RICHARD

He stood up, confused, eyes red from the tears, mouth dry, head pounding; it was a moment before he realized where they were, that they had slept again, a few short hours. His voice was slurred with the shock and tiredness of the night before as he nudged Abigail awake. She was clutching the blanket, biting on her lip, her face pale. It was mid-morning now, a new day, but he felt frozen in the night before, the last night.

She raised herself up into a sitting position, her chin on her knees, her arms wrapped around her legs. They stayed like that for a moment, him looking down at her, strands of hair loose from her chignon. The sun was streaking in the air, dust dancing in strips. He felt grateful at least that she was there, that he had found her. He knelt down to sit on the blankets, folded her into a hug, exhaling slowly as they held each other.

‘We should get you back to your sister’s…’

‘I can’t go back.’

She whispered the words into his chest, so, for a moment, Richard wondered if she’d actually spoken.

‘I don’t understand.’ He pulled away so he could look at her. She had a streak of mud on one cheek and he reached out to wipe at it with a thumb. ‘She’ll want to know you’re safe.’

She didn’t look up at him but stared ahead, unseeing, at the fire, long dead in the grate. ‘I can’t.’

Richard felt his lips move into a rounded question; her voice was barely there, a new expression settling on her face.

‘What if they never knew?’ she continued, biting her lip again, her eyes darting left to right and then up at him.

The ferocity of her gaze forced him to move round and kneel in front of her, tipping her chin towards him. ‘If they never knew what? What are you talking about, Abigail?’

Her whole face transformed, a blush creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. She swallowed once, then took a nervous breath. ‘If they never knew I survived.’

He reeled back on his heels, his voice sharper than intended. ‘What do you mean? Why?’

She reached out to him, her expression desperate, as if she was starving and he was holding the last morsel of food. ‘Richard, please. I can’t go back.’

He felt a surge of anger at this girl he thought he knew. Had he been mistaken? Why would she say such a thing?

‘I don’t understand,’ he repeated, wanting to understand, feeling overwhelmed with everything that was happening, still not able to keep up.

‘My brother-in-law…’ She spoke in the smallest voice so that he was forced to lean forward. ‘He…’

Richard must have made a noise because she looked up at him sharply. ‘He, well, I…’ She started wringing her hands, trying to get the words out.

He was thinking the worst things, watching as her eyes flicked left to right, her mouth stumbling over the sentences.

‘He tried to force himself on me. He is… If I could leave, I could… I don’t want to go back there. They’ll think I’ve gone… I’ll be free.’

He didn’t know what to say, his head too full of everything, aching, the light pressing on him. His world seemed to be tilting, making him clutch the blankets to keep himself grounded. He thought of his father in the cottage, leading Mary down to him, leaving them there. His fist tightened, he closed his eyes, picturing them in the house, trapped, the water rising.

Abigail was holding her breath and he looked over at her as if he was trying to recall who she was, what she’d been saying.

‘Please, I don’t want you to think… I didn’t want to tell you, but…’ She pleaded, brushing the back of his hand.

He snatched his hand away, too many noises in his head. ‘Don’t, Abi. I can’t think now, I can’t.’

She nodded, looking down, the exuberant girl who’d screamed at the river now broken by it all. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.’

He hated to see her like that, her shoulders drooping, her eyes dulled. He reached a hand up to her face and she leant her cheek into his palm as he kissed her, for a brief second trying to believe that it was a normal kiss, that nothing dreadful had happened. He closed his eyes, made a promise. ‘It will be alright, Abi.’

‘Will it?’ she whispered, tears filling her eyes before she looked away.

He stood, walked out into the garden, returned with a bucket of water. Moving to the butler’s sink, he splashed his face, rubbed at his neck and cheeks, feeling drops dampen his collar.

‘I need to go back down; I need to see if I can find them.’

Abigail nodded, wiping her face with the back of her hand as she sat in the nest of blankets on the floor.

He walked over to the door, pausing as she called his name in a voice filled with a pain he recognized as his own. ‘Please try and find Mary.’

He gulped as he looked back at her, trying to give her a reassuring smile but not managing it, then gently closed the door behind him.

The village seemed worse in the harsh daylight, brighter and more exposing than the hours before, or perhaps the shock was wearing off. Even the glimpses as he picked his way down the path – the ground saturated, moss clinging to stone walls, reeking of the recent rain, droplets on leaves, puddles at every turn – didn’t make sense to him. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, his brain moving through the images he knew, the places that were so familiar to him now distorted, twisted, smashed. Some not even there.

All across the village men with rolled-up shirtsleeves carried buckets, removing rocks, calling to each other, exclaiming over the crumpled wreckage of another automobile, a house, its contents gaping. In the sea beyond, the line of ghostly trees remained, propped up by their roots, splintered wood on the shore, the tide revealing more objects, masonry, bricks, upturned chairs, smashed bowls.

There was a line of bodies under blankets, a small hand peeking from the side of one. Richard found himself staring at the little finger; a man slopped mud on his boots as he lingered, muttering an apology, not able to look away. He stood there until someone steered him gently back, gave him a bucket, a hand on his shoulder, words in his ear. Bill rubbing at his glasses as he looked at him, his own face grey, bags under his eyes.

They worked in silence, filling their buckets, clambering over boulders, staring up as shouts in the distance indicated something else had been found.

He spent an age clearing the area around the cottages, the foundations gone, Richard having to look back up at the valley to get his bearings, touching the ground where the houses had once been. His father was found later that day in amongst the slabs of brick, the rocks pulled up gently by Bill and a couple of other lads, carefully muttering to each other in low voices, one holding a handkerchief over his mouth and nose, his eyes on Richard, who felt his world temporarily stop turning. Bill next to him then, a hand on his shoulder again as he fought to hold back the tears building behind his eyes and in his throat. He had needed to see him, to know. He didn’t look like his dad anymore. Richard felt something lurch in his stomach, held up a hand to his mouth, grateful for the sheet they put over the body.

The next morning he found himself heading down to the village again, in a trance, leaving Abigail sitting in the cottage, pacing up and down as she waited for him to return with news. More bodies found, no sign of Mary. An eleven-year-old who lived over a mile away had been found under the butcher’s slab on Watersmeet Road. They hadn’t located the body of his little brother. The tide swept in and out, crammed with broken wood, wheels of motor cars, misshapen metal. At times he felt completely lost, as if this was an entirely different place and his father was somewhere else, a village up the coastline, untouched.

There were huge stone boulders that Richard craned his neck to look at. They entered his dreams: he was pushing at one hopelessly, imagining his father underneath it, pinned, sinking into the silt, the rock weighing him down. He woke to that image, moving around and around, until Abi held him, told him where he was, brought him back to her.

Enough water to supply both villages for a century had hurtled down the two-river valley in a few short hours, destroying their idyllic home, the honeymooner’s paradise. The rivers had turned roads into streams and streams into rivers that flowed with furious energy down to the sea, taking everything in their path. There were dozens of mangled motor cars settled upside down and crooked. On the third day Richard stopped short, his breathing thick as he recognized the navy hood of a pram, its metal frame distorted and barely recognizable nearby, wheel-less. He sank to his knees, patting at the debris below it, not wanting to imagine what was hidden there.

Uniformed men from various agencies roamed amongst fishermen and villagers. People stood in the midst of the chaos, carting debris, lifting buckets, picking through the wreckage, returning to salvage belongings from broken homes. A lot of movement and then stillness as they suddenly stopped and stared at the devastation, observing it as if for the first time, as if for a second they had forgotten, that it couldn’t have happened, then starting up again, filling another bucket load.

He returned to the cottage every evening, Abigail waiting for him with questions, the cottage swept and tidied. He knew he should make her leave, should make her return to her sister, but as he folded her into his arms, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. So she stayed and they didn’t discuss it.

On the third day there were rumours that the body of a young woman had been found further down the coast; a little girl had discovered it in the water that morning. There was talk of who it could be. She was being brought back for identification, worried relatives hoping the interminable wait for news might be over. There was a small crowd around the body when it was carried into the village on a stretcher. One man, keen to lay claim to a maid in his service, stepped forward to survey the body. Richard lingered at the edge of the group. A bloated arm, brown hair. Her flesh was exposed, shoes long gone, but Richard recognized the scrap of material found with her, the sleeve of a light pink blouse she’d been wearing that night.

The man shook his head, stepped backwards, and Richard recognized Abigail’s sister, standing behind her husband, a startled bird. The husband moved forward, looking strangely out of place in a clean shirt and a bowler hat; he raised a thick eyebrow at her as he turned to steer her towards the blanket, one hand on the small of her back. She remained frozen, had to reach out for his arm at one point or she would have stumbled. Her pale lips were bitten down, her eyes the same shape as Abigail’s; she had the same slender neck but was somehow still, as if she were behind a pane of glass, whereas Abigail would have been vivid, breaking through it with her stare.

The man asked for the blanket to be removed from the face. He tipped his head to one side, assessing it, as if he were about to buy a barrel of fish. Richard felt his fists curl into themselves as he stood there, wanting to launch himself over the rocks at him. That was the man.

As if he had shouted his thoughts, he sensed Abigail’s sister glance over at him, start at the sight of him. She held his gaze, a steady look. Richard felt himself heat up, his skin itch. He should say something.

‘It’s not her.’ Her husband stepped backwards, interrupting Richard’s thoughts, his voice loud, bouncing off the debris, giving others hope that they might recognize the woman.

‘Wait.’ Abigail’s sister spoke quietly, her voice indistinct at first and then growing stronger. ‘I want to see.’

Richard watched her closely, his feet planted, unable to move at all, knowing he should go to her but finding himself immobilized, his eyes unable to leave her.

She walked forward, slowly, carefully, stumbling a little on the uneven ground, a handkerchief pressed into her mouth as she stared down at the body beneath the blankets. There was a beat and then she announced it in a quiet voice. ‘It’s her,’ she said, not looking at her husband but rather at the man with the clipboard.

Richard saw her husband take her elbow in one hand, forcibly steer her away. ‘Woman’s mistaken,’ he said.

‘I’m not. It’s her,’ she said, and as she repeated it she looked over her shoulder, straight at Richard. ‘It’s Abigail. She’s dead. She’s gone.’ She held his gaze, urgency in her voice.

Richard couldn’t look away, stared back at her, hearing the words as if from a great distance.

Then there was movement; she pulled away, back towards the body, but her husband marched across, seized her arm again. ‘It’s not her. My wife’s overwrought, she doesn’t know what she’s saying.’

The man holding the clipboard frowned, looked from one to the other. ‘If you’re sure…’

Abigail’s sister was muttering now, people’s eyes swivelling to the pair of them, voices in the crowd. Bill glanced up at Richard, a question on his lips as he searched his face. Her husband drew her away, his hand firm on her arm, his mouth set in a line.

She looked back once, meeting Richard’s eye again. ‘She’s gone.’