tightening around me.
When you’ve had a child, you carry them inside you for the first nine months, and then in your arms for months and months beyond that. I used to wonder how many times a day I’d kiss Marley as a baby, butterfly kisses on his cheeks, on the soft skin on the soles of his feet, my lips on his smooth white belly, kissing his tiny fingers, the soft skin at his neck, in th
e smooth dip between nose and forehead. As he’d grown older, I’d had to lessen those kisses. Sometimes I’d laugh, pinning him down, smothering him with them, and he’d jokingly protest, but I could see his delight. And then they stopped. All that love, all those kisses I could no longer give to him. Where does that love go? I imagined it as something physical – like hot water that freezes in a moment, hardening, cracking, splintering into shards. That was what happened to it. I was full of that ice now. Numb with it.
And here was Jacob, holding me. Warming me. I wanted to turn his fingers in my hand. Examine the boyish nubs of his fingertips. I wanted to plant kisses on each of them.
Suddenly becoming aware of myself, I staggered back. In my hurry, I caught my hip on the corner of the kitchen counter, knocking the bottle of gin to the floor. The glass shattered, fragments flying across the hut in a slosh of gin. I crouched unsteadily to the ground, alcohol vapours turning my stomach.
My head was spinning and I could feel the room starting to slide away from me.
‘Here, I’ve got this,’ Jacob said, placing his hands under my armpits and helping me to my feet. Then he fetched some kitchen towel and the dustpan and brush.
I tried to pour myself a glass of water, but even the action of holding a glass steady seemed beyond me.
When Jacob had cleared up, he looked at me clinging on to the counter and I saw the sympathy in his expression. ‘We need to get you in bed.’
I nodded. Bed. I needed to sleep. I tried to think what to do next. How to pull out the sofa bed. I needed to get changed. Clean my teeth. It seemed too much.
Jacob took charge, folding out the bed, grabbing the duvet from where I kept it stuffed in the bunks. The bunks where Jacob would sometimes sleep with Marley. They always slept so well at the beach – Sarah, Nick and I used to eat dinner together on the deck, the two boys sleeping soundly only feet away from us, their low snores emanating from the bunks.
‘Stay,’ I said. I wanted Jacob to sleep in the bunk so I could hear the slow rhythm of his breath in the night when I woke.
Jacob guided me to the bed, and I seemed to crumple into it. I was still wearing my clothes as I felt the coolness of the duvet being pulled over me.
Jacob’s footsteps crossed the hut, then I heard the soft fizz of the gas lanterns being turned off. The hut fell dark and quiet, just the low hum of the fridge behind me and the drum of waves. I listened for Jacob and could hear the shallow draw of his breath. Then there was the rasp of his T-shirt being pulled over his head and dropped to the floor with a whoosh of air.
I was surprised when I felt the give of the bed as Jacob climbed in, the metal springs creaking beneath his weight. He slipped beneath the covers, moving himself until his body was pressed lightly against mine. He wrapped an arm around me, drawing me into him, his fingers finding my hand and closing around it.
A faint awareness radiated somewhere beyond me that Jacob wasn’t supposed to be in this bed. The bunks. That’s where he and Marley always slept.
And yet – there was the hardness of his body against mine. My head swam with the warmth of his skin, the feeling of someone next to me. The hollow ache in my chest lessened. I turned into him, wanting to sink deeper into his warmth.
In the darkness, my fingers moved to his face, tracing the line of his cheeks, running my fingertips along his jaw, over his lips.
I felt his breath against my fingers as he whispered my name in the dark.
40. SARAH
DAY EIGHT, 5 P.M.
‘The same flight?’ Nick is saying, running a hand across his mouth. ‘Jacob and Isla went to Chile … together?’
Only an hour ago I would’ve bargained anything to hear that Jacob was alive, but the relief of knowing he’s in Chile has been replaced by a new fear.
‘I just … I can’t even begin to fathom why Isla hasn’t been in touch?’ Nick says. ‘I understand why Jacob would go to Isla for help, but there’s just no way,’ he says, his left hand slicing decisively through the air, ‘that she’d have let Jacob go to Chile without telling us. She knows exactly how worried we’d be. She knows that we’d get the police involved.’ His hands open. ‘So what are we missing?’
‘Jacob could’ve boarded the same flight as Isla without her knowing,’ I pose. ‘The planes are so big, aren’t they? They could have been seated in entirely different sections.’
Nick considers this for a moment, but then says, ‘Why would Jacob go to the trouble of travelling to Chile – and getting the same flight as Isla – if he didn’t want to see her?’
‘Maybe he knew she wouldn’t let him come with her. Perhaps he’d decided to wait until he’d set foot in Chile – surprise her at the airport when it was too late for her to say no.’ I press my lips together, shake my head, already dismissing my own theory: ‘Isla would still have called us the minute she realized Jacob was there.’
‘Unless he begged her not to tell us. Made her promise.’
‘No, she wouldn’t make that kind of promise to him. This is too serious. Absolutely no way.’ But then I am thinking about how things were between us when Isla left … what was said.
‘What is it?’ Nick asks, noticing my hesitation.
‘I don’t know … it’s just … that night Isla left, things were … strained between us. We had words after the barbecue.’
‘No matter what you’d said to each other – Isla still wouldn’t do this. She just wouldn’t.’
PC Roam’s voice is low as she asks, ‘Is there any possibility that their relationship was … romantic?’
Our heads snap up. ‘No!’ we both say.
PC Roam says, ‘We never discovered who Jacob’s love letter was intended for—’
‘You think it was for Isla? That Jacob was …’ I can’t even bring myself to say it … ‘infatuated with her?’
‘It’s possible,’ PC Roam says gently.
But she’s my age, I am thinking. His mother’s age! The possibility of it makes my stomach churn with disgust. I glance towards the window. Outside wind rakes the darkening sea, whipping the water into ridges, boats straining against their anchors. The light misting rain has been blown away by the wind, but heavy storm clouds are gathering on the horizon.
When I turn back, I can see from Nick’s expression that he is considering it, wondering if it’s possible. He takes out his phone and scrolls to the photo he took of the love letter. He crosses the hut and we look at it together.
I am thinking about the way Jacob has always looked up to Isla. She treated him like an adult – and perhaps when he was with her, he saw himself as one.
He thought it was love – so he wrote to her telling her, It is love, I know that!
That’s why he was upset on his birthday, as Isla was leaving for Chile.
That’s why he defended her with such vitriol when we argued on the night he disappeared.
That’s why he went to her. To Chile.
A boy’s infatuation with an attractive older woman.
I scan the letter, my eyes travelling to the final line.
There it is, like a knife twisting into my flesh …
Last night was amazing.
My breath catches in my throat.
What if it wasn’t a one-sided infatuation?
What if … they were lovers?
I stand with the palms of my hands pressed against the window, the skin flattened against the cool glass. To someone passing I must look like a woman desperate to escape.
PC Roam has returned to the station to see if she can track down Isla. She’s already informed us that she’s seen the payment details for Isla and Jacob’s flights. Both tickets were paid for on a credit card registered to Isla Berry. Her flight was booked nine weeks ago, and Jacob’s was paid for two hours before the plane departed.
I’m aware of Nick pacing somewhere behind me. He’s speaking in a low voice – whether to himself or to me, I can’t be sure. What I am thinking is: Isla cradled Jacob as a baby, laying him across her fore
arm while stroking his back to ease his wind. She took him blackberry picking, bringing him home with his lips stained purple, blackberries squished into the tiny pockets of his shorts. She cried in his first nativity play when he said his one line, sounding like the proudest innkeeper that Bethlehem had ever seen. She made up fantastical stories, Jacob and Marley always the heroes, as the boys sat entranced on her lap. It’s not possible that she and Jacob have become … lovers.
I breathe out hard, casting my eyes upwards. Hooked to the wall next to our bookshelf, I see Jacob’s binoculars. Something catches in my thoughts. In a flash, I’m reaching up for them. I flick off the lens cap and step out on to the deck. The wind snatches the door and it flings open, smacking against the side of the hut. Inside the tea towels are blown from the side, the kitchen roll flutters and Jacob’s birthday cards fly to the ground. Nick strides across the hut, glaring at me. He yanks the door closed.
I press the binoculars to my eyes, then follow the direction Jacob had been looking in the last time I’d seen him using the binoculars. I’d assumed he was staring at Caz, who was sitting on the shoreline between two boys, but now I remember that Isla was standing at the sea’s edge talking to Joe and Binks after her swim.
Jacob had been watching Isla, not Caz.
It was Isla he was in love with.
Did she know?
Did she love him, too, and that’s why she’d let him join her in Chile? Is that why she isn’t answering our calls?
A wave of nausea pushes through me and I let the binoculars hang from my neck as I reach for the railing, gripping it tightly with both hands, the wood coarse beneath my palms.
For years I’ve worn myself ragged worrying that Nick has been in love with Isla. I became obsessed by it, the idea flaming bright like a wicked heat singeing the edges of our marriage. Yet it isn’t my husband who is in love with her: it is my son.
The first drops of rain fall, plump and heavy. Nick watches from the window, his thumb joint tapping against his collarbone, making hollow thuds. I lean back into the sofa, placing the heel of my hands against my eye sockets. I know almost nothing about Chile. When Isla first travelled there, I searched out the country on a world map and was intrigued by the narrow strip of land that wound almost the entire length of the western coast of South America. It’s so vast and huge and unknown to me, that I feel dizzy at the knowledge that Jacob is somewhere within it.