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 on the jetty, mud-streaked legs hanging towards the water, scoring the size of the crabs they caught. That was a nine and a half. Look at its claws. It could tear boats out of the sea.
‘He blames himself,’ Nick says.
My blood freezes. I’m not sure I’ve heard right.
‘He doesn’t talk about Marley, does he? But I’m certain he still thinks about him. Marley shaped his life. What other seventeen year old would happily use a pair of binoculars to study birds? He does it because it’s his link to Marley.’
‘He was ten,’ I say. My voice is a whisper.
‘I know. I know that. But Jacob probably feels guilty: he made it – Marley didn’t. Isn’t there some disorder that people who live through a tragedy can suffer?’
‘Survivor guilt,’ I say, having looked into it some time ago. Signs of it can include anxiety, depression and guilt, linked to an experience where an individual survived a traumatic event when others didn’t. ‘I don’t think Jacob suffers from it. He’s never struck me as depressed or particularly anxious.’
‘Maybe not, but then would we even know? Jacob’s not exactly a sharer, is he?’
‘We’d know,’ I say.
‘Has he talked to you about Marley recently?’
My mouth turns dry. I shake my head.
‘He hasn’t mentioned his name in front of me – not for a while. But then,’ Nick shakes his head, ‘I never bring up Marley. Maybe I should. Maybe we should both be talking about him more. We don’t want what happened to seem like something
