Last Seen

by Lucy Clarke

  There was something so serious, so loaded in his tone that I felt my spine stiffen. ‘Jacob, what do you mean?’

  He’d looked away then, running the heel of his hand over the window, clearing a patch of condensation. The glow of streetlamps punctuated the darkness at steady intervals as we sped through the night.

  ‘Jacob,’ I’d said, placing my hand on his forearm. ‘Please, what are you talking about?’

  He’d turned towards me – and I knew before he’d said a word what this was about. It was all there on his face. ‘Marley?’

  Very slowly, he’d nodded. ‘It was Mum’s fault.’

  I look at Sarah now. Beads of sweat glisten on her brow. ‘Jacob told me everything,’ I say. ‘I know what happened in the minutes before he and Marley went for a swim. They’d finished building the sand fortress, and then went back to your hut to get a drink. As they walked in, Marley knocked over the bowl of water that you’d been using to clean the windows. Is that true?’

  Sarah nods, eyes flicking over my face.

  I can picture Marley drifting into the hut, his bare feet still looking too large for his narrow legs. He wouldn’t have been concentrating – his head was in the clouds half the time – and I can imagine him knocking into the bowl, sending water sloshing across the hut. Jacob had said Sarah was angry, and I can imagine the heat of embarrassment flushing pink in Marley’s cheeks.

  ‘You told them to get out from under your feet, play on the beach. When they complained they’d been doing that all morning, you said, “Go and swim, then!” You made it into a competition, didn’t you, telling them to swim out to the yellow buoy marker? You said there’d be a prize for whoever got back to shore the quickest. A Snickers bar; that’s what the prize was, wasn’t it? A fucking Snickers!’

  Sarah listens, her face white.

  ‘With you there were always running races, obstacle courses, prizes for the best drawing, the first one to finish their dinner. Everything was a fucking competition! You’re the same with me – always competing, as if you can only know your worth by measuring it against someone else. I can just picture you setting the boys off. Did you draw a line in the sand, tell them: On your marks, get set, go? And then what? They speed down the beach, hurdle through the shallows and start to swim. But you … you turn away. Our boys were confident in the water – but they were only ten! Why weren’t you watching? Where were you?’

  When Sarah doesn’t answer, I continue. ‘You were finishing cleaning the windows. You got distracted – went to the standpipe to fetch fresh water. Forgot to check on them.’ I swallow, feeling the emotion swelling into my throat. ‘You forgot to watch our ten-year-old children swimming to a buoy marker forty metres from the shore. You forgot to watch our boys – and because of that, Marley drowned.’

  I hear her breath catch.

  ‘You could say it was a mistake – a moment’s carelessness. We’ve all done it, haven’t we? God knows, I wish I’d checked on them more often that morning. So I could have forgiven it, Sarah. I think I truly could have.’ I take a breath. ‘But what I find impossible to understand is why you never told me.’ I shake my head as I say, ‘It wasn’t a lie by omission. You didn’t just leave that detail out. You made Jacob lie to me, too! You told him that the competition was a secret. You prepped him to tell me that it was Marley’s idea to swim around the buoy marker – when I knew, knew, Marley would never have suggested that! You laid a threat for Jacob, saying that if I found out the truth, I’d blame you. That you and Nick would have to sell the beach hut – wouldn’t be able to return to the sandbank ever again.’

  Sarah covers her mouth with a hand, her free arm wrapping around her middle.

  ‘What kind of mother does that to their son?’ My voice shakes as I say, ‘You should never have sent them out into the sea. You should’ve been watching them. But you forgot. Forgot about our children! You carried on cleaning your fucking hut, while my baby was drowning. And then … and then you lied about it! Made Jacob lie about it, too!’

  I snatch a breath, my mouth twisting around my words. ‘You’ve known for years that I blamed myself. I thought I should’ve taught Marley better to not swim without asking me. I punished myself for not watching – for being with Samuel when Marley was drowning. Jesus, Sarah, you saw that I pushed Samuel away – that I couldn’t bear to be with him because of the guilt. But it wasn’t my fault, was it? It was yours.’ I suck in air, my lungs tight. ‘But you – your life gets to carry on. You have Nick. You have your boy. You are part of a family. Everything that I should have had – you kept it all, when you’d cost me mine. And you didn’t even admit your part in it, or say sorry …’ My voice cracks on that word.

  ‘Listen—’

  ‘Listen? I was ready to listen seven years ago. I was begging you – begging Isaac – begging Jacob – begging everyone who’d been there that day to try and help me make sense of things. I sold myself a thousand theories of what happened. And all along, you knew!’ My fingers grasp at the roots of my hair. ‘You came to my flat, bringing meals, books, magazines. I thought you were being a good friend. A best friend. But you did those things out of guilt, didn’t you?’ I jab a finger in the direction of the memory book Sarah still grips. ‘And now that – that is all I have left. Memories!’

  I step forward to reach for it, but Sarah draws back, tightening her grip.

  My tone is lethal, punctuated. ‘Give. Me. The. Book.’

  She shakes her head. Swallows. ‘Not until you tell me if Jacob is safe.’

  My eyes widen in disbelief. ‘You’ve still not said sorry. After everything that’s happened – after everything you’ve done, you can’t even bring yourself to say, It’s true. I’m sorry.’

  Sarah lifts her chin. ‘I’ve looked through the memory book, Isla. There are pages and pages of memories about Jacob. Why? Why do you need to keep his memories? What have you done?’ She is yelling now. ‘What the hell have you done?’

  ‘You don’t deserve a single fucking answer!’ I hiss.

  The sound of tearing rips through the hut. It takes me a moment to understand. I look down and see that Sarah is shredding pages out of the memory book, screwing them up and tossing them to the floor.

  ‘Stop! Stop it!’

  ‘Where is he, Isla?’ she demands, yanking out another page, the thick cream paper crumpling in her fist. ‘Where the hell is my son?’

  I watch, horrified. It’s everything I have left of Marley – and she is destroying it in front of me. I launch forward, grabbing for the memory book, but Sarah snatches it out of reach, and I am unbalanced, falling forwards. I reach for Sarah, bringing her down with me. We crash to the floor, my cheekbone smacking against her shoulder as we land.

  I find myself on top of her, and she is pushing, trying to shove me from her. Rage seethes through me and I grab her wrists, pinning her arms down. She thrashes beneath me, her teeth bared. ‘Get off!’

  I feel the heat of her skin beneath my fingers, see the veins pulsing in her neck. She strains and writhes, her hair tangled across her face.

  ‘You’ve taken everything!’ I spit.

  ‘So you took my son?’ Sarah yells back. She jerks an arm free of my grip and it comes swinging towards me, her fist connecting with my jaw. There’s a hot burst of pain. Metallic notes fill my mouth.

  My hands go to my lips, fingertips meeting something hot, wet. Blood.

  Beneath me, Sarah’s body slackens.

  We are both silent, staring at one another in amazement.

  How? How did we get here?

  At the edge of my vision I can see the memory book splayed on the damp floor, loose pages ripped and scattered. I think of my beautiful little Marley with his sun-kissed face. I imagine him sitting in the corner of the hut, looking quizzically at his mother and Auntie Sarah.

  A deep wave of shame floods me. I drag myself off Sarah, slumping against the hut wall.

  Slowly, she pushes herself up so she is sitting, too. ‘Are you … okay? Your
lip …’

  Silence beats between us.

  Sarah stares at me in the growing quiet. When she speaks, her voice is a whisper. ‘Jacob was in love with you, did you know that?’

  I think about the question for a moment. ‘Yes, I did know.’ Not at first. I was slow to read the signs. But as the summer wore on, I could sense his feelings had shifted. I know I enflamed things with my hunger for closeness, letting him misinterpret it as attraction. I should never have allowed him to stay the night in my hut. I came dangerously close to crossing a line that I’d once thought was so much clearer to see. I look Sarah in the eye when I tell her, ‘Nothing happened between us. Never.’

  ‘But you took him to Chile.’

  ‘Because he asked me to. He needed me. For the first time in years, I felt like … like a mother again.’

  Sarah presses her palms together. Her voice trembles as she says, ‘I took your son, so you’re taking mine. Is that it?’

  I stare at Sarah, understanding the precise undulations of pain she feels, the unbalancing sensation of not knowing whether your child is safe, of feeling like your whole world is disorientated. I swallow the blood that’s filling my mouth. ‘You treat me like I’m a trespasser, like the beach hut, the sandbank, Nick, Jacob – it’s all yours. You never talk about Marley any more. He thought the world of you, Sarah. Your family. But you were quick to forget. You took down his photo, replaced it. You forgot the small details of who he was. His dance – his Michael Jackson dance – you’d forgotten it. Only Jacob remembers.’ I drag in a breath, my throat thickening with tears. ‘You, Nick, and Jacob were everything to me after Marley died. All I had. But you didn’t want me to be part of that. Have you any idea how it felt knowing you’d lied about Nick and Jacob’s camping dates just to keep me away?’ Tears pool in my eyes, making my vision swim. ‘You were pushing me out. So I wrote down those memories of Jacob, as I knew I wouldn’t have many more. I let him come to Chile with me because he was hurting – we both were. I wanted to look after him.’

  ‘He’s in Chile, still? He’s safe?’

  I look at Sarah. There are tears streaming down her face. ‘Yes, he’s there. He’s safe.’

  Her eyes screw shut as she breathes out heavily.

  I push myself to my feet, wiping the blood from my mouth with the back of my wrist. I gather up the memory book, smoothing the pages between my fingers. After a moment, Sarah reaches for the torn sheets that litter the hut floor. She gathers them carefully, passing them to me. As I reach for the final one, her hand moves over mine.

  I look up, our eyes meeting.

  ‘I didn’t know that’s how you felt. How you saw things. I’m so sorry, Isla. I’m sorry for everything I’ve done.’

  When I’d arrived in Chile with Jacob, there had been no plan as to what would come next. Numb with shock, I barely remember the three-hour drive south, or packing Jacob off on a trekking trip with a friend who runs wilderness expeditions. I do remember Jacob begging me to come with him, but I’d told him I had to work – that the space would be good for him. I agreed I’d pick him up afterwards; we’d talk then. I waved him off but, instead of returning to my apartment, I found myself at the airport spending the last of my savings on a return flight to England, knowing I needed to confront Sarah face-to-face.

  When I arrived on the sandbank, there was Sarah standing on the shoreline, desperate to know what had happened to her son. It was as if our lives had flipped – and I found myself watching, riveted. I only intended to stay hidden for a few hours, a day at most, yet … there was part of me that wanted to let her suffer. I wanted her to understand.

  But I let it go too far, I know that. I’m not proud of the person I’ve become. It’s up to me to end it.

  Now I take Sarah’s phone and dial the number for the mobile I’d pressed into Jacob’s hand before leaving him. It’ll be late afternoon in Chile. I imagine Jacob with the lowering sun on his face, standing in the mountains, hiking boots laced up, a pack on his shoulders.

  I hand the phone to Sarah.

  There is a question in the dip of her eyebrows.

  I nod at her. ‘It’s him.’

  She grips the phone to her ear, her other hand pressed to her chest.

  I watch as she pushes open the hut doors, stepping out on to the deck. The rain has stopped now. The night is bright with stars, the sky washed clean. She presses her back against the deck railing, her face turned towards the light.

  Lit by the soft glow from the gas lantern, I can see from Sarah’s expression the exact moment Jacob answers. The icy fear that’s held her prisoner melts in the sunburst of his voice. Her knees buckle and she grips on to the railing. ‘Oh, my baby! It’s you! It’s you!’

  It’s a moment I will never have in my life: the reuniting of a mother with her son.

  51. SARAH

  Hearing his voice is like stepping out of a nightmare into the golden light of a dream.

  ‘Jacob! Jacob!’ I repeat over and over, the two syllables of his name having never felt so wonderful on my lips.

  In clipped sentences he tells me he’s safe. He’s in Chile. Hiking. With a group.

  I am grinning and crying, and still repeating his name.

  In the blinding relief of hearing his voice – knowing he is alive, breathing, safe! – I’m slow to notice the strangeness of his tone. Somehow he sounds older, detached, changed. I press the phone closer to my ear, as if I can draw him nearer to me. But his voice remains hesitant, distant from me. I’m a mountaineer ascending a peak, suddenly seeing I am still miles from the final summit. I realize just how much distance lies between us now.

  In his silence, I attempt to explain about Isaac, but when he doesn’t respond, I falter, uncertain. I hear his breath coming in quick bursts, his footsteps crunching against earth. I try and picture him walking with a backpack on his shoulders. Are there new muscles in his shoulders, stubble dusting his chin, a tangle of unwashed hair? We have only been apart for days, but I feel like years have moved between us.

  ‘How did you get this number?’ he asks.

  ‘Isla.’

  ‘She’s been in touch?’

  ‘I’m with her.’

  ‘Where?’ he snaps. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘On the sandbank. Isla’s here, too.’

  ‘But – I thought she was here. In Chile.’

  ‘She wanted to talk to me.’

  ‘She flew back? I can’t believe she …’ I hear him curse several times, the words muffled as he holds the phone away from his mouth.

  I wait for him to return to the line, ears pricked as I try to gauge what he’s doing. More than a minute passes without a word, and I can feel the stutter of my heartbeat as I begin to think he’s cut me off. ‘Jacob? Jacob?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Are you there? Please, Jacob …’

  His voice is low, hushed. ‘Has she told you?’

  ‘Told me what?’

  There’s a pause. ‘Isla blames you for Marley’s death.’

  I glance inside the beach hut, where Isla stands with her back to me, her face lifted towards a photo on the wall. ‘Yes,’ I say finally, ‘she told me.’

  A weighted silence beats between us.

  Jacob’s voice is a whisper. ‘Does she know it’s a lie?’

  Isla chooses that moment to turn, to look directly at me.

  She cannot hear Jacob, yet her gaze seems to bore into me, her skin ghostly white. The deep hollows beneath her cheekbones sharpen her features, making her eyes seem larger, questioning.

  Seven years ago, a whispered promise in a darkened beach hut, tears wet on our faces.

  I lower my voice as I answer. ‘No. She doesn’t.’

  There’s a pause. ‘Are you going to tell her?’

  52. ISLA

  When there are so many words to choose from, so many places to begin, I wonder what Sarah is saying to Jacob. Where they will start.

  I begin to gather up the few things I have into my backpack, kno
wing I’m done here. The anger that’s been flaming bright since the night I left with Jacob has burned out, but what is left in its place, I can’t say.

  I turn off the gas lantern and the hut falls into darkness.

  I lock up the beach hut and slip the keys into my pocket. Outside, the waves beat against the shore, a restless rhythm.

  Sarah has left the deck and is standing on the dark beach, talking quietly into the phone, her eyes on the ground.

  With my coat pulled around me, I tuck the memory book under my arm and cross the deck. I pause for a moment, placing one hand against the hut, the wood damp beneath my palm. I lean forward, press my lips to the wood, tasting earth, and salt, and the layers of the sandbank.

  Then I push away, climbing down on to the rain-pocked sand. I pause at the narrow gap between our two huts that our boys once made into their Secret Sand Tunnel. I remember them whispering together in their private hideaway, as if the rest of the world couldn’t reach them there.

  With the dark sea at my back, the harbour sighing before me, I think: what we’ve lost. What we’ve all lost.

  As I’m about to move off, Sarah looks up. Our gazes lock. Her eyes are wide in her pale face. She holds her phone away from her ear, stepping forward. ‘Isla, wait.’

  She stares at me, her fingers outstretched, as if she wants to hold on to something that’s just out of reach.

  I’m not sure what more there is to say. The truth hangs between us now, immovable, insurmountable.

  Her mouth opens and closes. She glances at the phone in her hand and then back to me.

  ‘Isla—’

  53. SARAH

  I’m not sure what to say next. What to do.

  The phone throbs hot in my fingers, Jacob still on the other end of the line. I can distantly hear his voice, faint and panicked, blurring with the murmur of the sea.