Sea Defences E-Book

Hilary Taylor

• Herausgeber: Lightning Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PAUL TORDAY MEMORIAL PRIZE 'A mystery with heart and soul. Highly recommended' Frances Quinn Rachel, a trainee vicar struggling to bond with her flock in the coastal town of Holthorpe, learns the terrifying power of the North Sea when her six-year-old daughter goes missing on the beach. Meanwhile Mary, a defiant and distrustful loner, is fighting her own battle against nature as the crumbling Norfolk shoreline brings her clifftop home ever closer to destruction. Both scarred by life, the two women are drawn into an unlikely friendship, but Mary's misfit son Adam is nursing a secret. For Rachel, it will subject her battered faith to its greatest test: will she be strong enough to forgive? In her taut, lyrical debut novel, Hilary Taylor weaves the bleak power of the East Anglian winter into a searingly honest psychological drama, as gripping as any thriller.

Leseprobe

Praise for Sea Defences

‘A mystery with heart and soul, and a poignant picture of a family living with loss. Highly recommended’

Frances Quinn

‘A compelling and powerful debut, laced with mystery and full of heart’

Alison Moore

‘Powerful and raw law, like the sea she describes so evocatively. Really wonderful writing’

Amanda Berriman

‘Poetry in prose. Written with warmth and wit, this astutely observed study in grief is balanced by an exploration of faith, friendship and love’

Fiona Erskine

‘A heartbreaking exploration of grief and faith, with undercurrents of unease and intrigue, this is a tender, poignant and compassionate literary thriller’

Philippa East

‘A stunning debut: evocative descriptions, strong characterisation and a simmering tension which builds to a thrilling finale. Fans of Broadchurch, in particular, will love it’

‍Sarah Linley

‘Utterly engrossing and atmospheric, Sea Defences is an extraordinarily accomplished debut novel with its bare but beguiling prose and poignant exploration of loss. I loved it!’

Jane Jesmond

Hilary Taylor is a graduate of Edinburgh University and lives in Suffolk, where she taught for almost twenty years. Her short fiction has won or been listed in competitions including the Bridport Prize, Bare Fiction and Flash500, and has been published in magazines and anthologies. Sea Defences, her first novel, began life as a prize-winning short story, placed third in the Bath Short Story Award.

Published in 2023

by Lightning Books

Imprint of Eye Books Ltd

29A Barrow Street

Much Wenlock

Shropshire

TF13 6EN

www.lightning-books.com

ISBN: 9781785633355

Copyright © Hilary Taylor 2023

Cover by Nell Wood

Typeset in Garamond and Baskerville Cyrillic LT

The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Contents

Dedication

Waves in the Margin

Crow’s Nest

Bead Things

Sea Urchin

Winterbloom

Footprints

Holy Stone

Cormorant

Sheep Cushion

Blue Holdall

Cold Water and Vinegar

Lancashire Hotpot

Mermaid

Clockwork Shark

Razor Blades and Chocolate

Hard Hat

Bench

A Bag of Pebbles

An Unlit Candle

Earth

Pelican

Scarf

Bead Things, Broken

Pineapple

Red Paint

Distress Flare

Seedy Fences

Padlock

Butterscotch Buns

Giraffe Pyjamas

Shed

Fossil Boy

Shoe

Treasures

Flint

Driftwood

Wave

Lighthouse

Acknowledgements

For Emily

He stares at the empty sea. His wet clothes cling to him and weigh him down. Wind gusts around him and he can’t stop shaking. Waves crash, on and on, the sound that sends him to sleep every night. He rocks backwards and forwards, and a moaning sound mingles with the cry of the wind.

‘Help. Oh, Mumma, help,’ he hears himself whisper at last.

Waves in the Margin

Rachel never stopped loving the sea. Even after it happened. The need to blame someone consumed her, but she never blamed the sea.

She had always longed to live in a place where she could hear the crash and suck of the waves through the open window at night, where she could smell the salt in the air, where there would always be sand stuck in the soles of her shoes. She loved to walk that ever-shifting boundary between land and ocean, that magical seam, where neither world claimed her. On that smudged line, the stitching is loose. The fabric pulls. No one can say the ocean ends here and the land begins here. Or the other way round. You could fall between the cracks.

February. A bleak Friday afternoon. Whose idea was it to hold a PCC meeting at such a time? Rachel’s pencil meandered down the margin, forming intricate curls and spirals, creating a border of waves for the agenda. Her feet were freezing, and the musty smell in the vestry made her feel sick. Some of the fabrics – the cassocks and altar cloths and those tapestry kneelers – must be twice the age she was. Bat droppings nestled in the corners of the window sill. They would have met in the vicarage if it wasn’t located in the most distant of the four parishes, six miles inland from Holthorpe. She had considered offering her house, but it wouldn’t be fair on the children, not to mention Christopher. Besides, it was still five months till her ordination and it wouldn’t do to get ahead of herself.

She ticked off the items. The Christmas Fayre had made over eight hundred pounds, the Scout Hut had been booked for the Easter bake sale, and everyone was in favour of putting an extra thousand towards the Parish Share.

‘Maybe we’ll manage more than half this year,’ Gail said.

Rachel glanced at the clock on the wall. Five past four. Jamie would be all right for a bit on his own at home, but Hannah needed collecting from Friday Club at half past. She might make it, if she could avoid being grabbed for ‘a quick word’ after the meeting. They’d have to go to Tesco on the way home. She made a mental list. Loo roll, cereal, bananas, cheese. Something easy for tea. Pasta. Again.

‘Finally,’ Gail said, ‘we come to the summer concert.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Clearly, Thelma had been waiting for this last agenda item, and now set her jaw and shoulders for battle.

Rachel closed her eyes.

‘I still don’t understand,’ Thelma went on, ‘why we have to give half the proceeds to the RNLI. When we had the Saffron Singers, we always got all the money, and a jolly good fundraiser it was. And since this is a replacement for that event, I can’t see why it has to be a different arrangement.’

Rachel opened her eyes, but was careful not to meet anyone’s gaze. Instead, she looked at her paper. The pencil lines were thick and dark, and the dainty curlicues had grown into towering waves.

‘We agreed this last time,’ Gail said. ‘It’s in the minutes. The proceeds will be split fifty-fifty.’

Rachel noted Gail’s relaxed yet authoritative posture, the kindness in her eyes. Am I kidding myself, she thought, imagining I can do this? She was good at the intellectual stuff, but the patience needed to negotiate these petty personality clashes was beyond her. Putting on a dog collar couldn’t change that, and she wasn’t sure the training was doing anything to improve her people skills. But then, Gail had been a vicar for over thirty years. She’d had a long time to get good at it. Maybe Thelma’s ‘got issues’, Rachel thought now, as some of her colleagues would have said about their students, and this quarrelling is a displacement activity.

‘I know it was agreed,’ Thelma said. ‘But could someone explain why?’

Martin, next to Rachel, exhaled sharply. ‘The lifeboat group approached me,’ he said, with exaggerated patience, ‘to see if our band could play for their summer fundraiser, and then it turned out the venue was double-booked, and it was agreed to hold the concert here and split the proceeds between both worthy causes.’

Gail held up her hand. ‘Thank you, Martin. As I said, it’s settled. And of course, Thelma, we’d be most grateful if we could leave the refreshments in your expert hands as usual. Savoury nibbles, I think we said.’

‘I always did scones when we had the Saffron Singers,’ Thelma said. ‘With cream.’

Rachel drew a hard line across the page under Any Other Business. And back again. Twenty past four. They should have finished half an hour ago. Even if she left now, she’d be late. She fished her phone from the bag by her feet. The relative merits of savoury nibbles and cream teas were batted back and forth around her.

‘Sorry,’ Rachel murmured. ‘Sorting out Hannah.’

No one took any notice.

Christopher agreed to collect Hannah. ‘No problem,’ he said. No one at his school stayed late on a Friday.

‘I’ll do a quick shop and be home in time to cook,’ Rachel told him. ‘We can all eat together.’ She ended the call, let out a long breath, and gave her attention back to the room.

‘I’m sure there’s someone else who’d be perfectly capable of masterminding a savoury buffet,’ Thelma said. ‘It doesn’t have to be me.’

‘Okay.’ Martin’s voice took on a brisk jollity. Rachel couldn’t believe he was calling Thelma’s bluff. ‘I’ll ask Mick and Louise. They do most of the RNLI catering. They’ll be glad to step in if it’s too much for you, Thelma. They always do a grand spread.’

‘Well, I don’t think—’ Thelma began.

‘Thank you.’ Gail let him get away with it. ‘Please do ask them. Now, it’s nearly half past four. Any other business? No? Let’s say the Grace.’

Thelma caught up with Rachel at the lych gate. It was almost dark, and the wind gusted round them. Rachel shrugged herself further into the collar of her coat and headed across the lane towards her car. Her feet were like ice blocks. Her hand was on the door handle when Thelma said, ‘It’s such a shame about the Saffron Singers, isn’t it? Disbanding. People came from all over Norfolk.’

Would it be kind to mention the reputation of Thelma’s delicious scones, or would it add fuel to her fire? Before she could decide, Thelma said, ‘Still, it’s just as well, I suppose, in the circumstances.’

Pastoral care, Rachel thought. People skills. No excuse, now I’m not rushing off for Hannah. She let go of the handle, touched Thelma’s arm. ‘Is everything all right?’

Thelma burst into tears.

It was four years since Rachel had heard the first whispers. Not a call, then. It was too quiet, too easy to ignore or misinterpret. There were flashes of a desire to study theology, to read more, to write, to explore ways of making church more relevant in today’s culture. As an RE teacher, she had deep philosophical and theological discussions with her students, and when one of them asked her why she wasn’t a priest, the question wouldn’t go away. A few months later, the parent and baby choir she attended with Hannah was rehearsing ‘Feed The Birds’, from Mary Poppins. She sang the words, over and over, pictured the scene from the film, and then she made the connection with what Jesus had said to Peter in the Gospel. Feed my lambs. The whisper became a call.

She argued against it. How could she feed his lambs? She wouldn’t have the patience, she was too rebellious, she had the family to think about, and she already had a job she loved. There was that dark time after Hannah was born. Surely that disqualified her. And deep down, though she hardly dared admit it, lurked another, deeper fear. Sometimes, when she stared up at the night sky and imagined the size of the universe, or when she remembered the sound of her mother’s last breaths, she felt she was on the edge, a step away from losing all certainty. What if she became a priest, and her faith deserted her?

‘But that’s what faith is,’ Gail told her. ‘Carrying on in spite of the uncertainty. Show me a priest who’s never had doubts.’

‘It’s not exactly doubts,’ Rachel said. ‘It’s not about God, or his love, or his power. I know he’s there. I’ve seen him answer prayers, change people’s lives – he changed mine, even. I do believe in all of that. But this faith – it came to me – I didn’t go looking for it. What if one day I wake up, and it’s just…gone?’

‘Look,’ Gail said. ‘To be honest, I’d be more worried if you felt completely confident, sure of yourself. A little bit of self-doubt will keep you grounded. It’s not a reason to turn your back on this before you’ve given it a chance. Give it time. Reflect. Pray.’

Rachel couldn’t imagine Gail suffering from self-doubt. From her sleek grey bob to her Skechers boots, she radiated confidence, but she inspired it too. You got the feeling she knew what she was talking about, was comfortable with who she was, and she had a way of seeing beyond any problem. Rachel knew she couldn’t – and didn’t have to – become another Gail, but she longed to share her certainty, her steadiness, her solidity. She spent hours in prayer, staying up all night sometimes. She talked to Christopher too, and even to her friend Izzy, who didn’t believe in God, and two years later, after much exploring and examining, she was accepted as an ordinand.

Perhaps, she thought now, inviting the weeping Thelma to sit in her car, out of the wind, she’d been right to question the call, should have questioned it more. Sometimes she wondered why they had accepted her.

She hadn’t imagined they would still be sitting in the car half an hour later. She’d been right about the issues. Family issues, as it turned out – a daughter-in-law who refused to let Thelma see her grandson. ‘Don’t grandparents have any rights?’ she wailed. ‘I feel like I’ve lost him. He’ll grow up not knowing who I am.’

Rachel listened and made understanding noises and talked about faith and prayer and the loving arms of Jesus – concepts she believed in with all her heart – and yet somehow the words sounded hollow. Eventually Thelma blew her nose and said thank you for listening; it’s really helped. So she must have done something right.

In Tesco, Rachel grabbed a trolley, rummaging in her memory for that mental list. Pasta, cheese, cereal. What else? She reached the bread aisle. Was bread on her list? She threw a sliced white into the trolley. Bananas. She’d forgotten the bananas. Better get some grapes too, and a jar of sauce. If she fiddled about with tomatoes and made one from scratch, it wouldn’t be ready till after Hannah’s bed time. Chocolate mousses would do for pudding. She dashed to the checkout and back to the car.

Leaves swirled around the little car park behind the store. Trees swayed, and as she pulled away it started to rain – great, fat, heavy drops. There were sandbags outside some of the shops, and even one or two of those proper floodgates. At the bottom of the high street a sheet of cardboard blew across the road and for a terrifying moment clung to the windscreen. Rachel slammed on the brakes but the wind caught it up again and she drove home slowly with a hammering heart.

Crow’s Nest

They had moved to Holthorpe seven and a half years ago, on a wet day in July. It was the summer before Jamie started school, the year before Hannah was born. When the removal van had gone, the rain stopped and the sun broke through. Rachel was making up the beds when the light changed. She dropped the sheets and ran downstairs. She found Christopher in the kitchen, unpacking baking tins and saucepans. Jamie sat in a square of sunlight by the back door, parking his toy cars in rows against the step.

‘Let’s go to the beach,’ she said.

Outside, wisps of cloud criss-crossed a blue-washed sky. Steam rose from the pavements. The tide was out, and the wet sand glistened. On the horizon, the wind turbines shone silver, and the water sparkled in the sunlight. After a mile or so, they passed an old pillbox, half-buried at the top of the beach. It must have been built eighty odd years ago at the beginning of the war, on top of the squat cliff, to protect the land from invaders. Rachel wondered when it had fallen victim to the fragility of this part of the coast, and whether anyone had watched as this slice of land detached itself from its moorings and slid to the shore below. How long would it be before every trace of it was swallowed up? Evidence of past landslides littered the jumbled, sloping cliff; furrows and gullies ran between steep, grass-topped banks and scattered hummocks. It looked like solid ground, but it was an illusion.

Another mile and they reached a tumbled wall of dark granite boulders stretching across the beach and into the sea. At the end stood a groyne marker, with two outspread arms, and a basket shape on the top.

Jamie pointed. ‘Look! A robot!’ he said. They let him take off his shoes and socks to paddle in a shallow pool. The cliff was higher here, its face almost vertical, towering over the beach, as close to a headland as there could be on this straight coastline.

Christopher took her hand. ‘Happy?’

She smiled up at him and nodded. ‘I feel like a different person,’ she said. ‘Like the me I was meant to be.’

He leaned in and kissed her on the mouth. She tasted salt.

‘We’ll build a room in the roof,’ he said. ‘With lots of glass. We’ll see the sea from up there.’

‘A look-out,’ she said. ‘A crow’s nest, like on a ship.’

But you cannot always see when a storm is on the way. And when one hits, and changes your life, it is impossible to see the time before as it really was. You will always view it through the prism of that event and what it has done to you.

Holthorpe nestled in a dip in the cliffs, a bustling magnet for tourists from Easter to October, with its cafés and galleries and gift shops, and its long, award-winning beach. The last bank branch had closed years ago, the post office was a tiny counter at the back of the newsagent’s and the nearest dentist was twenty miles away, but there were three care homes, as well as a hairdresser, a Tesco Metro and, much to Christopher’s delight, the best bike shop in Norfolk. Rachel took to running on the beach, and she swam every week, even through the winter, joining the hardy few with their dry robes and flasks. The cold water made her feel alive in a way that nothing else did. The town was quieter in winter, but still people came – walkers and birdwatchers, fossil hunters and seal lovers. There were days, though – even bright, cloudless days – when the beach was almost empty. And over it all stretched the huge expanse of sky.

The loft room had been finished the year after they moved, in the Easter holidays. Rachel found a second-hand French chest of drawers with carved cabriole legs. She sanded it and painted it a soft grey-blue. Together, she and Christopher built the framework for the under-eaves storage. She bought a job lot of pine doors in a reclamation yard, sawed them down to fit, and painted them all in the same muted colour. A rag rug and a wicker chair came from a charity shop, and on the wall above the bed were three framed paintings by Jamie – a sailing boat, a shell and an ice-cream. She made cushion covers from old jeans and put a basket of beach stones by the window. She painted a driftwood sign and hung it on the door. The Crow’s Nest.

‘Let’s not have curtains,’ Christopher said. ‘Let’s just have the sky.’

‘Romantic.’ Rachel laughed. ‘But how much sleep will we get in the summer?’ They settled on blackout blinds of midnight blue.

On the first night they were to sleep up there, they peeped into Jamie’s room, where he slept with his limbs flung out like a starfish, then crept up the new stairs like a couple of guilty conspirators, whispering and giggling, fingers on lips. They stood at the window, with their arms round each other, looking out over the lights of the little town. Clouds hung low in the sky and the strip of sea was invisible.

‘Bed?’ Christopher moved his hands to her hips.

Rachel let her body slide against him, felt herself begin to melt at his touch. She closed her eyes. ‘Mmm. Why not?’

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ Rachel said afterwards. She lay in the crook of his arm in the half dark of their new bedroom.

‘What?’ He turned to look at her.

‘I knew this morning,’ she said. ‘I’ve been saving it up to tell you. I did a test.’

‘What? After all this time? It’s just…happened?’

‘Yes.’ She knew she was grinning like an idiot, and she thought she would never stop. ‘We’re having another baby.’

‘And you let me…?’

‘Let you? I wanted it. It’s perfectly safe.’

‘So when…how far on are you?’

‘Five and a half weeks. December the tenth.’

The call came at lunchtime the next day. Christopher had taken Jamie to the playground down by the promenade, and Rachel was in the garden, sowing a row of lettuces in the tiny raised bed she had squeezed in beside the shed. They hadn’t bothered with vegetables in their dreary patch of garden in Norwich. This wasn’t much bigger, but sunnier and south facing. The other house had always felt temporary – the layout was impractical and the rooms were dark – but this was a place to put down roots. A place to make a home.

It wasn’t just the house – a 1920s brick semi with a bay window and a green front door. It wasn’t just the sea and the sand, the sky and the cliffs. She had fallen in love with everything about Holthorpe – the crammed-in yards and lokes, the brick and flint buildings and higgledy-piggledy roofs, the tinny sound of the town hall clock, the smell of fish down by the slipway, the old men calling ‘Y’orrite, bor?’ across the street to each other, lifting their hands in salute. She loved the brightly painted beach huts and the fading murals on the sea wall. Moving here had felt like coming home.

She’d built a cone of bamboo canes for her climbing beans, and in a few weeks she would plant out the tomatoes from their pots on the kitchen window sill, where their warm, savoury scent promised aromatic salads for the end of summer.

She brushed soil from her fingers and ran into the kitchen, picked up her buzzing phone from the table. Her mother. Cathy.

‘Hi, Mum. I was going to call you tonight. I’ve got some—’ What was it that made her stop? A sound? A catch in her mother’s breath? She gripped the phone tight. ‘Mum?’

‘Hello, love. I’m sorry. It’s not good news.’

And so, as the baby grew inside her, she had watched her mother fade.

He must have stood there a long time, because it’s dark when he finds himself at the top of the beach. The tide has already covered the mudstone. He hears voices. Silhouetted figures call to each other down by the sea defences, waving torches and poking about on the rocks. Blue lights flash up there at the end of the lane. People climb up and down the steps.

And then the fear hits. There will be shouty policemen and a prison van. He’s seen it on the telly. Angry crowds with roaring mouths. ‘You’ll pay for this.’ Holding up signs. Banging on the van. The police will ask questions and he will get in a muddle and say things he doesn’t mean to say.

They will take him away from Mumma.

He crouches in the shadows at the foot of the cliff. At last, the blue lights have gone and he creeps up the steps to Wetherley End, hidden by the gorse.

Bead Things

Rachel cooked the pasta, stirred in the sauce, gathered her family round the table and flopped into a chair. Friday night. She had made it through the week.

Hannah refused to pick up her knife and fork. ‘It’s got meat in,’ she said. ‘An animal has been killed to make this.’

Rachel sighed. ‘Sorry, darling. I forgot. I was in a hurry. Give me your plate and I’ll pick the meat out. You can have extra cheese.’

‘No. There’ll be bits of meat you can’t see. Like germs. I don’t want it. Not any of it.’

‘The cow is dead anyway,’ Jamie said. ‘You’re not saving its life.’

‘Leave her alone,’ Christopher said, but it was too late. Hannah set up a loud wail, her eyes screwed up tight.

‘I’ll do some beans on toast,’ Christopher said. ‘I was on the point of doing it anyway. I didn’t realise you were going to be this late.’

‘Sorry,’ Rachel said. ‘I got waylaid by a weeping parishioner.’ A wave of guilt swept over her. How could she make light of Thelma’s troubles? Was this the kind of priest she was going to be?

Christopher spooned beans into a bowl, and put it in the microwave. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘now you’ve got a weeping daughter to concern yourself with.’ He put two slices of bread in the toaster and pushed the lever and looked across at her. Rachel could read the reproach behind his eyes.

‘So, how was Friday Club?’ Rachel said, when Hannah had calmed down and was tucking into her beans.

‘We had marshmallows and we made bead things.’

‘Bead things?’

‘For praying. Where is it, Daddy?’

‘Marshmallows are made of lambs’ ears,’ Jamie said. ‘Didn’t you know?’

Hannah’s eyes widened and her lip wobbled.

‘That’s enough, mate,’ Christopher said. He reached across the worktop and found a bracelet made of coloured beads threaded on to thin elastic, and put it on the table.

‘He’s teasing. It’s not true.’ Rachel picked up the bracelet. ‘Oh, that’s lovely. How is it for praying?’

‘We had to choose colours to show what we were praying for. Mine’s about my family.’

‘Can I have Hannah’s pasta?’ Jamie asked.

‘Go on then.’ Rachel pushed the plate across the table. There was no fat on him. When he took his top off you could count his ribs, and his arms were like sticks.

‘This green one’s for Daddy,’ Hannah said, ‘because he likes forests and recycling. The blue one is for Jamie because his bedroom is blue. Purple is for you, Mummy, because of that perfume you smell of.’

‘That’s a smell, not a colour,’ Jamie said.

‘I know, but it starts with the same sound. Purr. Anyway, it reminds me of Mummy.’

There were two more beads on the bracelet, a yellow one and a brown one.

‘This one is me because I like chocolate.’

‘And the other one?’ Rachel said.

‘The dog.’

‘The dog?’

‘I’m praying for a dog. It’s yellow because I’d really like a golden Labrador like Harvey. Anyway, you can wear the bracelet or keep it by your bed and then you can move your fingers along the beads like this and they remind you what to pray for.’

‘Can we have pudding now?’ Jamie said. ‘It’s not going to work – praying for a dog. You know we can’t have one. That’s why we take Harvey for walks.’

This time, no one could stop Hannah’s meltdown. In floods of tears, she jumped off her chair, shot round the table, and beat her fists against her brother’s chest. ‘You can’t say that! It is going to work. It is!’

Jamie grabbed her wrists, and then Hannah fell into Christopher’s arms, sobbing.

Rachel snapped. ‘For heaven’s sake, you two. That’s enough. Go to your rooms, both of you.’

‘But you got chocolate mousses. I saw—’

‘Enough! Go!’

Christopher took Hannah, and Jamie stomped up the stairs after them. Rachel leaned her elbows on the table, put her head in her hands, felt tears prick against her eyelids. Why did all of life have to be a fight?

She put the shopping away, loaded the dishwasher and wiped the surfaces. All was quiet upstairs.

Christopher appeared in the doorway. ‘Hannah wants to say goodnight. Jamie’s apologised.’

He stood aside for her to pass and they didn’t touch.

‘By the way,’ he said, when she was halfway up the stairs, ‘there’s no loo roll. Did you get some?’

‘Oh, I knew there was something else.’

‘I’ll go now. Anything else we need?’

‘Don’t think so.’

But there is, she thought, as the door closed behind him. There must be something else we need. Something to make all this work. Let me know if this is the right path, she prayed silently, and oh, please, help me to be better at it.

She looked in on Jamie first. ‘All right?’ she said.

He nodded, without looking up from his game.

She stepped inside the door, waited till he did look up. ‘Thanks for saying sorry to Hannah,’ she said. ‘And God always answers our prayers. Remember? Sometimes it’s yes, sometimes it’s no, and sometimes it’s wait.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, and gave her a sideways grin before going back to his game.

Hannah was curled under her jungle duvet, cuddling Floppy Rabbit and Puff-Puffin.

‘Here. I brought this up for you.’ Rachel held out the bracelet but Hannah didn’t take it, so she left it on the pillow and knelt down, stroked Hannah’s cloud of hair.

‘Look. We’ll ask Val if we can take Harvey for an extra long time on the beach tomorrow, shall we? And then we’ll get pizza and go bowling. How about that?’ It was a twenty-mile round trip for bowling, but it was something they could enjoy together.

Hannah popped her thumb out of her mouth. ‘And can I hold Harvey’s lead? By myself?’

Rachel smiled. ‘We’ll see.’

Perhaps, if they had a long tramp across the beach, she and Christopher would be able to have a proper talk. Find a way to make this all work better.

‘Did you tell Jamie off?’

‘Now, Hannah, that’s none of your business. He said sorry, didn’t he?’

‘Well, he’s still mean. And I still hate him. I wish I hadn’t put him on my prayer bracelet.’

‘Hate is a very powerful word. He hurt your feelings but he said sorry. Now, forgive and forget,’ Rachel said.

‘What’s that monstery sound? Outside. That roaring and tapping.’

‘It’s just the rain on the window. And the wind. It’s all right.’

‘I don’t like it.’ Hannah’s voice wobbled.

‘Tell you what. Let’s sing that song we’re doing at choir. The one about how God has the whole world in his hands. Even the wind and the rain. And you and me. It might sound a bit scary out there, but you don’t need to worry about storms, or anything else. Because you’re in God’s hands. Safe as can be.’

Diane, the health visitor, had introduced her to the parent and baby choir. ‘Singing is good for the soul,’ she had said. ‘It might be just what you need.’ And it was. It had saved her, in those desperate weeks, and now, six years on, they both still loved it. Besides, she wouldn’t have Izzy if she hadn’t joined the choir.

They sang the song through twice.

‘There. Now it’s time to sleep. You’re tucked in all nice and cosy. Snug as a bug in a rug.’ She kissed her daughter, moved the bracelet further along the pillow so she didn’t lie on it, and turned off the lamp.

She went upstairs and looked out at the sky. Hannah was right. The wind did sound like a monster, howling round the house, with the rain finger-tapping on the windows. She pulled the blinds down, then sat on her bed and called Izzy.

‘Do you think it could have been a mistake,’ she said, ‘thinking I was called to be a priest?’

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘Clash of priorities.’

‘That happens to all of us. It’s because everyone is more than one thing.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We all have more than one role. You know. You’re a mother, a daughter, a wife, a sister, a trainee vicar, a friend. There are bound to be tensions.’

‘But there’s more to it with being ordained. It won’t be just a role. It’s deeper than that.’

Christopher saw her calling as a choice, but it wasn’t – not really. He had supported her in the way he would have done if she’d gone for a deputy headship, or enrolled on a post-graduate course. But it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t a job. Being ordained changed who you were. She found it easier to talk about this with Izzy – someone outside the church, who didn’t even believe in God. Izzy took her as she was – beliefs, doubts, the whole package. But she wasn’t afraid to challenge, and was unshockable – an essential requirement, she said, for her job as welfare officer at Jamie’s school.

They’d met at choir when Hannah and Lenny, Izzy’s son, were a few months old. Rachel had thrust Hannah into Izzy’s arms one afternoon in the Scout Hut, in the middle of ‘Top Of The World’. ‘Here. I can’t look after her any more. I can’t keep her.’ She had run all the way home in tears to find that Christopher had called Janet, his mother, to come and take charge.

That was Janet’s speciality – taking charge. A small, energetic woman, all sharp angles and neat lines, she had been widowed young and had adopted a busy capableness as her way of coping with everything life threw at her. She had clear-cut opinions on how things should be done, and was not shy about sharing them.

‘She’s just here till you get better,’ Christopher said, and went to retrieve the baby.

Better? What did he mean? Better at being a mother?

‘But,’ Izzy said now, ‘being a priest won’t stop you being all those other things.’

‘No.’

‘Did you have a row?’

‘Not really.’

‘Come over. I’ve got ice cream and two spoons.’

Rachel imagined the two of them in Izzy’s tiny living room with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough – it was never any other kind. Rachel would curl up on the threadbare sofa and Izzy would sit cross-legged on the rug in one of her hand-knitted creations, her wild hair tied up in a bright strip of cotton.

‘Can’t,’ Rachel said. ‘Christopher’s gone shopping. Anyway, it’s a bit crazy out there. I might get blown away.’

‘Tomorrow then. After the kids have gone to bed.’

She’d have sorted everything out by then. But it would be a good end to the day. Something to look forward to.

‘Okay. Thanks, Iz.’

The wind woke her in the night. A bluish light filled the Crow’s Nest, and she was alone in the bed. Christopher was standing by the window, and the blinds were up.

‘Christopher?’

‘Come and look,’ he said. ‘It’s wild.’

She joined him and they stood in their glass nest while outside, clouds boiled up and rolled across the sky. The wind roared and rain lashed against the window.

She stood close to him, their arms touching. ‘I wish this afternoon had gone differently,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I don’t know how to get the right balance.’

‘We’re both responsible for finding a balance. Not just you. Sorry I made you feel bad.’

‘Oh, I do love you,’ she said, and then paused. ‘Most of the time.’

‘Imagine,’ he said, ‘being in a crow’s nest on a ship, seeing a storm blowing in when no one else knew it was coming. They used to send people up there as a punishment sometimes.’

‘I was driving through town today,’ Rachel said, ‘and a piece of cardboard stuck to my windscreen. Just for a moment. It was terrifying. Not being able to see.’

When they went back to bed, they left the blinds open and their hands moved over one another’s skin, and when his mouth found hers, she thought, it will be all right. The light turned their bodies silver, and the howling of the wind and the beating of the rain drowned any sounds they made.

Sea Urchin

‘Galvanised clout nails. Fifteen-millimetre.’ Adam repeated the words each time he passed a street lamp. After he’d got the nails, he would go down to Molly’s kiosk for the pasties, then walk home along the beach. He might be able to get on the reef.

What he really wanted was a sea urchin. Hundreds of living things made their home in the gullies and arches of chalk below the surface, but sometimes, at low tide, the reef’s edge was exposed along the beach, and it was here that Adam loved to search for the fossilised remains of long-dead inhabitants of the ocean – bullet-shaped devil’s fingers, neatly ridged lampshells and sea urchins like hearts, imprinted with a perfect, five-pointed star.

He stopped outside the fossil shop. ‘Echinoid.’ He rolled his tongue around the sounds. That was the proper name for a sea-urchin. There were two in the window, the size of pound coins. Four ninety-nine each. He would never pay for a fossil that someone else had found. He knew he’d find one. Sooner or later.