– nothing. I don’t even know his second name. Is that awful? I travelled back to the homestead to track him down, and left messages on the pin-boards of hostels asking if anyone knew of him, but I couldn’t find him.’ I’d agonized over Cubbie, unsettled by the idea that he’d never know he was to become a father. Eventually I had to accept there was nothing I could do, no way of locating him. I pressed my palms against the tiny swell of my stomach and promised my baby that I would make it up to him or her. That I would be everything.
When we pulled up at the house Sarah now shared with Nick, she cut the engine, then reached across and squeezed my fingers hard. ‘Nick and I. Are you sure?’
‘I’ve told you a thousand—’
‘I know. But I want you to look me in the eye and tell me. Not over the phone. Not by letter. Face to face. Are you certain?’
I pulled up her sunglasses, and pressed the tip of my nose against hers, staring her right in the eyes. ‘I’m certain.’
She exhaled with relief.
‘Anyway, bit late for me to change my mind, don’t you think?’ I said, pointing to her bump.
Sarah had talked to me about Nick from the start. When I’d called from a hostel in Goa, she’d told me about their first drunken kiss at The Rope and Anchor. Later, I think I was travelling north into the mountains, when she told me, ‘There’ve been more kisses, Isla. If I told you I thought I was falling for him, how would you feel?’ I was thousands of miles away, hiking through rice terraces, sleeping on overnight buses with my head on the shoulders of travellers I’d only known for hours. My relationship with Nick was a fond, warm memory. I cared about him deeply – but I didn’t ache for him. ‘I’d be happy for you both,’ I’d told her, and meant it.
By the time I phoned Sarah again, three or four months later, she told me that Nick had proposed. ‘He laid a picnic rug on the beach, and when he opened the hamper, there was a ring box inside! We’re engaged.’
Engaged. The word caught me off-guard, like a fist in the stomach. I managed to catch my breath and smile as I said, ‘Congratulations.’
At seven months pregnant, I knelt on the beach, scooping my hands into the damp sand. The sun was warm on my back, and I could feel the weight of the baby shifting within me.
I made two large holes, sculpting them smooth with my palms. ‘Done!’ I called to Sarah, who was walking towards the shore carrying a jug of cordial and a bowl of strawberries. In her bikini, her bump protruded so neatly it looked as if she’d swallowed a beach ball. I carried wide, and everyone told me I was having a girl because of the extra width at my hips, and the new thickness to my thighs.
I lay our beach towels side by side, covering the holes I’d dug. ‘You go first.’
Sarah, who was eight months pregnant to my seven, put the tray down, then knelt forward, gradually lowering herself on to the beach towel, her rounded stomach disappearing into the bump-sized hole. She made a low sound of pleasure at the back of her throat. ‘I will love you forever for this.’
I positioned myself next to her, my bump fitting snugly into the groove beneath my beach towel. It’d been months since I’d been able to lie on my front. At night, the only way I could get comfy was by lying on my right-hand side with a pillow gripped between my knees, and another wedged beneath my bump.
For a while, the two of us lay in silence, enjoying the bliss of stretching out flat. I lazily flicked the crescents of sand from beneath each of my fingernails, and every so often I’d feel the baby kick, a powerful little jab just below my ribs.
Sarah and I were spending most of our time at the sandbank. Nick’s parents had bought a holiday home in Spain, so had gifted their beach hut to Nick and Sarah. I’d picked up a part-time job waitressing but, whenever I wasn’t working, I’d be at the beach hut.
Sarah turned her head towards me, her cheek pressed into the beach towel. I could see the gold flecks in the green of her irises and smell strawberries on her breath. ‘You, Isla Berry, are a genius. Thank God you’re home.’
I grinned and squeezed her fingers. Sarah and I both looked up at the sound of Nick’s voice. ‘I’m looking for two pregnant women. I know they headed this way. Have you seen them?’
‘Nope. Not seen them,’ I said.
‘Now stop blocking our sun,’ Sarah told him.
He stepped aside, then stripped off his T-shirt and looked out over the water as if contemplating a swim. Then, as if he thought better of it, he patted his stomach and said, ‘Reckon you can make me one of those sand holes?’
It would be easy, I’d thought back then. The three of us would be best friends. We could make it work.
And maybe we would have done if Samuel had stayed in my life. If Marley had, too. Maybe, when they left, the space I carved for Sarah and Nick became too big – held too much weight – and it set the balance all wrong.
Or maybe it wasn’t my fault at all.
Maybe it was Sarah’s.
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
