21

Lauren, 2019

Lauren leaps back as Angie throws open the master bedroom door. ‘What’s the kerfuffle?’

‘Have you seen Raff?’ Lauren peers over Angie’s shoulder, catches a glimpse of ruffled bed sheets and quickly averts her gaze. ‘He’s hiding somewhere.’ And so is the note she’d been a second from sharing with Kat and is still in her trouser pocket. She desperately wishes she’d told her sisters straight after she’d found it, rather than hesitating, worrying it might spook them away, its menace compounded by the stabbed tyre. ‘Flora’s worried.’

‘Where is he?’ Flora walks over and grabs Angie’s sleeve, as if she might be responsible.

‘Hey,’ says Angie, softly, glancing down at Flora’s hand. ‘He won’t have gone far.’

‘We’ll find him, Flora,’ Lauren says, trying to reassure her sister as she spins in blind panic on the landing. ‘He’s probably rooting through the cupboards for treasures to take home or something.’

Flora stops. ‘Yes. Yes, he will, won’t he? But … but … oh, God.’

‘What’s this business with Raff?’ Charlie appears in his bedroom doorway, his hands on Angie’s shoulders. ‘Oh, he’s being a monkey, is he? Flora, don’t worry. You lot would disappear for hours – hours! – at Rock Point some days.’ Flora blinks at him incredulously. He reaches across and squeezes her hand.

Lauren tries to think of the places and nooks that drew them as children, the places one might hide and get stuck. Rock Point’s not the sort of place you want to lose a four-year-old. Not for a minute.

‘Right, where was he last?’ Angie asks, bending down, pulling on her silver boots.

‘I … I left him downstairs playing with the shells, the jar in the living room, and went upstairs to my room to take a call from Scott. We were talking, I don’t know, twenty minutes? And I came down and … and the shells were there, on the floor and Raff wasn’t.’ Flora can hardly speak now, wiping tears from her eyes with the heel of her hand. ‘Oh God.’

‘The dressing room?’ suggests Lauren.

Flora flings open Granny’s wardrobe, revealing its soft stale belly. The hangers screech on the brass rail as they rummage through the forest of their grandmother’s dresses they’d once pillaged and worn, gallivanting over the cliff tops. No Raff.

As each room in the house is checked – the chilly scullery, the warm laundry cupboard, empty closets in empty bedrooms – it becomes less likely Raff’s in the house or playing some drawn-out game.

The house starts to fill with rising urgent voices, ‘Raff? Raff, are you here?’ and shake with footsteps, as if the floors were drum skins, and hundreds of feet are running, besieging it, splitting it apart. Lauren returns to the studio, just to be sure he’s not sneaked up here while they were looking elsewhere. She prises open the under-the-eaves cupboards of tools and paints, releasing a clotted scent of undisturbed things. Pushing aside a wicker picnic hamper, she sees a box labelled ‘Photos’. At any other time, she’d fall on it, attempt to fill in the lost frames of that last summer. But Raff must be found first. The only discovery that matters.

‘His wellies! His wellies are missing!’ Flora shouts from downstairs. Raff hates the wet and cold. He wouldn’t wander out alone, she’s sobbing. Never, never, never.

Lauren’s heart crashes as she traverses the conservatory – Bertha screams and squawks excitably – and goes straight into the bleak January garden.

The aviary. It seems to radiate cold, like a block of ice. For a snip of time, she can see a figure lying there, balled, hands over their head. But it’s a trick of the low light, the moisture in the air, and she turns away, back to the house.

Bertha’s squawking. Talking. Lauren stops, listens harder. Yes, there it is again. ‘Shark!’ Bertha’s mimicking Raff’s voice. ‘Shark!’

Lauren runs through the alley, the dripping ivy, and into the savage expanse of sea, sky and rock beyond. In the lane, she turns and squints at the brooding moor. If Raff has wandered up there it could be very dangerous indeed, and he’ll need retrieving quickly. But if you want to see sharks you don’t head away from the water, do you? Deciding that Bertha’s tip-off is worth following, she scrambles towards the cove, not sticking strictly to the path since a boy probably wouldn’t either, criss-crossing the ridges and ledges, slipping and skidding.

Halfway down, she spots Jonah, his tall bulk, coat hood up, his black dog, walking on the cliff top, the other side of the cove. She waves frantically to get his attention – he might have seen Raff. But he turns and walks away, head down. Her spirits plummet. She wonders if he’s blanking her after their encounter in the Heaps’ cottage, and why, then feels bad for thinking about herself at such a time.

The fog starts to roll in, curling around her boots, clinging to the cliff face in little clouds. Resting gulls explode upwards, stealing her breath, poised to dive-bomb, razor-beaked, and attack her as they would a freshly hauled fishing net. Her heart scuds in her chest, her slickening palms. Stupidly, she’s left her phone in the house. A couple of times, she’s struck by the sense that someone else is around, watching. She hears a footstep, the knuckle crunch of small rocks moving against one another, unseen behind an outcrop. When she stops, the noise does too. ‘Raff?’ she shouts into the torrent of wind. Nothing.

Where is he? She pictures the cave at the bottom of the cliff, that dark wet throat where the incoming tide seeps, playfully slow at first, then in a lethal flooding gush. ‘Raff?’ she yells again, cupping her hands around her mouth. His name seems to cling there a moment before the wind steals it.

There’s one place she hasn’t checked. A few metres down.

That ledge. With its perfect panoramic view. And vertiginous drop. A memory starts to twist into life – the same ledge, a boiling summer day, the world tipped upside down. She stumbles, cutting her steadying palms on a seam of raised white granite. More gulls lift with a bellows-beat of air. And that’s when she sees Raff.

A few feet below, a small lump on the ledge, like the back of a hunched puffin. She inhales to call, then stops, not daring to startle him, realizing, with a gut flip of dread, why she cannot see his legs.