like.
We reach the gate where the track goes down past our cottage. Ours isn’t the only cottage here, but our neighbours are set far apart. At night we can see the lights from the other cottages’ windows, shining out against the dark hillside. Our cottage is closest to the sea.
“Look, there’s Mum. What’s she doing?” asks Conor suddenly.
Mum has climbed to the top of the stile opposite our cottage. She’s standing there, outlined against the light of the sunset. She strains forward, as if she’s looking for something.
“Something’s wrong,” says Conor. He drops his bike on the side of the track and starts to run. I drop mine too, but its handlebars get tangled up with Conor’s bike. I stop to sort out the bikes and prop them against the wall. I want to run to Mum, but I also don’t want to. I hang back. I have a cold feeling in my heart that tells me that Conor is right. Something is wrong. Something has happened.
This is when the long night begins. The longest night of my life so far, even though it’s summer and the nights are short.
None of us goes to bed. At first we all sit together in the kitchen, round the table, waiting. Sometimes I start to fall asleep. My head lolls and then I lurch out of sleep just before I tip off my chair. Mum doesn’t notice, and she doesn’t send me to bed. She watches the door as if any moment it will open, and Dad will be back.
“Dad often takes the boat out this late,” Conor keeps saying stubbornly, as the clock moves on. Ten o’clock. Eleven o’clock.
“Not like this,” says Mum. Her lips barely move. I know that she’s right, and so does Conor. Something’s wrong. When Dad goes fishing he usually goes with Badge or Pete. He does go on his own sometimes, but he never, ever just disappears without telling us where he’s going. We help him load up the boat and often we watch him go out on the tide.
But this time Dad has said nothing. He was working in the garden all afternoon. Mum heard him singing. She went to lie down for half an hour, because she was so tired from not sleeping the night before. She must have fallen asleep. When she woke the sun was low. She called to Dad, but no one answered. She went down the track and called again but everything was still. Our neighbour, Mary Thomas, came out.
“Is something wrong, Jennie?” she asked. “I heard you calling for Mathew.”
“No, nothing’s wrong,” said Mum. “It’s just I don’t know where he is. Maybe he’s working on the boat. I’ll go down to the mooring and check.”
Imagine Mum going all the way down to the cove, so near to the sea. She must have been scared, but she did it. She slipped on a rock as she climbed down, and cut her hand on mussel shells and got blood all over her jeans. She went down as far as she dared, until she could see that there was no boat tied up at the mooring place. The tide was high, just on the turn. Mum called and called again even though she was sure by now that Dad wasn’t there. She couldn’t stop herself calling.
“I had a feeling that Mathew was nearby. He was trying to get to me, but he couldn’t.”
Mum doesn’t tell us all this as we sit around the kitchen table. Much later that night, when she’s told us to go upstairs and get some sleep, we sit on the stairs and listen to her talking to Mary Thomas, telling her all the things she hasn’t told us – about calling Dad, and thinking he was nearby, but he couldn’t get to her.
Dawn comes, and Dad’s still not back. Mary Thomas is with Mum in the kitchen. Conor and I are still sitting on the stairs, waiting and listening. I must have fallen asleep, because suddenly I wake up with Conor’s arm round me. I’m stiff all over. My head hurts and the heavy frightened feeling inside is stronger than ever.
Mum said Dad would be back in the morning. But it’s morning now, and he’s not here. There’s a murmur of voices through the closed kitchen door, and we strain to make out what Mum’s saying.
“I don’t know what to do now, Mary!” she says, and we can hear the fear and panic in her voice. I wait for Mary to tell her to relax and calm down, because Dad’s been out in that boat a million times and no harm has ever come to him. But Mary doesn’t. Morning light creeps into our cottage, and Mary says, “Maybe we should call the coastguard now, Jennie.”
“Come on Saph,” says Conor. He stands up, and his face suddenly looks much older. We push through the kitchen doorway, and Mum stares at us as if she’s forgotten who we are. She looks awful.
Mary says to Conor, “I was saying to your mum, Conor, that maybe it’s time to call the coastguard now. It’s not like your father to go off like this and leave your mother worrying. There’s enough light to search by. If he’s out there fishing, there’s no harm done if the coastguard happens by. I’ll get the phone for you now, Jennie.”
Mum phones, and everything begins. Once it starts you can’t stop it. I’m still clinging to the hope that the police and the coastguard will say we’re being stupid to bother them. Take it easy, your dad’ll be fine. Wait a while and he’ll turn up. But they don’t.
The coastguard Jeep comes bouncing down the track. People talk into radios and mobiles. The police crowd into the kitchen, filling it with their uniforms.
Neighbours knock on the door. Mary goes out to talk to them, quietly, so that none of us will hear her telling the story over and over again. There are mugs of tea on the kitchen table, some empty, some half full. People start bringing sandwiches and cakes and biscuits until there’s so much food I think it’ll never get eaten I can’t eat anything. I try to swallow a biscuit and I choke, and Mum holds a glass of water to my mouth while I sip and splutter. Mum’s face is creased with fear and lack of sleep.
The old life of me and Dad and Mum and Conor has stopped like a clock. Another life has begun. I can hear it ticking: your dad has gone, your dad has gone, your dad has gone.
The sun shines brightly, and it’s getting warm. Conor stays downstairs with Mum but I go up to my bedroom and wrap the duvet tight around me and shut my eyes and try to bring Dad back. I shut out all the sounds of people in the kitchen below, and concentrate. If you love someone so much, how can he not hear you when you call to him?
“Dad,” I say, “Dad. Please. Please come home. Can you hear me, Dad? It’s me, Sapphy. I won’t let Mum be angry with you if you just come home.”
Nobody. Nothing. All I can hear is the rushing sound of my own blood, because the duvet is wrapped around my ears.
“Dad, please…”
I sit up, cold all over, and strain my ears for the two things I want to hear more than anything else in the world. One is the beating of Dad’s heart, as I heard it when he was carrying me down from the Midsummer Fire. The other is his voice rising up in the summer air, singing O Peggy Gordon.
O Peggy Gordon, you are my darling,
Come sit you down upon my knee…
My name’s not Peggy, I used to say when I was little. Come and sit on my knee anyway, Dad always answered, and he’d cup his hands under my elbows and swoop me up to sit on his lap and I would bounce and laugh and he would laugh back and bounce me higher and higher until Mum told him to stop before I was sick. But she wasn’t ever angry then. She was laughing too.
If only time would go back, like the tide. Back and back, past yesterday, past the night before. Back when the bonfire wasn’t lit, back to when none of this had happened. And then we could all start again…
The coastguard search up and down the coast, but they find nothing. All that day they search, all the next day and the one after. A helicopter comes down from the air-sea rescue. It flies low and hammers the air, searching coves and cliffs.
After two days Conor explains to me that they are now scaling down the search. He tells me what that means. It means that if Dad is in the sea, or on the cliffs, they don’t believe that they’ll find him safe any more. Too much time has