“Does your father know you’re buying this?” Harrold, the shopkeeper, had looked at her over his glasses.
“Of course, Harrold,” Gil said, appearing from behind the Local History section. “It’s not up to you what my daughter reads.” He handed over the money. Outside the shop Gil took the book from her and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “You won’t be reading this for a while.” He laughed. “Let’s go and get an ice cream.”
In the kitchen Nan said, “Oh, you should go again. Viv is so welcoming and happy to show people around and recommend things.”
“You seem to know a lot about her.” Flora licked marmalade off her knife. She looked up at Nan. Her sister’s cheeks were flushed. “Really?” Flora said, smiling, her head on one side.
Nan rinsed a dishcloth under the tap and wrung it out. “She’s just . . . she’s just a very nice woman.”
“That’s wonderful,” Flora said. She got up and hugged her sister, whose arms hung limply by her side, the dishcloth still in one hand. “I’m so pleased for you.”
“I think you should change out of that dress,” Nan said.
Once more, Flora sat in the driver’s seat of the Morris Minor. Nan leaned in through the open passenger window. There was no sign of last night’s storm and no fish on the road. The sky over the heath was blue and cloudless. Cars disgorging from the ferry streamed past, and the road verges were packed nose to tail. A queue had built up in front of the Morris Minor, impatient motorists wanting to pass to catch the ferry. Flora, picturing her father waiting for them in hospital, wanted to get going too. “Can’t we just go in yours?”
“We can’t leave this car here,” Nan said. “It’s blocking the road. Try the ignition one more time.”
“It’s not going to start.” Flora felt like weeping.
“Aren’t you meant to pull out the choke or something?” Nan said.
A driver in one of the cars in the queue tooted a horn.
“It’s broken.” And to prove it, Flora turned the key once more. The awful clunk sounded again.
“I’ll call the garage and you’ll just have to wait with it. I’ll go and get Dad on my own.”
“But I want to come.”
“You shouldn’t have driven, then. You should have come down this morning by train like I suggested.” Nan took her phone out of her handbag, looked at the time, rolled her eyes, and called the garage.
In the cab of the tow truck, Flora stared out of the rear window over the roof of the Morris Minor as they drove away from the ferry and the hospital, towards Hadleigh. The line of traffic heading in the opposite direction stopped to let them out, and she saw on the road a single fish that must have been under the car, its scales winking in the sunshine.
“Fan belt,” the man said as he withdrew the top half of his body from under the bonnet.
“Is that important?” Flora said.
He laughed. “It’s not going to go without it. Take a walk, get yourself a cup of tea, and come back in three hours or so. We should have her all fixed by then.”
The route from the garage to the sea took Flora through the public car park. Halfway across she noticed her father’s car, a parking ticket stuck to the windscreen. When she peered through the window, she saw that all the footwells and the seats, apart from the driver’s, were full of carrier bags spilling out secondhand books.
She took an alleyway to the sea and walked the length of the promenade. At the town end she leaned on the railings and tried not to think about her father tumbling over them, how he could so easily have died from the fall. She ducked under the bottom bar and sat on the lip of the concrete for a moment, her legs dangling over the rocks, before she jumped. Maybe her mother had been there; perhaps she had been the one who called the ambulance. Flora clambered across the rocks close to the promenade, out towards the rounder boulders next to the sea—searching without knowing what she was looking for. She found a jelly shoe—slimy with age, its buckle permanently fused shut by salt water—five rusty beer-bottle tops, and a plastic toy soldier wedged in a crevice that her mother might have crouched beside. The soldier stood sideways on its base, legs akimbo, one arm raised as if waving on an invisible army. Most of its green pigment had been leached by the sea, so that when she held it up to the sun it was almost translucent.