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