Gil slammed his palm against the windowpane, but the woman turned away and stared along the street again, towards the town and, as if she had seen the person or car she was waiting for, strode off. He hit the window again but the woman didn’t stop. He pressed his cheek sideways against the cold glass and saw her for a moment more before she was gone from view. “Ingrid!” he called, pointlessly.
He snapped shut the book he was holding and, clasping it to his chest, hurried down the stairs, then to the front of the shop and through the door. From behind the till Viv called to him, but he kept going. Outside, the rain pasted his grey hair to his forehead and soaked through his jacket. The street was empty but he marched along it, every two or three steps breaking into a trot. By the time he reached the high street, Gil was puffing and struggling to catch his breath. He stood on the corner and looked up the hill. The pavement was empty. In the other direction, towards the sea, some tourists hurried, the squall bowling them closer to the water. He limped after them, scanning the people ahead for the large coat and glancing through the steamy windows of the café and the bakery. He weaved around a young woman with a buggy and, ignoring a stab of pain in his hip, crossed the road at the corner without checking for cars. He was on the promenade, eight feet or so above the beach. In the distance, a man walked at an angle against the gale while an ugly dog jumped and snapped at the wind—too fierce for May, more like an autumn storm. Gil slowed but continued to shuffle, head lowered, along the promenade until below him the sand ended and the breakwater boulders and the massive concrete blocks began, wet with leaping spray. The rain flew in his face and the wind buffeted him, pushing him into the metal railing at the edge of the walkway, tilting him over it as though he were being passed from hand to hand in a violent dance. Between the rocks, about a dozen paces farther along and below him, Gil thought he saw a jut of olive and the whip of lifted hair.
“Ingrid!” he shouted, but the wind took his words, and the woman, if that’s what he had seen, didn’t even turn her head. He continued along the promenade in her direction. Twice he stopped to lean out over the railing, but the angle and the height of the walkway—together with how she was hunkered down—meant he lost sight of her. When he judged that he must be above Ingrid, he tipped forwards over the railing again, but now couldn’t even see her coat. He put his head and torso in the wide gap between the top and bottom bars, and, with the book in one hand and the other on a vertical post, Gil inched his left leg over the lower railing, swivelling it awkwardly so his foot remained on the lip of the promenade, while he negotiated his right over the bottom rail. When he was on the other side, he clung on to the wet post with his free hand and cantilevered his body out, but his left foot in its leather brogue slipped.
It seemed to Gil that he fell in slow motion into the void, so there was plenty of time to think about the fuss his eldest daughter, Nan, would make, and how worried Flora would be, and then he thought about whether, if he survived this fall, he should ask his children to promise to make a pyre of his books when he did die, and what a sight that would be. The fire, a beacon announcing his death, might be visible as far as the Isle of Wight. And Gil considered that if today was the 2nd of May 2004, which he thought it probably was, it meant Ingrid had been gone for eleven years and ten months exactly, and he also thought how he should have made it clearer that he had loved her. All this went through his mind while he fell between the rocks, and then there was pain in his arm and bursts of light in his head, but before the blackness swallowed him up he saw the book open beside him, its spine cracked in two.
Chapter 1
The ringing woke Flora from a deep sleep. Richard, lying next to her, had a pillow over his head, so she climbed across him and out into the cold and gloomy room. She stepped over the debris of clothes, empty bottles, and dirty plates on the floor, picked up an old tablecloth that she kept on the sofa to hide the greasy stains left by the previous tenants, and wrapped it around her like a cloak. The ringing stopped. Flora sighed, and at the end of her out-breath the ringing started again. She listened and then rummaged through the clothes until she found her jeans with her mobile phone in the pocket. Nan, the display said. Richard rolled over in the bed with a groan and Flora went through to the bathroom.
“Nan?” she said, pulling the light cord and wincing at the glare.
“Hello? Flora?”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry,” Flora said. “I should have called. Happy birthday for yesterday.”
“Thanks,” Nan said, “but I’m not calling about that.” Her tone was urgent, worried, and a creature uncoiled itself inside Flora’s stomach.
“What is it?” Flora’s voice was a whisper. She sank onto the lino, slotting herself between the bath and the basin’s pedestal. Close up, the abstract swirls and eddies embroidered on the tablecloth transformed themselves into silvery-blue fish swimming over her knees.