‘What started it this time?’
I make a show of trying to remember what we argued about, although I know exactly how it began. I remember the way Jacob turned to face me, the accusation in his eyes as Isla’s name came hissing out of my mouth. But I don’t tell Nick that. I say, ‘I asked Jacob whether he had enjoyed the barbecue – I was fishing for a thank you, I suppose. But he missed the hint entirely, just got out his phone and ignored me. I don’t mind doing all the work – I really don’t – but I’d just like him to notice sometimes. I nagged him about not being glued to the screen all day. He flared up. I fired back. That was it. I should have left it – it was his birthday.’
‘Doesn’t give him the right to be rude to you.’
I shrug lightly.
‘And then what, he left?’
‘Stormed out.’
Nick’s brows draw together, annoyed. He doesn’t ask a lot from Jacob – but good manners are high on his list.
‘I’m worried,’ I tell Nick, truthfully. ‘It’s been almost twenty-four hours since we’ve seen him. We don’t even know where he stayed last night. He wasn’t with Luke, or Caz, so where was he?’
‘He could’ve crashed in another friend’s hut – or even slept on the beach. It’s warm enough.’
‘Yes, but surely he’d have come back today? And he’s not answering his phone – it keeps on telling me that I can’t be connected.’
‘He’s switched it off, then.’
Why? Why would Jacob keep his phone switched off all day? Even if he was angry enough to not want to speak to me, surely he wouldn’t want to be cut off from everyone else? He could have just ignored my calls – but left his phone on.
Nick asks, ‘Do you think it’s serious between him and Caz?’
‘I think Jacob is serious. He’s in love with her, I can see it. He’s just been so … changeable. One moment he’s on top of the world – practically skipping around the hut. He was even singing yesterday morning. Jacob. Singing.’ I shake my head. ‘Then the next minute, he’s a moody bugger. Probably because they’ve had a fight or he’s seen her talking to another boy.’
‘And you don’t think she feels the same?’
I sigh. ‘To be honest, I’ve no idea. She just seems more … together than he does.’
‘So maybe they had a fight, like you suggested, and he’s just taking some time to cool down. Let’s give him another hour or two. You know what us Symonds men are like: when we get upset we like to just disappear, take ourselves off into the woods. Maybe this is Jacob’s way of letting off steam. He’s dealing with a lot of emotions, right now. He’s in love. His first love. That’s life-changing.’
Before Nick realizes what he’s said, the words are out there.
Colour spreads across his cheeks. He meets my gaze and I can see the apology in the widening of his pupils.
I wasn’t Nick’s first love.
Isla was.
Nick was mine before he was Sarah’s. It’s one of those oddly uncomfortable, yet incontrovertible pieces of history that Sarah, Nick and I pretend to ignore. We flit around the subject, never quite brushing the edges of it, like moths scared of getting too close to a flame.
I met Nick the summer I bought my beach hut. His parents, David and Stella, owned the newly built hut next door, which had modern windows and a brand-new cooker that was fancier than the one in my mother’s old bungalow. They talked to me mostly of their three sons. Two were doctors, both on secondment in America, and their youngest son, Nick, was completing an MA in Business Studies – and was due to return to the sandbank for summer.
I was expecting someone pale-skinned and bookish from a spring spent studying, but when Nick arrived, he was tanned and athletic-looking. I liked his easy manner, and the smile that lit up his whole face when he shook my hand for the first time.
We were friends for two days – lovers by the third.
Summer 1998
‘Sherbet lemon yellow,’ I said to Nick as I balanced on the stepladder, dipping the paintbrush into the tin, the sun-warmed rungs of the ladder hard against my bare feet.
Nick, a glue-gun in hand, glanced up.
‘That’s how my mum would’ve described this colour. She painted my bedroom door in the same shade.’ I worked the brush across the hut in smooth strokes. I liked the steady rhythm of painting, the soothing repetition, the heat on my back.
‘You had a yellow bedroom door?’
‘All our doors were different colours. Mum’s room was new-leaf green,’ I said, thinking of the smear of my child-sized fingerprints from where I’d pushed the door open before the paint had dried. ‘The bathroom door was iceberg blue, and the kitchen was plum-pie purple. The estate agent who valued the bungalow said, “You might want to think about more neutral tones before putting it on the market.”’
Nick laughed. I could see he was going to ask something further about my mother, but I pointed to the radio and said, ‘Oh, I love this song! Turn it up.’
Sometimes I liked to talk to Nick about her, but more often than not I kept her for myself. It felt like an impossible task to try and pin her into words. He wouldn’t have been able to picture the violet flecks of her irises, or the way she sometimes slipped a pencil through the loose twisted knot of her hair. He didn’t know that when she played the flute, her eyes fluttered closed and her head would dance with the notes. He would struggle to understand that, in our house, we didn’t have a dining table – we brought mugs of tea and biscuits into bed in the mornings; we took jam sandwiches in our pockets when we were walking; we’d make thick soups over a fire in the garden. He wouldn’t know that sometimes my mother disappeared inside herself for long periods of time, and I would bring her food and books, and she’d run her fingers through my hair and call me, ‘My darling, Isla-la.’ She was a mother of colour and inconsistencies – and I wasn’t ready to share her.
In Nick’s family there were older brothers, a host of cousins, and two sets of grandparents; there were family meals and trophies on shelves; there was laughter and ribbing and family jokes. I loved being a part of it. His father treated me as though I was an exotic, intriguing patient he was still trying to diagnose. His mother looked at me through the corners of her eyes and spoke carefully. ‘She adores you,’ Nick would assure me with his easy smile, believing it. ‘How couldn’t she?’
I looked across at Nick, his top lip beaded with sweat as he concentrated on filling the cracks in the wood. I loved the confidence he had in the world – and his place in it. He belonged in a way I never would. If my mother had met him, she’d have held his face in her hands and said, ‘Well, aren’t you something special?’
He glanced up. ‘What?’
I smiled. ‘I wish Mum could have met you.’
He moved towards the stepladder where I still balanced, placing his lips against my bare ankle.
That evening, Sarah arrived at the hut with a sleeping bag stuffed underarm. ‘Can I stay?’
‘Course.’ I pushed myself up from Nick’s lap and crossed the hut, wrapping my arms around her. ‘Maggie’s