He’d been driving all day and his eyes were dry, his shoulders cracking like pipes. Three hours, maybe four, that’s how long he’d thought it would take, but he’d been driving for over eight. The roads had narrowed the closer he got, and now they were single track, with clumps of grass down the middle and flanked by bulky hedges. Beyond them were ridged fields, pylons, a few barns with collapsed roofs, the wet wind dousing everything.
The road turned stony. Potholes made the car jump. The road narrowed again and Bryce stopped, tried to see where he was, then kept going. He was sure he’d missed it. Nothing around here looked exactly as he remembered – that farmhouse wasn’t there before, was it? And that dark mass of trees? He stopped again and got out. Daffodils lit the bank like torches. He climbed up and looked over, could just glimpse the sea at the bottom of the fields. He stood there for a long time. There was the same old wind above and the same old waves below, knuckling together like they were shaping loaves of bread.
He drove forward again, then stopped suddenly at a gate, which was open and hanging off its hinges. He turned in and parked on the long grass. There were the campsite’s corrugated huts – the kitchen, the laundry, the shower block. There was the office – a caravan at the bottom of the slope – and the swing; but it was all rusted out, overgrown, and one of the swing’s chains had snapped. There was no one around. It was early spring and there should have been people staying by now; the fields scattered with tents and campfires, the roar of gas from stoves.
He took his bag out and crossed over to the bungalow to find Kensa. Skylarks rose up from the grass, their songs tangling together. He could smell clover, gorse, the mucky, shitty smell from the next field over. A tractor was ploughing in the distance, gulls following behind like a reel of cotton unspooling.
He was almost at the house when he looked up and saw a woman standing in the window, talking on a phone. He was about to wave then stopped, almost stumbling in the furrowed mud. It wasn’t his sister. He turned and scanned the fields, then turned back to the house. The woman was staring at him and pointing at something over his shoulder. It took him a moment to realise that she meant the caravan. He nodded, pulled his bag higher onto his shoulder, and made his way down the slope.
There was a low sound coming from somewhere – almost too low to notice. The further down the field he went, the louder it got. It was a sort of booming. He stopped and looked around, but couldn’t see anything. It wasn’t the waves; he could hear those breaking slowly against the rocks. This was deeper, more like an echo, or a murmur behind a wall. He kept going through the long grass. After a while he told himself he couldn’t hear it any more.
The caravan’s door was shut and there were curtains across the windows. He went up the step and knocked. He waited a moment then knocked again, and when there was no answer he pushed gently on the door. Inside, the room was cramped and stale. He was expecting the desk and the swivel chair, but there was also a mattress on the floor with a blanket on it he recognised. There was a gas heater, and a pan on the hob. Kensa must have rigged the caravan up to the mains because the fridge under the sink was humming and there was a dim lamp in the corner.
He put his bag down and went over to the desk. All the office stuff was there – the money box, the check-in forms, the accounts book. He opened the accounts and looked at the figures. They were low. No one had stayed over the winter; hardly anyone the summer before. There were no bookings for the months coming up either.
There was a noise outside and suddenly Kensa was in the doorway. They stared at each other for a moment, then she came in, sat on the mattress and started pulling off her boots. ‘You’re back then,’ she said.
Bryce closed the book. ‘You sold the house,’ he said. He moved away from the desk and knocked into a box of clothes. He pulled out the chair and sat in it, rubbing his fingers into the corners of his eyes. When their parents died, Kensa had taken over the place. Bryce had already gone. He remembered the day she’d moved back into the bungalow – it was the last time he’d been here.
‘I saved your share,’ Kensa said. ‘Of the money.’ She got up, opened one of the cupboards, closed it, then opened it again. She brought out a few tins, emptied one into the pan and lit the flame. ‘Are you hungry?’ She seemed smaller somehow; there was a stoop to the top of her back. She kept running her hand through her hair, which she’d cut short. There were the same three hoops in each ear. She was past forty; he could hardly believe it, Christ, he was almost forty himself. He felt too big for the space – he was suddenly aware of how bulky he’d let his waist get, the extra weight around his hips. There was still the same wiriness about Kensa, or maybe rigidity, like she was holding herself away from something.
‘I just need a few days,’ he said, gesturing to his bag. ‘Maybe a week.’ There was nowhere else he could go. A few things hadn’t worked out, a few things needed waiting out, and then they’d be OK again, like a piece of glass battered into smoothness by time and the sea.
Kensa stirred the pan. ‘Are beans alright?’ she asked.
She’d never liked beans, and neither had Bryce. It was the way the skins peeled off and crumbled. As kids they’d gone round to an aunt’s for dinner and fed them to the dog under the table.
He leaned back in the chair and it cracked softly. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Sounds good.’
Summers on the campsite were long and empty. There was nothing nearby – no shop, no park, no other houses. Their parents were too busy to take them anywhere so Bryce and Kensa would hang around by the kitchen block, light matches from the spare box, bet which tent would collapse first, or who would trip over a guy rope. They went through the left-behind clothes in the laundry and put on whatever they found. Sometimes Kensa wore rolled-up overalls; sometimes a velvet dress which slipped off her shoulders. Bryce wore a Hawaiian shirt that smelled of aftershave.
At first, they made friends with other kids who came to stay – there was that girl with the head-brace, and that boy who could burp the alphabet – but after a while Kensa decided they wouldn’t do it any more. They didn’t need anyone else. The other kids always left. They never turned round to wave from the backseats of their cars; they probably forgot about them as soon as they went past the gate. All that would be left were the yellow squares of grass where their tents had been, and a few charred sticks from their fires.
Instead, Kensa stole bright soaps from the showers and chocolate out of the communal fridge. At night, they would crouch by the tents, listening. Sometimes there would be arguing, sometimes singing. Sometimes there would be strange noises in there that Bryce didn’t recognise, and Kensa would put her hands over his ears.
She could hold her breath until her lips went grey, and throw the peeling knife into the door so hard that it quivered. She would push back her stringy fringe and stare out at things Bryce couldn’t see. Once, she found a chunk of ice on the grass outside the front door. It was about the size of a grapefruit and it was just there suddenly, one day, in the heat. They had no idea where it had come from. She picked it up and kept it in the freezer, behind the bread and the bag of peas. Sometimes they would take it out and look for a long time at the blue-tinged crystals. Bryce followed her everywhere.
They got sunburn, grass rash, nettle stings, bites from mosquitoes and horseflies. Kensa would find dock leaves and spit on Bryce’s bites. She picked her own into scars. When a group of boys crushed a patch of strawberries he’d been growing, she went out in the night and undid their guy ropes, so that their tent collapsed on them in the rain.
Then, one summer, Nate came. It was a dark, muggy summer, the kind that always seems to be brewing storms, but no storm ever hits. Flies banged into the windows and lay twitching against the glass. Mushrooms bloomed and disappeared overnight.
Bryce was nine and Kensa was twelve. Nate arrived late one afternoon and set up a small tent in the corner of the field, far away from everyone. He was seventeen. No one knew where he’d come from. He paid by the week and said he didn’t know how long he’d be staying. At night, a small torch would shine out from his tent, and stay on until morning.
Kensa cleared up the food and put the plates in the sink. She glanced at Bryce, then around the cramped room. ‘I guess I should give you the mattress,’ she said.
Bryce’s eyes were closing and he forced them open. He zipped his jacket up to his chin – he could almost see his breath in front of him. ‘Have you still got that tent?’ he said. ‘The spare one?’ They always used to keep a spare in case any of the visitors’ tents broke.
‘Maybe,’ Kensa said. ‘I’ll go and look.’ She put her boots back on and went out into the dark. The wind came in the door and blew the papers across the desk.
Bryce’s eyes closed again. He must have slept for a moment because he suddenly jerked awake. He didn’t know where he was, and he stood up, took a step forward, felt the small walls pressing in. There was a low noise, deep and almost regular, as if there was too much pressure in his ears. He crossed the room and opened the door, almost walking into Kensa.
‘Can you hear that?’ Bryce said.
‘What?’
‘That.’ He went down the step and onto the grass.
‘The wind’s picking up,’ Kensa said. She was holding a tent, a sleeping bag and a torch. ‘We should put this up.’
Bryce listened again. The wind was thudding against the caravan, making the loose glass in the window clunk. He’d forgotten the way the gales careened over the cliffs like that: head first, with nothing in their way. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said. He went inside and got his bag, then took all the camping stuff from Kensa. ‘See you in the morning, OK?’
A bat brushed past his face, then swung low over the grass. Kensa went inside. He could see her through a gap in the curtain – she sat down on the mattress, got up again, took out a bottle of something and poured it into a mug.
Bryce walked down the field until he found a flat pitch to put up the tent. He unpacked it from the bag and shone the torch on the poles and the rusty pegs. The wind dragged the material out of his hands. It was soft and mouldy and there were dead flies studded in the netting.
He put up the buckling poles, spread the canvas over them, then realised it was inside out. He took the canvas off, turned it over, fastened it back down, then hammered in the pegs, hammering his finger by mistake and swearing into the wind. The pegs bent against the stony ground but finally went in.
Kensa’s light was still on when he zipped up the door.
He shifted on the ground, turned onto his side, then his back. He pulled the sleeping bag higher, then dropped it back down. He didn’t want to know what the smell was in there.
An hour passed, and then another. It started to rain and a few drops splashed onto his legs. He moved over to the other side of the tent. He needed a mat, maybe some cushions. There was a stone jutting into his hip, and another one in his shoulder. He turned over again.
The sky lightened slowly and a chill came up from the ground. Finally he gave up, pulled on a jumper and jeans, found his towel at the bottom of his bag, and went over the wet grass to the shower block. It had been a long time since he’d walked outside with bare feet – he’d forgotten the sponginess of it, the bristle of dandelion leaves, the way daisies snapped off between his toes.
He took a piss then turned on the shower. There were cracks everywhere, clumps of mud and dried grass, brittle spiders that must have died years ago. Red gunk dribbled between the tiles and there were yellow flakes of old soap on the floor.
Whenever he’d imagined Kensa, it hadn’t been like this. He’d thought of her walking between bright tents, letting down guy ropes in the night if someone had been a jerk. He’d thought it would all be the same, suspended somehow, like a point on a map, even when Kensa’s face became blurred, even when the campsite faded like paint running over wet paper. They hadn’t spoken for a long time. He’d meant to phone, to get in touch, but he’d always been moving from place to place, from job to job, always trying to find the next thing, waiting for when he could say, finally, here I am.
The water ran lukewarm, almost cold. He came out shivering.
That summer they would get up early, slipping out before their parents made them do any chores. What they hated was cleaning out the showers, emptying bins, looking for mouldy bread or bottles of green milk in the kitchen. So they disappeared, taking handfuls of dry cereal with them. They weren’t meant to go far – beyond the campsite there were cliffs, rips, caves, long drops to gravelly beaches – so they stayed around the lanes and the fields, walking back and forth along the dark hedges. The fields had barley in them, which moved in the wind like muscles under a horse’s back. Kensa would get Bryce to hide in the stalks and then she would try to find him. She’d start counting and Bryce would crawl away through the damp soil, his heart pummelling in his throat, trying not to snap any of the stalks and give himself away. Kensa always found him.
One morning he’d been hiding for a long time. He’d found a gap big enough to sit in, and he was waiting, the skin on his hands tingling. Minutes passed, then maybe half an hour. An ant crawled up his leg. It was hot down there and the clouds were getting thick and murky.
‘Kensa?’ he said quietly. Another ant went up his leg. Voices drifted over the field towards him. He stood up, but he couldn’t see anything except the stalks rippling.
He walked towards the voices. One of them sounded like Kensa’s but he couldn’t tell who the other person was. He crossed the field and came out at the edge, his cheeks dusty, seeds knotted in his hair. It was Kensa and that boy, Nate, from the campsite. They were standing by the gate, talking. It took them a moment to see Bryce.
‘Hello there,’ Nate said. ‘Who are you?’
‘That’s just Bryce,’ Kensa said. ‘My brother.’
Bryce brushed another ant off his leg. ‘You were meant to find me,’ he said.
Kensa picked at a barley stalk. ‘This is Nate,’ she said. ‘Remember?’
‘You were supposed to find me,’ Bryce told her.
Kensa bent the stalk around her arm and left it there, like a bracelet. ‘You were saying about the glow-worms,’ she said to Nate.
Nate pushed at his glasses and sniffed. He sounded blocked up. ‘I thought I’d go and look for them. There’s meant to be a lot round here.’ He was short and his face was pale and creased, like a pillow in the morning. He had a shaved head and bare feet.
‘Glow-worms?’ Bryce said.
‘You can come if you want,’ Nate said. He spoke quietly, almost with a lisp, which made him sound even more out of breath.
‘I’ll come,’ Kensa said. She wound another stalk round her wrist.
‘I was hiding for ages,’ Bryce said. The clouds got even darker and a few drops of rain fell onto the dusty ground. He stood there, picking the seeds out of his hair, then he turned and went back into the field, found his hiding place and crouched down, muttering to himself and digging in the soil with his fingers. He didn’t come out when Kensa called him.
That evening, Kensa didn’t eat all her dinner. She kept some back and put it on another plate in secret. When she went out of the back door, Bryce followed. She crossed over the main site and went down to Nate’s tent, then sat outside with him while he ate.
Bryce was alone on the campsite. He didn’t know where Kensa had gone. It was late afternoon and just starting to get dark. He’d spent most of the day reinforcing his tent, patching the leaks with tape and trying to find a mat to lie on. Now he got a bucket of water, disinfectant, a cloth, crusty rubber gloves, and started cleaning the shower block. He turned on all the strip lights, which buzzed and clanked, then gritted his teeth while he did the plugholes and the sink and between the tiles. He washed away the spiders and the strung-up midges, then took the casing off the lights and tipped out the husks of wasps. He poured bleach everywhere and came out coughing, his eyes red around the rims.
He did the same with the laundry room and the kitchen. He emptied the bins, threw away old socks, swept up onion skins and peeled desiccated teabags from the floor. He mopped and threw down more bleach. Then he washed his hands a thousand times and went down to his tent.
Kensa was back. He knocked at the caravan and went in. She was sitting at the desk with a book in front of her, squinting in the dim light.
‘I cleaned the blocks,’ Bryce said. The bottle of whisky was out on the sink and he poured some into a mug for himself, topped up Kensa’s, then sat down on the edge of the mattress. ‘It doesn’t look like many people have been using them.’
Kensa closed the book slowly. Bryce thought he recognised the cover from the pile of left-behind books in the kitchen. It was some kind of musty out-of-date travel guide, the edges yellow and curled. The lamp cast shadows below her eyes.
‘When did the last person stay?’ he said.
The light flickered and Kensa frowned and tapped the bulb. ‘I don’t remember.’
Bryce shifted on the mattress. He took a long drink, and then another.
‘Other sites have opened up,’ she said. ‘Around.’
‘Maybe you should …’
The bulb flickered again. ‘Don’t do this now,’ Kensa said.
Bryce shifted again on the mattress. The blanket was rucked up under him. He picked it up. It was tiny and fraying, and there was a wobbly K written on the label. He looked around at the bare walls, the boxes of clothes, the bottle of drink. This was what he’d just come from – except that, for him, it was because he was always just on the cusp of leaving.
‘Kensa,’ he said.
The lamp pinged and snapped off.
‘Shit,’ Kensa said. The fridge stopped humming. The lights at the edge of the campsite went black and they were plunged into the dark.
Bryce got up and stepped forward, stumbling over Kensa’s foot.
‘Stay still,’ Kensa said. ‘I need to find the torch.’
‘I’ll find it.’
‘Just stay still.’
There was the sound of cupboards and drawers opening, and a moment later the torch was on, the door had opened and she was zipping up her coat.
Bryce followed her down the step and onto the grass. The darkness was almost solid – it seemed to press outwards, filling everything like gas expanding to fill a space.
Kensa’s voice came from behind him. ‘It’s the trip switch. I need to re-jig the wires,’ she said. ‘It always bloody does this.’ She started walking over to the kitchen block.
He watched her go. He’d thought, for a moment, that when he’d stumbled in the caravan she was about to say, have a nice trip.
In the distance, the bungalow was still lit up. There was a family in there, sitting round a table, steam rising slowly from their plates.
Kensa spent more and more time with Nate. Instead of waiting for Bryce in the morning, she would leave before he was up, disappearing on long walks out to the cliffs and down to the rocks and the beaches.
When Bryce tried to follow, he always got caught by his parents. When they asked where Kensa was he pursed his lips and said he didn’t know. He had to do the chores alone: mopping the floors, smearing the mud around the tiles, wiping the stained mirrors. The coins they gave him afterwards rattled like stones in his pocket.
A family came and set up a big tent with an awning that flapped like a broken wing.
There was a boy who looked about the same age as Bryce, so Bryce went over there and stood by the door until the boy finally came out and started kicking a ball around by himself.
‘Kick it to me,’ Bryce said.
‘Why?’
‘Kick it to me.’
The boy kept the ball under his foot so Bryce kicked it away, then picked it up and ran off with it. The boy followed him.
‘Let’s go and listen at that tent,’ Bryce said.
The boy stared at him.
‘Let’s crouch down behind it and listen.’
‘Why?’
Bryce picked a flake of rubber off the ball. It was muddy and wet. ‘I don’t know.’
The other boy went back into his tent. He didn’t come back for the ball.
Bryce went down to the bottom of the campsite and looked out. He could see Kensa and Nate far below, on the rocks. They were just walking. They never did anything except walk and talk quietly about things, their heads bent together. Bryce could never catch what they were saying. He would listen, but their voices would blur and hum, and get tugged away by the wind.
Kensa took Nate bits of food from the fridge and loose change she found down the back of the sofa. She’d told him how to work the washing machine for free. She’d shown him the chunk of ice and Nate had held it up, looked at it for a long time, then said it was probably the remains of something someone had flushed out of a toilet on an aeroplane. After that Kensa didn’t take it out any more.
Bryce watched them until they disappeared round the headland, then he started walking back. He passed Nate’s tent, and slowed down. A thin sheet of rain was billowing in across the fields. The edges of the clouds were orange, almost smouldering. He looked around, then unzipped the tent and went in.
There was hardly anything in there: a mat, a sleeping bag, a damp towel, a jumper rolled up for a pillow. There was a rucksack by the door and Bryce took everything out and laid it on the ground. There was a book, a torch, a few spare clothes, a pair of fraying socks that had been repaired with neat stitches. Half a bar of chocolate. Allergy tablets. An old bus ticket.
He looked it all over carefully, then put every item back exactly as he’d found it, except he ripped a small corner of the book before closing it.
Bryce was taking his rubbish up to the bins when the woman from the bungalow came out. She was wearing a long, baggy jumper that went past her knees, and rubber gloves which dripped water on the path. A small boy was watching from the window, his hands pushed up against the glass.
‘Are you Bryce?’ she asked.
Bryce opened the bin and threw his bag in. He nodded.
‘We bought the house, a couple of years back?’
‘I saw that,’ Bryce told her.
The woman glanced over to check on the boy. ‘Kensa’s talked about you.’
As soon as she’d turned away again, the boy pressed his face against the window, squashing his cheeks and lips into fat white shapes.
‘She has?’
The woman pulled at a loose thread on her jumper, but couldn’t hold on to it with the rubber gloves. ‘We sometimes worry about her, living out in that caravan – we …’ She trailed off and pulled again at the thread. ‘What I wanted to ask you was, would you both like to come over for dinner later?’
‘Dinner?’ Bryce said.
‘If you’re free.’
‘Later?’ He looked behind him, as if that would determine the answer. He looked at the house – the kitchen, the hallway. That kid was probably sleeping in his old room. He rubbed a finger over his eye. ‘We’re actually busy tonight,’ he said. ‘Sorry about that.’
He waited for her to suggest another night, but she didn’t. She just shrugged and smiled and said that it was OK.
He went back and told Kensa.
‘Bollocks,’ she said. ‘Now we have to go somewhere.’
‘Where can we go?’
‘There isn’t anywhere.’
‘We have to go somewhere.’ He glanced outside, saw the grass, the swing, his tent buckling in the wind. ‘We’ll drive to the pub.’
‘It closed.’
‘Bollocks.’
Kensa took two mugs out of the cupboard and sat down. ‘We’ll have to stay in here with all the lights off.’
‘We’re not doing that.’
‘Why?’
Bryce went out of the caravan, scanned the fields, his car, then went up to the blocks. He paced around the kitchen. There was a pile of old driftwood in the corner, and a box of matches. He carried it all back down to the caravan, then found some tins of food, bread, a few cans of beer. ‘Come on,’ he said.
They crossed the fields and took the path that sloped down the cliff. There was a ledge, and then another, lower ledge – a wide outcrop ringed with thrift, which trembled in the wind. The sea was still far below them, the tops of the waves cutting across like torn edges of paper. A flock of gulls glided out towards the deeper water.
Bryce piled the wood up, rolled some newspaper and lit it. The wind blew the flame straight out. He tried again, shielding it with his back.
‘Let me try,’ Kensa said. She crouched down and blew into the middle of the wood. A flame sputtered and spread and a line of smoke twisted out.
Bryce rested the tins on the fire and soon they were scalding. They waited for them to cool, then pulled up the lids and ate, scooping out meatballs and folding them into bread, drinking the dregs of sauce at the bottom. The driftwood spat out salt into the dark.
Kensa sat forwards with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her head was slightly to one side, as if she was listening for something. She’d gone out again all that morning; he didn’t know where she went, what she did all day. Bryce started to speak, stopped, shifted on the stones. Sparks spat and went out.
‘When do you think we can go back up?’ he said.
Kensa watched the fire. She opened the beers and passed one over to him. ‘Not yet,’ she said. She settled back against a rock.
Bryce threw another bit of wood on the fire. Smoke billowed like a sheet. It crossed his mind that Kensa had probably sat in the caravan with all the lights off before, to avoid other invitations.
‘Remember when you almost stabbed yourself with that knife?’ Kensa said.
Bryce looked up. ‘I thought it was that fake one.’
‘It wasn’t the fake one,’ Kensa said.
‘Where the blade slid into the handle.’
‘It wasn’t the fake one.’
‘I’d started pushing it into my stomach.’
‘I had to knock it out of your hand.’
They drank their beers and watched the fire. Minutes passed, or maybe hours. Bryce could still feel the sharp point of the knife – there was a scar there somewhere, below his belly button, hidden now by a line of wiry hair.
‘Do you remember Nate?’ he asked suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Nate, that guy who stayed here on his own, do you remember him?’
Kensa put her can down slowly. The fire was almost out. She got up and stood on a rock, looking over towards the campsite. ‘It’s probably safe to go back up now.’ She used her boot to scrape ash over the last few embers.
Bryce’s bedroom was small and tidy. It had a desk and a globe and his shoes were lined up by the door. There was a stain on the carpet in the corner, which he’d covered with a cushion, from when he and Kensa had mixed together baking powder and vinegar to make a bomb, but it had gone off too quickly. He could still smell the vinegar on hot mornings.
He was just getting up – the long, empty day stretching ahead of him – when Kensa flung the door open, knocking over the globe. She was breathing hard, and her shoes and legs were flecked with wet grass.
‘He’s gone,’ she said.
Bryce folded the top of his duvet down carefully.
‘Did you hear what I said? Nate’s gone.’
‘What do you mean gone?’
‘I went out there and he’s gone.’
Bryce smoothed the duvet, then straightened and smoothed his pillow.
‘His tent’s there,’ Kensa said. ‘But none of his stuff. His bag’s gone.’ She was pacing the room now. The tops of her cheeks had gone very pale, almost white. ‘I told Mum and Dad but they’re not worried at all. They said he’d paid up yesterday and must have moved on. I said what about his tent, he wouldn’t leave his tent, and they said it was a crummy old tent and people leave crummy tents all the time. They were annoyed because now they have to take it down and get rid of it themselves.’ She paced over to the window and looked out. ‘Say something.’
‘He just left,’ Bryce told her.
‘But he didn’t say he was going,’ Kensa said. ‘He wasn’t meant to go.’
Bryce went over to the window and stood next to her. He scratched at the paint on the frame. ‘Let’s go and hide in the field,’ he said. The day suddenly seemed not so long, not so empty. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Kensa stayed by the window.
It was late morning and Bryce came down from the kitchen eating a handful of dry cereal and drinking from a mug of thick black coffee. He knocked on the caravan and waited for Kensa. He was going out to buy food and wanted to know if she needed anything.
He knocked again, then went in. Kensa had already gone. There was a bowl and mug in the sink and a pan on the hob, which was still warm when he touched it. He went outside and stood on the step, thought he just caught a glimpse of her walking across the field. He closed the door, turned, and followed her.
He took the same paths they used to take, past the edges of the fields, where the barley was only just starting to come up. When he used to crawl through the stalks, the fields had seemed vast, stretching for miles in all directions, the rows like corridors that never ended, but now he crossed them in a moment, remembering the feeling of warm dust on his cheeks, the scratchy earth under his knees. He almost heard the sound of Kensa counting down, almost felt the old fearful tingle that meant she’d got to zero.
He climbed the gate and turned towards the headland. The wind had dropped overnight and the air was warmer, denser. The clouds had a dark tinge to them, like damp behind a wall. The path edged down and he scanned the rocks below. The tide was in and the sea was gnashing at them, the white water roiling like a cauldron.
He pushed on further. His knees ached and his T-shirt was sticking to his skin. He should have caught up with her by now, or at least be able to see her somewhere further along the path.
He skidded on a gritty slope and stopped. He looked around again. There was nothing, no one, just a buzzard keening overhead, a swathe of blue flowers like stitches in the grass, and then the low, dull booming, so low he almost couldn’t hear it, echoing across the rocks, the sea, the sky, as if it was coming from everywhere.
Sometimes, when their parents had to go away for the day, Bryce and Kensa would be in charge of the office, answering the phone and taking down bookings. There was a pile of forms and pens, and an old chipped phone. The caravan was cool and musty. Thin spiders hung in the corners. There was a new chair in there that swivelled and Kensa sat on it behind the desk. Bryce sat at the top of the step, in a wedge of sun that came in the doorway. Clouds moved across and the caravan went from dark to light, dark to light, until the skin on his arms turned to goosebumps.
Kensa spun slowly in the chair, staring out of the window. The phone rang but she didn’t move.
‘You have to answer that,’ Bryce said.
‘You do it.’
‘It’s your turn.’ They always took it in turns. Bryce hated answering the phone. He could never remember how much they charged each night, or if they had electric hook-ups. The voices on the other end sounded impatient and far away. They asked him how old he was and where his parents were. Sometimes Kensa answered all the calls. She would use a funny accent and make him almost retch with laughing.
Bryce watched the phone. Eventually it stopped ringing.
Kensa was still looking out of the window. ‘He wouldn’t have left his tent,’ she said. ‘If he didn’t have his tent, where would he sleep? He didn’t have anywhere else to go. He didn’t have anyone.’
‘We should have taken that booking,’ Bryce told her.
Kensa spun the chair back towards the desk. She opened the bookings folder and flipped back through the pages, running her finger down the columns. ‘Here’s where he checked in,’ she said. ‘And here …’ She looked closer. ‘See, he didn’t actually check out.’
‘He paid the full amount,’ Bryce said.
‘He didn’t officially check out.’
The phone rang again but Kensa didn’t look up.
Bryce’s throat felt dry. It wasn’t his turn. What was he meant to say? Hello, you’re through to bookings? How can I help you? Welcome to …
Kensa didn’t move. The phone kept ringing. Bryce picked it up and held it to his ear, and forgot to say anything at all.
A car drove into the campsite and a woman got out. She was about fifty, and she was wearing wellies and a leather jacket. There were a lot of silver bracelets on one of her wrists. She stood by the car for a moment, looking round at the site, then started walking down to the office.
Bryce had been washing the outside of the caravan, which was coated in a rind of mildew. The car’s radio was blaring as it came in and he recognised the song but couldn’t place it – the music sounded strange, too loud, like something half-familiar from a long time ago. He put the cloth down and dried his hands.
The woman nodded at him, and looked around again at the site, following the slope of grass up to the blocks, down to the sea.
‘It’s warming up,’ Bryce said. He went inside and found a check-in form and a pen. He knew that, eventually, people would start coming. ‘We’ve got a lot of flat pitches. How big’s your tent?’
‘I don’t have a tent,’ the woman said.
‘Are you bringing a caravan?’
‘I’m not staying.’ She put her hand up as if to shield her eyes against a glare, even though it wasn’t bright. Her bracelets jangled. ‘I’m actually here to …’
Just then Kensa came back from the laundry room carrying a bag of washing. When she saw the woman she frowned and shook her head.
‘You said you’d think about it again,’ the woman said.
Kensa went inside with the washing, slammed a cupboard, then came back out. She took the cloth out of Bryce’s bucket and started thumping it against the caravan. Soap ran down the metal and onto the grass. ‘I told you last time,’ she said.
‘I’m offering good money,’ the woman said. ‘Take it off your hands. Like I said, I’d do the place up, look after it.’
Kensa scrubbed hard at a thick patch of green. She plunged the cloth in the bucket and slopped it out again. The water turned grey.
‘You’re living in the office,’ the woman said.
‘I told you already.’
The woman glanced at Bryce, then took one more look over the site. Her hair kept blowing across her face. She pushed it back behind her ears, holding the rest in her hand. A few staticky strands lifted, as if a balloon had been rubbed over it. ‘I’ll come back in a few weeks,’ she said. ‘Give you some more time.’ She looked once more at Bryce, then started walking back to her car. A daisy she’d stepped on sprang back up slowly.
Bryce found another cloth and started cleaning around the back of the caravan. Grit worked its way in under his nails, and wet spiderwebs wrapped around his fingers. He stopped and picked them off – they felt tough but they were so thin they were almost impossible to see. He could hear Kensa banging and muttering to herself.
‘What offer was it?’ he said.
‘I’ve told her it’s a waste of time.’ Kensa started on the side window, thumping the cloth over the glass in wide arcs. Bits of dirt flew across onto Bryce’s feet.
‘You don’t have to stay,’ he said. ‘You could do something else. Go.’
‘What?’
‘You could go.’
The banging stopped for a moment.
‘Something would come up,’ Bryce said. ‘You could figure it out as you went.’
‘Like you?’ Kensa said. Her cloth thumped again at the window.
‘Stop following me.’ Kensa turned back and waved her arms at Bryce. She was wearing her rolled-up overalls, and there were scabs and freckles like paint spatters up her thin legs. ‘Go home.’
Bryce slowed down but didn’t stop. He kicked at the dusty path. ‘You’re going too far,’ he said.
Kensa crossed over to the cliffs and looked down. The sea was very dark and very grey. A mass of tangled wood and netting drifted past.
‘You’re going too far,’ Bryce said again. ‘We’re not meant to.’
‘We used to go down here all the time,’ Kensa told him.
‘No we didn’t,’ Bryce said. He realised too late that she meant her and Nate. She’d been circling their old routes for days now – skirting the fields, the path round the headland, the rocks below. She’d been staying out later and later, coming back just in time for dinner, with mud and bits of stone stuck to her hands. She would avoid their parents’ questions, bend her head down to her plate and eat. She wouldn’t look at Bryce.
Bryce stayed where he was. A seal dipped in the water and made a crying sound. It was hot and his T-shirt stuck to his skin. He waited until Kensa climbed back up. The next day she slipped out again before he was awake.
The spring wind blew in strange, sporadic gusts, like it was working itself up to something. The sky was leaden and low, but a shaft of sun broke through, sweeping across like a searchlight.
Bryce came out of the shower, an old towel wrapped around his waist, the smell of rusty pipes and chlorine in his wet hair. He’d managed to work the controls now so that the water came out mostly warm, apart from the last freezing jet at the end. He’d glanced in the mirror, realised his hair was long and tangled round his ears, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. He needed to shave too – his cheeks and jaw were thick with dark bristles. He thought of himself aged nine; his arms were so thin he could reach behind the tumble dryer in the laundry block and find any dropped money.
He was just in the doorway when the woman from the bungalow came past. When she saw him she jumped, but she tried to hide it.
‘Sorry,’ he said. He kept hold of the towel. The wind went up there like a bastard.
‘I wasn’t expecting … I was looking for Kensa. Is she back yet?’
‘Back?’
‘Last night. I saw the torch. She’s usually back by now.’
Bryce turned and looked at the caravan. The curtains were still shut.
‘It’s just something I need to ask her, about the house.’ The woman was looking everywhere except at him. She studied a crack in the wall, the way a dandelion was bursting out of it. ‘Tell her she doesn’t have to come in, it’s just those boxes she left in the loft – old clothes and household things, some of your stuff, I think – she said she’d clear them but she hasn’t yet and I sort of need the space.’ One of her hands was resting on her stomach, which curved out under her jumper. He hadn’t noticed it before.
He shut the shower-block door. ‘I’ll tell her,’ he said. He crossed the field. He’d thought Kensa was still asleep. Her curtains were across, her door was shut, how was he meant to know she wasn’t in there? What did the woman say? She’s usually back by now. He didn’t know anything.
He was almost at his tent when Kensa came up from the path. She looked tired. Her boots were wet and she was carrying the torch.
Bryce unzipped his door but stayed where he was. ‘Been out?’ he said.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’ She crouched down and started to tighten one of his ropes.
‘Where’d you go?’ he asked.
She pushed a peg further into the ground with her boot. ‘This thing looks like it’s going to blow away any second.’ She worked her boot so the peg was right in. ‘I could see it bending as I came up.’
‘Where’d you go?’ Bryce said.
Kensa went back round the tent, checking each peg, each rope. ‘You have to be careful pitching here,’ she said. ‘Because of the rocks. The pegs don’t catch. You think the tent’s secure but in a gale it’ll just skid right across the field.’ She banged at another peg with her heel until it disappeared into the ground.
Bryce nodded. When she was crouched down like that, he could see how sloped her shoulders were – it looked as if she was hunching against cold weather. The hoops of her earrings clinked softly against each other.
‘You must have gone pretty far,’ he said.
‘I guess.’
‘Out past the fields?’
‘I guess.’
‘Is that burnt-out barn still there?’
‘What barn?’
‘Further out that way, past the fields.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You would have seen it, if you went that way,’ Bryce said. An ant started to crawl up his leg and he leaned down and brushed it off. ‘We used to go there. The roof was collapsing. It would make these cracking noises, where the wood was about to give in.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘It was over that way.’
Kensa frowned. She pulled the canvas so that it was taut over the frame. ‘Are you sure?’
‘What do you mean am I sure?’ Bryce said. There was a dull ache behind his eyes. He needed coffee, or a drink, maybe both. ‘We used to go there.’ As soon as he said it, he remembered the barn was somewhere else; by the road near the first place he’d lived when he moved away. He’d climbed onto the roof one night and felt the soft wood almost give way under him.
‘Maybe,’ Kensa said. ‘I think I remember. Out past the fields?’
Bryce nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Over there.’
Kensa finished with his tent and Bryce went inside to get dressed. He lay on his sleeping bag and put his head on the rolled-up jumper he was using as a pillow. The tent was so thin he could almost see through it. He took everything out of his bag and looked over it: jeans, socks, spare shirts, a phone with no battery, no signal. His wallet. A receipt for petrol. He put it all back carefully.
Bryce’s bedroom door opened and a crack of light from the hallway grew and spread over the floor, and across his bed. There were footsteps, the stifled sound of breathing, and then Kensa was standing over him.
‘I know where he went,’ she said.
Bryce opened one eye. His clock read midnight. It was dark and quiet. He closed his eye and tried to tell Kensa to go away, but his mouth wouldn’t work properly. He pulled the covers over his head.
‘Come on,’ Kensa whispered. She opened Bryce’s wardrobe, pulled out some clothes for him and threw them onto the bed.
‘Whatnma?’ Bryce said.
‘We have to go.’
Bryce sat up and rubbed over his eyes. His chin dropped onto his chest and he tried to lift it back up, but couldn’t do it.
‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before,’ Kensa was saying. ‘He kept talking about going down there. He wanted to go right to the back; he thought there might be bats, or maybe those glow-worms he’d read about. He couldn’t find them anywhere else and he really wanted to see them. All he wanted to do was see them.’
Bryce watched as she moved around the room, pushing at her fringe and adjusting the batteries in the torch.
‘Where?’ he said. ‘Where did he talk about?’
‘The sea caves. I already said that. We have to go there now.’
‘We’re not allowed.’ The caves were meant to be huge and pitch-black – you could walk in deeper and deeper and never come out. No one knew how far they stretched back.
‘We have to go,’ Kensa said.
Bryce sat back on the bed and folded his arms. ‘You told me to go home.’
‘When?’
‘You told me to go home.’ He lay back down and rolled himself in the duvet, leaving just enough of a gap so he could see what Kensa was doing.
She came over to the bed and stood right in front of him. She pressed again at the batteries in the torch and the light came on, the beam tilting upwards into her chin, making her eyes look huge and roving. ‘You have to come,’ she said.
Bryce didn’t move. The duvet muffled his voice. ‘Why?’
Kensa moved over to the window and looked out. ‘Because.’
Bryce rolled himself tighter into the covers.
‘I need you to come,’ she said. ‘OK?’ She wouldn’t turn around.
Bryce got up and put on his shoes.
Kensa opened the window and started climbing out. She balanced her feet on the windowsill then jumped over the spiky bushes in the flower bed.
Bryce followed behind. ‘He took his sleeping bag though,’ he whispered. ‘And his mat. Why would he have taken those down there?’ He tried to jump from the window, but slipped, and grabbed at the bottom of the palm tree, scratching his hands on the gristly bark.
‘Ssshh,’ Kensa said. She turned the torch off and threaded her way through the campsite. It was full and they had to go between tents and ropes, past the sounds of people sleeping and awnings lifting in the wind. There were hushed, gurgling snores, as if a plug was loose in a bath. A little kid called something out in his sleep. A dog barked and they froze, waiting for someone to come out and see them, but no one came. They kept going. Once they were past the tents and into the first field, Kensa turned the torch back on.
There was a thin moon and the clouds crowded around it like moths. The barley bent in the wind. They walked in silence, Kensa first, Bryce behind, his legs heavy, his mouth dry, trying to stop himself turning back with every step.
They crossed the edge of the field, then climbed the gate. Something rustled on the ground, then darted away. Kensa turned round to look at Bryce. The buckles on her sandals rattled softly and the moon striped her face with silver. She looked different somehow, like his sister but also not like his sister at all. As they carried on along the path he reached out to touch her, to check, but just as he was about to do it, his hand fell away.
The path turned stony and started to drop down towards the sea. The gritty dust scraped with each step, waves cracked against the rocks like beaten rugs, and there was something else as well – a strange, low noise, that Bryce had never noticed before – a sort of deep booming that echoed through the cliff and up into his feet. He stumbled on the stony path, righted himself, then stumbled again.
‘Kensa?’ he said.
‘We’re almost there.’
‘What’s that noise?’
‘What?’
‘That.’
‘It’s the caves,’ Kensa said.
The sound got louder until it was all Bryce could hear. It beat in his ears like a sail. He skidded and stones rolled; he couldn’t find anywhere stable to put his feet so he stopped and stood very still. He couldn’t see Kensa. He couldn’t move forward. It was so dark. He couldn’t tell where the path was any more, where anything was.
‘Kensa?’ he whispered.
There was no answer.
The sea was booming in the caves, knocking against the walls. It sounded like his heart against his chest. It was dangerous to go in; it was too dark, the tide was too high. Water might be pushing in through the tunnels. He turned and looked back. There were a few tiny glints of light from the campsite. He took another step forward, then turned again. There was a scrabbling noise from the path below and the torch’s beam swept up across the rocks.
‘Wait for me,’ Bryce called. ‘Wait there. I’m coming down, OK?’ He waited until he was sure Kensa had stopped, then he turned and ran back to the campsite to get their parents.
The storm came in suddenly. Bryce had just slipped into an uneasy sleep – dreaming of stones rolling, the moon, Kensa’s muffled cry of surprise, her eyes narrowing, her face turning away. He woke with the side of his tent pushing against his mouth, water sluicing down his legs, the tent poles bowing like they were about to snap.
He sat up, got dressed, then tried to unzip his tent to go out, but the force of the wind and the rain drove him back in. He lay back down, felt the storm wrenching at the tent, trying to drag it across the grass. The poles strained. There was a tightness in the air, and then the lightning started, fast and bright, scattering across the sky like gunshots. The thunder came straight after, pealing like huge bells, and below it all was the relentless booming of the caves – he could almost feel them reverberating up the earth and into his back, the sea pummelling at the stone, hurling itself around the hollow tunnels, right under the campsite, under his tent, under everything.
He didn’t know how long the storm lasted. Gradually the wind eased, gradually the rain thinned to mizzle. Everything in the tent was drenched: his sleeping bag, his wallet, his clothes. He unzipped the door and went out. It was just getting light. The grass was flattened. There were leaves and twigs everywhere, bits of wood, a rusty hinge that had been bowled down from the gate. His tent hadn’t moved – the ropes were still tight, the pegs still deep in the ground – but the main pole had snapped and one of the walls had ripped, making the sides crumple inwards like old fruit. There was a fine layer of sand along the roof.
He looked over at the caravan. The curtains were shut, the door was open and swinging in the wind. Bryce looked at his tent, his stuff, his car. Maybe he should just go. Maybe it would be easier if he just went.
He packed his sodden bag, walked to the car, and put it in the boot. He opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat. He didn’t turn on the engine. He sat for a long time. Then he got out and started walking.
He took the path down to the caves. Halfway there he looked down and saw Kensa. She was sitting on the rocks at the side of the path, staring at the sea. The tide was out. The water was creased and battered after the storm, brown with churned sand and teeming with choppy waves. The path was wet, the stones stained with rain. They rolled under his feet as he made his way down.
‘Did you hear them?’ Kensa said. ‘They were so loud.’
‘What are they like inside?’
Kensa zipped her coat tighter and watched the waves. ‘I don’t know.’
Bryce looked down at the rocks and the beach. He thought of Kensa crossing the fields, going down to the rocks, standing outside the caves, but never going in. He thought of her on the path that night, in the dark, waiting for him.
‘Come on,’ he said.
He made his way down, slipping on grit, clutching at wet rocks, Kensa following behind until they were on the beach. The caves were in front of them – there was a deep gap in the cliff that widened out into the dark, the stone shattered and polished by the sea as it shouldered its way further in.
Bryce walked up the beach and stood at the caves’ mouth. Tunnels arched ahead of him, echoing and gleaming like a cathedral.
Kensa stood next to him. She had one hand deep in her pocket, the other was clutching the torch. ‘What if we …’ she said, but she didn’t finish.
The longer Bryce stared into the cave, the darker it looked. He took a step forward, his boots rattling on stones and bits of slate. He took another step and the slate became smooth, pale sand. He took a breath and walked in.
The air was cool and musty. After a moment, Kensa came in and turned on the torch, shining it on the dripping walls, which glistened black and red as if a flame had passed across them.
They walked forwards slowly. The walls dripped, the waves broke on the rocks very far away. Something moved above them, then a bat dropped down, circled the tunnel, and flew back up into the dark. Kensa moved ahead. Bryce picked his way through carefully, thinking of Nate’s small torch, the way he used to keep it on all night, the worn straps on his rucksack, the look he had that Bryce now recognised, of someone who’d got used to moving on and not looking back.
The caves went deeper and the silence seemed to grow and thicken. There was no way of knowing which direction he was going – he just kept going, following the caves as they dipped and turned, breathing in the thin air. Sometimes the tunnels narrowed, sometimes they opened out like rooms. After a while he realised he couldn’t hear Kensa any more. He couldn’t see the torch. He stopped. There was no sound, no movement.
He waited in the tunnel. He didn’t know how many turns he’d taken, how far or how deep he’d gone. He reached out and touched the wall, tried not to think of the miles of cliff all around him, the sea slowly making its way back in.
He held onto the cold stone. He called out. He waited. A stone clattered down and landed by his boot. Another bat dropped and circled. Then, finally, he heard footsteps in the distance. He let go of the wall and made his way towards the sound, stretching out his hands. He called again. His heart was pounding like the tide against the caves; the skin on his palms was damp and tingling. He half-expected to hear Kensa counting slowly down to zero. Any minute now she would stretch out her hands and find him.
Kensa called out, telling him to wait, to stay where he was, she’d be there in a minute, but he kept going. They could hear each other’s footsteps, their breathing, they were getting closer, it was so dark, there were so many twists and bends, but any moment now they would find each other, any moment now they would know exactly where they were.