The stone in his belly has got heavier. His headache’s worse. In the morning, Nina takes him down to the Surfing Shack to get his new wetsuit, and he has to pretend to be really pleased – it’s her peace offering to him, after all. He is pleased really, but there’s a shadow over everything now. He can’t stop thinking about last night.
He dozes all afternoon while Nina and Ellie go over to Matt’s house.
She’s full of the news when she gets back. It’s unbearable, pretending to know nothing, feigning interest, surprise. Covering his own tracks.
‘Didn’t Leah say that man had followed her once?’ Nina asks him. ‘And he’s been hanging around when you and the boys are in the fields, hasn’t he? Perhaps we ought to tell the police about that too?’
‘No.’ Simon feels the sweat beading along his hairline. ‘I mean, it’s like you said – he’s a bit weird, a loner, but he doesn’t mean any harm.’
‘Simon! How can you say that now? Look at poor Leah. She’s got a great gash in her leg! And what he’s got against Mart’s sculpture I can’t imagine! But I suppose that’s the point – it’s not a rational, thought-out thing. When I think of you wandering out on those cliffs – with him out there – last night even! Well, not any longer.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The police are after him now. Leah and Matt can press charges… There’s a history too, of other things. Police record. There are lots of rumours… not that I like to listen to that sort of gossip. Anyway, until they’ve got him, you take care, OK? No going off by yourself. Have you seen Leah yet?’
‘No,’ Simon says.
‘You haven’t fallen out, you two?’
‘Shut up, Mum. It’s not like that. Stop looking at me like that!’
Secrets..
Lies.
Growing up.
He wishes there was someone he could tell about what really happened, up at Matt’s place. What he did. But there’s no one. How can he possibly own up now? What would happen to him? And to his mother. It would ruin everything for her. And now someone else is in serious trouble, and it’s all his fault. And each hour he doesn’t tell, it gets worse.
The wind keeps blowing all day and all evening. The weather is changing. Huge storm clouds are building out to sea. It’ll be raining by morning.
The knot of fear in his stomach gets tighter.
He feels like he’s waiting for something. In suspended animation.
He offers to babysit Ellie so Nina can go out with Matt Davies. He still hasn’t seen Leah.
Over and over he thinks about what he did. Shooting for real. What it felt like. How easy it was to lose it completely, become a sort of machine. It’s terrifying. He could have killed someone.
Should he just go straight to the police and own up what really happened? Whatever the consequences? So that Mad Ed doesn’t get into deeper trouble?
Leah, he realizes, is the one person who knows about his air rifle. But she also knows that it’s a secret, that Nina mustn’t find out. There’s no reason for her to make any connection between him and the shooting. Not when she saw Mad Ed right there with her own eyes. Is there?
He reads Ellie her bedtime story. She’s moved on from the selkie story now, to one about a pioneer family living in the big woods. There’s a description of a pig being butchered which makes Ellie squeal and cover her ears. When she’s fallen asleep, he finds himself reading on, even though it’s a children’s book. It’s strangely comforting.
He has a bath. He spends ages in there, submerged almost completely. He practises holding his breath underwater. He can do over a minute.
When he goes down to the kitchen to find something to eat, he hears the first squall of heavy rain hitting the window.
He switches on the telly. The local news comes on at ten twenty. There’s something about a missing person.
Much later, lying in bed, he hears snatches of the shipping forecast from the radio in Nina’s room. ‘Storm force eight, rising, heavy rain; visibility poor.’
Tomorrow I’ll go and see Leah.
That night, he dreams he’s climbing the tall black stack just off the cliff, higher and higher, and it’s raining, and his foot slips, and he starts to fall. He keeps on falling, down, down towards the deep black sea. It’s so far, he wakes up before he hits the water.
Lying awake in the darkness, he listens to the rain and wind buffeting the house. He imagines the sea crashing against the cliffs. He imagines a huge tidal wave rising up and engulfing the whole spit of land that makes up this place, this almost-an-island.