Leon looks at me in disbelief. “Do you not think we’ve got far bigger problems to deal with?”
“But she was supposed to be here,” I say, making my way to the front door and lifting up the corner of the mat I’d thrown the key under when I left with the police officers. It’s gone.
My phone rings again, and I rush back into the living room and snatch it up from the dining table.
“Don’t answer it,” says Leon sharply.
“But Anna might be in trouble!”
“I swear to God, Naomi, if you pick that up—”
“Just give me a second,” I say holding one finger up. “Let me just make sure she’s OK.”
He throws his hands up in the air and I turn my back on him.
“Hello?” I breathe down the line. “Anna, are you OK?”
“No,” is all she says.
“Where are you? Why aren’t you here?”
“I’m done,” is all she says. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Anna, where are you?” I ask, at pains to keep my tone soft and calm.
“I’m at the beach,” she says, and I can hear the faintest slur in her voice.
“Is someone with you?”
She laughs. “I’ve got gin and a whole bottle of Prozac for company.”
I can’t disguise my sharp intake of breath. “Anna, listen, you need to tell me where you are.”
I grab my keys from the dining table and throw my bag over my shoulder. Leon stands open-mouthed as I brush past him on my way to the door.
“Stay on the line,” I say, fumbling to open the car. “I’m coming to get you, but I’m going to need a little help.”
“It’s too late for that,” she mumbles. “I’m past helping.”
“Anna, you need to tell me exactly where you are,” I say, trying desperately hard not to let her hear my growing sense of hysteria.
“I’m with Ben,” she says.
“Anna, please, just listen to me…”
The line goes dead and I suck in my rising panic.
With Ben? I rack my brain as to what she might mean. Then I remember her telling me how they’d bought a beach hut in Tankerton and painted it yellow, Ben’s favorite color, in tribute to him.
Despite continuously trying to call her back while I make the five-minute journey along the coastal road, my mind runs amok with what I’m going to find when I get there.
I park, and half walk, half run down the slope toward the beach, where four rows of brightly colored huts merge together like a pick ’n’ mix selection. Pink candy stripes and baby blue panels jar against my impending sense of doom as I race along the promenade, toward the only yellow one I can see.
A woman, sitting with her dog on the front veranda of number forty-one, looks up and gives me a friendly smile as I pass. If she’d seen anything that had given her cause for concern, surely she wouldn’t be sitting there watching the world go by, would she?
My heart thumps in my chest as I come to a stop outside number forty-nine.
I turn the handle and peer into the darkness.
“Anna?” I say huskily as I step inside, leaving the door behind me open, to throw light into the ten-by-ten cabin. There’s nobody here, but as my eyes adjust I can see a single candle burning on a shelf, illuminating a row of framed photos lined up around it.
Every picture shows the same smiling little boy, with white-blond hair and dancing eyes. I recognize Anna in one where a sleeping baby is lying on her chest and she’s staring into the camera lens, with a look of utter contentment radiating from deep within.
A blond lock of hair lies on the desk next to a painting of what looks like a sunflower field, created out of tiny yellow and green handprints. The paper is stiff and crunchy as I lightly pass my fingertips over the palm shapes.
How could so much pain and suffering be cast on one family?
There’s an agonized wail from outside, and I race out of the hut and onto the shingled beach where Anna is standing against the sunset with her arms aloft.
She moves toward the water’s edge as I run to reach her, and the tide rolls over our shoes as I grab her tightly around the waist from behind.
“Please,” I say, gently pulling her back into me. “Let’s talk.”
She turns to look at me and her face is so twisted that at first, it seems like she might lash out. But she melts into my arms and for a moment, we’re lost in the sound of the waves.
“What have you taken?” I ask.
“I … I…” she says, shaking her head.
“Anna!” I shout, in a bid to rouse her from her stupor. “What have you taken?”
“N-nothing,” she says. “I haven’t taken anything.”
The breath I’ve been holding in escapes from my lungs like a missile, and I flounder as I guide her back across the pebbles. “Come inside,” I say, not knowing whether the shrine to her son will help or hinder her.
She falls down on the daybed and instinctively picks up the blue blanket square beside her, poking her forefinger through one of its silk loops.
“Ben would go to bed with this every night,” she says, holding it against her cheek and inhaling its scent. “He would slip his finger through like this and rub the material with his thumb to send him off to sleep.”
Her wistful smile suddenly disappears and her mouth pulls into a thin, tight line as she looks at her watch. “This time last year he was still alive,” she says, her voice cracking as the enormity of the milestone hits her. “If I’d known then what I know now, I would have spent the next few hours loving him, smelling him…”
I sit down beside her and put an arm around her back. “You’ve never told me what actually happened on that day.”
She shakes her head and bites down on her lip.
“Do you want to talk about it now?” I ask. “Might we be able to honor Ben in the way he deserves?”
She rubs at the loop, which I can now see is worn, attached by the thinnest of threads. I imagine Ben wasn’t the only one who slept with it every night.
“It was here,” she says, her face crumpling as she looks around. “This is where he died.”
Tears immediately spring to my eyes as I imagine the little boy in the photos running around on the beach, fetching water in his bucket and making sandcastles with his devoted family. How could something so tragic have happened in this beautiful place?
“I held him in my arms, begging him to open his eyes,” she cries. “I honestly believed that if I prayed enough, he’d come back to me, but his little body had been through so much…”
A guttural sob ricochets around the wooden walls.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, pulling her into me. “I can’t imagine…”
“I should have been able to save him,” she croaks, her eyes searching mine. “My only job as his mother was to keep him safe and make sure no harm ever came to him, so how … how could I have let it happen?”
“You mustn’t blame yourself,” I offer.
“Well, who else is there?” she screams, turning on me; her face twisted and her lips pulled back to reveal her gums. “I should have trusted my instincts. I should have known not to listen to Nick; he was drunk—why would I have taken him at his word? Who in their right mind would take the say-so of an alcoholic over the safety of their innocent child?”
I shake my head, at a loss for what to say.
“I’ll never be able to forgive him,” she says, jumping up off the bed. “And I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”
She rushes out onto the veranda, down the wooden steps and across the pebbled beach, sinking to her knees at the water’s edge.
Running to her, I fall onto the stones and pull her into me. “It’s OK,” I soothe. “It’s OK.”
“I need to be with Ben,” she sobs, falling into me. “If I could just be with him, everything would be all right.”
“Listen to me,” I say, holding her at arm’s length, where I can look her in the eye. “You still have two beautiful children who need you.”
“But Ben needs me,” she cries.
“You’ll be with him in the fullness of time—he will always be waiting for you—but right now, you have to love and nurture those who are here. You are their world and, believe you me, they will never recover from losing you at such a young age.”