She hurried around the side of the house. Only a handful of streetlights were still working — trembling in the downpour, buffeted by the wind howling in from the North Sea, casting their sickly yellow glow out onto the cracked tarmac. The lampposts stopped a dozen yards past her house, leaving everything from there on — not that there was much of it — wreathed in gloom. Hiding the end of the world.
‘ALFIE!’
Into the middle of the road, turning, hauling in a deep breath and making a loudhailer of her hands. ‘ALFIE!’
Wait... there was a noise. Something hiding in the bellowing storm. A clattering growling noise. A hard mechanical whomp-whomp-whomp that stuttered and yowled. Then a light, bright and sharp, rose in the distance, bringing with it winking eyes of red and green as a helicopter rose over the cliffs, the whining engines and thrumming blades louder now. Clearer.
And Alfie loved helicopters.
‘ALFIE!’
Margaret stumbled past blacked-out houses towards it, ducking under the line of ‘NO ENTRY’ tape that frrrrrrrred in the wind. Temporary metal fencing cut straight across the road, eight-foot high, blocking off the last ‘habitable’ house on either side from the ‘uninhabitable’ ones beyond. A faded sign, bolted to the chain-link: ‘WARNING! ~ COASTAL EROSION ZONE ~ NO ENTRY ~ DANGER OF DEATH’
They never maintained the fence, did they? Just moved it one house further inland every time some poor sod’s home disappeared into the North Sea. The thing was probably riddled with holes big enough for a five-year-old to wriggle through.
She hauled one end of the fence out of its concrete footplate, dragging it as far as the chain holding it to the next segment would allow, then squeezed between the cold metal uprights and into the darkness beyond. ‘ALFIE!’
Above her, the helicopter turned and its spotlight slid across the rain-slicked grass. A flash of yellow burst in the night, ‘ALFIE!’ then the light moved on and he was swallowed by darkness again.
Margaret stumbled forward into the wind, staggering in the helicopter’s downdraught. Moving from the tattered tarmac into someone long-gone’s garden. Feeling her way along what was probably a picket fence. Heaving herself over to the other side with a tugging rip of fabric. Losing the other slipper in the process.
‘ALFIE?’
He was standing there, at the edge of the cliff, staring down into the water.
Oh God.
The cliff. The one all the warning signs were about.
What if it collapsed underneath him?
What if he was light enough, but she was too heavy and trying to save him caused it all to fall into the sea?
Her bare feet slithered through the wet grass as she crept closer, arms held out to him. Trying to hide the tremble in her voice, bottling it down. ‘Come on, baby, come to Mummy. It’s OK, it’s OK. Come to Mummy.’
He looked over his shoulder at her and smiled a gap-toothed smile, one finger pointing up at the red-and-white machine hammering the air above them. ‘Hellingcopter!’
‘Please come to Mummy, Alfie. Come on, you can do it.’ Reaching for him. Inching closer.
Alfie’s finger pointed downwards. ‘Boaty!’
She dropped to her hands and knees, crawling towards him.
Swear to God, if she could get Alfie home alive she’d never duck her mother’s calls again. She’d give up drinking. She’d do volunteer work for a homeless charity, or a foodbank or something.
Closer.
Alfie stuck his thumb in his mouth.
She’d even stop calling Gary a child-support-dodging barmaid-shagging wanker, as long as she GOT ALFIE HOME ALIVE.
Margaret’s fingertips snatched at the wet hem of his bright-yellow anorak, and she hauled him off his feet and into her arms. Knelt there, on the clifftop, holding him tight, squeezing, breathing in the rubbery scent of his waterproof. ‘Don’t ever do that again!’
‘Look, Mummy, a boaty and a hellingcopter!’
‘Let’s get you home.’ Tucking an arm under his bottom, she scooped him up, stood, and turned.
The Coastguard helicopter shone above them, its spotlight pointing straight down at a dumpy fishing boat — about as long as a double-decker bus, but twice as wide. As if it were nearly as pregnant as she was. The Ocean-Gold Harvester’s blue-and-white livery was pristine on this side, but its other side was pushed up against the brown-grey cliffs that towered above it. One of its fishing booms lay twisted along its deck, the other poking out to sea, still fixed to a ballooning swell of net as the waves slammed the boat against the wall of earth and rock.
Five men clustered by the wheelhouse, all in fluorescent-orange survival suits and life jackets, clutching at the boat’s handrails, staring up at the helicopter, as one of their number was winched into the air.
The boat slid into a trough, the hull screeching down the cliff face, then the next wave battered it into the headland again.
‘Want to see, want to see!’
‘No, Alfie, we have to get home before...’
A dark, rumbling noise cut through the wind and the rain and the helicopter’s thrumming blades.
It was too late.
The cliffs were giving way.
Margaret swallowed. Pulled Alfie’s head against her chest. ‘Close your eyes, darling. Mummy loves you!’
Then the headland slumped, the sound of cracking rock building to a deafening bellow as a huge wall of earth and stone curled forwards and crashed down on top of the Ocean-Gold Harvester. Burying it. Sending up a massive gout of spray as it forced the crushed boat beneath the churning waves, taking everyone with it.
Five men, dead, just like that...
Above, the Coastguard helicopter wobbled, as if trying to catch its balance.
And Margaret stared. Not at the mound of rubble where a boat and five men used to be, but at the cliff face, caught in the helicopter’s spotlight. The newly exposed soil was darker than the cliff had been, and that made it easier to see what poked out of it.
Bones.
Dozens of them.
Human bones.
— thoughts and prayers —
2
Bloody potholes.
The car lurched from one to the next, sending gouts of water splashing up from the wheel arches as the windscreen wipers squeak-thunked their way back and forth, fighting a losing battle against the pummelling rain. Streetlights made septic halos in the downpour, doing almost nothing to hold back the darkness. Half a dozen of them, then nothing but the angry coal-black sweep of the North Sea.
I grabbed the handle above the passenger door as the wee Suzuki jeep thumped through yet another pothole. ‘Are you aiming for these things?’
Alice hunched closer to the steering wheel, squinting out through the greasy arc of semi-clear glass. ‘Should be somewhere around here...’ She’d bundled herself up in a black padded jacket, a pair of rainbow-coloured fingerless gloves poking out of the too-long sleeves. Curly brown hair pulled back in a bun that jiggled and bounced in time with the jeep’s potholing adventures.
Thump. Lurch. Bump.
‘Only, it’s OK if you don’t hit every single one of them.’
‘Is that it down there?’ She freed a hand for long enough to point at yet another post-war semi in unappealing shades of beige and brown. The only thing that distinguished it from its neighbours was every single light in the place seemed to be on, and it had an a snot-green rattletrap Fiat Panda parked outside.
‘Still say this is a waste of time.’
‘But we—’