My blood freezes. I’m not sure I’ve heard right.
‘He doesn’t talk about Marley, does he? But I’m certain he still thinks about him. Marley shaped his life. What other seventeen year old would happily use a pair of binoculars to study birds? He does it because it’s his link to Marley.’
‘He was ten,’ I say. My voice is a whisper.
‘I know. I know that. But Jacob probably feels guilty: he made it – Marley didn’t. Isn’t there some disorder that people who live through a tragedy can suffer?’
‘Survivor guilt,’ I say, having looked into it some time ago. Signs of it can include anxiety, depression and guilt, linked to an experience where an individual survived a traumatic event when others didn’t. ‘I don’t think Jacob suffers from it. He’s never struck me as depressed or particularly anxious.’
‘Maybe not, but then would we even know? Jacob’s not exactly a sharer, is he?’
‘We’d know,’ I say.
‘Has he talked to you about Marley recently?’
My mouth turns dry. I shake my head.
‘He hasn’t mentioned his name in front of me – not for a while. But then,’ Nick shakes his head, ‘I never bring up Marley. Maybe I should. Maybe we should both be talking about him more. We don’t want what happened to seem like something that should have to crouch in the shadows. It was a desperate, desperate tragedy, but really it’s up to us to keep celebrating Marley’s memory, isn’t it?’
I manage to nod.
‘We should ring Isla.’
I start. ‘Why?’
‘Jacob’s close to her.’
The comment stings in a way it shouldn’t.
‘Jacob’s confided in her in the past,’ Nick continues. ‘They often talk together about Marley, don’t they?’
It was true. Sometimes I wondered if it wasn’t good for Jacob. He would share a memory of Marley, and I’d watch the way Isla’s face would light up with gratitude as if he’d given her the greatest gift.
Nick continues, ‘I heard him this summer reminiscing with Isla about that time he and Marley found that old windsurfing board washed up in our bay.’
‘When they cited scavengers’ rights,’ I add.
Nick smiles to himself. ‘The boys were so close.’
My heart clenches. Could Marley’s anniversary really have triggered Jacob’s disappearance?
‘Maybe Isla can think of something that’ll help us,’ Nick says. ‘Jacob might have mentioned something to her.’
‘I’m not sure if her mobile works over there.’
‘Course it will.’
Isla has been living and working in Chile for the past four years. She originally went there on a hiking holiday to Patagonia – but fell in love with the country and ended up working as a teacher at an international school. When she’s away, we rarely ring each other. We tell ourselves that ours is the sort of friendship that’s unchanged by long distance: when she’s back, she’s back. But I can’t help wondering whether, like me, Isla feels a sense of relief when we part. Summers on the sandbank have always had an intensity to them, our friendship blooming in the heat, living in each other’s pockets for the summer stretch. When autumn arrives and the huts are swept out, boarded up ready for the winter, we each disappear back to our own lives, and I like that – the flow of the seasons mirroring our friendship.
I was definitely ready to see her go this time.
‘Are you going to call her?’ Nick asks.
I think of the things we said to each other before she left. But with Nick at my shoulder, I can’t hesitate. I take out my mobile and turn so my back is to the wind. ‘What’s the time difference in Chile?’ I ask. ‘It could be the middle of the night.’
‘I’ve no idea. Isla won’t mind. This is important.’
I nod. Press Call.
There is long pause, and then the phone begins to ring.
I glance at Nick. He’s watching, expectant.
I wait, a hand pressed to my other ear to block out the wind.
In my head I am silently pleading: Don’t pick up.
Sarah’s name flashes across my mobile like a warning. I stare at the screen dispassionately. I can imagine what she’s going to say. In truth, I’m surprised she’s waited this long.
Eventually my voicemail intercepts the call. Sarah leaves a message, but rather than listening to it, I return the phone to the drawer. I don’t want to hear her voice. I don’t even want to think about her – because right now I’m back in a comfortable, warm place of memory. I’m with Marley. My beautiful newborn Marley, with the sweet scent of milk on his skin, a tiny pink fist gripped around my finger. All I want to think about is the moment he burst into my world. My light, my joy, my son.
Summer 2000
As the next contraction crashed through my body, I dragged my focus to my breath. I pushed the air from my open mouth, then sucked a new breath deep into my lungs. In. Out. In. Out. My fists were clenched rocks at my side, my skin licked with salt.
The contraction subsided, like a wave petering out. The midwife resumed rolling a pair of dark-green flight socks up my calves. ‘The anaesthetist won’t be long now.’
I pressed my lips tight, nodding.
Right then – more than anything in the world – I wanted my mother.
I’d been labouring for forty-two hours, but the baby’s head had become jammed in the birthing canal. His heart rate was dropping with each contraction, and there was no way of pushing the baby out naturally.
‘You’ll stay with me?’
The midwife took my hand tight in her own and said, ‘I’m going to be there until the moment that baby is put in your arms.’
I felt the next ripple of pain building and pulled my focus back to my breathing, jamming my fists into the bed as the full contraction ripped through my body.
When I was finally wheeled into the operating theatre, there was a room full of people in scrubs and masks. I didn’t care that I’d envisaged giving birth in a water-pool with calming music playing. All I wanted was my baby safe in my arms.
I felt the blissful relief of painlessness as the anaesthetic flooded through me. It was seconds – that was all it took to cut me open. The midwife stayed at my side as she promised, keeping up a steady stream of conversation. Although I was numb from the chest down, I felt the exact moment when the baby was lifted out of me; it was astounding, I felt it, a strange lightness as the weight was removed. I waited, eyes tracked to the corner of the small room, listening. And then I heard it: a tiny mewing cry.
Someone said the word: boy.
He was brought to me, naked and red-skinned, his dark hair matted to his head. He was placed on my chest, a tiny squished creature with a swollen puckered mouth, and the love that rocked through me was fierce and primeval. I kissed his face, and through my tears and kisses words slid from my mouth – promises of love that I meant wholly. My newborn son – Marley – opened his eyes and looked right at me. In that moment it was perfect.