We stand on the tip of the Point, watching the coast guard launch the lifeboat. My father wanders along the beach behind the lighthouse, asking everyone who’s there if they saw anything. Then he stops and picks something up—a piece of clothing, or perhaps it’s just a bit of rubbish. He holds it up and inspects it. What is he doing? Why isn’t he in the water looking for Eddie? I point again in the direction of where Eddie was paddling, but no one is paying any attention. People are wading in the white froth, looking down, looking for little lost Eddie.
“Over there,” I say. Still no one listens. I make my way to the edge of the water but fall down onto the pebbles. Shaking, murmuring, I try to work out if I’m looking at the sea or the sky. There’s a loud crack of thunder and it keeps on going, vibrating through my head, and then I see my father’s feet moving across the pebbles, toward me. In his hand he has my mother’s blue coat. He throws it over me.
“Help, someone! I need help,” he cries. “She’s fainted.”
There’s the overhang. My legs, strong and powerful, propel me through the arch and out into the open water. Then I follow the moon’s reflection to get back to the surface. When I break through, I’m out farther than I thought, at least a hundred meters from the rocks, and the water out here is choppy. Rain stings my face as I swim back to shore, Eddie’s T-shirt clenched tightly in my fist.
Mum wasn’t wearing her coat when she arrived at the beach. And yet my father had it in his hands. Dillon was right. She must have been there on the beach earlier that day, and she’d left her coat behind.
5
THE WET GROUND SOOTHES THE CUTS ON MY FEET AS I WALK through the deserted high street, toward the harbor. It’s nearly nine p.m. when I get there.
Inside the boathouse, I find Tay leaning against the wall, his head shrouded in smoke.
“Shit, what happened?” His eyes are wide, and he holds out a blanket toward me. It’s like he’s moving in slow motion. Or maybe it’s me moving slowly.
I hold up Eddie’s T-shirt. It takes a few seconds, and then Tay groans.
“Where did you get this?” he asks, reaching out to touch it.
I don’t answer, because it’s a rhetorical question.
“I found your note,” I say. “Who is D? Danny? Dillon?”
“Your brother. I’m so sorry, El. I wanted to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” My voice is deep and shaky. “Please, I’m so confused.”
Tay grabs my hand, possibly to stop me reaching out and smacking him. He’s trembling.
“I wanted to tell you everything, but I couldn’t because I made a pact,” he whispers. “I promised Danny.”
Danny, Dillon, Tay. They all know something, and I’m completely in the dark. I wrench out of Tay’s grip and slide back toward the corner by the loose panel. I can’t bear to be near him, yet I need to hear the truth. I lay Eddie’s T-shirt over my knees and run my fingers across the lion logo. It’s frayed and bobbled from its years spent in the cave under all those stones.
“Just talk,” I say. “Tell me what happened to Eddie.”
Tay’s eyes are pink, from the weed, from the lies.
“It was an accident,” he starts. “I’d only gone down to the beach to get Danny’s bike because he’d left it there earlier in the day.”
“What happened earlier?”
“We followed Uncle Mick down to the Point on our bikes because Danny thought he was up to something. We saw Mick arguing with this woman down by the lighthouse. Then there was all this commotion, people yelling, and Mick and the woman raced to the car and drove off. Danny went crazy about his dad being with someone other than his mom, and kicked his bike to pieces. He had to run home because he was already grounded and wasn’t supposed to be out. I couldn’t carry his bike back while I was riding, so I went back for it later.”
“What was the commotion?”
Tay screws up his face up so tight, I can’t even see where his eyes are.
“I didn’t know anything bad had happened. I swear. I would’ve stayed to help. I thought it was just excitement over the dolphins.”
“You thought that people screaming was excitement over the dolphins? Are you insane?”
“No! It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t close enough to see what was going on.” Tay pauses but I keep quiet, waiting for him to tell me what happened.
“It was dark when I went back,” he continues. “As I was trying to put the chain back on the bike, I saw Danny on the beach. I was pissed off with him for not telling me he was coming, because it was freezing and I would’ve stayed in and finished my computer game if I’d known. I crept up and wrestled him down onto the pebbles. But it wasn’t Danny, just someone who looked like him. It was Dillon. Then he shouted that he could see something in the water. We both waded in up to our waists, and there was definitely something there . . .”
Tay’s voice cracks. I brace myself for what’s coming next. Blood pulses loudly in my ears. I picture Tay and Dillon on the beach. Tay would’ve been twelve, and Dillon thirteen. Two boys who didn’t know each other, alone in the dark, about to . . .
“I didn’t know it was a body,” Tay whispers.
“Stop!” I shout. “I don’t want to hear any more.”