The Love of My Life(92)

I turn around to look at Coquet Island. The lighthouse, long-abandoned, sits at the far end, blinking briefly in the sun. I follow back to the land, and scan slowly across the village of Alnmouth.

Where are you?

I search along the lane to the car park, across the golf course, to the coastal path above the exposed rocks.

Up to the horizon, back down to where the grass peters off into scrub and sand dunes. Then back to the coastal path above the rocks again.

‘Charlie,’ I say, carefully. ‘I really do think we should go to the village. Ask around again. I know your Dad told the shop to call him if Janice came back in, but she could have gone into a cafe, a pub, the deli – I think we need to ask all of them. And then I think we should go to your house, sit down and make a proper plan. We need to find her.’

It doesn’t take him long to give in. He’s exhausted.

We walk back to the village together, my son and I. As we turn up a lane to the High Street, I turn back once more to look, careful Charlie doesn’t see me.

There.

That’s where she is. I’m certain of it. But I don’t know if it’s safe to take Charlie there. I don’t know if we’ve arrived just a little too late.





Chapter Sixty-Two


EMMA


Charlie falls asleep within minutes of sitting on his parents’ spotless cream sofa. I want to get him a proper pillow, a duvet, but I resist the urge. He’s an adult, and he doesn’t want to be mothered, least of all by me.

I leave him a note to say I’ve gone for another walk, and slip out of the door.

The wind has cleared and it’s warm. There are more people on the beach now, some in the sea, which sparkles cheerfully all the way to the horizon. A child flies a kite, yelling at his dad, who is doing it all wrong.

The cabins I spotted earlier appear above the path, immaculate, recently painted. Adirondack chairs lined up outside in the sun, expensive-looking sun shades. They’re exactly the sort of thing people pay vast sums of money to pretend to camp in: faux-rugged exteriors, interiors decked out with champagne glasses and luxury down-filled duvets.

Exactly the sort of place you’d go for a ‘nice private breakdown’ if you didn’t really like roughing it, but you loved Alnmouth beach.

She’s here. As soon as I spotted them, just a few hundred metres up from the sheep hut, I knew.

*

Two of the huts are closed up; tasteful blinds rolled down. One is occupied. Its Adirondack chair has been turned so it faces straight across the bay to Coquet Island.

As I approach the door, I see a dead crab on the picnic table. Its carapace is partly smashed, with a large section around the cervical groove missing. But my heart quickens, because the bristled chelae are intact. The signal-red spots along the remaining carapace, which is marked by four distinct spines.

This is it.

It’s real. She found one.

I pause, outside the door. The crab shell looks polished; I suspect she’s had it a long time. But even with the crab – my crab – there’s nothing good about the feeling of this place. I used to sense Janice and her nervous energy, the times I followed her and Charlie round Islington, but I don’t sense any energy at all now.

Gingerly, I knock on the door.

No answer.

I knock again. ‘Janice?’

Nothing. I look out to sea, for a moment. If she is in here, and she’s not alive, I’m not sure I’ll cope.

I try the door, which is open.

She’s propped up in bed, as if watching television, but her eyes are closed.

‘Janice,’ I say.

She opens her eyes, briefly, but then closes them. Then she opens them properly, and turns to me. ‘Emily?’ she says, slowly. ‘Emma?’

‘Janice,’ I say, crossing to the bed. ‘Are you OK?’

She closes her eyes again. ‘Go away,’ she says. ‘Please.’

There are five packets of paracetamol on the trendy plywood bedside table. In my trance I find myself wondering if the owners could have imagined the table being used for this, when they kitted the cabin out. Five packets of paracetamol, and a packet of something else, something pharmaceutical, with Janice’s details printed on a label on the side.

I pick one of the packets up. It’s empty. I check the others. All empty.

‘Janice,’ I say. ‘Janice, have you taken all of these pills?’

If she can hear me, she ignores me – this woman whose beautiful face, now puffy and pale, is known and loved by hundreds of thousands of people.

This woman who stole my son with her make-believe and her ability to convince. She ignores me.

‘Janice,’ I say, more loudly. ‘Janice, have you taken all of these pills?’

‘Not you too,’ she says. ‘Just go away. Please.’

Not me too?

I leave the hut, jabbing at my phone. I press 999, but the call won’t connect. I have no signal.

Tears of panic are forming. ‘Janice,’ I call. ‘I need to get you an ambulance.’

‘No.’

‘I have to go and find a signal. Please stay with me until then. Please.’

She mutters something else, which I’m sure is ‘Not you too,’ again, but I have no idea what she means. I leave the cabin, ready to run up the hill, but as I do I see someone running towards me.