The afternoon he was taken, the rangers put up beach closure signs and the patrols began by sea and air. The lone witness had said it was a great white.
‘Big as a campervan,’ he’d said.
The police officer introduced her to the man coordinating the search.
‘So, you’re the young man’s …?’
‘Mother,’ she said. ‘And his name’s Josh.’
When they reopened the beach three days later, they warned her, as softly as they could, that there was little chance of finding body parts. ‘We think the shark took everything,’ they said. She looked straight into their faces, and though they tried, they just couldn’t look straight back.
* * *
Four days after they set the drum lines, they called to say they’d caught it. She went down to the beach and waited. She so wanted to hate it. She wanted to spit on it, to kick its oily flank, to spew her grief into its jaws. She’d demand to know why, of all the flesh and blood it could have taken, it had chosen hers to take.
But when at last she saw its face with its fearful, lifeless eyes, all she truly wanted was to stand and stare and weep.