Last Seen

by Lucy Clarke

  I stayed just long enough for Sarah to finish her dessert, then I thanked her and made my excuses, returning to my hut.

  It was midnight when I laced up my running trainers, then switched on my head torch, slipping from the beach hut. It was one of the many freedoms my life allowed: there was no sleeping child to leave, or husband to comment, Where are you going at this hour? It didn’t matter what time I ran, or how long I was gone for, or why I went.

  Night on the headland was quiet. There was a low hum of insects, the occasional swoop of wings, but mostly there was just the sea – the tide sliding away from the shore, the moon luminous and ghostly, bleaching the landscape grey.

  The small circle of light cast by my head torch danced two paces in front of me, like a star I could never catch. I could feel the welcome burn of heat in my calf muscles as I ran, earth and stones shifting beneath the soles of my trainers. I pushed away the image of the faded photo of Marley and Jacob, focusing on the fierce pump of my heart. I was breathing hard, but wouldn’t slow. Minutes later came the sharp glass fingers of a stitch cutting between my ribs. I should have dropped my pace, waited for the pain to ease – but instead I pushed on harder. I welcomed the burning stitch – focused on it.

  When I was pregnant with Marley, I read an article about childbirth and how it was possible to manage the presence of pain by channelling your thoughts to a different sensation in the body. It worked on the idea that if the non-pain-carrying nerves are active, they can override some of the pain signals. The pain is still physically present – there’s no way to lessen it – yet you’re better able to deal with it.

  Over the years, I’ve wondered if it’s the same with emotional pain. Losing Marley never becomes less painful, but I am able to channel that pain more effectively. There are times when I prefer to wrap myself in memories of him, say his name aloud and share stories of him so that he feels real and present to me. And there are other times when the pain is so dark and thick, it feels like this great pressure within me that is going to explode. That’s when I run.

  I reached the end of the headland and jogged down the stone steps that led on to the beach. I sucked the night air deep into my lungs, tasting scents of earth and salt. Heat fired through me, a slick of sweat pooling at the base of my back and between my breasts. My breathing was rasped and hard, and I liked the physicality of it.

  The sea was right there ahead of me – both enemy and friend. I knew I had to be in it. I made a final sprint to the water’s edge, coming to a halt in a spray of sand. Further along there was the glow of a beach fire, but other than that, the beach was mine.

  Panting, I removed my head torch, then bent forward and pulled off my trainers and socks, feeling the heat and swollen veins in my feet. I wriggled out of my vest, shorts and underwear, then tugged out my hair band, losing it to the sand.

  I was still breathing hard as I waded in, diving forwards and losing myself to the inky water.

  There, everything silenced. There was just the black-cool dark, my limbs moving fluidly through it. I could feel my nipples hardening beneath the water, feel the sea covering every inch of my hot flesh. I broke through the surface with my face tilted to the night, a slick of wet hair dripping down my spine.

  I kicked around in the water, floating on my back and watching the stars, until my skin was chilled and puckered like goose flesh.

  Eventually I waded out, wringing the water from my hair. I pulled my vest and shorts straight on, not bothering with underwear, which I stuffed into my trainers, and carried them swinging at my side.

  Walking along the shoreline with the warm night wind behind me, I felt the boost of endorphins that exercise always rewarded me with. The stars were bright, dancing. As I grew closer to the beach fire, I could see a group of young men standing around it, bottles of beer in their hands. I smelled dope in the air and smiled to myself.

  ‘Isla!’

  I turned. A figure was standing at the edge of the fire, calling to me with the glow of a cigarette between his fingers. It took me a moment to realize it was Jacob. It shouldn’t have been such a shock to see him here drinking and smoking with his friends – yet there was a part of me that still believed he was the boy who slept in the bunk above Marley’s, the promise of a hot chocolate and a Roald Dahl story being enough to make him beam.

  I should have simply waved, then walked on. I could have poked fun at him the following morning that I’d busted him smoking. But I didn’t. I waited as he jogged towards me.

  Away from the flames we stood in the darkness.

  He stepped close to me. ‘Isla,’ he said again.

  He took a drag of his cigarette, then breathed out away from me, flicking the butt into the sand.

  I said nothing.

  He reached out and touched my wet hair. ‘You’ve been swimming.’

  ‘And you’ve been drinking.’

  He grinned. ‘How was the water?’

  ‘Refreshing.’

  I could feel his gaze travel down my body; my clothes clung to my wet skin. My nipples were hard and erect with the cold. ‘Beautiful night for it,’ he said. He told me about the phosphorescence that had lit up the waves earlier when he’d swum, alcohol loosening his words.

  I glanced over his shoulder towards the fire where his friends waited. They weren’t watching, and Jacob didn’t seem in a hurry to return.

  ‘I love the beach at night,’ Jacob said. ‘It’s ours, isn’t it? No tourists, just a few of us from the huts.’

  I nodded.

  Jacob reached out and placed the back of his hand against my upper arm, his fingers warm against my cool skin. ‘You’re cold. Come to the fire.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  He held my gaze.

  ‘I’m going back to the hut.’

  ‘Shall I walk you?’

  I would have loved someone to take me by the hand, lead me back to the hut, put me in bed and tuck the covers under my chin.

  ‘Jacob!’ I heard one of his friends calling to him. ‘Who are you talking to?’

  ‘You’d better get back to the fire.’

  ‘He doesn’t matter.’

  There was silence between us.

  ‘I’ll walk you.’

  It was a statement this time, not a question.

  ‘Goodnight, Jacob,’ I said. I turned and set off alone.

  38. SARAH

  DAY EIGHT, 4.15 P.M.

  Outside, wind gusts across the beach, a cloud of sand lifting into the air. I want to feel the coarse sting of it, taste the salt and chalk in the air, feel the chill of the cooling wind.

  I have some news.

  PC Roam stands with her back to the hut doors, as if blocking our exit. I’m sitting on the sofa opposite Nick, but my position feels all wrong, head angled awkwardly to look at her face, my throat stretched. I need to be next to Nick. I need his hands around mine.

  I am about to move, when PC Roam says, ‘We have a positive lead.’

  Air leaves my lungs in a rush. ‘A lead …’ I say, my gaze flicking to Nick. A lead, not a body. A lead!

  ‘We have run some checks with the Border Agency. Jacob’s passport has been used …’ PC Roam is still speaking, apologizing that they hadn’t picked this up sooner, that border checks are typically only a priority in high-risk cases, but all I want to know is:

  ‘Used by him?’

  ‘We believe so.’

  ‘Jacob’s passport has been used,’ I relay to Nick, even though he, too, is right here in the hut.

  My mind spins with new thoughts. Jacob must have made it to shore, then taken off, wanting to disappear, to get out of the country. This is good news. This is excellent, wondrous, incredible news! We can find him! Bring him home! Explain! We will all be okay because Jacob is alive!

  ‘Where is he?’ Nick asks.

  I am already picturing somewhere in Europe, or possibly further flung, like Australia. Somewhere he could easily blend in – New Zealand possibly, although, what about money?
r />   PC Roam answers the question. ‘Jacob is in Chile.’

  ‘Chile?’ I repeat.

  Nick’s eyes narrow. ‘Jacob’s in Chile?’ He pauses. ‘With Isla?’

  My mind works fast, trying to unravel the knot of why he is there, how he is there. I picture him scrambling out of the dark sea, sodden clothes clinging to his body. He’d have been in shock, reeling. Nick and I would be the last people he’d want to turn to, so he’d have thought of the one person who he could rely on, who he trusted, who would do anything to help him: Isla.

  She’d have already left for Chile by then, but there was nothing to stop him following her out there. I’ve seen how spellbound he becomes listening to Isla’s stories of the wild, wave-pounded coastline, and the startling jagged peaks of the mountains. Perhaps he pictured himself there, romanticized it, till it became the perfect solution.

  ‘Where in Chile is he? Can we speak to him?’ Nick is asking.

  ‘I’m sorry; we don’t know.’

  ‘How did he get to the airport? What about his passport? How did he pay for it?’ Nick fires.

  PC Roam says, ‘These are all things we’re looking into.’

  Possibilities turn through my head. Jacob had no money on him – we found his wallet in his backpack, and the five hundred pounds cash he’d taken out for Caz’s abortion was safe in the beach hut drawer – so did he borrow money from someone else? He’d have had to pay for a bus or taxi to the airport, plus the flight.

  Then there’s his passport. I’m almost certain he wouldn’t have been carrying it on him, so he must have returned to our house to fetch it. Had he walked there? It is twelve miles from the sandbank – so it would’ve taken him several hours. Unless he was helped? But the police have already spoken to his friends and no one claims to have seen him since the disappearance. I keep all our passports together in a document file at home, so he couldn’t have—

  I’m halted in my thoughts. All our belongings are stored in the garage. He knows where we keep the spare key. He could easily have let himself in unseen. Suddenly, I think of it: the box file lying on its side on the concrete floor, the contents spilled out. That’s the file that contains all our important family documents – our passports, travel insurance documents, mine and Nick’s wills. I’d assumed the file had toppled over, but now I am picturing Jacob searching for his passport, knocking it over in his hurry to leave.

  PC Roam is saying, ‘We’ve checked Jacob’s savings account again, and still no money has been withdrawn since his disappearance. I wanted to know if it’s possible that he had any cash or savings that you didn’t know about?’

  ‘My mother gave him some money last Christmas – but that’s the cash we found in his drawer. Apart from his wages from the ferry job, he has little other money. Certainly not enough for a plane ticket.’

  ‘We’re aware that Jacob’s godmother, Isla Berry, lives in Chile. Is it likely that he’d have gone to see her?’

  ‘Yes, yes I think it is.’ Jacob knows the name of the international school where Isla works, and would have been able to find out her address. He could’ve followed her out to Chile, turned up on her doorstep.

  ‘Isla Berry hasn’t been in touch?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Is it possible that Jacob has begged Isla not to say anything?’

  Nick rubs his hand back and forth across his brow. ‘No. Isla would know how worried we’d be – Sarah’s left lots of messages. Isla would have called us.’ Yet there is something in Nick’s expression – a flicker of doubt.

  PC Roam says, ‘We’ve called her workplace – Santiago International School – but she is not due to start back until next week. Now we’re trying to get in touch with the landlord of the apartment she rents.’

  ‘What if Jacob arrived in Chile,’ I say, ‘but never found his way to where she lives?’

  I picture Jacob stepping out of the airport, bewildered and exhausted. Would he have tried to get a taxi or coach to take him to Isla’s address? He doesn’t speak any Spanish; he’s never travelled. Did someone notice him, a naïve, fresh-faced English boy?

  ‘How are you planning on tracking him down?’ Nick asks. ‘Have you contacted the Chilean authorities?’

  ‘I have to warn you,’ PC Roam begins, ‘that I don’t think they’ll get involved, as there’s no reason to believe that Jacob left the UK unwillingly. As he’s over sixteen, I’m afraid the Chilean police wouldn’t see any reason to begin searching for him. However, we will see if they are able to send someone over to Isla Berry’s apartment. Ask her to contact us.’

  ‘That’s not enough!’ I say, my voice rising. ‘What if he’s in trouble? When did he fly? How long’s he been there?’

  ‘He flew last Monday.’

  ‘Last Monday,’ I repeat. ‘That’s the day after he disappeared. What time?’

  ‘Let me just check for you,’ PC Roam says, pulling a notebook from her pocket and flicking through the pages.

  Nick gets to his feet and paces the hut. ‘When did Isla leave?’

  ‘The day before Jacob. Sunday. You bumped into her when you were meeting my mother. What time was it?’

  ‘Around nine, I’d say.’ He draws a hand over his mouth, thinking. ‘But she said her taxi wasn’t booked for another couple of hours.’

  It was then a two-hour drive to the airport, plus checking in. Which means she would have flown in the early hours of Monday morning.

  ‘Here we are,’ PC Roam says, arriving at the relevant page in her notebook. ‘Jacob was on the 04.45 flight from London Heathrow to Santiago, Chile.’

  I look at Nick, my stomach falling. ‘He left at the same time as Isla, didn’t he? They went together.’

  39. ISLA

  From the vantage point of hindsight, it should be easy for me to look at the pieces of our friendship and decide exactly where the first cracks began.

  Take a china vase, for example, once beautiful and prized, that lies broken on a tiled floor. The vase might have shattered at the moment the china hit the floor, but perhaps there was a weakness there from the beginning. The kiln might have been a degree too hot; the vase might have been knocked years before, leaving a tiny hairline fracture, barely visible to the eye; maybe it was the position it was placed in – too near the edge of a table or mantelpiece – so that there was an inevitability to its destruction.

  Or, what if the vase smashing into a thousand fragments was no accident? Maybe that vase, once beautiful and whole and adored, didn’t topple to the floor – but was thrown.

  This summer

  I pushed aside Marley’s memory book, and stood. The soles of my feet fuzzed with pins and needles and I stamped on the spot to try and encourage the blood to flow back into them. Dusk had crept up on me and I realized the hut had fallen into darkness. I shivered, and pulled my cotton scarf from a hook on the wall and wrapped it around my shoulders, then set about lighting the candles.

  Once that was done, I poured myself a gin and tonic and fetched a novel. The gin slipped down with ease, but I couldn’t focus on the book, my thoughts swimming away from the page towards Marley. Tomorrow would be the seventh anniversary. Hard to believe that it’d been seven years since I’d hugged him, breathing in his warm biscuit smell.

  I snapped the book shut and stood. I had to get out of the hut. I grabbed a bottle of red wine from the rack, picked up Jacob’s birthday card that I’d written ready for tomorrow, then went next door. I was hoping to find Sarah and Nick with the candles burning, the radio on, one of her huge pasta dishes bubbling on the hob, the smell of melted cheese thick in the air.

  ‘Hello!’ I called, crossing the deck with wine in hand, feeling a little light-headed from the gin. The double doors were thrown wide open, yet the hut was in darkness. With a lurch of disappointment, I remembered Sarah telling me that they were having dinner with friends of Nick’s who were renting a beach hut at the far end of the sandbank. They’d invited me to join them, but I’d said no, lacking the energy to b
e in the company of strangers.

  I was about to leave when I noticed Jacob stretched across the sofa, eyes closed. Large headphones were clamped over his ears and his thumbs were tapping a rhythm against his bare chest.

  In the half-light he could, so easily, have been Marley.

  I stood there, transfixed by an urge to place my fingertips on his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin and his heart beating beneath my palm.

  Jacob’s eyes flicked open.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know you were—’

  He pushed himself upright, pulling off his headphones. ‘Isla.’ He smiled. When Jacob smiled, it transformed his whole face, softening the darkness of his eyes.

  ‘I came to find your mum – but I just remembered she’s out for dinner.’

  He glanced at the wine in my hand. ‘Yeah, but come in.’ He stood, crossing the hut towards me, and removed the bottle from my hands before I had a chance to protest. He set the wine on the kitchen side while he slid a pack of matches from his pocket and lit the gas lantern. A warm glow from the flame illuminated his face as he opened the cutlery drawer and took out a corkscrew.

  ‘It’s screw top,’ I said.

  He grinned at me, twisting it off deftly and sloshing wine into two glasses, filling them almost to the top.

  He passed me one, then grabbed a bag of crisps from the cupboard and tore the bag open and put it on the coffee table, like we were sharing crisps in a pub. I took a seat on the sofa, unwinding the scarf at my neck. Jacob pulled on a T-shirt, then sat beside me, drawing one of his legs on to the sofa, his knee angled towards me.

  I took a drink, pleased for the warmth of the alcohol as it slid down my throat. Without realizing, I sighed.

  Jacob watched me closely.

  We often spent time together, but not at night, not drinking wine on a sofa. I became acutely aware of the raised beat of my heart. I wanted Sarah and Nick to bustle in, grab themselves a glass each and join us. I looked towards the open doors, where the moon hung suspended above the sea, laying a silver trail.