The Survivors(14)

Verity didn’t answer, but Kieran thought he could guess what she was thinking. Verity Elliott did not want a new start. What she wanted was for things to be the way they used to be. She would never say that though, he knew. Sure enough, she took a sip of coffee and glanced at the beach towel draped over the back of Kieran’s chair.

‘Are you going for a swim?’

‘Can we not change the subject?’

‘I wasn’t trying to.’ Verity regarded him across the kitchen. ‘I was going to ask if you were coping okay.’

‘Oh.’ Kieran swallowed. ‘Yeah. I guess so. I mean, this whole thing with Dad is –’

He tried to find the word.

‘Confronting?’ Verity supplied.

‘Yeah, I suppose.’ Kieran had been going to say really shit, but sure, that was close enough.

‘It’s –’ Verity started, then hesitated.

Kieran waited, genuinely curious what she was going to say, here in her kitchen surrounded by half-filled boxes of rubbish-stained clothes, packed by a man who had stood by her side for forty years and now looked at her as though he couldn’t quite place her. Verity stared into her coffee mug with a hint of a frown on her face. For a long moment, the only sound was the ticking of the kitchen clock, coming from a box beside the counter, then she took a breath. When she looked up, her expression was back to neutral.

‘The thing to remember, Kieran, is that feelings of uncertainty or anxiety are completely normal ahead of big –’

She broke off as Kieran stood abruptly. No. He had absolutely no interest in sitting through a natural to fear change session led by his mother. He’d had to do that one already, a few times in fact, with actual qualified professionals.

‘If you don’t want to talk about this,’ he said. ‘I may as well swim.’

Verity was firmly serene. ‘I thought we were talking.’

‘Did you really?’

They looked at each other over the boxes. Then Verity opened her mouth.

‘All right.’ The mask was still perfectly in place. ‘Be careful in the water.’

Her words were as light as air. Kieran stared at his mother. She gazed back. He genuinely could not tell if she was having a dig. Slowly, he picked up his towel and walked out of the kitchen, making sure not to slam the door, in case that meant something.

‘Where’s Finn off to?’ Brian’s question floated into the hall.

Verity didn’t bother to correct him.

At the back door, Kieran ignored a small patch of sand he’d missed, scattering the grains as he strode out onto the verandah. He looked out at the sea, hoping to find Mia walking barefoot in the shallows, or lying on a towel with their daughter.

No Mia. No Audrey. The beach behind their house was empty.

Kieran took out his phone and sent her another text. Where are you guys?

He walked down the thin but well-worn path through the back gate and onto the sand. He stopped when he neared the tideline and turned, shielding his eyes.

To the north, the rolling waves fizzed white against the sand. A couple of distant boats drifted with the breeze.

To the south – Kieran froze.

To the south, just a few minutes’ walk away, a small crowd had gathered. They were standing very still and close together, their heads down and dogs held tight on leads as they watched something unfolding at the shoreline. Their distress pulsed across the sand.

Kieran would have known what it was, even without the flash of a blue uniform. Even without the police tape flapping against makeshift stakes outside what he could now see was Fisherman’s Cottage. There was only one thing in Evelyn Bay that drew a crowd like that to the water’s edge.

Kieran dropped his towel and started to run.





Chapter 6


It wasn’t them, Kieran knew, his heels sinking into the damp sand as he tried to pick up speed. It wasn’t Mia and Audrey at the feet of that crowd.

It wasn’t them, because someone would have knocked on his parents’ door by now. Kieran would not have been allowed to sit exasperated at his mother’s kitchen table while this played out a few hundred metres away.

It wasn’t them, because otherwise the largely forgotten but familiar faces of neighbours that turned towards Kieran as he ran up now would surely be softened with sympathy.

It wasn’t Mia or Audrey, Kieran told himself as he drew to a halt with his breath burning in his chest, because he simply could not bear it to be them.

He was right.

The small crowd shifted and parted a little, enough for him to see what it was that had drawn this silent vigil. And it wasn’t them. It wasn’t Mia lying still, with her hair lank against the damp sand, her bare arms mottled with an unearthly blue-white bloom of cold. It wasn’t Mia sprawled lifeless at the shoreline, with the distinctive bright orange glow of her waitress uniform darkened by the sea.

It wasn’t Mia. It wasn’t even Olivia, thank God, as the plastic police tape shuddered and glinted in the breeze, roping off the path leading directly to Fisherman’s Cottage.

It was Bronte.

Kieran’s immediate thought was a pure, shameful rush of relief. He ran both hands over his face, horrified that someone might notice. He took a deep breath.

‘Do they know what happened?’ he said to the woman next to him, whose name he knew he should remember. He could picture her on his parents’ porch, sipping wine at barbecues. The woman shook her head, her grey hair catching the wind as her dog strained at its leash.