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Skye watched Alan Noble’s tight face, wondering what she should do if he asked her about Liam. He was Liam’s father, after all.
“You haven’t seen him since you came back?” Rowena said, frowning.
“No.” He looked at Rowena. “He was absent the two nights I’ve been back. Perhaps even longer. The housekeeper who comes in weekly couldn’t say.” He glanced around at the faces all focused on him. “I raised him to be independent. We don’t keep tabs on each other. But nothing in this village would keep him away from the Towers for perhaps more than a night.” His gaze was resting on Morgan, and distaste seemed to colour his expression. “Morgan. You were, ah, dating my son for a short time, isn’t that right? Have you seen him?”
The inverted commas around ‘dating’ were obvious, and Morgan flushed, her neck becoming blotchy. Any sympathy Skye had for Alan Noble vanished in anger.
“Sorry, I don’t know where Liam is.” True, yet not answering the question. When dealing with the Nobles, was this something Morgan and Rowena learned? Skye wondered.
“‘Unlucky in love’; that’s what people say about us Nobles,” Alan said, surprising Skye. “I have been unfortunate enough to lose both of my previous wives. Liam, the son of my second wife, is all I have to show for those years. Unlucky in love, lucky in other ways...” his right hand touched a gold signet ring on his left, and Skye noted a gold watch gleaming on his wrist. It sounded like something he had said more than once.
Alan sighed. “Perhaps I am worrying unnecessarily, although it is hardly surprising, considering... Liam has had episodes of...fragility.”
“How so?” Rowena asked politely.
“His heightened sensitivity to his thoughts and emotions was because of the tragic disappearance of his girlfriend Gina.” Again, his piercing gaze swept over Skye, Morgan and Hunter. “With recent events, I wonder if Liam’s persistent belief that Gina was still alive, perhaps out at sea somewhere...was not mistaken after all.” The room was silent. “The missing people coming back to the village, apparently nicknamed ‘the returned’, may have convinced him to look for her.”
The question in his dry voice was subtle, but Skye’s heart pounded so hard she found it hard to breathe. This man made her feel frightened.
“If we can help you, Alan, we will. Absolutely,” Daniel’s words were heartfelt. “But I’m sure Liam will turn up again.” A sharp clatter made Skye jump. A broom left leaning against a table had fallen to the wooden floor. The atmosphere changed as a couple of people chuckled at being startled by the noise. Hunter busied himself with picking up the broom and returning it to its cupboard. Alan shook the hand that Daniel offered him again, and Rowena walked Alan to the door.
In the doorway, Alan faced them again. “If you have any information that can help me find Liam, I’d be grateful.” As the café door closed on him, Skye saw he was looking at her.
*
Alan Noble strode along Marine Parade. His chest heaved with suppressed rage. He didn’t stop until the bend in the road hid the café from sight, then he crossed the road to the seawall and glared across the sand at the distant water. There had been so many people at the café that he couldn't use his family's gift of persuasion. He should have waited until he had those kids alone. Or Rowena; she was always an easy mark. But he was skilled in searching out people’s emotions too, even in a group. It had been clear to him there was something they were hiding. Someone knew something connected to Liam’s disappearance.
Before approaching them, Alan had first entered the unlocked, empty room at the end of the lane, just as Connor had planned to. Someone had set it up like an art studio. His already racing pulse had sped up when he saw the paintings - underwater scenes. He’d crossed the courtyard and seen the broken pane. Connor had done that, Alan was sure.
Yes, someone knew something. The three teenagers or Rowena. Possibly all of them. He would have to corner them alone. Flush the truth out.
The tide was low, not like it had been last night. In the small hours last night, his worry about Liam had him too restless to sleep. Liam’s certainty that Gina was out there in the sea with some kind of ocean-dwelling creatures had seemed an insane delusion. Until those people came ashore. From a boat? Perhaps. The thought of his slightly unbalanced son following the possibilities that the returned villager had opened had driven him to the waterline.
And as he had stood in the dark night, desperate to know where Liam was, the surface of the water broke and a boy stumbled ashore.
He’d thought it was Liam. The agony of joy crushed by disappointment had made him feel deranged. But he knew; he knew that the boy Connor could be the key to finding Liam. For a moment he thought there was someone else in the water, but the night was too dark and the water too choppy to be sure.
The garbled words of the hysterical boy had kindled his hope. He’d let him go on his quest to find the keeper, whoever that was. The shop keeper? Rowena? It seemed unlikely. But he waited in anticipation so intense he felt he was losing his mind. And then...nothing. Literally nothing. Nothing left of the emotion that had driven Connor to Café Bliss, or the memories he had shared.
Fury surged in him again. Then a straggle of memory returned, breaking into his anger like a ray of light. One of Liam’s crazy stories. Something Liam had told him earlier this summer on one of their painful, duty-bound phone chats. Alan had paid it no mind, putting it down to Liam’s obsession with Bannimor legends. But now he turned the shreds of recall over. Liam had been here on the beach, just like Alan was last night, hidden by the darkness, watching the sea in the vain hope that Gina would come ashore.
While Liam waited and watched unseen, someone else had come to the dark waterline. The surface of the water had broken, and another figure had staggered ashore. Liam had been almost sure the one waiting had been Daniel Sebastian’s daughter: the one whose mother disappeared about ten years ago; Skye. And Liam was almost certain that the person who walked out of the sea was...Rowena’s daughter, Morgan.
