Last Seen

by Lucy Clarke

‘With Isla,’ Nick says.

  ‘That’s right.’ I remember packing Jacob off with a thick sleeping bag and a flask of hot chocolate, thinking, Poor Isla!

  Nick asks, ‘Still no word from her?’

  I shake my head. ‘I haven’t tried her today. Maybe I’ll give her a ring now,’ I say, slipping my mobile from my pocket. I punch in Isla’s number once again, yet even as I’m cradling the phone to my ear, something inside me knows that she isn’t going to answer.

  When I hear her voicemail click on, I feel the sting of disappointment. I try reasoning that when Isla’s in Chile, we never phone each other – I’m not even sure that she has her English mobile switched on over there.

  As I leave her a message, my voice feels tight, a notch louder than it needs to be. I update her on the latest developments, telling her about Jacob’s trainers by the rocks, my conviction that Jacob got on a boat, our visit to Robert’s hut. I tell her how scared we are. That I’m not sleeping. I want her to understand how serious this is. To understand that I need her.

  As I’m talking, her voicemail cuts off.

  I listen to the stretched beep of the phone, blinking.

  ‘What is it?’ Nick asks, noticing my expression,

  I tell myself that my message must have been too long – it filled up Isla’s voicemail. Yet a strange chill creeps down my spine; I have a vividly uncomfortable sensation that Isla was staring at the phone in her hand – watching my name flashing on her screen, choosing not to pick up. And then her finger moved to the ‘End call’ button – and she cut me off.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Nick tells me. ‘Isla wouldn’t have cut you off.’

  Wouldn’t she? I haven’t told Nick about our argument on the night she left for Chile.

  ‘If she’d heard any one of your messages, she’d have called you straight back. You said yourself that you don’t know if she uses her UK mobile in Chile.’

  This is true. Perhaps the stress of Jacob’s disappearance is getting to me. Isla and I have argued before and always made up. And, anyway, if Isla has been getting my messages, she’d have called. She cares too much about Jacob not to help.

  ‘Why don’t you try emailing her?’ Nick says.

  ‘I can’t from my phone.’ I rarely need to use my email account, so I’ve never got around to setting it up on my mobile.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Nick says, taking out his phone. ‘What do you want to say?’

  ‘Just to ring us urgently.’

  I watch Nick tapping away. Less than a minute later, he says, ‘Sent.’

  I stare at him. ‘How did you know her email address?’

  He shrugs. ‘It was in my contacts.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘No idea. Probably been in there for years.’

  ‘You’ve emailed Isla before, then?’

  A pause. ‘Must’ve done. Or maybe you have from my email account.’

  We both know I never use Nick’s email.

  I look at Nick closely, my gaze searching his face for clues. ‘Is there anything you want to tell me?’

  Nick’s eyes are on me, his expression hardening. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I think you know.’

  He shakes his head once. ‘Don’t do this, Sarah. I mean it. Let’s not go there.’

  24. ISLA

  An email from Nick pings across the screen of my phone. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen his name in my inbox.

  From: Nick Symonds.

  Subject: Jacob

  Message: Can you ring Sarah urgently? Jacob’s been missing for five days. We’re scared, Isla. Call us. Nick x

  I delete the email. I can’t think about Nick.

  Instead, I play Sarah’s voicemail for the second time. I hadn’t meant to cut her off while she was still talking. I’d been holding my mobile, watching her name on the screen, and my thumb must have slipped.

  Replaying the message now, I hear the sharpness of her tone and the way she gulps in air between her sentences.

  ‘I need to talk to you. You’re the only person who will understand.’

  My teeth clench together. Yes, I know what it’s like to wake each morning with the sickening lurch of memory: He’s not here.

  I continue to listen, catching Nick’s footsteps in the background. I hear the breathless rush of Sarah’s voice as she tells me about Robert and his boat, Neil and Diane, her theories and suspicions. It’s amazing to me that she’s still not asking other questions – the important ones. She’s not even mentioned Isaac’s name yet. Not once. But I suppose she can’t. Not to me, at least.

  Even now she’s hiding from the truth.

  There’s a pause in the voicemail. I can hear the sea in the background – a particular sound that is unique to the sandbank: the cawing of gulls, the light breeze washing through the hut doors. There’s something fresh about it, intoxicating. It makes me wistful for the summers we’ve left behind.

  When Sarah speaks again, she sounds distracted – impatient with me for not being there when she needs to talk. I’ve always been her go-to person; if she’s exhausted a topic with Nick, or doesn’t think he’ll be a sympathetic audience, it’s me she talks to.

  I listen carefully to the timbre of her voice. By now she must be wondering why I’ve not returned her calls. Why my phone goes straight to voicemail.

  And I think I can catch it – just the tiniest flicker of hesitation.

  Jacob’s been missing for five days. When Marley had been gone for that long, I’d travelled down every possibility, ludicrous or not. Sarah will be getting desperate for answers. She may just be pulling me into her radar. But it won’t be long, I realize.

  She is my best friend – the nearest person I have on this planet to family. But Jacob is her son. She will doubt me, I know she will.

  She’ll begin to question everyone close to her – and she will be right to.

  25. SARAH

  DAY FIVE, 8 P.M.

  I sit at the table with a glass of wine, facing the view. As dusk rolls in over the water, sand martins pour from the sky, soaring and dipping in their chase for insects. Dusk has always been my favourite time on the sandbank, when the day-trippers have left and the beach is returned to us again. But I’ve begun to dread this peculiar half-light between day and night, where thoughts blur and meld – a shadow becoming a boy, or the cawing of a gull seeming like a panicked voice. As the colour is leached from the sky, I know we’re approaching the close of yet another day without Jacob.

  Nick stands and clears our supper things. Cutlery slides against china as he scrapes the virtually untouched pasta into the bin. We went through the motions of dinner – cooking, laying the table, placing steaming plates of linguini heaped with parmesan before us – but neither of us had an appetite. We watched the meal grow cold, the cheese congealing in yellowy gluts.

  I don’t move to help. A tension headache is threatening behind my eyes. I finish my wine without tasting it, and set down the empty glass.

  Nick crosses the beach hut, leaving the stacked dirty plates for me to deal with. Clearing up for him means making a pile by the sink. He crouches on the floor by the sofa bed, pulling out Jacob’s belongings. Clothes, wash stuff, and magazines litter the beach hut floor.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I catch the waspish tone of my question.

  ‘We’re missing something. There’s got to be a clue.’

  I’ve already been through every inch of this hut, but I don’t say anything. I understand Nick’s need to do something. He is not a man who coasts. I’ve never once heard him say, We’ll see what happens. Nick steers the course of his life; he makes things happen. To not be active in finding Jacob would render him passive – and he’ll never be that.

  Some time later, light footsteps sound across our deck. My shoulders tense: I don’t want to see anyone, not tonight. There’s a tentative knock.

  I open the door to find Caz looking pale and drawn against the darkening sky. I’m surprised she’s eve
n on the sandbank – Robert had said she was recovering at her aunt’s. ‘Caz, hi. Come in, come in.’

  A breeze washes in behind her, tinged with barbecue smoke and the oily scent of fresh mackerel cooking.

  There is almost nowhere to sit as every surface is covered with stuff – Nick has piled our belongings around the hut in his search for clues: a large Tupperware box containing mosquito coils and repellents; board games that don’t get played as much as I’d like; a first-aid kit that I must remember to update; a pack of scented candles. I push aside a pile of blankets and Caz perches on the edge of the sofa. Nick, rummaging at the back of the hut, lifts a hand in greeting.

  I sit opposite Caz, wondering what she’s doing here. Did Robert tell her that we’d been to see him? I clear my throat. ‘How are you feeling – after yesterday?’

  She lifts and drops her shoulders. ‘It was the right thing.’ Her response is clipped and it’s clear she didn’t come here to talk about the abortion. ‘Any news on Jacob? Dad told me that you found his trainers.’

  ‘Yes, they were by the rocks – just where you said the two of you had been sitting. Was he wearing them when you were … talking?’

  She nods.

  ‘We wondered if Jacob took off his trainers to swim – but if that had been the case, we’d have probably found his T-shirt and phone, too. So now we’re wondering if he got on a boat with someone.’

  I look to Caz, as if she may have some thoughts on this, but she just shrugs.

  I notice now the puffiness to her eyelids: she’s been crying. I get a strange feeling that she has come here to tell us something. I wait, levelling my gaze to hers.

  When she says nothing, I ask gently, ‘Is there anything you want to talk about, Caz?’

  She looks up at me, her gaze moving across my face.

  I wait, heartbeat drumming.

  ‘Sorry for the chaos,’ Nick interrupts, grabbing an armful of things from the sofa beside Caz. As he removes them, I see the small cotton bag he’s left behind, turned on its side, the contents spilled on to the sofa. My eyes widen as I realize what the bag contains: a signed copy of an Anita Shreve novel stolen from Diane’s bookcase; an Ace of Spades playing card taken from a pristine pack in one of Nick’s friends’ huts; and there, right beside Caz, are her silver seahorse earrings.

  ‘I don’t even know what half of this crap is doing in the hut,’ Nick continues, shoving things back into drawers.

  I can’t take my eyes off the seahorse earrings. They are only centimetres from Caz’s thigh. I want to pull her to her feet, usher her from the hut. But I also don’t want to draw attention to the items. She hasn’t noticed them yet – maybe she won’t do.

  My heart pounds against my ribcage and my skin feels so hot it is starting to itch.

  Caz is looking at me and I realize my expression must be strained. I fix my features into what I hope is a neutral expression. ‘So how have you been feeling today?’ My voice comes out oddly tight.

  Caz stares at me for a moment. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good. That’s good. And your mother, how is she? Do you speak much these days? Portugal, isn’t it? No, wait. Spain.’

  Her brow furrows. ‘She’s fine …’

  ‘That’s good,’ I repeat idiotically.

  I startle at the sound of a phone ringing. I reach towards my pocket – but realize it is Nick’s phone.

  He answers it, saying, ‘Oh, hello. Thanks for calling me back. Yes, that’s right. I left you a message earlier today.’ He glances at me.

  It’s the marina, I realize, returning his call.

  ‘Yes, I just wanted to check the detail of something,’ he says, moving towards the open doorway, stepping out on to the deck. I can tell he’s stalling, waiting until he’s out of Caz’s earshot before he asks about Robert’s boat.

  ‘Probably something to do with work,’ I say as I watch Nick moving away along the beach.

  I set down my glass of wine and say, in as light a tone as I can manage, ‘Here, let me try and make things cosier. I’ll move some of this stuff for you.’

  As I rise, about to take a step towards the sofa where Caz is, she says, ‘Don’t worry. It’s fine.’

  Maybe there is something in my expression – something resolute and focused – as Caz follows my gaze, angling her head towards the items beside her.

  And there they are: two beautiful seahorse earrings, curled together by her thigh.

  Her glance is casual – casual enough for me to think she hasn’t registered them. But then her head tilts slightly towards the earrings, and her gaze intensifies, pinned to the earrings.

  I can almost see each of her thoughts as she looks at the earrings, thinking, I have some just like these. She lifts a hand to her ear lobe, touching the empty space – perhaps recalling that her earrings are missing. And then I see it, a slight stiffening in her posture as she realizes that the last time she saw them was when I was in her beach hut.

  She picks up the earrings. Turns them through her fingers as if inspecting them, looking for the one tiny, irrefutable piece of evidence that these belong to her.

  She sees it: one of the backs of the earrings has a gold clasp, rather than silver. She looks up sharply. ‘These earrings …’

  It is not what she says, or even the tone of her voice exactly, as much as the look on her face which tells me she knows.

  My mouth is ever so slightly open. I feel like my cheeks are burning red. I swallow. ‘I was just going to move those things.’

  I move as if to take them from her, but Caz’s fingers make a fist around the earrings.

  She stands, and for a moment the two of us face one another. We are exactly the same height. We look into each other’s faces and it is there, the truth.

  ‘These are mine.’

  I have imagined it – all the different ways I could be confronted by the people I’ve stolen from. I’ve practised what I’d say: I must have put it in my pocket without thinking. Or, Are you sure this is yours? I have one just the same. Or perhaps, I knocked it off the shelf and intended to put it back, but wasn’t concentrating. But now that I’m standing here in front of Caz, my mind is blank.

  ‘Why?’ she demands of me. ‘Why did you steal them?’

  I’ve no idea how to begin to explain why I do it. Heat crawls over my skin. I feel as if I’ve just walked into a public place naked: I am humiliated, exposed, ashamed. ‘I … I intended to give them back,’ I say, lamely.

  ‘You could have just asked. I’d have let you borrow them.’

  I blink. She thinks I wanted to wear them, that I can’t afford to buy my own earrings. I suddenly want to laugh, but I know this is anything but funny.

  ‘It’s weird. What you did is just … weird.’

  I glance towards the open door, aware of our proximity to other beach huts. This is not a conversation that I want overheard. ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I don’t know what happened. I’m so embarrassed. I think it must just be the stress with Jacob. I wasn’t thinking, and I … I just …’

  ‘Sure,’ she says curtly. ‘I need to get back.’

  ‘Wait …’

  A deep exhale of frustration. ‘What?’

  ‘You came to the hut to tell us something, didn’t you? About Jacob.’

  ‘Forget it,’ Caz says with a shake of her head.

  ‘Please. If there’s anything you know …’

  ‘I don’t.’

  I am kicking myself. I’ve put up a barrier between us now. She’s the last person who saw my son – and now she doesn’t trust me. ‘You’ve got this all wrong—’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Listen, Caz—’

  She stares at me, eyes narrowed. ‘Now I understand where Jacob gets it from.’

  A mosquito buzzes close to my ear and I swipe a hand through the air.

  ‘Gets what from?’ I ask, perplexed. Stealing? Has Jacob stolen something of Caz’s? I don’t know what she’s talking about, but Caz is already moving through the door,
crossing the deck, climbing on to the beach.

  ‘Got what from?’ I call, following her on to the sand.

  But she doesn’t stop. Just walks on, leaving me humiliated on the dark beach.

  I can feel the flame of heat raging in my cheeks. I know I must tell Nick what’s just happened, as there is every possibility that Caz will. I picture myself standing before him like a schoolgirl, confessing that I steal; that I’ve been doing it for years; that I can’t stop.

  Bewilderment would cloud his face. You’re joking, right?

  No, I just can’t do it, not now, in the middle of all this. I’m afraid of where the conversation would lead us. Nick would ask when I first began to steal, why it started, who I steal from … And if I pull out that first thread of truth, then everything else is going to unravel.

  A door clangs open somewhere behind me. I turn to see Neil stepping from his hut in a flood of light. He’s carrying a set of oars underarm, which smack against the doorframe as he strides across the deck and on to the beach.

  I want to ask him about the ding in his boat that he found the morning after Jacob disappeared but, before I have chance to call out, I see Diane hurrying from the hut behind him. I catch her pursed lips and closely drawn brows before the darkness steals the details from her face. ‘Neil! This isn’t a good idea,’ she urges, her voice lowered. ‘Please! You’ve been drinking!’

  The burst of his reply is startlingly loud. ‘I need to think, Diane! Think!’

  ‘Not out there,’ she hisses, rushing on to the beach after him.

  Neil doesn’t break stride, moving towards the shoreline where the tender for his boat waits.

  They don’t see me in the darkness, and I’m careful to keep very still as I hear Diane whisper, ‘Please, Neil. You’re worrying me. You need to let this go.’ She says something further, but the breeze carries the words out of reach.

  ‘How can I?’ Neil demands, his volume unchecked.

  Diane is saying something else and I’m sure I catch the word ‘accident’, but the rest is lost as they continue moving towards the shore.

  The intensity of the exchange draws me forward, and I’m following them through the cool sand when there’s a hand on my arm.