50

Rita, October 1972

A half-chewed Farley’s Rusk pulps in Sylvie’s clutched fist as she sleeps behind the stripy windbreak. Rita removes it, flicks away the sand bugs, and covers her little girl carefully with a pink blanket, one she hand-knit on summer evenings. Today is one of those glorious late-autumn days, unseasonably warm. But the breeze is cool, hinting at the winter months, the stews, roaring fires, and hunkering down to come.

Rita picks her shoreline finds out of a red bucket, her hands working quickly, deftly, and spreads them in an arc, like a deck of cards. “There,” she says, glancing up at Robbie with a smile, and feeling that immediate catch, weakening, whatever it is, that still happens low in her belly every time she locks gazes with her husband.

Robbie is lying on his side, resting his head on his hand, his expression receptive and quiet. His hair has grown longer since their wedding in May—Hackney register office, a short white Miss Selfridge dress, a model friend as a witness, drinks in the pub afterward, bliss—and is sun-bleached from his daily sea swims, as far out as the fishing boats, cove to cove, like a native. There’s a wallet-shaped faded square on the front pocket of his jeans, their house keys bulging in the other. Behind him, the sun is gold as Devon butter, and starting to sink.

“If I had some string, I’d tie labels to each item, like you did my leaves,” she adds teasingly, feeling a beat of pleasure just looking at him. “For reference. Lest you forget.”

His smile spreads slowly. He has a self-taught, encyclopedic brain and never forgets anything. Slightly annoyingly, he can already identify all the different seaweed that washes up on their little local beach—gutweed, red rag, egg wrack, oyster thief, dead man’s rope . . . He says he’s well on the way to becoming an arenophile. (“A what?” “A sand lover.”) She hopes so. His cottage has sold now, and the forest is a place to which they daren’t return.

They moved to Devon from London last month. Although a bit of her misses the city—Robbie does not—she’s glad to be out of their poky rental apartment, and Sylvie can breathe fresh air, not the fumes from the number 30 bus.

Every morning she wakes to the gulls’ cries and a novel set of feelings: she’s on holiday; she’s come home. Not just the abstract idea of home, like she had before, that confused mash of yearning and other people’s houses. But home as a simple place of belonging.

They have big plans. Self-sufficiency. Veg. Fruit. Chickens. And a carpentry studio, which he’s started to build in their generous garden, the woodworking equipment under a tarpaulin for now. The house itself is tiny and tongue-and-grooved, like a ship’s cabin—she can stretch out her arms in Sylvie’s nursery and touch the opposing wonky walls—but it’s all they can afford. And it’s about as far from the forest as they could get without falling into the ocean.

Home is wherever they are together, Robbie says. His adaptability amazes Rita. And yet she’s aware of the sacrifice he’s made. Sometimes she’ll find him on the beach, a silvered lump of driftwood in his hands, his fingertips running over it, as if communing, absorbing its long journey from seedling to sea.

“Urchin.” She points to each shell in turn. “Artemis. Razor clam. You don’t want to step on that. Common whelk. Periwinkle. You can eat those. Needs a good squirt of lemon, though.” He nods, listening carefully. But in typical Robbie fashion, he doesn’t say anything, lets her jabber on. “Oh, and this is actually a seabird bill. Probably an oystercatcher. See the shape? To hammer open mollusks . . . Don’t you dare ask me for the Latin name!”

He laughs and reaches toward her, holding her face in his hands, rough palms light on her cheeks. They often end up like this, just staring at each other, grinning stupidly. But today is different. Today there is something else hovering. Unresolved. She can see it in his eyes, a cloud, a question mark.

Sylvie, ever attuned to moments of parental intimacy, wakes and strains to pull herself up and totter off. A feisty and inquisitive infant, she’s drawn to the sea, always making a break for it. They have to watch her like hawks.

“Come here, you.” Robbie brushes the sand from Sylvie’s pudgy feet, then lies back, wheeling her above his head so she giggles, her delight growing frenzied.

Rita watches them, smiling. But something nags. She tries to identify the feeling, the vague sense of misplacement. But it slips away. She just knows it’s made worse by perfect family moments like this. The wispy beach grass waving in the wind. The dark jewel of the sea. The sheer excess of loveliness.

Robbie shoots her a sidelong glance. Sylvie tugs his nose, wanting his attention, Daddy’s girl. “You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you? What we talked about last night.”

Rita nods and lowers her eyes.

Robbie lies down, Sylvie on his chest. She paddles her feet and snatches fistfuls of sand, throws it. “It’s a risk, Rita. Even attempting to . . . I mean, Walter . . .” He stops. His face darkens. Walter’s name is never spoken without a hard swallow afterward.

Rita doesn’t want to push their luck, either. They’ve got so much. She didn’t think it was possible to feel this happy. “Yes, mad idea.”

Sylvie lurches forward and grabs the periwinkle shell, turning it in her fingers. When she tries to taste it, Rita takes it from her mouth and shakes her head. But she doesn’t remove it. This is Sylvie’s world, hers to explore. Robbie is adamant about that. He even sits Sylvie on an alarmingly high apple-tree branch in the garden, holding her carefully, but letting her enjoy the sensation, her legs kicking free. Rita’s glad the lady at the adoption agency never got to see that.

“Rita.” Robbie nudges her bare foot with his own. “We can’t rescue everyone.”

“I know, I know.” She hinges down beside him, stretching out her long brown legs, and stares up. The sky is huge, the clouds feathered, like the flesh of a freshly cooked fish. This is enough, she tells herself. Just this.

Then Robbie says quietly, “But we could try.”