she left, she noticed several people on the town side of the beach, more than the normal morning dog walkers. Anneliese strained to see what was going on. There were definitely six or seven people gathered together on the high ground between the two bays and it was as if they were looking out to sea for something.
A boat. Oh no, she thought. A fisherman’s boat had gone missing. It was the awful fear that haunted any seaside town.
Once a boat went missing, the whole community came to a stop, as people prayed, the air and sea rescuers searched, and families sat numb. Anneliese could remember a vigil being held in the church once, when a boat with three generations of fishermen capsized; what felt like all of Tamarin had crowded into the wintry cold of St Canice’s, as if the intensity of prayer could carry the boat and its crew back home. It hadn’t. Only one of the crew had returned when his body had been washed up on the rocks five miles south.
She had no business to be feeling low when all she’d lost was a husband – who still lived – while some pour soul in Tamarin was readying herself for the real loss of a man.
Although Anneliese felt too raw to deal with the pain of a fishing crew lost, she felt a responsibility to walk down to the people on the beach. She was a local and if help or vigil was needed, she had to be there too.
But as she walked quickly through the sand, down to the damp swathe of the beach, she realised that the people weren’t looking desolately out to sea: they were looking at something in the water.
‘What is it, Claire?’ she asked a woman who lived several miles inland and who was often on the beach walking three black-and-white collies who danced around the surf in delight.
‘Hello, Anneliese,’ the woman said. The dogs were at her feet, whimpering because they wanted to keep walking and not stand. ‘It’s a whale, look. She’s come in too far and now she can’t seem to get out.’
‘Poor whale,’ said someone else, moving so that Anneliese could stand on the highest part and see for herself.
There, in the waters of Tamarin Bay, was a dark shape circling in slow, aimless arcs. It was huge, had to be, because they were easily half a mile away from the shape and it was easily visible. Just as Anneliese was wondering how anybody could tell for certain what the creature was, it moved gracefully up in the water, a gleaming mound of darkest, silky blue, and she could see that it was clearly some sort of whale.
A tall fountain of water sprayed up from the whale’s blowhole before the huge mammal sank back beneath the waters of the bay.
‘They rise when they’re in distress,’ said a voice, explaining. ‘She won’t know what to do.’
Anneliese hadn’t noticed the man before in the group of local people. He could be taken for a fisherman in his dark pants and bulky sweater, but she knew most of the fishermen and she’d never seen him before. He was tall and grizzled looking enough to be one of them, with a greying beard that matched thick, slightly too long, hair.
‘What should we do?’
‘I’m sorry to say, there’s not an awful lot we can do,’ he said.
‘But there must be!’ said Anneliese, furious at the resignation in his voice. Didn’t he care? That poor whale was like her: lost and alone, and now nobody wanted to help. It just wasn’t good enough. ‘Has anyone phoned the maritime wildlife people to tell them about her?’
‘That would be me,’ the strange man said. ‘I’m the local maritime expert. I’m living in Dolphin Cottage.’
Dolphin Cottage was less of a house and more of a barn, nestled among the sand dunes on Ballyvolane Strand, the next horseshoe-shaped bay up from Milsean. A squat wooden building, painted blue by man and washed beige by God, Dolphin House was one of the local houses that were permanently rented out.
‘I’m Mac,’ he added. ‘Mac Petersen.’
Anneliese glared at him, not taking the hand he held out. She’d done polite all her life: she wasn’t doing it any more.
‘And you can’t do anything to help?’ she snapped.
‘When whales become stranded in shallow harbours, they often die,’ he said, calmly ignoring her rudeness.
‘So this is it?’ Anneliese demanded, waving her arms to encompass the whole group. ‘Us standing around watching her die? That’s great. Well done Mr Marine Specialist.’
As she turned to see the whale’s dark shape move silently through the water again, Anneliese felt more empathy with the great creature than with any of the human beings around her. They knew nothing. Pain, loss, fear – they knew nothing about it. But the whale, circling in fear, she understood.
The man began to speak again but she didn’t want to hear.
Tears bit at the corners of her eyes as Anneliese stormed back up the beach.
She knew she’d lost it, but she was past caring. Bottling up her feelings had got her nowhere in life. She didn’t care enough about the world to hide who and what she was. Let the bloody world deal with it.
As she got in the door of the cottage, she caught the final ring of the telephone, before it clicked into answering machine mode. The message was still Edward’s voice, telling everyone that he and Anneliese were busy and couldn’t come to the phone, but to leave a message. Strangely, it was Edward’s own voice that came on the phone then, leaving her a message.
‘Anneliese, love – sorry, don’t know how to tell you this, but just had a phone call from Brendan and…I’m really sorry, darling, Lily’s in hospital, they think she had a stroke. She was sitting outside the church in town and they found her there this morning after Mass. Anyway, she’s in the hospital, they took her in by ambulance. Brendan’s on his way there now. I can’t go just yet, I have…’
He paused. ‘…something else to do, but I’ll drop in this afternoon, if that would be all right, if…’ he paused again. ‘If you wouldn’t mind me being there, I mean. Nell won’t be there, obviously, but I’d like to be there for Brendan and for you. OK, goodbye, Anneliese. Sorry to be bringing you such horrible news.’
The phone call ended. Anneliese stared at it for a moment, before rushing over and hitting one of the speed-dial buttons to ring Brendan’s number. Brendan Silver was Lily’s son-in-law, and Anneliese’s cousin, well, cousin-in-law, if such a thing existed. He was actually Edward’s cousin. A good, kind man, but not the sort of person you’d need in a crisis, and poor darling Lily was in a crisis. Anneliese felt her heart ache for her darling aunt. Lily mightn’t have been a blood relation to Anneliese, but she was one of the dearest people in her life. Strange how Lily – who had virtually raised her granddaughter, Izzie, when Izzie’s mother had died – seemed to understand how difficult life had been for Anneliese and Beth. Anneliese couldn’t imagine Lily ever suffering from panic attacks or depression. She was so calm, so serene, and yet she did understand. She’d been through the darkest thing a person could deal with: the death of her daughter, Alice. Lily understood darkness.
When Beth and Izzie were teenagers, Lily often stepped in and invited Beth to come and stay when Izzie was spending a few days with her. Anneliese hated the sleepover concept, but with Lily it was different: when Beth was in her house with her cousin, Anneliese could relax. The two girls were like chalk and cheese, mind you, and Izzie was three years older too, but they loved each other and got on well
