There is a faint bellow of foghorns on the wind. Then the sound of ships tussling with the waves, doing battle with the ice falling from the sky in sheets. The noise engenders a terrible sense of claustrophobia in Hazel and pinpricks of fear pinch at her as she and Jonny make their way down the staircase to the hotel lounge.
Outside, a world of white that has transfigured the garden. Ice debris covers everything in sight. A water barrel resembles the bottom half of a snowman, and intricate webs of snow and remnants of hail are strung together like diamond necklaces between the bare branches of the apple trees.
The tension in the air crackles like cellophane. But despite this the lounge clings bravely on to the mellifluous calm of a cosy room on New Year’s Eve. Hazel’s hand is clamped in Jonny’s. If she could shut her ears and ignore the sound of the storm, try and swallow down the fearful bile that burns in her throat, she might be able to pretend that this is all just as they’d planned, Jonny and she: a trip to Devon for her birthday, to the hotel where he’d come as a boy. Bringing Evie with them, hoping that the holiday would draw them closer together, because the fact that Hazel is only eleven years older than Jonny’s daughter is an itch everyone acknowledges but no one dares to scratch.
Evie has followed them into the room, fully made up, tottering on heels that only a fourteen year old would wear for an interrogation by the police. Hazel and Jonny sit quietly on a love seat underneath one of the ice-battered windows. Balcombe Court is fully booked for New Year’s Eve. Forty guests have gathered, sombre and grave-faced. Before them stands Mr Lamb, hands linked behind his back, swaying to and fro on his feet, waiting for them and the staff to settle like birds onto branches at sundown.
Max has wandered into the lounge from the billiards room. He fingers a packet of cigarettes in his trouser pocket and leans on a wall at the back, his eyes moving from staff member to guest, observing their muted anxiety, their nervous chatter. He is the first to notice DC Hillier when she enters, her notebook tucked away, her eyes bright and keen. She is in her late-forties, he surmises, with curly brown hair scraped back into a tight knot. Energy buzzes from her as she surveys the gathering, gazing at each of them as acutely as Max has done.
‘It is our view,’ she begins, ‘that Georgie Greenstreet is no longer in the hotel.’ She waits a second to let that sink in. ‘We’ve searched the building thoroughly but I’m afraid to say she still hasn’t been found.’ Hillier lifts her head towards the window as a crack of thunder splits the sky above. ‘As you can see – and hear – the weather is abominable. I’ve been told by the coastguard that the search will have to be abandoned until morning.’
A wave of concern breaks through the room at this. A spark flies from the fire and lands on the rug by Hillier’s foot. She grinds it into the carpet with her black lace-up shoe, eyes never leaving her audience. ‘I know that you are eager to help in any way you can,’ she continues. ‘At present, however, there isn’t much that can be done until daylight returns and the storm dies down. Right now, all we need is for you to provide myself and PC Ellis with your details and an approximation of your movements this afternoon and evening. Then all we can do is wait.’
‘How is Mrs Greenstreet?’ an elderly lady asks from a corner of the lounge. ‘The poor woman . . .’
A sympathetic murmuring breaks out among the guests and Hazel grips Jonny’s hand, her thumb rubbing his in a compulsive pattern.
‘She is very grateful for your concern,’ Hillier answers. ‘And doing OK under the circumstances.’
‘Officer,’ a man in a colour-blocked rugby shirt cuts in. ‘Look, I’m ex-TA. The weather’s fierce, sure, but this is a little girl we’re talking about. You can’t call off the search. If she’s out there in this . . .’
Hillier holds up her hands, palms facing out, to stop him talking. She looks calm but Hazel can see a gleam in her eyes. It’s an expression she recognises. A drive deep within, with tentacles so fierce and probing that they will reach into dark places, secret places that once were thought well hidden. It makes Hazel catch her breath, this look. At once she feels unutterably exhausted, beaten to the quick. She drops Jonny’s hand, feels him glance at her uneasily but cannot meet his eyes. It’s all she can do to remain upright and still, and try to keep invisible.
‘As I say,’ Hillier goes on, ‘we do appreciate your concern but we would ask that you do as we advise. We don’t want any more people outside, getting lost in this storm. It’s treacherous. Please leave the searching to the professionals. We would also request that no one departs from the hotel at present.’
‘What do you mean?’ the man in the rugby shirt interrupts again. ‘Are you saying we can’t leave?’
Hillier smiles at him. ‘The weather wouldn’t permit it in any event, sir. But I would ask that if you need to check out of the hotel tomorrow, you do so only after you have been questioned and provided us with full contact details.’
Hazel’s hand searches again for Jonny’s and clutches it tightly.
Hillier looks around the room, taking in their faces one by one. ‘Right then,’ she says brightly. ‘PC Ellis and I will call you in one at a time. Thank you.’
As she spins round and leaves, Max is reminded of a soldier and wonders briefly if Hillier is ex-military. He studies the guests as they sink back into random disquiet. The man in the rugby shirt is gesturing to his wife, a disgusted look on his face. A group of older women sitting together in a huddle seem close to tears. The couple on the window seat are motionless and silent. Their teenage daughter appears bored by the whole occasion, chewing gum and studying her fingernails.
Something about the woman by the window seems familiar although Max can’t place what. It niggles at him like a prickle on his skin. There is an almost childlike quality about her, the way she clings to the man beside her. She’s pretty but with the kind of delicate, petite appearance that he has never found wholly attractive. She’s got a freckled, snub nose and dark brown hair cut like a boy’s. But her eyes are those of a Cinecittà heroine and her lips have the warm, pendulous pout of an Ingrid Bergman. She seems sweet, a slight person; the type Alison would immediately pin down as a girly girl.
Alison is very much the opposite of a girly girl, with her Scandinavian genes and her strong-boned looks of a milkmaid. She’ll be at the farm in Coventry now. He looks at his watch. They’ll be sitting down to dinner, Alison raising her eyebrows if she sees his number light up on the screen of her phone. She’d probably show it to Rachael, and her sister would give her a sad look, rub her arm and pour her more wine. His name will be mud there tonight.
He’s said sorry a thousand times. Explained that if he doesn’t meet his deadline, he won’t get his money. And then they’ll be late on the school fees and that will incur a penalty. And, no, he can’t write at Alison’s parents’ farmhouse because it will be filled to the rafters with a horde of family members, yelling and arguing at all hours of the day and night, and he unable to hear himself think. Despite the (tax-deductible) expense, he has to come to Balcombe to write here, where The Buccaneer’s Daughter is set. It was all obvious to him, but unfortunately not to Alison, who sets family above all other concerns, including, it appears, keeping a roof over said family’s head.
And so, on the day after Boxing Day, Max packed his case and hoisted his laptop bag over his shoulder and took the three trains required to travel from the terraced house he and Alison live in just outside Birmingham to this remote edge of Devon. Now he sighs, abandoning the pointless rehashing of it all. He feels for his cigarettes again and decides to brave the freezing cold for a smoke.
Hazel barely notices him go; she sees nobody else in the room, so immersed is she in her thoughts. She stares down intently at her thumb circling Jonny’s, over and over again.
That look.
That look the policewoman had given her right before she left. It’s a look that takes Hazel straight back to the old canal path.
And, at once, it is as if a chasm has opened up beneath her, and all the castles in the air she has built over the years – with Jonny, with her job, her colleagues – are minutes away from being dashed to smithereens. Like the pirate vessels on the rocks down from the headland where the hotel sits, her treasures will be discarded, tossed out, picked over . . . and then the vilification will begin.
And Jonny. Is he brave enough for this? Can he see it as she can, what’s to come? She stays small and tight, curled up like cigarette paper, her heart warm and beating, but damaged. She comes to this place tonight with all of that inside her. But Jonny? He can’t understand what it’s like. How can he? Can he really know that he will stay, when everything is out in the open, trickling down, carving its mark in the rocks forevermore?
That look.
Down in the gully behind the garden.
By the willow trees above the bank, spouting leaves onto the ground like a lime-green fountain. The far-off laughter of children running in the playground, the sun on their faces, wind in their hair.
That’s the look that started it all. The look that meant everything from then on must be hidden. Tucked away in secret.
Her secret.
Her past.