‘Penny for them,’ Josh laughed. ‘You looked far away then.’
‘Nope,’ Mae laughed. ‘I was right in the moment!’
‘That’s my girl,’ Josh said. ‘Here we go, anchor’s away!’
His girl? He’d really said that – his girl! Mae was more than glad she’d given him a second chance now.
Chapter Thirteen
Cara rang Rosie. When the answerphone cut in, she hesitated for a moment – to leave a message or not? Struggling to keep panic from her voice she said, ‘Rosie, please can you come over? Just as soon as you pick up this message. I may need to go out for a short while. Mae’s not back and she should be. The key’s in the usual place.’
Cara always left a key in case she lost her own while out, and also so Rosie could get in if she needed to – underneath a garden gnome, a joke present from Rosie. ‘This gnome’s got no home,’ she’d said, laughing when she’d given it to Cara one Christmas.
But Rosie would know something was wrong when she heard Cara’s message. All through the bad times with Mark and his gambling, Rosie had known what was going on, but Cara had never asked for her help before. She would be there just as soon as she could, Cara knew it.
Then, just before nine o’ clock, when the light was beginning to go, and she was feeling more scared than she’d ever felt in her life, she rang the Reverend David Maynard.
‘David Maynard. St Peter’s.’
Cara took a deep, steadying, breath. She’d not spoken to the Reverend Maynard since Mark’s funeral and she felt bad about that now. He’d been very kind to both her and Mae back then. But wasn’t that the way most people behaved – asking for a vicar’s help at the worst time in their lives and then when they were back on track just sort of moving away physically and emotionally? But she needed him again now.
‘Hello, it’s Cara Howard. I’m Mae’s mum. Is Mae there?’
‘Mae? No. Not as far as I know. Were you expecting her to be?’
She took another deep breath, trying to slow down her quickening heartbeat and banish worst-case scenarios from her head. The phone propped between her shoulder and her ear, she turned her now-returned engagement ring round and round on her finger. It was a bit loose now she’d lost a fair bit of weight – more due to stress than any sort of diet.
‘Mae left here just after ten this morning to meet Josh. I was expecting her back around tea-time. They’ve gone sailing. In the Laser.’
‘What?’ David Maynard shouted, and Cara had to yank the receiver away from her ear. ‘He promised me he wouldn’t take Mae out in it. I said she was too young and inexperienced for the Laser. Just wait until … Have you’ve tried Mae’s mobile?’
‘Yes, but it’s switched off. I know it’s still light – just – but it’s fading fast and …’
‘And we’re wasting time,’ the Reverend Maynard cut in, but kindly. ‘Now, what I think we should do is, you stay where you are in case Mae rings your landline on Josh’s mobile to say they’re becalmed or something, and I’ll nip down to the harbour to see if they’ve moored up and have gone to the pub or wherever. I’ll take my mobile, give Josh a call as I go and then I can ring you as soon as I locate them. I’m sure they’re just being typical unthinking young people and all will be well.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Cara said, although she wasn’t entirely sure that he was. Her mouth was as dry as ash, but her palms were sticky with nerves. She felt an almost overwhelming gratitude to him that he was taking over. They exchanged mobile numbers and rang off. Then needing to do something, she picked it up again – thank goodness for cordless telephones – and went upstairs. Some sort of invisible thread drew her towards Mae’s room. How tidy it all was. Cara had often commented on it. ‘Yeah, but is it normal,’ Rosie or her mother or Mark would ask, ‘for a teenager to be so tidy?’ But they always laughed it off and told Cara to be grateful for small mercies.
Cara walked over to the bookcase – everything arranged in alphabetical order by author, and then within genres, also in alphabetical order, and every book standing straight. Had Mae read them all? She knew since Mark’s death that Mae had retreated to her room more than she’d ever done before. Perhaps she’d been reading. Mae turned away from the bookcase and saw the polka dot frock – turquoise with white spots – Mae had bought only recently from a charity shop in Totnes and not worn yet. It hung from a padded hanger, freshly washed and ironed. Cara gulped – what if she never came home to wear it. Again, Cara twirled her engagement ring around her finger. And the ring – what if she never got to say, ‘Daddy bought this for me the very same day he asked me to marry him. We were so in love.’ And they had been for a very long time. It wasn’t that she’d fallen out of love with Mark, just that she’d lost the respect she’d had for him over his gambling. Telling him to leave had been a desperate measure – something she hoped would give him a wake-up call. Except it had been anything but that. ‘This is who I am, take it or leave it, Cara,’ was what he’d said. And she’d said just the one word – leave.
And then Cara saw it – Mae’s mobile. She picked it up. Hugged it to her.
‘Oh, Mae,’ she said out loud, ‘how stupid not to take this.’
Chapter Fourteen
Mae writhed and wriggled deliciously in Josh’s arms, his kisses transporting her to somewhere else entirely – she wasn’t even minding the aroma of wet rubber and a faint fishy smell from the rotting seaweed at the tide-line. They hadn’t got any further than Crystal Cove once the kissing had started, taking advantage of being alone with no one likely to access the cove before the tide turned. Not that they’d only kissed. They’d talked too – about their families, about what the future might hold for them both, although Mae wasn’t so stupid as to think she would be in Josh’s life forever. She’d opened up and told Josh how hard it was being without a dad and Josh had listened and nodded but not offered any sort of platitudes, which pleased Mae. And then he’d said she could have his dad if she liked because he was always on his back wanting him to go to university, to get a better job, to be the son he wanted him to be and not who he was. She’d heard rumours that Josh had been seen with Alice Morrell in the Port Light over in Paignton, but why spoil the moment by asking him about that now? They were only rumours, and it was her who Josh was with at that moment, not Alice. They were lying side by side, their hands clasped, when Josh threw an arm across her and reached for her again.
‘Come here, gorgeous,’ he said.
Mae rolled over towards him and their lips touched, just lightly at first, before Josh’s tongue began to explore her mouth and she thought she might die of pleasure at how it made her feel inside. He tasted of coca cola and … alcohol? Josh had offered Mae a drink from the bottles of coke he’d brought with him, but she’d declined because she didn’t like it – it always gave her terrible indigestion. But she was in danger of becoming paranoid if she started thinking every time Josh had a drink of something there’d be alcohol in it, wasn’t she? But still … Mae kissed him back long and hard, trying to banish the thought.
‘What time is it?’ she asked after breaking away from him reluctantly. She looked up at the faint outline of what was going to be a crescent moon.
‘Time we got back probably.’
‘No. Not yet,’ Mae said. She tugged on the zip of her wetsuit so that Josh could slide his hand inside. Touch her skin. Make her writhe in ecstasy.
‘As contraceptives go,’ Josh laughed, ‘wetsuits are pretty effective!’
‘I’ll go to the doctor soon,’ Mae said. ‘Get fixed up. The pill.’
But how soon was soon? And did she want to really? What if, once she’d let him do it, Josh moved on to his next conquest? Or Alice Morrell…
‘Actually …’ Josh began, fumbling in the pocket of his buoyancy aid that he’d taken off and dropped onto the sand. ‘Oh God, no! Where the hell’s my phone? I put it in here.’
‘I left mine at home,’ Mae told him. ‘It was the last present Dad gave me and
I didn’t want to lose it and it hasn’t got much credit on it anyway.’
‘You can’t get a signal down here anyway.’ Josh reached for a bottle of coke and took a long swig.
Mae’s heart flipped. There was more than just coca cola in there. Josh was on his second bottle now.
‘You’ve been here before?’ she asked.
‘Well, of course I have. I was born here. I’ve been sailing since, like, forever.’ Josh took another swig from his bottle.
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant I’m not the first girlfriend you’ve brought here, am I?’
‘I didn’t have you down as totally naïve, Mae,’ Josh said. ‘Just because my old man’s a vicar, it doesn’t make me a saint.’
Mae felt her heart almost stop in her chest – he was changing again before her very eyes. It had to be the drink. He was an alcoholic, wasn’t he? She was getting scared now.
‘I can’t believe you’ve been so stupid as to leave your phone at home,’ Josh said. He sat up now and began scrabbling about in the sand beside him looking for his phone.
‘Hey! Watch who you’re calling stupid,’ Mae said. ‘You seem to have lost your phone so …’
She left her sentence unfinished, feeling frightened now as to how the mood between them had suddenly changed, just like before. They had to get out of here. And before Josh drank even more. There was a steep and very basic path up the side of the cliff, but now the light was beginning to drop Mae knew they’d be stupid to attempt that in the dark. She stood up and walked towards a set of roughly hewn steps that led up to a grassy area where there had been a lookout post during the Second World War. They could leave the boat moored, walk up the steps and on through the housing estate and maybe hitch a lift or call Josh’s dad from there. And then she saw it – a warning sign at the top of what was now very obviously broken steps with a gap about twelve feet wide that they’d never get over. And another one, smaller, leaning against the cliff face. No wonder no one had attempted to come down onto the beach as the tide went out.
She walked back to Josh to tell him what she’d seen, but it was as though he’d read her mind.
‘It looks like we’re stuck, Mae. The tide has gone out at a fair pace. Let’s hope we can get the boat afloat.’
Mae looked towards the boat they’d anchored when they’d swum in and it was obvious by the way it tilted that it was on some sort of sandbank. She dropped onto the sand and sat hugging her knees as though that gesture might give her inspiration.
‘And if we can’t?’
‘Then we’ll have to shack up here for the night, or until there’s enough light at dawn to climb the cliff, or the tide has come back in far enough to float the boat and we’ve got enough light to sail by. Honestly, Mae, do I have to explain everything to you, chapter and verse?’
‘Flares?’ Mae said, her voice shaky. Josh seemed like a totally different person now. ‘Have you got some in the boat?’
‘Nope.’
‘How stupid was that – to come out without a flare?’ Fear was, she knew, making her sound very confrontational.
‘Did you check, then?’ Josh snapped back at her.
‘Of course not, it’s not my boat,’ Mae said. And then she added, even though she’d probably have come anyway if he’d told her there wasn’t one, ‘But I ought to have asked you if you had some. Dad would …’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Mae, can you give over being Daddy’s girl, just for a moment.’ Josh leapt to his feet.
Mae was too shocked at his words and the fact he was now looming over her.
‘Right! Someone has to be the grown up around here!’ Josh’s voice was so loud Mae put her hands over her ears. And she could feel his angry breath ruffling her hair. ‘I don’t think we’re going to be able to get the boat off that sandbank for a while. I’ll wade in and take the sails off and we can wrap ourselves in them and it’ll be …’
‘No, we can’t! We can’t!’ Everyone would assume they’d really done it then, wouldn’t they? It was against the law – Rosie had said. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. We can’t stop here! We just can’t!’
‘Actually, Mae,’ Josh said, his voice suddenly serious. He turned away from Mae. ‘I’m beginning to think the age gap between us is just too wide. I’m getting a bit fed up with this on/off, off/on stuff from you.’
‘You mean the sex, I suppose,’ Mae said. She knew they were wasting time talking when they should have been doing something practical about getting back to the harbour, and she knew Josh was probably as scared as she was, but he was being bully man not macho man and she wasn’t going to stand for it. ‘I said I’d go to the doctor and I …’
‘Forget it,’ Josh said. ‘It’s going to be too much hassle. Doctor Green is bound to tell your mum, with you being underage. He and your dad played golf together.’
‘I know,’ Mae said. There was only one doctor in the village and everyone went to him. She didn’t really want to be reminded of what her dad used to do, and with whom either. But Josh was right – Doctor Green would split on her, more than likely, seeing as she was underage for sex.
‘Right, I’m making a run for it,’ Josh said. ‘Stay here if you want.’
‘What!’
Mae couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He was running out on her!
Josh was running towards the sea in a rather wobbly fashion. It could have been because he was running on sand, but Mae knew now that whatever had been in the bottles with the coke wasn’t helping. The boat now looked a lot further away from them than it had been when they’d been lying on the sand kissing.
‘Hey!’ Mae called after him. ‘Don’t forget your buoyancy aid! Wait for me!’
She picked up both buoyancy aids and ran after him, her heart hammering like crazy in her chest, making her take quick gasps of breath, like she was having an asthma attack or something, not that she’d ever had one.
Struggling to get into her buoyancy aid, she reached the boat, which Josh was trying to pull from the sandbank into the sea now.
‘Put this on!’ she yelled at him, tossing his buoyancy aid into the boat. Josh ignored her and carried on tugging on the boat, but it was making little headway.
‘Pull for God’s sake, Mae,’ Josh yelled at her.
Mae pulled, adrenalin taking over now. She wondered if her mum had missed her and whether she might have called the coastguard or something. She hoped so, even though she knew she’d get read the riot act for getting herself into this position – she couldn’t blame Josh entirely for that, it had taken two and she’d been a willing participant just a short while ago.
The bow was in the water now, and then came a little surge of incoming tide and the whole boat was more or less afloat.
Josh jumped in.
‘Keep pulling!’ he yelled at her. ‘We’re nearly off.’
Mae had no option but to do as she was told, despite being shocked at Josh’s lack of grace in jumping in first, leaving her to do the donkey work.
But the dinghy was going nowhere fast. Josh – still refusing to put on his buoyancy aid – began to raise a sail, which scared Mae because the wind was getting up now. Sailing in the dark was never a good idea, although visibility was still okay for the moment.
‘Is there a torch?’ she asked.
‘What do you think?’ Josh said.
Mae didn’t even bother to answer. Perhaps she should have agreed to spend the night on the beach wrapped in the sail after all?
Each time there was a surge of incoming tide, Mae pulled the boat and then, at last, it moved freely on the water. Mae hauled herself over the side.
Please, please, Dad, she prayed, looking up to the fast-darkening sky – there were millions of stars out already – please look after me. Then she amended me to us because she didn’t want Josh to die, even if she knew beyond doubt now that she didn’t want to go out with him any more.
Please, Dad, guide us back safely.
‘Shit, Mae,’ Josh snapped at her.
‘What did you do that for? We’re stuck again now with your added weight. You’re going to have to get out again.’
‘No, I’m not! You get out. You’re bigger and heavier than I am.’
And then she looked at Josh’s face – he looked terrified, white, as though he was about to pass out.
‘Oh my God,’ Mae said. ‘Josh …’
‘You’ll have to get out,’ he said, not sounding forceful any more. He was beginning to shake, and although Mae felt chilly, she wasn’t cold and began to wonder if Josh had hypothermia beginning to set in.
She knew she ought not to leave him.
‘I think what we’ll do is both sit tight a while longer. The tide’s coming in faster and it won’t be long before we’re properly afloat and then …’
‘For fuck’s sake, Mae, just get out and pull us off, will you?’
‘Put your buoyancy aid on,’ Mae said, taking charge of the situation. Fear and cold – and alcohol – were clouding Josh’s judgement now and she knew it, even if he didn’t. ‘Then I’ll get out.’
Josh sighed heavily but reached for it in the bottom of the boat anyway.
Mae considered telling him to do up the buoyancy aid, but he’d probably object and then there’d be an argument about that and they’d waste even more time.
She stepped gingerly over the edge of the boat and found purchase when the water came up to her waist. With one almighty pull on a tidal surge she had the boat well afloat now.
Josh leaned over the edge of the boat, reached an arm out over Mae and grabbed her backside, hauling her none-too-gently back on, where she landed with a thud.
‘Can you get the sails up?’ Josh asked, his teeth chattering, and his whole body beginning to judder now. ‘I don’t think I can.’
Mae did as she was told.
She noticed that the houses along the cliff edge had their lights on so that she could just about make out the shape of the coastline. She thought she saw a torch flashing on and off or it could, perhaps, have been the intermittent beam from the lighthouse reflecting off something.
The Little B & B at Cove End Page 12
