The Survivors(3)

It was shit. Kieran had known that. He should have come home earlier.

‘How long since you were last back?’ Ash said, reading his mind.

‘Two years?’

‘Longer than that, I reckon,’ Ash said, even as Mia was shaking her head.

‘It’s been nearly three,’ she said, turning to Ash. ‘How’s Olivia? I emailed her to say we’d be here for the week.’

‘Yeah, she’s good, she definitely wants to catch up.’ Ash was reaching for his phone. ‘Let me check if she’s around now actually, that’s her place just up there. Fisherman’s Cottage.’ He nodded along the row of beach houses backing onto the sand.

‘Oh yeah?’ Kieran could picture the low-slung weatherboard bungalow a dozen doors up from his parents’ place. Cottage was a generously poetic name. Like pretty much every other house in the town – even a lot of the newer ones – it screamed 1960s architecture. ‘How long’s she been renting there?’

‘Eighteen months or so. Since she moved back, anyway.’

As Ash dialled his girlfriend, Kieran tried to picture what Olivia Birch would look like at thirty. He hadn’t seen her properly in – he tried to work it out – years, anyway, so the image in his head was firmly set at eighteen. She’d had a kind of lithe height and poise that adults described as ‘statuesque’ and boys described as ‘hot’. She had been a regular down at the shore, her brown curly hair tied high in a ponytail, which she pushed aside impatiently as she zipped up her wetsuit. She would still be tall, obviously, and probably still beautiful. Girls born with Olivia’s looks tended to keep them.

Ash held the phone to his ear, then hung up, frowning a little at the screen. He lifted his head and to Kieran’s surprise, shouted out along the beach.

‘Hey! Bronte!’

The young woman had stopped beachcombing and was now crouching at the edge of the surf, focusing a camera on something in the sand. She looked up at Ash’s call, then stood, her skirt flapping in the sea breeze.

‘Liv’s housemate,’ Ash said to Kieran and Mia before pointing towards the cottage and raising his voice again. ‘Olivia at home?’

The girl – Bronte, Kieran gathered – shook her head, an exaggerated gesture over the distance. No. They saw rather than heard the word, her voice snatched away by the wind.

Ash cupped a hand around his mouth. ‘Where is she?’

A shrug. Don’t know.

‘Right, well.’ Ash turned back to his phone, the frown deepening. ‘I dunno. But look, she’s working tonight so let’s all go for drinks. She can say hello there.’

‘Liv’s still working at the Surf and Turf?’ Mia tried and failed to hide her surprise.

‘Yeah,’ Ash said. ‘For now, anyway. So, what time tonight? Eight-ish?’

‘I’m not sure, mate.’ Kieran pointed at Audrey in the towel, awake now underneath her sunhat. ‘We’ve got the bub, so –’

‘So that’s what grandmothers are for, isn’t it?’ Ash was already texting. ‘I’ll let Liv know we’ll be in. Get Sean along as well.’

Kieran and Mia exchanged a look through which they conducted an entire silent conversation, culminating in a barely visible nod from each. They would both go.

‘Okay.’ Texting complete, Ash picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. ‘I’d better get back to work. I’ll see you later.’ He leaned in to Audrey. ‘But not you, little one. You get to spend some quality time with Grandma.’

Audrey turned her head to look at him and the wind caught the edge of her hat, ripping it off. Both Kieran and Ash lunged for it but it was halfway down the beach before they’d moved. Ash cupped his mouth again.

‘Bronte!’

The girl was now knee-deep in the water, examining a length of seaweed she held in both hands. Her canvas bag lay safely up on the sand. She raised her head at his call, the movement both impatient and indulgent.

What now?

She saw Audrey’s little hat skimming along the edge of the surf and dropped the seaweed. She ran after the hat, gathering her skirt above her knees with one hand as she splashed through the water, the white crests of the waves fizzing around her legs. She nearly had it when the breeze spirited it up and away, out to sea and out of reach.

Kieran watched as Bronte stopped, recognising a lost cause when she saw one. She dropped her skirt, the hem falling just clear of the water, and ran a hand distractedly over the back of her neck, lifting her sheet of blonde hair away from her skin in a thick messy handful. She watched the hat float away.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Ash was grinning. ‘Swim out!’

She laughed, and called back something that sounded like: You swim out.

‘Don’t be so bloody selfish, Bronte. You’re already half in.’

She let her hair fall loose again and with her free hand flashed him the finger.

Ash laughed and turned away as his phone buzzed once in his hand. He glanced down but didn’t say anything.

Kieran looked out at the hat, which was doing an unnerving impression of a person as it bobbed in the surf.

‘Oh well.’ Mia reached out and took Audrey. ‘I think it’s gone, sweetheart. Sorry.’

Audrey, unconcerned, simply lifted a chubby hand and grabbed at her mother’s necklace. She yanked the silver chain in her fist as they all stood on the beach and watched as the hat dipped once, then twice, before being swallowed by the sea.