Flora climbed back up and sat on a bench on the promenade overlooking the water. The view was so familiar she barely noticed it. Below, people rested in deck chairs and three hardy children ran about in swimming costumes. She held the soldier close to her face and shut one eye so that the little man became huge and out of focus, balancing on the horizon, and she imagined her mother sitting on this bench, in this spot, and wondered what she had been thinking.
After Ingrid disappeared, neighbours and friends searched the nearby coves, walked over Barrow Down, tramped through the heath with sticks and dogs, and dredged Little Sea Pond. Jonathan and, later, her mother’s old university friend, Louise, came down to Spanish Green although there wasn’t much they could do, and they spent their time in the pub avoiding the reporters who massed around the village like swarms of wasps. They took two rooms above the bar and didn’t come to the house. One evening, when Flora went to the pub with her father—who bought her a Coke and a bag of crisps and told her she could stay, as long as she sat in a corner and kept quiet—Jonathan suddenly remembered a conversation he’d had with Ingrid about Ireland, and Gil shouted, broke a barstool, and was asked to leave. Sometime later Louise resigned from Parliament.
Gil refused to give up hope. He went to Ireland but returned alone. He had posters made and placed adverts in the local papers. Flora and Nan spent their weekends in the car, sleeping, eating, and watching the countryside and towns speed by, chasing possible sightings of their mother.
Flora asked someone the time and was disappointed to find that only an hour had passed, so she crossed the road into town. She got a window table in Sea Lane Café and read through their menu. She ordered toast, the cheapest item, and a cup of tea. The waiter’s hair was gelled forwards as if he were in a constant battle with a backwind. Flora would have liked to make him sit so she could draw him, but the café was full and he was busy. When he brought the food over she said, “Did a woman come in here yesterday? On her own, I think.”
“A woman?” the waiter said, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t get many of those in here.” He smiled. His teeth were the size of a baby’s, small and square with a gap between the front two. “What does she look like?”
“I’m not sure.” Flora blushed. “Straight hair, maybe. Light coloured. Pale skin.”
“How old?”
“Forty-eight . . . no, forty-seven.”
“A bit old for me.” He winked. When Flora frowned, he said, “Do you have a photo?” He put down her plate of toast.
“No.”
The man set her cup of tea on the table. “Get a lot of work as a private detective, do you?” Another wink.
“I’m in great demand,” Flora said. She picked up her knife and a pat of butter, pleased they hadn’t spread it on for her, suddenly starving.
“I’m afraid it was my day off yesterday. I wasn’t even here.” He seemed like he wanted to carry on talking, but he was called to the kitchen for another order.
When she had finished eating, Flora pulled the toy soldier from her pocket. The small man stood in heavy boots, a pair of binoculars hanging around his neck. She thought about the child who must have lost him on the beach. How long had it been before they realised the soldier was missing, and did they blame themselves for not noticing when it became buried in the sand, was swept out to sea, or fell from a boulder into the crevice? And did the child remember it every time they returned to the beach? Flora balanced the soldier on the crust of toast she had left, took her sketchbook and a pencil out of her satchel, and stared at the tiny man with his arm raised. But when the waiter came over and asked if there was anything else she wanted, Flora realised she had drawn her mother standing in front of the Swimming Pavilion. In her mind, the tin roof shimmered in the heat and the long dress flowed around her mother’s ankles.
“It rained fish last night,” Flora said to the waiter when he returned with the bill. “On the road from the ferry.”
He looked over her shoulder at her drawing and at the soldier propped on the toast. “I like a girl with a vivid imagination,” he said. “It makes a change,” and he smiled his baby smile. He left the bill, and Flora put some money on the table and packed her sketchbook and pencil into her bag. As she glanced up, a woman walked past the café window, gone in an instant, but leaving an impression of fine hair the colour of ripe wheat. Flora cried out and jumped up, knocking her chair into the man sitting at the table behind. She snatched up her satchel and was nearly out of the door when she turned to grab the little plastic soldier.
“I’ve got another day off tomorrow,” the waiter shouted after her, but she was gone.
And so was the woman.