12

JACK

While he’d been away, the dark, faded greens of late summer had given way to autumn’s red and gold. Nature’s attempt to lull everyone into a false sense of security before the sheeting drizzle and endless gray of the Cornish winter swept in.

In Spain, he’d left behind the heat of the sun and a parched landscape scented with pine and rosemary. Scents that had soothed his soul and allowed the faintest hint of hope to take root, hope that he’d been determined to bring home with him. Hope that had been lacking in his life. Because life had to go on. Now that he was back, however, he could already feel it slipping.

Not that he didn’t like living here. It was just that life had served up several types of shit, the kind that dragged you down and held you there. Hence the fortnight in Spain, to break away, change the record. Ordinarily, Jack would spend his time off walking the coast path with Beamer, his black Labrador. He was never short of things to do when he wasn’t working. There was the house, which always needed something or other done to it. The pile of logs that needed sawing and splitting, then storing on the porch until he needed another load for the wood-burning stove that he kept burning all winter. The yard—an acre and a half, mostly woodland—which at this time of year dumped leaves like the clouds dumped rain in winter.

In an ideal world, he’d be happy not to work. Only the truth was, it had been a long time since Jack had been happy. And whether the idle time was good for him was another matter. There were too many ghosts in his life. His son, Josh, who had died after a car accident. Since then, his wife’s affair, their more recent separation. No doubt divorce, given time. She’d given no indication she’d had second thoughts. It was something else to look forward to. Jack wasn’t a cynic, but sometimes it felt as though life pushed you to see what you were capable of, only all of this felt a step too far.

After closing the back door, he walked toward his battered Land Rover, breathing in the damp air and feeling a pang of loss for Spain, allowing it to linger for a self-indulgent moment as he let the dog jump in, before he slid inside and started the engine. He needed to get his shit together and focus. He didn’t want to be the sad git, always surrounded by some kind of tragedy. While he was away, his wife had picked up the rest of her things. It was the start of a new chapter, he kept telling himself. Better to be alone than with someone who didn’t want him. Time to move on.

Autumn wasn’t so bad. In the fading light, the leaves were still vibrant, and even the stubble fields had stayed a pale gold. Only until the rain started, he mused, when it took mere minutes before everything got muddied to gray.

He’d left it rather late for a walk, but after two weeks away, he wanted a blast of sea air on his skin and the sound of waves crashing in his ears. In Spain, the sea had been a millpond, except for one night, when there’d been a storm. As he’d listened to the waves pounding on the shore, he’d felt a flicker of nostalgia for Cornwall. And it didn’t matter now that it was getting dark—he could find his way around here with his eyes closed. He had walked this coast most of his life, knew every twist of the path, where it narrowed and the edge crumbled toward the sea.

Beamer was pleased to be back here, too. Jack watched him, a shadow lost among other, darker shadows, darting ahead of him. They’d made it just in time, minutes before sunset. Around the sinking sun, orange streaked the sky. He stood for a moment, taking it in. His last night’s solace before he went back to work. Probably a good thing, he mused. Too much time alone made him introspective.

He was going to be busy, he already knew that. After he got back from the airport, he’d briefly checked his e-mails. While he was away, a woman had been attacked and her child had gone missing. He’d been shocked. It was the kind of crime that, round here, happened rarely. By and large, Cornwall was peaceful. Most of the trouble happened at the height of the tourist season. Petty crime and drunken brawls—so many incidents could be related back to alcohol, though most towns had clamped down, and it was less of a problem than it used to be. Things still happened, though.

The e-mail he’d read had set all kinds of alarm bells ringing in his brain, before he’d turned off his laptop and silenced them. Work could wait until tomorrow.

Here, on the coast path, listening to the wind picking up and the waves, he managed to salvage the flicker of hope he’d found in Spain. You had to believe things could get better. Otherwise, there was no point in going on.

His thoughts were interrupted by a scream. An animal? His heart quickened. It was human, he was sure. Whistling to Beamer, he turned in the direction it had come from, broke into a jog, sure-footed, even in the fading light.

After hearing another scream, he started to run. What was going on? It was a raw, piercing sound that came from close by. Then ahead of him through the dusk, silhouetted against the glimmer of the sea, he made out the figure of a woman. At least, he thought it was a woman. There was something about the shape of her, or maybe her hair blowing in the wind, something about the way she was standing, her arms thrust toward the sky. She was wearing a silver coat. The color caught briefly in the light from the dying sun.

Was she the one who had screamed? Or maybe she was one of the sun-worshipping hippie types they got from time to time, and the scream had come from someone else. She must have heard it, though—and she was dangerously close to the cliff edge. He was about to call out to her, but before he could speak, she’d turned and run off into the darkness.