Nature was a hard taskmaster, Lily realized. That night she witnessed nature, nurture and then – the final blow – nothing. Lily alone grieved for The Head. She’d learned that nobody loved freaks. Not Dad, not Mum. No one loved freaks. Only she loved them. That was her role. And when The Head told her in a dream that she too was a freak, on the inside, and that the only reason Daddy didn’t kill her was because he hadn’t noticed what a freak she was yet, and that Mummy hadn’t caught on either, Lily saw no reason to disbelieve him.
But what if they did see? What was to stop them from covering her with straw? From getting rid of her? And acting afterwards like none of it had ever happened? What was to stop them?
Lily grew furtive. She grew stealthy.
She’d seen Jim. She’d noticed that he had no eyebrows, no eyelashes. He always wore a hat. Hiding something, she’d supposed. No hair. She imagined that he was ill, with leukaemia. He looked sick. Too pale. Always alone. Bent over like an old man, his body withered. She watched him. Nothing escaped her. She gathered information because it might come in handy, one day. You could never tell.
Sara was in the kitchen leaning against the Aga drinking hot Vimto when Lily arrived home, soaking wet. She demanded to know what was up. Her daughter should have been at college all afternoon, not dawdling on the beach. Lily couldn’t face a confrontation.
‘Here’s what happened,’ she said, licking the salt from her fingers. ‘I met this man down by Shellness Hamlet. Totally naked. He’s renting one of the prefabs.’
‘You mean the bald one?’
‘No. The bald one doesn’t use the beach. He keeps to himself. This guy was fat and smelled of fish. Anyhow, I told him he shouldn’t be allowed to walk on a public highway totally starkers.’
Sara frowned. ‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing. He didn’t get my point. He was heading down to the sea for a dip. But then I noticed that he’d gone and left his prefab door wide open. I was cycling past, so I couldn’t help seeing that all over the floor were these pictures of naked ladies. And I don’t mean just naked, I mean weird. Things stuck up their arses and everything. Animals.’
‘My God.’
‘Exactly. So I confronted him about it and he said it was none of my business. I didn’t like the look of him. I mean, he was naked. I thought he might turn nasty so I jumped into the sea to avoid him.’
Even Sara found this last bit difficult to comprehend.
‘You jumped into the sea? Why didn’t you just ride home?’
‘I dunno. I was angry, I suppose. He’s a sicko. This is a small place. There’s the nudist beach, which attracts the worst kind of people anyway. And now there’s this man. Attracted by the nudity. You know? Like this is a sewer. Our home.’
Sara shook her head. ‘It’s not good, certainly.’
‘It’s terrible.’
‘I don’t want you going down there again.’
‘Oh no,’ Lily smiled at this, her eyes icy, ‘no one stops me from going where I want to go and doing what I want to do. No bloody pervert, anyway.’
Sara felt vexed by Lily’s moral certainty. ‘Go and get changed. You’ll catch your death.’
Lily had dripped a puddle on to the kitchen flags. She held up her hands. Her knuckles were purple with cold.
‘I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with the human body in its natural state,’ she said piously. ‘I’m not suggesting that for a moment. But what I am saying, though, is that one thing leads to another.’
She sounded just like her father.
‘I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the human body in its natural state,’ Sara said staunchly, ‘but what I am saying is that enough’s enough. My daughter is seventeen. She has a right to travel on a public highway without encountering this kind of thing.’
Luke was fully dressed. It was hard to believe that he would even consider walking a public highway stark naked.
‘Maybe you should step inside for a moment.’
He pulled the prefab’s door wide. Sara saw the picture of the woman with the high breasts. The woman, she noted, was not particularly attractive, which was good, somehow. Even so, she stood her ground. ‘No. I can’t stay.’
Lily was right. He did smell of fish.
Luke scratched his head. What should he do? Trouble was the last thing he’d expected here. He’d come for the emptiness. He’d come for an end to people and their associated burdens and stresses.
‘Lily arrived home soaking wet,’ Sara continued.
Luke nodded. ‘She jumped into the sea. I was very surprised.’
Sara shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Luke seemed harmless. But it was the harmless ones, she told herself, who were the real danger. Was that logical?
‘The thing is …’ she cleared her throat, ‘most of the people who live around here were upset about the nudist beach. It was a concession to the Hamlet.’ Sara pointed, uselessly, because it was pitch dark now. ‘I mean, the fenced-off chalets. And in general the rest of us don’t have that much to do with them. They tend to come and go. Summer weekends mainly. They aren’t what I’d call the community proper.’
‘And the prefabs?’
‘Pardon?’
‘This handful of prefabs. Are we the community proper?’
Sara frowned. Luke was thinking how gorgeous she was. If Sara had suspected, a feather could have felled her.
‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly, ‘for some reason we tend to see them as separate.’
She thought for a moment. ‘I suppose that’s illogical, really.’
‘It is illogical.’
‘There’s the boatmaker at the end of the line. Two along. He’s permanent. And then there’s the artists down to the left. But they winter in Ibiza.’
Sara felt like she wanted to sneeze. Powerfully. But her nose was clear.
‘And next to me,’ Luke added, ‘is Jim.’
Jim.
‘You mean the sick one?’
‘He isn’t sick. It’s alopecia. It’s a condition. You lose all your body hair.’
‘Oh.’
‘He’s a nice guy. He keeps my cigarettes for me.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I gave up smoking, but I’ve entrusted him with a packet just in case. I’m actually purifying. That’s why I’m here. I’m downloading.’
Purifying? Downloading?
Sara stared at the picture again. Luke smiled. ‘My ex-wife.’
‘Really?’
She blushed. Luke noticed. He found it rather touching.
‘The only thing I don’t understand,’ Sara said, after a short pause, ‘is why her sandals are unfastened.’
Luke gazed at Sara with a sense of real wonder. And then he said, so softly that she could hardly hear him, in a whisper, ‘Is it you?’
Sara blinked rapidly. ‘Is who me?’
He