The waves were breaking on the beach, but with none of their usual rhythm, no in and out. They were overlapping each other, spilling sideways, as if the whole ocean was contained in a pan and someone had given it a shake. The sight was strange enough to silence us. Bewildered, we hurried down to the shoreline where the water swirled around our ankles, so eerily like the sea in Susannah’s latest crewel work, it made me suddenly afraid. Bea, who’d been woken by our raised voices, started to cry.
‘There, there,’ Susannah murmured, resting her hand tenderly on Bea’s head. I wondered if the soothing was meant for all of us.
Stranger still was how the sea retreated, which it did very suddenly, all at once. I waited for waves to roll in again. Expected it – like one breath following another. But the sea kept shrinking down the beach, going further away from us, until it was just a line of silver on the horizon.
‘It must be the spring tide,’ I said, for want of an explanation.
Mr Spicer shook his head. ‘I’ve never seen a spring tide retreat in this manner.’
‘A storm surge, then?’ Susannah suggested.
‘Whatever it is, the sea can’t just vanish,’ I said.
Yet it had. I’d seen it happen with my own eyes.
Where the sea had been was now grey, sodden sand. A whole great stretch of it, pitted with little pools. Rocks that had been hidden underwater were dripping in the bright sunshine. And all the time the tide carried on draining away, like an emptying washtub. In all my days of gazing at the sea, I’d never seen it behave so oddly.
Nor had I ever seen Mr Spicer so animated. He was pacing up and down, just like Ellis did when some new idea had seized him and he couldn’t keep still.
‘This must be an act of God,’ he muttered excitedly. ‘A punishment for our transgressions. Yes, I do believe that’s what this is – a sign from above that our work needs to be done.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I couldn’t hold my tongue. ‘It’s the sea. It doesn’t follow our bidding!’
But Mr Spicer, already lost to his own theory, kicked off his shoes and strode off across the newly wet sand.
Within minutes, he was easily sixty yards out, small as a flea against the empty seabed that stretched in all directions. Perhaps he’d keep walking until he reached Wales on the other side. I hoped he and his poisonous ideas would stay there too.
‘There must be a storm coming,’ Susannah said firmly. ‘We’d best go back to the house and warn Mistress Bagwell.’
‘What about Ellis?’
‘I feel certain Ellis, wherever he is, is a long way from here by now. Besides, Bea’s getting cold.’
The storm idea was certainly a better explanation than Mr Spicer’s. The tides had been thrown out by the weather, and we’d do best to return to Berrow Hall, pull the shutters and wait it out.
But I didn’t believe it.
How could there be a storm about to arrive when the sky was clear blue and cloudless? There wasn’t so much as a breath of wind. Everything was very still. Very hushed. I realised what was missing, then: the gulls.
Normally you’d hear them calling, shrieking. You’d see them too, hovering above a fishing boat or swooping low over the water. You’d catch a flash of white. A yellow beak. A frogspawn eye. Today, there wasn’t a single gull in the sky. It was as if they’d kept away on purpose because they knew something wasn’t right.
When we turned for the house, I saw them. They were crowding on to a thorn tree. But there wasn’t space for them all, so the tree was alive with beaks and flapping wings. Queerer still was the wall of Berrow Hall, on which more gulls sat like soldiers on guard. I’d seen swallows do something similar at the tail end of summer, but this felt eerie and wrong.
I had an overwhelming sense, then, an ice-cold dread, that something very terrible was about to happen.
‘What are the birds doing?’ Susannah asked.
‘They’re watching something out to sea,’ I realised, and we both turned to discover what it was.
The bank of dirty brown-grey cloud on the horizon was coming towards us, billowing like the smoke from damp wood.
It was moving too fast for a sea fog. Instinct made me step further up the beach. Bea was getting heavier, and wrigglier. My back ached from holding her; I wasn’t sure if I could for much longer.
‘We should go,’ I warned.
What we’d assumed was fog or smoke was sea spray. The sunlight caught it, made it shimmer and glisten. It was almost beautiful, until I saw the sea beneath rising up, and how fast everything seemed to be happening. A mountain of deepest blue, getting higher and higher with no sign of breaking. Suddenly there seemed more sea than sky.
‘Run!’ I screamed.
The sea rushed in at a galloping-horse pace. We didn’t stand a chance. One moment I was scrambling up the beach, clutching Bea as best I could, the next I felt as if I’d been hit from behind by a cartload of stone. The force sent me flying, an arrow from a bow. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t call out, couldn’t see where I was going. All I knew was I was moving very fast – so fast I was sure I’d left my guts way behind. Everything was seawater-dark.
When I sensed the surge was easing, I tried to swim. But the sea was in charge, make no mistake. It flung me sideways, pulled me under. Bea was still tied to me, her legs kicking against my ribs. I held on to her with one arm and paddled with the other. I tried to keep both our heads above the surface. And that was a battle enough.
By sheer luck, I spotted Susannah only a few yards away, her nightclothes a white flag in the water.
‘Over here!’ I yelled. ‘Susannah! Over here!’
The roar of the sea was deafening. I felt as if I had water inside my brain. Each time I shouted, I swallowed mouthfuls. Bea kept kicking. Coughing. I called Susannah’s name again, though I’d little hope she’d heard.
‘Can you reach me?’ I cried.
In desperation, she flung out her arm. I lunged for it. Missed. Tried again, my fingers brushing hers.
‘Grab my hand!’ I screamed.
For a second, her fingers locked with mine. I felt the pull in my shoulder socket, the heave of the sea. Susannah’s terrified face loomed before me. Her blue eyes. Her bluer lips. Then in a surge of foam and mud, she was gone.