“Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. You have to let some things go.”
“I’m not so good at that.”
In the end, they didn’t take much at all. Half of Tabitha’s clothes ended up in bin bags. They took towels, rolled up a couple of rugs. Of the furniture, they took only four kitchen chairs and a workbench and a piece of driftwood Tabitha had found washed up on the beach and had thought of carving into something, someday.
When they were done, it was only midmorning.
“We hardly needed the van,” Michaela said.
Then Tabitha thought of something. She stepped inside the back of the van, retrieved a towel and her swimsuit.
“We’re going for a swim,” she said.
“You’re going for a swim,” said Michaela.
Down on the beach, Tabitha took off her clothes and pulled on her swimsuit. She had lost so much weight in prison that it hung off her, absurdly.
“Fuck it,” she said and in front of Michaela’s amused gaze slipped it off and ran naked into the sea. The water was cold, like a steely grip on her body. It was also rough and she had to push through the breakers until she was away from the shore. She felt like a creature being born into a new element and she let herself slip under the surface. It was suddenly so dark and quiet and cold and good that she felt an impulse to stay there, to breathe the water in. They said that to drown was strangely peaceful, it took just that first breath of water rather than air.
But she couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to do it. Not really. She burst up into the light, spluttering, and turned to the shore and saw a shape standing beside Michaela, a shape that she couldn’t make out. She swam toward the shore and just as she was approaching it, she was overtaken by a huge wave that turned her over and landed her on the pebbles on her back. It felt undignified and comic and she stood up dripping and laughing and looking into the slightly bemused face of the Reverend Melanie Coglan. She was wearing a heavy-duty anorak and a woolen cap and Tabitha was wearing nothing, until Michaela stepped forward and wrapped a towel round her.
“It’s a bit rough,” said Mel.
“I like the sea like that.”
“I heard you were here.”
“Through the grapevine.”
“Someone said they had seen you.”
Tabitha dried herself, let the towel fall and dressed herself.
“I should have got in touch,” said Mel. “To see how you were.”
“That wasn’t necessary. But I’m fine. How are you?”
“I’m fine too. I’m transferring. To another parish.”
“I would have thought your parishioners needed you,” said Tabitha. “At a time like this.”
Mel flexed her jaw. She looked pale.
“The people in this village do have certain issues, conflicts, problems, call them what you will, but I’m too . . .”
“Involved,” said Tabitha.
“Yes.”
“Embroiled.”
“Well, there have been various kinds of conflict, you know, between people, in the . . .” Melanie seemed to be searching for the right word. “Aftermath of . . . er—”
“Me. The trial. All that.”
“Yes.”
“Good,” said Tabitha. “Good. They deserve it.”
She was all dressed now. She looked at Michaela. “Shall we head off?”
Michaela nodded in response.
As they turned to go, Mel put her hand on Tabitha’s shoulder.
“The police,” she said. “They’re not going to find the truth, are they?”
“How should I know?” said Tabitha, then gave a little shrug. “Probably not.”
“That’s going to be a torment,” said Melanie. “They’ll never know. They’ll suspect each other.”
“That sounds awful,” said Tabitha and she and Michaela left Melanie Coglan there on the beach, staring at the waves.
“What are you thinking?” asked Michaela as they drove out of Okeham: past the village shop and the bus stop and the camera, past the church and the vicarage, the row of small houses where Andy lived, where Shona lived, up the hill with the cliffs rearing up on one side, where the tree had fallen. The sea was beneath them now, and from here you couldn’t tell how cold the water was and how the undertow sucked you into its churning depths.
She was thinking she would never go back. She would never hammer nails into wooden boards, with Andy working at her side in companionable silence; never make porridge and sit at her kitchen table looking out onto water and sky, or wake in her little gable room in the watches of the night and hear the roar and shush of the waves; never walk down to the cove and take off her clothes and slide her body into the vast darkness of the sea; never suffer her demons and herself in this place that she had thought she could rescue but which had nearly destroyed her. She had been wrong to imagine she could return to call this place home or could ever put the past safely behind her, when all the time it lay inside.
“What am I thinking?”
She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the village dwindle into nothing; just a few lamps winking in the morning and smoke rising from a chimney. For a brief moment, she thought a small, scowling girl with a mop of dark hair was standing on the shoulder, holding a sticky fistful of blackberries, but it was just a trick of the light.
“I’m thinking that this is where I start.”
Acknowledgments
As always, we owe so much to so many.
At United Agents, thanks to dear Sarah Ballard, always our first reader. (Needless to say, everyone that follows is dear as well.) Eli Keren and St. John Donald are a constant support.
We’re grateful to Sam Edenborough and Nicki Kennedy and the rest of the team at Intercontinental Literary Agency for their
