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,
