Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Lucy Clarke 2017

Cover design by Heike Schüssler © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover photographs © Mary Schannen/Trevillion Images (children, beach); Hayden

Verry/Arcangel Images (beach huts); Naomi Roe/EyeEm/Getty Images (sky).

Lucy Clarke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007563388

Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780007563395

Version: 2018-07-17

Dedication

To Darcy Wren, the newest addition to the family.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

1. Sarah

2. Isla

3. Sarah

4. Isla

5. Sarah

6. Isla

7. Sarah

8. Sarah

9. Isla

10. Sarah

11. Isla

12. Sarah

13. Isla

14. Sarah

15. Sarah

16. Isla

17. Sarah

18. Isla

19. Sarah

20. Isla

21. Sarah

22. Isla

23. Sarah

24. Isla

25. Sarah

26. Sarah

27. Isla

28. Sarah

29. Sarah

30. Isla

31. Sarah

32. Isla

33. Sarah

34. Sarah

35. Sarah

36. Isla

37. Isla

38. Sarah

39. Isla

40. Sarah

41. Sarah

42. Isla

43. Sarah

44. Isla

45. Sarah

46. Isla

47. Sarah

48. Isla

49. Sarah

50. Isla

51. Sarah

52. Isla

53. Sarah

54. Sarah

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

Chilling, gripping, and utterly compulsive, Lucy Clarke’s new novel is unmissable

A Q&A with Lucy Clarke

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Lucy Clarke

About the Publisher

Prologue

Salt water burns the back of my throat as I surface, coughing. My legs kick frantically, trying to propel me nearer the boat. The hull is close, whale-sized, solid. I lash out, white fingertips clawing at the side, but there’s nothing to grip and I go under again, mouth open, briny water shooting up my nose.

Suddenly there’s an iron hand around my arm, pulling, dragging me upwards. My kneecap smashes against the side of the boat as I’m hauled on board, a pool of water spilling from me. I blink salt water and tears from my eyes, staring into a face half hidden by a beard. A dark gaze meets mine; the man speaks quickly, asking questions, draping a blanket over my shoulders.

I say nothing. My whole body shakes beneath the stiff fabric.

I look down at my feet. They are pressed together, white, bloodless, impossibly pale. Beyond them, stacked in the centre of the boat, is a tower of briny, dark cages, where lobsters writhe, tails and claws snapping and clacking.

‘What happened?’ the man asks over and over, his voice sounding distant as if it’s an echo in my head.

I don’t answer – won’t take my eyes off the lobsters. They are not red as you see them in pictures, but black and shining, huge claws flecked with white. Can they breathe out of the sea, I wonder? Aren’t they drowning, right now, here in front of me? I want to throw them back into the water, watch them swim down to the sea bed. Their antennae quiver and flit as we motor towards the shallows.

There’s a sudden roar of a boat engine close by. My head snaps up in time to see a blur of orange flashing past: the lifeboat. For the first time I notice the small crowd gathered on the shoreline. My fingers dig into the blanket as I realize: they are looking for us.

Both of us.

I am shaking so hard my teeth clatter in my head. I look down at my hands, then slide them beneath my thighs. I know everything is different now. Everything has changed.

1. SARAH
DAY ONE, 6.15 A.M.

In the distance I can hear the light wash of waves folding on to shore. I lie still, eyes closed, but I can sense the dawn light filtering into the beach hut, slipping beneath the blinds ready to pull me into the new day. But I’m not ready. An uneasy feeling slides through my stomach.

I reach out to find Nick’s side of the bed empty, the sheet cool. He’s in Bristol, I remember. He has his pitch this morning. He left last night with a slice of birthday cake pressed into his hand. At that point Jacob was still smiling about the presents he’d been given for his seventeenth birthday. Nick has no idea what happened later.

A low flutter of panic beats in my chest: Will Jacob tell him?

I push myself upright in bed, my thoughts snapping and firing now. I can still feel the vibrations of Jacob’s footsteps storming across the beach hut, then the gust of air as the door slammed behind him, his birthday cards gliding to the ground like falling birds. I’d picked them up, carefully replacing each of them, until I reached the last – a homemade card with a photo glued to the front. I’d gripped its edges, imagining the satisfying tear of paper beneath my fingertips. I had made myself return it to the shelf, rearranging the cards so it was placed at the back.

I listen for the sound of Jacob’s breathing, waiting to catch the light hum of a snore – but all I can hear are the waves at the door. I straighten, fully alert now. Did I hear him come in last night? It’s impossible to sneak into the beach hut quietly. The door has to be yanked open where the wooden frame has swollen with rain; the sofa bed has to be skirted around in the dark; the wooden ladder to the mezzanine, where Jacob sleeps, creaks as it is climbed; and then there’s the slide and shuffle of his knees when he crawls to the mattress in the eaves.

Pulling back the covers, I clamber from the bed. In the dim haze I scan the tidy square of the beach hut for clues of my son: there are no trainers kicked off by the door; no jumper tossed on the sofa; no empty glasses or plates left on the kitchen counter, nor dusting of crumbs. The hut is immaculate, neat, just as I left it.

I ignore the faint pulse of pain in my head as I cross the beach hut in three steps, climbing the base of the ladder. It’s dark in the mezzanine – I’d pulled the blind over the porthole window and made Jacob’s bed before going to sleep myself. Usually the distinctive fug of a teenage boy lingers up here, but this morning the heaped body of my son is absent, the duvet smooth.

I squeeze my eyes shut and swear under my breath. What did I expect?

I don’t know why I let it happen, not on his birthday. I shouldn’t have risen to his challenge. I went too far. We both did. Diffuse, not antagonise, Nick is fond of telling me. (Thank you, Nick. I’d never have thought of that myself.)

When Jacob was little, Nick would always ask my opinion on what Jacob needed, how best to dress a cut on his knee, or whether he could do with a nap, or what he might prefer to eat. But, in the last few years, my confidence in knowing what my son needs has slipped away. In his company, I often find myself at an utter loss as to what to say – asking too many questions, or not the right ones. On the odd occasion that Jacob does confide in me, I feel like a desert-walker who has come across a freshwater lake, thirsting for closeness.

Last night, as Jacob swung round to face me, I couldn’t think what to say, what to do. Maybe it was because seventeen is like a line in the sand; he’d just stepped over it into adulthood – but I wasn’t ready. Maybe that’s why I said the things I did, trying to pull him back to me.

I descend the ladder now, feeling the full weight of my headache kicking in. I’m sure Jacob will have stayed out with his friends – he’ll probably roll in at mid-morning, a hangover worsening his mood. Yet still, I feel the tentacles of panic reaching, feeling their way through my chest.

Coffee. That’s what I need. I pump water into the kettle, then light the hob, listening to the rush of gas. As I wait for the water to boil, I have a strange, uncomfortable sensation that this is going to be my life one day: just me, alone, making coffee for one. It makes sweat prickle underarm, dread loosening my insides.

I reach out and snap on the battery-powered radio. A song blares into the hut – Jacob and I are always having radio wars, he switching it from Radio 4 to a station he likes, knowing I’ve still not learnt how to use the Memory button, so I must manually retune it to find my station again. But this morning, I like the noise and the thrash of guitars. I’ll leave it on. That way, when he comes back it’ll be playing.

Once I’ve made myself a coffee, I use the rest of the hot water to wash my face. There’s a toilet block nearby, but the sinks are usually mapped with sand or the white trails of spat-toothpaste. Diane and Neil next door have installed a water tank beneath their hut, and rigged up a heater from their solar panels so they can have hot running water at the flick of the tap. Isla thinks it’s an extravagance – another sign of the beach huts becoming too gentrified – but I’d laughed and said I’d be adding that to Nick’s To Do list.

I pat my face dry, then move to the windows, pulling up the blinds. Sea, sky and morning light spill into the hut and my breathing immediately softens. The early sun lies low to the horizon, the glassy sea tamed beneath it.

Stepping out on to the deck, the air is fresh and salted. I love this time of day before the breeze picks up and stirs white caps, when the light is soft against the water and the sand is empty of footprints. If Nick were here, he’d take his daily swim before leaving for the office, but right now he’ll be waking in a hotel room. I picture him shaving off the weekend’s stubble in a windowless en suite, then making an instant coffee with one of those silly miniature kettles. I don’t feel sorry that he’s there; he thrives on that kick of adrenalin that will be firing through him as he runs through the pitch for a final time, making sure he’s got just the right blend of humour, professionalism and hard facts. He’ll be brilliant, I know he will. His agency is pitching for the print advertising for a confectionery company that he’s been wooing for months. I’m keeping everything crossed for him. I know how much Nick needs it.

How much we need it.

Standing at the edge of the deck, I glance across to Isla’s hut. It stands shoulder to shoulder with ours – exactly five feet between them. In the summer that our boys turned seven, Jacob and Marley had fastened sheets above the shaded pathway running between the huts, calling it their Secret Sand Tunnel. Their games usually involved wanting to be in the water, or making dens in the wooded headland at the far end of the sandbank, so Isla and I were delighted to have them playing close by where we could hear the soft murmur of their chatter through the wooden walls of our huts, like mice in the eaves of a home.

In the clear morning light, I notice how tired Isla’s hut looks. The plywood shutters, which were hurriedly fixed across the windows last night, give the air of eviction, and the deck is empty of her faded floral sun-chair and barbecue. Several planks of decking are beginning to rot, mould lining the grooves. The yellow paintwork of the hut is peeling and flaking, and the sight saddens me, remembering how bright and vivid her hut was the first year she owned it – sherbet lemon yellow, she called the colour.

I feel my throat closing. Everything felt so fresh at the beginning. That first summer we met, I remember my father asking hopefully, ‘Is there a boy?’

I’d laughed. In a way, meeting Isla was like falling in love. We wanted to spend every free moment together. We would call each other after school, and have long, laughter-filled conversations that made my cheeks ache from smiling so hard, and my ear pink from being pressed close to the phone. My exercise books were filled with doodles of her name, and I’d find ways to bring her into conversation, just so she would feel present and real to me. Our friendship burst to life like a butterfly shedding its chrysalis: together we were bright and beautiful and soaring.

What happened to those two girls?

You didn’t want me here, Isla hissed last night before leaving to catch her flight.

I wondered if I’d feel guilty this morning. Regret the things I’d said to her.

I pull my shoulders back. I don’t.

I’m relieved she’s gone.

2. ISLA

It was so close to being perfect.

We were best friends.

We spent our summers living on a sandbank in beach huts next door to one another.

We fell pregnant in the same year – and gave birth to sons three weeks apart.

Our boys grew up together with the beach as their playground.

It seemed impossible, back then, to imagine that anything could come between us.

Yet perfect is a high spire to dance on – and below there’s nothing but a very long drop …

Summer 1991

A strong briny scent rose from the stacks of blackened lobster pots, where a flock of starlings hopped and chattered, iridescent feathers catching in the sunlight. At the harbour edge, the water gurgled and slopped. Sarah crouched down and dipped her forefinger into the water, then brought it to her lips and sucked it. She thought for a moment, then said, ‘Notes of engine oil, fish guts and swan shit.’

I grinned. I’d known Sarah for precisely one hour and forty-five minutes, but already we were friends. She had a good laugh – mischievous and surprisingly loud – yet there was something almost apologetic about the way she lifted a hand to her mouth as if to contain it.

Right now we were meant to be crammed into a sweltering studio taking part in a week-long drama workshop. I had my mum’s Reiki clients to blame for losing a whole week of the summer holidays; Sarah said she’d signed herself up as it was better than being at home. During the first break, we’d sat on the sun-warmed steps outside, drinking cans of Cherry Coke, and decided we wouldn’t be going back indoors.

Sarah placed her hands on the railings. Her bitten fingernails were painted pink, the polish faded at the edges. She looked across the water to the golden stretch of sand ahead of us. ‘Where’s that?’

‘Longstone Sandbank.’ It was flanked by a meandering natural harbour on one side, and on the other by the open sea. ‘You’ve never been?’

She shook her head. ‘We only moved here a month ago. Is it an island?’

‘Almost.’ The sandbank was no more than half a mile long, and was separated from the quay by a fast-moving channel of water. Dotted along its spine were a rabble of brightly coloured wooden beach huts. I always thought it looked as though the sandbank had tried its hardest to escape the mainland – and it had succeeded, except for the slimmest touch of land still tethering it to a wooded headland at its far end.

‘How do you get there?’

‘By boat,’ I said, nodding towards the ferry that was bobbing across the harbour, orange fenders strapped to its sides. The engine growled against the running tide as it motored towards the quayside. We watched as the round-faced captain leant out to loop a rope around a thick wooden post.

‘Wanna go there?’ I asked.

Sarah’s green eyes glittered as they met mine. ‘Yes.’

We climbed on to the wooden boat, handing the captain our fifty-pence pieces, and moved to the bench at the back. Kneeling up on the seat, we rested our chins on top of folded arms so we could watch the wake the ferry created as it pulled away.

I glanced across at Sarah. The sun illuminated her clear, smooth face, and the delicate curve of her small mouth. She grinned at me. ‘Who knew drama club would be so much fun?’

The ferry crossing only took a few minutes and we hopped from the boat and moved down the rickety jetty, our sandals clanking against the wooden planks. Reaching the beach, Sarah’s gaze flitted over the huts as she exclaimed, ‘They’re like little houses. Look! They have proper kitchens – and beds!’

‘You can sleep in them during the summer,’ I told her, pointing out a hut with a wooden ladder leading up to a mezzanine. ‘Imagine waking up here!’

A low, rhythmic boom hinted at the sea that lay on the other shore of the sandbank, so we left the harbour behind and squeezed between two huts, stepping over a set of oars and skirting a deflated dinghy. Immediately the breeze was stronger, blown onshore in salty gusts. Whitecaps ducked and dived, driving small waves to break on the shore. Rocky groynes punctuated the beach, creating a series of small bays.

We kicked off our shoes and walked with our arms linked, tramping through the thick, warm sand. Sarah was a head shorter than me, but she walked with long strides and our steps fell into an easy rhythm. There were pockets of activity everywhere: two young girls buckled into life jackets were dragging a kayak to the shore; an older woman standing in the shallows threw a stick for a muscular, bounding dog; a man in a panama hat struggled to put up a windbreak in the fine sand, using a pebble for a hammer. We passed a family eating brunch at a picnic table, their bare feet dug into the sand, a pile of napkins secured from the breeze by a large pebble. At the hut next door a group of teenage boys lounged bare-chested and tanned, two guitars leant against sun-chairs. I nudged Sarah in the ribs and she smiled into her chin.

Surprisingly, many of the huts were closed, their blinds drawn. I wondered where their owners were – what they could possibly be doing that was better than being here. They looked odd, those shuttered huts, secretive shadows in the brilliant midday sun.

After some time, a craggy headland ended the row of huts and the beach thinned as it wrapped around crumbling sandstone cliffs. We scrambled over a rocky groyne that separated one deserted bay from the next, and walked on the shoreline, avoiding the dark piles of seaweed flagging on the sand.

Sarah paused, turning to face me. ‘Shall we swim?’

I glanced around us; the bay was empty, the water a tantalizing blue. I grinned as I wriggled out of my T-shirt and cut-offs, leaving me in mismatched underwear.

Sarah shrugged off her dress, grabbed my hand, and together we ran towards the water.

My breath caught at the first grip of cold around my ankles. Sarah squealed as a rush of white water engulfed our middles. When a wave came, I dived through it, cold squeezing a scream from my lungs. Beneath the water I glided, the rest of the world closing out. My skin came alive with the bite of the sea, the sting of the salt.

When there was no more air left in my lungs, I broke through the surface, hair slick to my head. The sea fizzed and breathed around me.

Sarah was laughing with her head tipped back.

We let the sea toy with us – lifting us up, then sucking us back with each shelf of water.

‘Let’s catch this wave,’ I said, paddling for a small peak and trying to bodysurf into shore, but I wasn’t quick enough and it passed beneath me. I trod water waiting for the next and, when it came, we both kicked feverishly whilst striking out with our arms. We were rewarded as the wave propelled us forwards, Sarah whooping as we travelled. The wave broke early in a charge of foam and we were sent flailing, legs tangled about arms like rag dolls. I felt myself rolled along the sea bed, my underwear flimsy protection against the ride, and we both surfaced gasping and laughing. We waded out, staggering up the beach.

An older boy with thick dark hair, who I hadn’t noticed earlier, was fishing on the rocks at the edge of the bay. He watched us closely, his gaze both serious and curious. I glanced sideways at Sarah and found she was staring right back at him.

I shivered. We didn’t have towels, so we stood with our arms outstretched to salute the sun, like my mother did in her yoga practice.

Looking towards the beach huts, they seemed like tiny colourful homes whispering of sun-swept holidays. High on adrenalin and the bloom of a new friendship, I announced, ‘One day I’m going to buy a beach hut. I’ll fill it with books and candles and board games and music – and I won’t leave all summer.’

‘Except when you walk over to my beach hut,’ Sarah added. ‘Because I’m going to buy the one next door.’

It was a girl’s wish, that’s all. Beach huts next door, long summers spent on a sandbank.

But neither of us could know that our lightly cast dream would come true – or what it would cost us both.

3. SARAH
DAY ONE, MIDDAY

I wait until midday before I call Jacob; it gives him long enough to sleep off the worst of his hangover, and enough time to feel he’s proved a point by not returning to the beach hut. When I pick up my mobile, I see that I missed a call from Isla last night. There’s no message and I wonder vaguely if she was ringing to apologize.

I scroll to Jacob’s number, press call, and then hold the mobile to my ear, my fingers drumming the kitchen counter.

Oddly, there’s no ring tone – just a recorded voice informing me that they’re unable to connect me, and I should try again later.

Jacob would never switch off his phone. His mobile is like a fifth limb, which he uses with an instinctiveness that eludes me completely. He can point his phone to the sky and name star constellations, or take over the car stereo with a swipe of the screen. It’s unlikely he’s got no signal either, as everywhere on the sandbank is in range. I suppose it’s possible that he’s run out of battery, although we all charge our phones from an attachment that Nick rigged up from the solar panels.

I wonder what to do now. I don’t like the idea of stewing in the beach hut, waiting for him to return. I keep replaying our argument, pausing on the narrowness of Jacob’s dark gaze, and the way he’d yanked his rucksack from the floor, then slammed the beach hut door so hard that the panes of glass rattled in their frames. I’d gone to the window, pressing my fingertips against the cool glass. The beach was in darkness, except for the lantern of a night-fisherman setting up for the evening and the glow of Neil’s boat going out, and I’d watched Jacob slide away into the night, a stranger to me.

What happened to the little boy I used to hold in my arms as a baby, with his inquisitive brown gaze that fixed on mine, the button nose that wrinkled when I made him laugh? It had been so much easier then. There were fewer mistakes to make.

I pick up my mobile again, passing it from hand to hand. Part of me is desperate to call Nick and tell him what’s going on, but he’ll still be in the pitch and, anyway, if I tell him that Jacob’s stayed out overnight, he’ll want to know why.

No, I need to handle this myself.

I slip the phone into my pocket, then leave the hut.

Luke’s beach hut is on the harbour side of the sandbank, near the wooden jetty where the ferry docks. I’ve known his parents for years: they are a lovely couple, both GPs, who take on gruelling schedules. Luke is the youngest of four brothers and I think, by now, his parents’ rules have relaxed so greatly that Luke spends the majority of the summer in the beach hut on his own.

A shining cloud of starlings rises from a hut roof as I pass, wings beating a bewitching pattern in the sunlight.

As I near Luke’s hut I pull my sunglasses down and go to smooth my hair back – forgetting I’ve recently had it cut so it now rests just above my shoulders. The space where it has always hung down my back feels strangely exposed, naked. Nick assures me he likes the change, but I worry I look too severe, the blonde bob sharpening my features.

Luke is sitting on the deck in his board shorts, opposite a girl who wears a black bikini, her skin tanned and tight. I glance beyond them, inside the dim hut, and can make out a cluster of young people sprawled across the sofas. I have no intention of embarrassing Jacob with a lecture about why he didn’t come home last night – I simply want to see him, know he’s okay.

‘Luke!’ I smile, lifting a hand.

He sits up a little straighter, squinting. ‘All right?’

He’s turning into a handsome young man, with his thick sandy blond hair and an open smile. ‘Good party?’

‘Yeah,’ he says, getting slowly to his feet. He climbs down from the deck and stands on the beach, leaning a hand on a weathered picnic bench as he squints against the sun. I don’t flatter myself that he’s come to greet me – he just doesn’t want me to enter the hut. It’s a space for teenagers, not mothers.

Up a little closer, it’s clear he’s hung-over. He’s got that glazed look, and a slumped, low energy, as if everything is a little too bright, a touch too vivid. His hair sticks up at one side of his head, and his eyes are bloodshot. I can smell the alcohol fumes rising from his pores. ‘Jacob still here?’

‘Jacob?’ he repeats, surprised.

‘He didn’t stay here last night?’

‘No.’ Luke glances back inside the hut, my gaze following his. Through the gaggle of teenagers I spot empty cans of beer, bottles of spirits, cigarette butts. I notice a plastic drinks bottle with the nose cut off and tin foil wrapped around one end of it, and can guess what they’ve been using it for.

I keep my tone light. ‘He did come to the party?’

‘Yeah, course. It was for him.’

Jacob has always dismissed any suggestion of a birthday party, which is why I was thrilled this year when he said he was going to Luke’s hut for drinks. I offered to buy some beers for them, and a few packs of burgers in case they were hungry later, but he said, ‘It’s sorted.’ Which meant, Don’t interfere.

Despite myself, I ask, ‘What time did he leave?’

Luke rubs the heel of his hand across the side of his head. ‘I dunno. Maybe around eleven, I guess.’

Early – especially as it was a party for him.

‘He said he was gonna come back here.’

Then I realize. I smile lightly as I say, ‘I should probably be looking for him in Caz’s hut, shouldn’t I?’

One of the young men in the hut adds with a smirk, ‘Maybe they were making up!’

Luke narrows his eyes at the boy.

I want to ask more, but instead I say, ‘Cheers, Luke.’

Cheers? I never say cheers.

I leave the hut feeling like an idiot. Of course Jacob will be at Caz’s hut! Robert, her father, must be away.

As far as I can intuit, Jacob and Caz have been a couple since the start of summer. I’ve known Caz since she was a little girl. She’s always been pretty – petite and blonde with sharp green eyes – and I’ve watched her bloom into a confident, beautiful young woman, but there’s a knowingness in her eyes that doesn’t escape me. Earlier in the summer I’d come across the pair of them lying on a rug by the shore, listening to music. A song they both knew was playing loudly and Caz began to sing. I was surprised to see Jacob joining in at the chorus. Their singing grew louder and more raucous as they half shouted the lyrics, nodding their heads, laughing together, the sun on their faces. Caz had jumped to her feet, the rug becoming her stage as she danced and sang. Jacob pulled out his phone and snapped pictures, Caz posing with a hand on her hip, laughing, pouting. As I watched, a spike of doubt stabbed the scene: Do not hurt my son.

As I’m walking away from Luke’s hut, I catch one of the girls saying, ‘Caz was a total mess.’

I slow my pace enough to catch someone else adding, ‘He didn’t need to march her out. She was just having fun.’

I strain to hear the rest, but the conversation swims away from me. Did Jacob have to help Caz back to her hut? Was she so drunk that he didn’t want to leave her? I like the idea of my son being the responsible one.

Caz’s hut is at the furthest end of the sandbank, near the headland. The walk from one tip of the sandbank to the other should only take fifteen minutes, but in summer it feels like you can’t go more than ten paces without a hut owner calling out a greeting, or inviting you in for a drink. I have to pass our beach hut on the way, so I pop my head in briefly just to check Jacob hasn’t returned in the meantime. I’m not surprised to find it empty still.

As I’m moving on, I notice Diane, our next-door beach hut neighbour, standing on her deck. Despite the warmth of the day, a navy fleece is zipped to her chin. She stands with her hands planted on her hips, staring out into the bay where her husband, Neil, is boarding his boat.

‘Neil going fishing?’ I ask.

She looks at me for a long moment. ‘The boat’s been dinged. He’s checking the damage.’

‘Oh, what happened?’

‘No idea.’

Neil will be on the warpath, then. The boat is his pride and joy. He spends more time tinkering with it than fishing from it.

Although Diane and Neil have owned the hut next door for over ten years, I’ve always found it disappointing that we’ve never grown close. Nick and Neil sink the odd beer around the barbecue – but I just can’t imagine sitting out late on the deck sharing a bottle of wine with Diane. I honestly don’t know what we’d talk about.

I ask, ‘You haven’t seen Jacob this morning, have you?’

Diane looks at me through the corners of her eyes. ‘Jacob? Why? Is something wrong?’

‘He didn’t come home last night,’ I say with a loose wave of my fingers, as if it is no big deal.

There’s something odd about the way her gaze travels searchingly over my face. ‘No. I’ve not seen him.’

‘He’s probably at his girlfriend’s.’

Her gaze still doesn’t leave me. ‘I do hope so.’

It’s an odd remark – although perhaps not in the context of Diane. As I move on, I think that, if Diane were one of my other friends with teenagers, I’d already be turning this into an anecdote: Jacob stayed out all night on his birthday. He didn’t bother to text, didn’t answer his mobile the next morning – nothing! I was in a total panic. I found him eventually – with his girlfriend, of course! I can picture the other mums doing that reassuring little roll of their eyes, which means: teenagers.

I’m a good sharer among friends; I trade just the right balance of lamentable parenting tales, with the occasional golden highlight thrown in for good measure: Jacob cooked for us all yesterday. Spaghetti bolognese. Without being asked. I had to stop myself demanding to know what he’d done.

But I am careful not to share everything. For example, it’s only Nick and I who know that Jacob’s head of sixth form called us in halfway through the term to talk about Jacob’s poor attendance. My hands trembled as I left the office. ‘Truancy? Where’s he been going? Do you think something is wrong?’

Nick had slung his arm around my shoulder, just like he used to do when we were younger, and said with a grin, ‘I seem to remember you and Isla bunking off your drama classes.’

‘That was different. It wasn’t school.’

Nick only grinned more.

I also didn’t tell my friends how Jacob broke two toes in the spring. He didn’t injure them in a skateboarding accident, but because he’d kicked the skirting board in our hallway when I’d told him he was too young to go to Glastonbury with his friends.

Just before I reach Caz’s hut, I become aware of Isaac at the periphery of my vision. He’s crossing the beach, his gaze fixed on me. I keep my eyes lowered, pretending not to notice him.

‘Sarah!’ he calls.

I flinch at the sound of my name from his mouth – but I don’t turn.

I can hear his footsteps hurrying through the sand. Heat suffuses my skin as I march on.

‘Sarah! Wait!’ he calls when he is almost at my shoulder.

I have no choice but to turn. ‘Oh, Isaac! I was miles away.’ I keep pace as I say, ‘Sorry, I can’t stop. Meeting Jacob. Already late!’

It’s a lie, of course, but at least Isaac doesn’t say anything further. From the corner of my eye, I see him hesitate. He looks anxious, his hands fluttering at his sides. Then thankfully he nods his head and lets me go.

Caz and Robert’s hut, painted a fresh sky blue, is raised slightly above the neighbouring ones. I scan the harbour to see if I can spot Robert’s boat – a large grey RIB with an oversized engine (which, to me, screams Penis extension!). I can’t see it moored up today, which most likely means he isn’t on the sandbank.

I call out as I climb the wooden steps leading on to the deck, not wishing to surprise Caz and Jacob if they’re together. I find Caz curled into the sofa with her headphones on, eyes closed. Her clear skin is deeply tanned, and her hair, bleached to a white-blonde, looks wild and mussed. I glance beyond her, looking for traces that my son is here. I suppose he could have left by now, deciding to see one of his friends, or to take a walk up on the headland. I am turning to leave when Caz’s eyes suddenly flick open. She sits up, startled, yanking off her headphones. There’s a red mark across her cheek from where she’s been lying, and I notice a slight glassiness to her eyes.

‘Sorry, I just came to see if—’

‘I was just … going out.’

‘Out?’

‘To catch up with a friend.’ Caz puts a hand to her head and ruffles her hair around her face.

I hover in the doorway, giving no indication of leaving.

‘I’ve got a minute though.’

I move into the hut, lowering myself on to the sofa opposite her. I take in the cream tongue-and-groove panelling, the expensive striped navy blinds, the antique barometer fixed above the sink. Caz’s mother decorated the hut before she left Robert to live in Spain with the manager of the timeshare she owned. I’ve not been in the hut since she left and I’m reminded how serene the view of the harbour is on a still day; only sailing boats and sea birds dot the water, the fishing quay visible in the distance. I do enjoy crossing to the harbour side of the sandbank to watch the sun go down in the evenings, yet it’s the sea view that I love; it’s wilder, more exposed.

‘Want a drink?’ Caz offers half-heartedly.

‘Thank you, but no. I was just passing and wanted to catch Jacob. But obviously he’s not here.’

‘No.’

‘He stayed last night, didn’t he?’

She shakes her head. ‘No.’

The word is clear and firm. It drops like a pebble into my chest, causing a ripple of panic. Then, where did he stay?

I look closely at Caz, wondering whether she is telling me the truth. She is perched on the edge of the sofa, as if she’s about to spring up – disappear. Perhaps she thinks I’d be cross if she admitted that Jacob spent the night. She reaches a hand to her left ear lobe, toying with a silver earring she wears in the shape of a seahorse. I watch as she turns it lightly through her fingers, over and over, like a rosary bead, and then removes it. She does the same with the second earring, placing them both on top of a pile of Coast magazines that are stacked neatly on the rustic coffee table between us.

I have the strongest desire to reach out for the earrings, feel the warm weight of the silver in my palm. I keep my focus on Caz though, asking, ‘Do you know where he is?’

‘No. No, I don’t.’

‘But you saw him at the party last night?’

‘Yeah, for a bit.’

‘I heard you left together.’

Colour spreads up Caz’s neck. ‘Oh, yeah. That’s right. We walked back together.’

‘But Jacob didn’t stay here?’

‘No,’ she says tightly.

‘Where did he stay?’

She sighs, exasperated now. ‘Look, we walked back along the beach. Stopped by the rocks near his hut to talk for a bit. Then I came back here. That’s it.’

‘Was he planning to return to the party?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

I think of the conversation I overheard in Luke’s hut – Caz was a ‘mess’ and Jacob practically had to ‘march her out’. ‘Did the two of you argue?’ I picture Caz standing close with one of the other boys at the party, looking up through her long lashes, while Jacob waited at the edge of the hut, watching.

It’s clear I’ve overstepped the mark by the way Caz lifts her chin and glares at me. ‘Jacob wasn’t in a brilliant mood last night.’ She pauses. ‘I’m sure you know.’

The comment, delivered so innocuously, holds a clear accusation. Heat builds in my cheeks as I wonder what exactly Jacob told her.

Caz’s barbed remark seems to have returned her composure, set her on some ledge above me that I didn’t know we were vying for. She uncrosses her bare legs and stands. There is an empty glass on the coffee table, and she collects it, carrying it towards the sink. ‘If I see Jacob, I’ll be sure to let him know you’re looking for him.’

I’m about to rise to my feet, but my gaze catches again on the silver seahorse earrings, lying right there in front of me.

As Caz fills her water glass, I stand, and as I do so I find my fingertips brushing the earrings. I tell myself I am only looking. I just want to see the detail of them. Touch them once. But, before I can stop myself, I feel my fingers closing tightly around them.

I feel the burst of energy filling my chest, the heat roaring through me.

Caz turns to look at me.

I meet her eye, smile. Then I leave her beach hut, heart thudding.

4. ISLA

My thoughts wander back through the events of this summer, turning each one through my mind, like a collection of pebbles I’m trying to arrange. I need to understand how I’m here. How any of this happened. Where everything went wrong between Sarah and me.

There was an evening jog in the mosquito-clouded air; a bottle of wine shared in the wrong beach hut; a stinging remark made on the deck of Sarah’s hut; a photo removed from a wall. Were those some of the events that led to this?

It wasn’t just this summer when things began to unravel – the first thread came loose years before. I meander further back through deep sands and beneath cloudy, salt-bitten skies, pausing on a boat returning to shore with only one boy on deck – not two.

There. That is the moment.

Maybe there’s a sense of inevitability, because how do you recover, pick up your friendship, after something like that?

Yet there was a time when Sarah was everything to me. When she was my family. Back then, I thought nothing could break us.

Summer 1997

My knees were pressed against the metal frame of my mother’s hospital bed, my hands squeezing hers. I was scared: scared by the smell of decay in the thick, still air; scared by the lightness of my mother’s fragile, bony fingers that had once danced with silver rings; scared by her tissue-thin eyelids that hadn’t opened in two days; scared by the watery rasp of her breath that dragged through her body like the tide drawing over rocks. I wanted to pull my hands away, clamp them over my ears. I wanted to run. I wanted to be anywhere but in the curtained space of a Macmillan ward watching my mother dying.

This could not be it. I wasn’t ready.

Our life together was walking at night through the woodland that backed on to our bungalow. It was reading books in front of the fire, me lying on the faded rug, my mother sitting in the oak rocking chair. It was picking elderflower heads and making thick sweet cordial that we stored in glass bottles in the pantry. It was strangers coming in and out of the house for Reiki appointments and reflexology. It was the smell of lavender and rosehip and orange blossom. It was the sound of laughter.

Cancer is a wicked thief. In four short months it had stolen almost everything my mother had: her energy, the songs she used to sing, the quickness in her steps. I’d watched her fade away until all that was left was her shadow. I knew the thief wouldn’t rest until it had that too, but I sat there, clinging on, not ready to let my mother go.

I squeezed her hand tightly, silently begging, I am nineteen years old. Don’t leave me, Mum. Please …

But she did.

She slipped away from me even while I was holding on.

A night-shift nurse with cropped black hair pulled the curtain back a little. Maybe that nurse had learnt to tell death from the expression on the living’s faces, or from the silencing of the hospital machines, or from that certain stillness that pervaded afterwards. She padded softly across the lino floor and gently placed her hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s all right, sweetie. You’re going to be all right.’

I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t let go of my mother.

I screwed my eyes shut and gripped tighter, already beginning to feel her fingers cooling within mine.

On the afternoon of my mother’s funeral, I stood in the hallway, watching people trampling across our rugs, smearing our glasses with their fingerprints, leaving their scents of perfume and aftershave lingering in our home – wiping away the final traces of my mother.

I squeezed into the kitchen, skirting a group of my mother’s yoga friends, searching for Sarah. She’d slept at the bungalow with me every night since my mother died; we’d grab a stack of blankets from the lounge and sit on the mildew-ridden swing-chair in the garden, smoking and talking. I had no siblings to grieve with, and my father – a Scottish chef who’d met my mother during a retreat – had never been a fixture in my life. Sarah was everything, now. It was easy being together because she’d loved my mother, too. She’d tried on wigs with us, striking silly poses in front of the shop mirror; she’d artfully wrapped bright scarves around my mother’s neck to hide the tumours that had spread there; she’d smoothed blusher across her cheekbones before hospital appointments. My mother called her ‘Sarah Sunshine’.

I saw her across the room carrying a tray of drinks, smiling, thanking people for coming – doing the things I hadn’t the heart to. Seeing me, she tapped the pocket of her trousers where I could make out the rectangular shape of a cigarette packet, then signalled towards the garden with a grin. A smoke outside. That’s exactly what I needed. We’d pull down the hood of the swing-chair and light up with our heads bent together, shutting out the rest of the world.

As I started to make my way across the lounge, a heavyset man with tufts of white hair sprouting from the crown of his head lowered himself into my mother’s rocking chair. The oak spindles protested beneath his weight as he rocked it back and forth, the back of the chair clipping the wall with each motion. He lifted a hand to his mouth, inserting a forefinger to work something loose from his teeth, flashing his thick pink tongue at the room. He sucked his finger clean, then drummed it against the polished arm of the rocker, leaving a glistening smear of his saliva on the wood.

My throat burned with red-hot outrage as I bellowed, ‘No!’

The room fell instantly silent. Every head swivelled in my direction.

‘Get out of my mother’s chair!’

The white-haired man looked horrified. His brow dipped uncertainly, shock making his mouth hang slack. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, apologizing. His eyes darted around the room, as if looking for someone to help him.

A hand wrapped around my arm. Heart thudding, I turned to find Sarah looking at me, worry etched in her high, pale forehead. ‘Isla?’

An enormous pressure was building within my chest. ‘I … I just … need to go.’

‘Okay,’ she told me. ‘Okay.’

I spun round, crossed the living room and raced along the hallway, bursting out of the back door. A blast of cool air hit me, and I ran with my head down, my red pumps flashing along the damp pavement in quick bursts of colour, like a heartbeat.

Some time later, I found myself at the quay, my dress stuck to the small of my back, my breath coming hard. I gripped the metal railing, sucking in the salt-tinged air.

The beach huts sat quietly on the distant sandbank, a comforting presence with their pastel-light colours cutting through the grey, rolling sky. When the harbour ferry arrived, I didn’t pause to think about the guests abandoned in my home, or worry that Sarah would be left to lock up; I simply climbed aboard.

Within minutes, I was standing on the shoreline of the sandbank before a grey, restless sea. Tears ran down my face, dripping from my chin into the neckline of my dress. I had no coat, not even a cardigan, and I could feel the cold beginning to seep into my bones as I hugged my arms around myself, shivering into my sobs. When the first drops of rain began to fall, I stood firm thinking I could outlast them – that I would dance in the face of the cold, of the rain, my grief burning like heat inside me – but after a few minutes, the dark romance of the idea waned, and I hurried for cover beneath the pitched wooden roof of a beach hut.

Sheltering from the rain, I noticed a handwritten advert was tacked to the window, the blue ink faded: Beach hut for sale.

I stepped back, considering the hut. It had once been painted a brilliant blue, but the paint had peeled and flaked over the years. In places the wood had rotted, and the deck I was standing on had moulded in the corners, long fingers of dune grass reaching up beneath the planks.

There was a small gap at the base of the blinds, and I pressed my face against the damp glass, peering in. Through the dimness, I could see the deckchairs, a barbecue and a windbreak cluttering the small space. A sun-bleached sofa bed was piled with a rabble of patterned cushions. Above it was a driftwood shelf that had been emptied of the previous owner’s belongings, hardened candlewax pooled in two spots. At the back of the hut there was a small kitchen area with an ancient gas oven and a two-ringed hob. An old wooden spice rack was tacked to the wall, and an array of mugs hung from hooks below it. The mismatch of colours and patterns reminded me of my mother’s bungalow – and I wanted it.

I wanted that beach hut more than I’d ever wanted anything.

I could picture it: the hut would be a place to retreat to; somewhere I could rebuild myself; a place where I could watch the weather moving across the horizon and begin to make fresh memories.

As I stood on the deck of that old hut with the roar of the sea at my ear and the fresh breath of salt air on my skin, the sandbank seemed to stretch around me, holding me tightly, anchoring me.

Back then, I had been certain that buying the beach hut was the right decision. I used the money from the sale of my mother’s bungalow, though everyone had told me I was mad. Keep the inheritance in brick-built property – not a beach hut! But I was nineteen. I didn’t want mortgage repayments, council tax bills, or responsibility. I wanted the sea. I wanted space. I wanted to do something for myself.

Summers I’d live in the beach hut. Winters I’d rent one of the cheap holiday lets that always stood empty in the winter months.

It was a plan. It was the best I could do.

‘Go for it!’ Sarah had said to me as we ate Chinese takeaway sitting on the floor of my mother’s bungalow, surrounded by boxes marked for charity shops. ‘That’s what your mother would have told you to do, isn’t it?’

I nodded because she was right.

I remember how Sarah had put down her plate and slung her arm around my shoulder, pulling me in close. ‘The beach hut will be a fresh start, Isla. It’s going to change everything.’

Sarah was right about that, too.

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