The phone on the bed buzzed. Clover glanced at it and gave a wail. ‘Shit! The driver’s here.’
Johnny, who was still – in spite of the commotion – trying to sleep on the sofa in the next room, lifted his head. ‘Just get the next flight.’
Not helpful.
Matty dismissed his suggestion with a withering look and moved her arms in a calming motion. ‘Okay. Let’s not panic. I think we’re in pretty good shape.’ Clover didn’t find that calming, coming from someone whose mascara had migrated onto her cheeks and had a biro stuck in her hair. They were all much the worse for wear.
‘Mats, there’s two of you! I’m still drunk! I’m not sure they’ll even let me on the plane.’
But Matty shook her head, refusing to be panicked. ‘We’ll do a checklist.’ There was nothing in her world that couldn’t be solved by a list of some sort. She closed her eyes and compiled a mental inventory. It was like watching someone meditate. ‘Passport?’
Clover reached into her bag and pulled it out. ‘Yup.’
‘Visa?’
‘Yep.’
‘Purse?’
‘Yes.’ Clover nodded, her eyes skating towards the window. She was sure she could see the exhaust fumes from her waiting car drifting past the glass. She was so late. How could she have thought ‘farewell drinks’ at Soho House would end in any way other than how it had?
‘Shoes? And that means heels – not trainers.’
Clover thought, reminding herself of the moment of packing them. ‘Yep.’
‘Tux?’
‘Yes.’ She definitely remembered that. It was a bugger to pack to avoid getting crease lines in the velvet.
Matty’s eyes opened. ‘Not that it matters. I’ve managed to get a couple of dresses sent to your hotel room. Don’t ask me how I did it. A few well-placed calls . . .’ She took in Clover’s underwhelmed expression and rolled her eyes. ‘Thank me later. Chargers? Including your toothbrush charger? You always forget that.’
‘Yes.’
‘Adaptors?’ Johnny offered from the next room. His one contribution to getting her to LA on time. He was pushing himself slowly up to a sitting position, his shaggy dirty-blonde hair looking more tangled than ever.
‘Oh shit. Adaptors.’ Clover caught her hair in her hands, twisting it at the temples. Where had she last seen them?
Matty caught her by the shoulders as she went to tear clothes from yet more drawers. ‘No time. You can get them at the airport. I’ll WhatsApp you a list while you’re in the car. Stay focused. Speech?’
‘On my laptop.’
‘Okay then. Laptop?’
Clover’s eyes widened. ‘Shit!’
‘Clo!’ Matty cried, losing her cool. ‘Sort it out! Laptop is basic!’
‘I know!’ Her phone buzzed. It was the driver again.
Matty reached onto the bed and pulled Clover’s laptop out from under the twist of clothes and the thick eiderdown. Clover stuffed it into her hand luggage. ‘Right, I’ve gotta go. Anything else I’ve forgotten, it won’t be a disaster, I can get out there.’
‘Yes. Good. Go, go!’ Matty clutched her hard, her fingertips digging into the back of Clover’s shoulders. ‘It’s going to be incredible.’
Johnny shuffled over and put his arms around them both, leaning on them heavily. In spite of his dishevelled appearance, he smelled good.
Clover pulled back. ‘I so wish you guys were coming too. It’s so unfair. We’re a team.’ They had only been issued with two tickets and there was no way Liam was going to pass on the chance to share air with the Hollywood cognoscenti.
‘It fucking sucks,’ Johnny agreed. ‘There’s some cinematographers out there I’d give my right arm to meet.’
‘I promise I’ll make sure they all know your name and the things you did. I’ll get their cards for you,’ she said earnestly.
‘Thanks, Clo.’
‘If you do happen to meet Nancy . . .’ Matty shrugged. ‘Send her my best. Tell her I’ll be in touch.’
Clover gave a bemused nod.
Johnny picked up her luggage. He gave a surprised look. ‘Have you actually got anything in here?’
Matty groaned. She could never understand that ‘packing light’ was actually a thing. Her guru and queen in most things – packing, jewels, grooming routines – was Elizabeth Taylor. More was more.
‘Just the essentials.’ Clover blew them both a kiss as she headed for the door. ‘I’ll buzz you when I get there. In the meantime, Mats, I think there’s legs in the Geldof idea, make an approach, see what comes back. Johnny-boy, if you can begin editing that material for the bonus content deal with Netflix. They need eleven minutes on the nose.’
‘Got it.’
She started down the stairs. ‘Hollywood, here we come!’
‘And if you get a chance to snog Liam Hemsworth, I say go for it!’ Matty hollered as she disappeared out of sight down the grand winding staircase. ‘Do it for me!’
‘Will do!’ Clover said, getting down to the communal hall and opening the heavy front door. ‘. . . Sorry, sorry!’ she said, seeing the driver in a dark grey suit waiting by the car for her. ‘I overslept.’
He was too professional to point out it was gone two in the afternoon.
‘There’s traffic on the M40, Ms Phillips,’ was all he said, reaching for her bags and putting them into the boot.
‘Hey Clo!’ She looked back to find Matty waving from the sitting-room window. ‘You forgot your bloody phone!’
‘Fuck!’ She was so excited – and hung over – she’d forget her own head right now.
‘Johnny’s coming down!’ Matty yelled, just as the front door burst open and Johnny leaned through, holding it out with an outstretched arm. He had no shoes or socks on and the path was glistening with spring rain. ‘Just as well it rang or we wouldn’t have noticed in time,’ he said as she jogged back to him.
‘Rang?’
‘Mia’s on the line.’
‘Oh! Thanks Johnny.’ She took it from him, blowing him a kiss and heading for the car again. The driver was standing beside the open door with a look of barely concealed agitation. ‘Hey Mia! I’m literally – literally – leaving now! I’m so late!’ What time was it there? Half six in the morning?
‘Clo? Is that you?’
Clover’s feet stopped moving at the sound of her friend’s voice. It sounded crazy-glazed, as if Mia’s very surface was covered in cracks, as if she was breaking apart. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’
Her own voice sounded peculiar too: it was strangled, inflected with strain. She saw a frown crease Johnny’s brow.
‘Cory’s gone.’
For a moment, the words rang in her head, empty and meaningless, just a swirl of sound. ‘What do you mean, gone? Gone where? Like, out?’
‘We don’t know where he is. He’s been sleeping on the sofa the last few nights but when the kids woke up this morning, he wasn’t here.’ Mia’s voice rose in pitch, panic fraying at the edges.
‘Well, has he gone for a walk? The fresh air helps his head.’
‘No, it’s not that. I know it’s not.’ There was an ominous silence; Clover could hear Mia’s breathing was rapid and shallow. ‘I told him, Clo, last night . . . I told him we have to sell the house.’
Oh god. ‘How did he take it?’
‘At first he just stared at me and didn’t say a word.’ Her voice slipped into the next octave. ‘Then he said if I thought it was for the best . . .’
‘That was it?’
‘I could see he was upset – but I thought he understood that there’s no other way.’
Clover swallowed, determined to be optimistic. ‘So then he’s gone for a walk. He’s thinking it all through and processing the news.’
Mia’s voice cracked suddenly, the emotion breaking through. ‘No. He’s not walking. There’s a storm blowing in. Offshore wind, swell from the west.’
Clover knew what those conditions meant. Right around the headland from Ross Cove, where their cottage sat, lay Mavericks. Big wave country.
‘His board’s gone.’
Those three words were like little tombstones. Clover felt the ground drop an inch beneath her feet. She had to step back to balance herself as the reason for this call finally shot across the ocean and down the phone, right into her ear, her brain, her heart.
Mia’s voice, when it came back, was tiny, as though curled up inside itself. ‘They’re out looking for him now. Everyone. There’s more people on that beach and in the water than I’ve ever seen. Guys risking their lives . . .’ Her voice broke off.
Clover became aware Johnny had come over and was standing right in front of her, his bare feet on the wet tiles, one hand resting lightly on her arm, looking down at her with a look of open alarm. ‘So then they’ll find him and bring him home.’
‘No . . . you’re not hearing me.’ Mia crumbled in the face of her stoicism, all her reserves gone. ‘It’s heavy out there today. The coastguards have told me to prepare myself, Clo. They’re looking for a body. Cory’s dead.’ A sound left her body unlike anything Clover had ever heard. ‘My husband is dead!’
The water heaved and sighed beneath them, glittering and tranquil beneath a cloudless sky. The storm had been and gone, blown itself out in a fury that left trees toppled in its wake, power lines down, and a body on the beach.
Giving them closure, at least.
By the time her plane had landed in San Francisco and she had made the journey to Half Moon Bay, the storm had been at full pitch – the wind ferocious, bending the palm trees to its will, whipping the water into mountainous peaks that toppled and crashed every few seconds, deafening, thunderous, terrifying the hundreds of onlookers safe on the shore.
The beaches had become so packed as news of the search spread, police had been forced to close off the local roads and it had taken forty minutes before she could get hold of Mia on the phone and be allowed through to their bungalow at the head of the bay. The two women had hugged in anguished silence. What was there to say? There was no hope to cling to, no comfort to find from this, nothing to counter the sight of Cory’s three young sons, standing tense and erect on the scrap of lawn overlooking the ocean, watching the activity on the water as pro surfers and lifeguards, jet ski teams and the coastguard scoured the clear water between the wave sets for their father’s body.
By the time the ocean spat him out, the storm had spent itself and now picture-postcard conditions had returned. The surf – though always imposing there – was without snarling menace once more, families back playing on the beach, the familiar line-up of surfers sitting on their boards, waiting their turn.
But today didn’t look like any other day Clover had ever seen. Under a cloudless sky, a mile up the coast from the scene of the tragedy, an incredible spectacle was already under way. Word had spread fast about Cory’s death, inflamed by the global media coverage and the pathos that he should have been walking the red carpet in LA tonight – Liam was bringing a date along on her ticket; Clover couldn’t think of anything less important than attending the awards right now – and now hundreds of surfers were standing on the beach, boards by their sides, ready for the paddle-out memorial. Clover was with Mia and the boys in a traditional Hawaiian outrigger canoe which Cory had brought back with him following his first ever win at Pipe Masters at Oahu. He had loved that thing.
The five of them, plus Eddie ‘Razorfish’ Kahale – a retired local surfer and long-time buddy of the Allbrights; Clover had interviewed him extensively for the documentary – had paddled out together. Clover had been surprised at just how skilfully and powerfully the young boys paddled, the muscles visible on their skinny brown backs as they did this for their father. To make him proud.
Now, a few hundred metres offshore, they were getting their breath back, allowing the boat to gently drift and watching the gathering crowds watching them. There was press everywhere – TV crews, drones, long-lens cameras on tripods – occasional passing boats hooting their horns in sympathy at the sight. But it was surprisingly quiet on shore, the crowds standing in silent respect.
Gulls wheeled overhead, listing on air currents, spying for fish. Clover could just see the Allbrights’ small, battered house above the rocks at Ross Cove. For safety reasons, the memorial was being held the next bay up from Half Moon; the lifeguards wouldn’t allow such a large gathering near those breaks. Here, at least, there was no reef, no white water.
The calm was broken. Clover’s head jerked up as a bell sounded suddenly, three times, and the mass on the beach moved as one, the multicoloured crowd dispersing into bright fragments as they picked up their boards and raced into the water, leaping belly-first onto their boards and beginning to paddle, long-stemmed flowers held between their teeth.
She couldn’t help it – Clover felt the tears begin to flow down her cheeks again as they all headed straight for the small canoe. There had been so many tears in the days since she had arrived here and it was an overwhelming sight, to have that many people heading towards the family in a show of such love. They drew close in minutes, surrounding them protectively, getting to within metres of the boat.
Two girls paddled right up to the ama – the outrigger section of the canoe that acted as a counterbalance – and began to decorate the booms with lei garlands.
Brady, the youngest, still only three – Mia had been seven months pregnant with him at the time of Cory’s accident – began crying; Mia reached over, lifting him onto her lap and kissing his hair. She was managing to stay strong. Ever since that one animalistic cry down the phone, she had been holding it together, going through the motions for her boys and doing what had to be done. But there was a look in her eyes that hadn’t been there before; a blankness, surprise registering whenever a voice carried to her ear. It took several repetitions before she ever heard what Clover said to her and although she fussed over the boys, making sure they finished their meals, Clover was pretty sure Mia herself had scarcely eaten. She looked spectral.
Clover knew from her own experience that this was the shock that came with grief. Years of nursing and caring for a man she loved, but who swung from utter dependency to utter contempt, couldn’t be undone in a few days. Mia was used to being needed, rejected, run off her feet, and several times Clover had found her standing in a room just staring at the emptiness, as though confounded that he wasn’t in it. There was no longer anything to do. No one to fight with, or for.
The sight around them became ever more wondrous. There were hundreds of people all around them on the water, floating like lily pads, faces turned towards them. Someone pointed to a pod of dolphins further out in the bay. Clover could feel the medley of emotions gathered all around them, sitting within each and every person: loss, shock, sadness, anger. But also gratitude, affection, love.
A man she vaguely recognized as Pipe Rat, the leader of Cory’s local surf tribe – his actual name was Wes – stood on his board, as arranged, and began to speak.
‘Friends! We’ve come together today to give thanks for the life of our friend and fellow soul surfer, Cory Allbright. At thirty-six years old, he’s gone way too soon. He had so much more to give. Things should have been very different to this . . .’
His words carried over the quiet body of the congregated crowd. All eyes were upon him.
‘Cory was our guy. A true local, he was born here, lived here. Died here. He was one of us, even though he was also one of the greats! He was as happy riding with the Half Moon homies or an off-duty dentist as he was screaming through a barrel at Pipe Masters. And he was never happier than when he was riding with his three boys.’
Pipe Rat looked over at them, bringing the weight of the crowd’s stare with him. ‘You boys can be so proud of your dad. All he ever wanted was to make you proud. To be the best for you.’ He looked back at the paddlers. ‘Forty-eight career victories in twenty years, riding against guys half his age. He was ranking first on the ASP World Tour when he had his accident but before that, he had been world number two for four consecutive years . . . He was consistent, dogged, the best surfer never to make world champ there ever was.’
His words skimmed across the ocean’s surface.
‘Cory never had it easy. He never quite caught the breaks that mattered. But he was a fighter. He kept going. He was like all of us – a regular guy, not without his demons, just doing his best.’
Clover glanced at the boys. One day – just not today – they would also hear about their father’s sporadic drink and drug problems, the half-hearted retirement episodes when he gave up, gained weight and checked out of the sport. But he had always turned things around, gone back. The ocean didn’t need mermaids to lure him in, just barrels.
‘He didn’t grow up in some fancy house. He wasn’t no rich kid who got given everything on a plate. What he got, he earned. He did it the hard way. Through grit. And resilience. And talent. And self-belief. He wanted to win, not for money, but for love. For his family: Mia and his boys – Hunter, Taylor, Brady. You guys were his world. He wanted to make you proud. Cos he was so damn proud of you.’
Clover saw that Mia’s shoulders were hunching up by her ears as she tried to hold back her tears, and she leaned forward, resting a comforting hand upon her shoulder. Brady was still tucked up on his mother’s lap but the older boys were stoically looking back at the crowds, peering from behind their long fringes of white-blonde, sun-bleached hair. Their little bodies were rigid with tension as they hung on Pipe Rat’s every word about their father, their breath coming in big gulps that inflated their rib cages.
‘. . . Cory Allbright was a beautiful soul. This never should have gone down the way it did, we all know that. But there’ll be justice down the line. Karma be like that.’
His voice had become hard and brittle; everyone knew to what – or rather, whom – he was referring. Clover realized they were all now holding hands, forming linked chains in concentric circles around the small boat, ten, eleven deep. A short distance away bobbed a solitary surfer. Had he arrived too late? Or was he simply a passing rider, unaware of what he’d come across? He sat, silhouetted, watching, making no attempt to draw closer.
‘. . . But that’s for the future. Today is about honouring Cory’s memory. About blessing his spirit and keeping in our hearts, the good times. He won’t be forgotten. And the surf community will make sure his family is loved. Supported. Protected.’ He looked at Mia. ‘Mia, that is our promise to you. You and the boys are not alone.’
Mia swallowed and nodded her thanks.
‘Cory, we love ya, man! Rest in peace, brother!’
A cheer went up, growing in volume and heft as people began splashing and scooping up water into the air in a form of salute. Goosebumps raced up Clover’s arms as she watched the cacophony.
Eddie stood and handed Taylor, who was sitting behind him, the urn he had kept safe by his feet. Taylor stared at it for several moments, then kissed it. ‘Love you, Dad,’ he sobbed. He passed it back to Hunter, who did the same.
Clover didn’t think she could bear it. These poor children, their final goodbye . . .
Mia patted Brady and he squirrelled off her lap, understanding it was his turn now. The urn was heavy, heavier than he might have expected, and he had to clutch it to his body to take the weight. He closed his eyes, swinging from side to side with it, like it was a teddy bear. ‘Come back, Daddy. We’ll be good.’
A cry escaped Mia and she reached over to him, stroking his hair back and kissing his face. ‘Daddy loved you so much, baby.’ Her voice was thick with tears. ‘You were his best boys. All of you. He lives in here now.’ And she tapped Brady’s chest, by his heart. ‘He’ll never leave you. He’ll always be with you.’
Clover turned away, not wanting the children to see her tears. She knew all about losing a father, but this wasn’t her tragedy. Who was she to be so upset? And yet . . . she was intricately woven into the tapestry of their family life now. She had lived with them, seen the truth of their situation behind closed doors. She knew how it felt when a family fell apart.
Mia took the urn and stood. Tears pooled in her eyes and she didn’t try to hide them as she stared out at the silent gathering. The crowd stared back at her in common understanding; they didn’t need her to speak. She just nodded slowly and they understood, the connection sparkling in the quietness, like a spiderweb catching the sunlight.
At the far end of the canoe, Eddie stood and began to sing a mournful Hawaiian lament. The circles of floating surfers seemed to draw even more tightly together as Mia unscrewed the lid and carefully, with slender, trembling arms, tipped her husband’s ashes into the sea. They slipped into the water, heavy and silent, as though returning to their rightful place. Not so much dust to dust as sand to the beach.
Eddie’s song lifted and carried above them all. No one stirred. People were weeping silently but openly. Salt-water tears to a salt-water ocean. As the song ended, everyone threw their garlands, stems and wreaths into the water too and within moments it became thick with colour and scent, a carpet upon the sea’s surface, like a minuscule, beautiful scar in the water.
‘Mom, look!’
Mia looked down to find Hunter, her eldest boy at age eight, pointing out to sea. The surface was flat, a dead calm in the bay today – except for a single set of waves heading for them.
Everyone turned to look, releasing a collective gasp at the sight. In under a minute, the waves reached them, lifting up beneath each and every one of them and rocking them all. Eddie looked over at Mia and nodded. Clover knew what he was confirming, something that Cory had told her himself: it was Hawaiian belief that the departed would show their presence with a wave passing under the circle, and although Cory had been a California boy through and through, he had long ago adopted the spirituality of the ancient Hawaiian water men. He was telling them he was here, with them.
Leaving.
Mia sobbed in astonishment, in heartbreak, at her husband’s final goodbye. He was really gone. A chant suddenly started up, led by Eddie again, and everyone began to splash in unison. It wasn’t just an incredible sight, but the sound of it was too – hundreds of hands hitting the water to the same beat, droplets catching the sunlight. A dance on the water, with the water.
Clover watched the set of waves roll towards the shore, preparing to break themselves apart against the land and be gone forever. Her gaze fell again on the lone surfer. He had given up on their strange, private ceremony and was paddling back to shore, looking for an excitement not to be found here. Not today.
From her bed – the bed that had been hers for nine months last year – Clover could see the moon glistening on the water, throwing out a light that made dark dots of passing ships on the horizon. Closer by, she could hear the rhythmic roll and crash of the surf. It underpinned life here, in this bay, in this house. Even the wind let up sometimes but the surf always kept on rolling in, endless, repetitive, dependable. It would never not be here. Cliffs would crumble and mountains fall before those waves stopped.
That was why Cory had walked into a stormy sea. He had been as much a part of this landscape as the cliffs and the ocean itself. He belonged to it. There was no moving on for him. Mia had told her, in the quiet hours since getting here, how she’d pleaded with Cory for them to not just move house, but move state. Start over properly and find somewhere landlocked, with no coastline, no surf to torment him with what could never be. But salt water was his oxygen, that was what he’d told her. He could no sooner ‘live in the dry’ than a landed fish. In the end, he hadn’t even tried.
Throwing the sheets back with a sigh, she got up. Sleep was like a nervous bird tonight, nowhere close to landing on her yet; she could feel the day’s high emotions still flickering like dying flames through her veins. Opening her bedroom door a crack, she peered out into the open-plan kitchen-living space, seeing the long shadows across the wooden floor. The tap was dripping. A skateboard was poking out from under the sofa, a wet beach towel bunched on one of the bar stools.
She went over to pick it up and spread it out along the back of a chair to dry, her gaze falling inevitably to the scene outside. The ocean was a midnight ribbon sparkling below a full moon, the trees like cathedral spires, throwing inky spines on the grass.
One shadow in particular – soft and round – caught her eye. She stopped and watched for several seconds, then, grabbing a throw from the sofa, slid open the back door and tiptoed past the rack of surfboards propped against the wall. Mia was sitting on the grass in a vest and knickers, hugging her knees. Her skin was blue-tinted in the moonlight, her blonde hair a regal silver. She looked like an angel.
‘Couldn’t sleep?’ Clover asked quietly, her voice little more than a whisper.
Mia didn’t startle. As ever now, it seemed to take several seconds before she registered the question. She turned her head with a sad smile.
Clover put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You’re cold. Here.’ She draped the throw over Mia’s bare skin, sinking onto the grass beside her.
Neither of them spoke for several minutes, both watching a container ship bound for . . . who knew? . . . tracking a steady course along the horizon. It was soon out of sight.
‘Today was beautiful,’ Clover said finally.
‘. . . Yes. Yes, it was,’ Mia said slowly, like the words were being pulled out of her on a thread. ‘He would have loved it.’
‘For sure.’
‘I think it would have amazed him to see – to actually see – how many people loved him.’ Mia looked at her as if baffled. Then she looked away again, her gaze fixing upon the reflected moon, its shape flickering and twisting as the waves rippled through it, and Clover remembered again that moment when the set of waves had rolled in under them all this morning. Cory’s farewell lap. ‘. . . Do you think if he’d known . . .?’
Clover knew what she was asking, but there was no answer to give. ‘The important thing was that he knew how much you all loved him.’
‘Did he, though?’
Clover was surprised. How could Mia even doubt it? Their relationship had been fiery and passionate, but Clover had never once questioned the strength of their bond. ‘Mia, of course! You more than anyone. You were his greatest protector.’
Mia blinked at her, shaking her head softly. ‘I’m no saint. There were so many times when I wanted it to just be over. When I felt like I couldn’t keep going.’ Tears shone in her eyes. ‘I wished for this.’
Clover reached over and clutched her arm. ‘Mia, you listen to me. You didn’t want him dead. You didn’t make this happen . . . Of course you’re not a saint. No one is. It would not be humane to expect any one person to deal with everything you’ve dealt with, for the past few years, and not sometimes lose your shit. You hear me? You did the best you could. Better than anyone else could have done. Certainly better than I ever could have done. You were his wife, right to the end. You’re the mother to his kids. He was lucky to have you and he knew it. He told me that himself, so many times. Over and over he’d tell me how he couldn’t believe that you had stuck with him. He said you deserved better than him.’ Clover swallowed. ‘You are the reason he kept going as long as he did.’
Mia stared back at her with huge, shining eyes. The tears were racing down her cheeks in silent tracks. ‘. . . I just want to scream. All the time.’ The words were softly said, quiet as opening flowers, but the sinews in Mia’s neck were strained, the muscles in her arms flexed with repressed rage. ‘I want him to see what he’s done to us. I want him to see what he’s done to me. To my little boys. I want to make him suffer the way we’re suffering. Because it’s not going to ever stop. This feeling. This pain.’
Clover put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Mia, it will. With time—’
Mia jerked her head sharply, pinning her with a wild look. ‘Bullshit.’ Her voice was still quiet, but savage. ‘This isn’t the beginning for us. We’ve been living in this nightmare for years already. Brady never knew his father before the accident – he only got the monster. They all did! Hunter and Taylor were too little to remember him before. All they’ll remember of him are the rages and the depressions. That’s the legacy of what he did. He took their father from them – not once, but twice!’
Clover frowned. ‘Mia . . . who are we talking about?’
Mia blinked back at her, as though confused by the question. ‘Kit Foley!’ she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘Who else? He’s the architect of this. Everything that has happened to us . . . all of this . . . can be traced back to what he did that day. We know it. He knows it. And he got away with it.’
Clover’s mouth opened to protest, to offer words of encouragement, but what could she possibly say? Knowing what she knew of Foley’s latest adventures, it was undeniable that his life was on the up again. It was true – he had got away with it.
‘We’re the ones left living with the fallout. My boys are growing up without their father. I’ve lost my soulmate. And we have nothing. No money.’ Mia gave a small sound of despair, hiding her face in her hands suddenly. ‘. . . Oh. Did I tell you? The latest kick in the teeth?’
Clover shook her head, mute, dreading to think what other calamity could have befallen her friend.
Mia drew in a deep, slow breath. ‘The life insurance is invalidated because it was a suicide.’
‘Oh god, Mia.’ Clover hadn’t even got as far as thinking about what came after Cory’s death.
Mia rubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes, exhausted, agitated, defeated. Neither one spoke for several minutes. Mia had no husband. And now no money. ‘I’ve sold the house.’
‘Already?’
‘What other choice did I have? We’re out in five days.’
‘But so soon?’ Clover was shocked. Then she remembered. ‘Oh. That developer?’
Mia nodded. ‘He’s emailed me every three months since the accident. Regular as clockwork. Did we want to sell? Like all this was inevitable.’ Her voice cracked on the last word, as she looked back at Clover with questioning eyes. Had it been? Had there really never been any hope for her husband?
Clover took her hand and squeezed it hard.
Mia shrugged, her head hanging again, her silences saying as much as her words. ‘The day after they found Cory, I told him to give me his best offer. It’s nothing like what we could have got if we could afford to wait, but he knows we can’t. So he wins too and we keep on losing. We just keep on losing.’ She stared out to sea, at the black morass which had taken everything from them. Clover could see the tears shining on her cheeks. ‘Cory always said this place was where our souls danced, but now it’ll just be torn down and some glass holiday home will get built for a tech millionaire who probably doesn’t even like getting his feet wet.’
Clover put an arm around her friend’s shoulders. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Mia,’ she whispered. ‘This is all so unfair. You don’t deserve any of it.’
They sat huddled together, Mia weeping as the moon sketched a tremulous path across the bay.
‘I just wish I knew why,’ she whispered into the dark. ‘How can I ever find any peace when I don’t understand why this happened to us? How do I explain to my boys why they lost their dad, and their home . . .?’
Clover was quiet. In the process of making Pipe Dreams, she had watched the footage of the accident thousands of times. In her mind’s eye she could easily see Cory paddling for the wave, the turn of Kit Foley’s head to check his rival, and then him paddling too . . . Both men standing on their boards within a second of each other. Cory had priority as the outside rider, but Foley deliberately blocked his line, forcing him off the board just as the wave broke. It was an automatic interference penalty for Foley, but by then Cory was under the water.
Cory had needed only one more good run to win the heat, win the event, take the world title. Foley had been running down the clock and he’d burned him to stop him getting the points. The will to win was one thing, gamesmanship another. But to do what Foley had done, in those heavy surf conditions . . . it had been nothing short of reckless endangerment.
They stared out at the midnight horizon together, but as the moon peeped from behind a cloud, Clover felt something, previously hidden, begin to surface within her too. Through the shock and the sadness, the first stirrings of anger shifted inside her – because Mia was right. Her husband was dead. Her family’s life in ruins. The very least she deserved was to know why.