Laurie spoke before Nina could answer. ‘A whole month. Mum’s taken a sabbatical from work.’
‘Attagirl!’ Marie said.
‘She’s a high-up producer on a news show,’ Laurie said. Nina wanted to hug her, though her suddenly positive attitude was puzzling. ‘She works really hard.’
Marie beamed. ‘You deserve a break then. So, what are your plans?’
Nina spread her arms wide: no plans.
‘Hey,’ Marie said, now speaking to Laurie. ‘I know this is your vacation and all, and you’re too old for our little school—’
Nina peered again at the building. It wasn’t a church; it was a schoolhouse.
‘—but if you’d like to join in,’ Marie continued, ‘the island kids have set up a little weekday club to occupy themselves. You’d be very welcome.’
Laurie looked doubtful.
Marie chuckled. ‘It isn’t only the young ones. Thomas joins in each day too. His school’s on the mainland, of course. He comes home each day full of wild stories about the ‘real world’, as if Hope Island isn’t part of it. But he was as keen as anyone to set up this little club, seeing as he’s stuck here for the vacation. I guess you’d say he’s the ringleader.’
‘Thank you. I’d love to,’ Laurie said, before Nina could interject. Laurie stood on her tiptoes to watch Thomas as he climbed onto the porch of the schoolhouse and disappeared inside.
‘There you go then. Tomorrow at ten or thereabouts.’ She patted Nina on the arm. ‘It’ll give you more time for R and R. Let’s do coffee.’
She flinched as the baby shot out a tiny hand, scraping his nail all the way from her neck to her breast, leaving a thin track. His scream scrambled Nina’s thoughts.
‘Christ, that one hurt,’ Marie muttered. ‘He’ll be a bruiser like his dad.’
Laurie bent to the baby. ‘Hello, little Niall. Nice to meet you.’ She enclosed his tiny fist in hers. The baby’s yelling stopped abruptly.
Laurie looked up at Marie quizzically and then, to Nina’s surprise and odd revulsion, she threw her arms around Marie on her free side. Marie reciprocated one-handed. Her grin directed at Nina contained no hint of gloating.
‘We’d best be moving on,’ Nina said.
Marie peeled Laurie away from her gently. The baby resumed his crying.
‘Come now,’ she whispered to him. ‘You’ll get what you want, once we’re back inside.’ She rolled her eyes at Nina. ‘Give my love to Tammy and dear old Abe, will you?’
‘You know them?’ Nina’s face flushed. ‘Of course you do. What’s the total population of Hope Island?’
‘Seventy-eight.’ Marie looked down at the child in her arms. ‘Seventy-nine. But sure, I know the Fishers well. Had plenty of my meals in their little kitchen when I was a kid.’
Nina’s cheeks became hot. Perhaps Rob and Marie had been childhood sweethearts.
‘They’re having a tough time of it,’ Marie continued. ‘Well, Tammy is, anyways. You’d never know it, but there’s a whole lot of tension on this little island. A whole lot of politics.’
‘Is it anything to do with the Sanctuary? I got the impression that Tammy has a bee in her bonnet about it.’
Marie smiled. ‘You’re a quick study. You should be a journalist.’
‘Actually, I am.’ She frowned, testing the label against her current role at Salford MediaCity. ‘Or at least I was.’
‘There you go then. Sure, it’s about the Sanctuary. Down at the harbour they’re plotting counter-insurgency. You been over to the Sanctuary yet? Met the Siblings? They’re good folk, all told.’
Nina shook her head. ‘We really should be getting back to Tammy and Abram. It was lovely meeting you.’
‘Likewise, Nina Fisher. See you tomorrow.’
‘Scaife. Nina Scaife.’
‘Oh, sure. Scaife.’
Nina ushered Laurie down the hillside.
* * *
The sounds of the harbour grew in volume as they approached. Nina had always liked seaside holidays as a child, though her experiences were of the garish promenades of Bournemouth and Brighton, the amusements and ice-cream kiosks. It occurred to her how much of a landlubber she was: even though she had lived in Manchester for almost six years, the only time she’d been to any of the Lancashire coastal towns was a single trip to Blackpool, and that had been only for the illuminations. They had set off late because something had cropped up at work, and Laurie had slept in the car the whole time, missing everything.
In fact, she wasn’t sure she’d ever visited a working coastal village. Perhaps the constant shouting between the men hopping from boat to boat, the fishermen dragging plastic crates filled with ice and red limbs, the woman standing with arms folded outside the tiny grocery store and the locals criss-crossing the cobbles between the shops and a hotel were normal and necessary to the smooth running of life on the island.
As they passed the concrete building where the girl had disappeared last night, Nina glanced into the gap between it and the rocks. She saw pebbles and crisp packets. There was nothing unnerving about the space.
She forced a bright tone into her voice. ‘How about I treat you to something?’
Laurie hadn’t spoken during their struggle down the hillside from the schoolhouse. The misunderstanding about Thomas’s intentions made Nina reluctant to push her luck by trying to start a conversation. Silence was better than being shouted at again.
Laurie smoothed down the collar of her denim jacket which she had pulled up against the wind. ‘Like what?’
Nina tried to judge a correct answer. Not comics, not beer. ‘A bar of chocolate?’
‘Have you tasted American chocolate?’
‘Something else then. Sweets. I mean candy.’
‘Yeah. Okay.’
The woman outside the grocery store ignored them as they approached. Instead, she continued bellowing, ‘—and my sister doesn’t even have a cat, so there’s no telling where it came from. All I know is that she’s pissed, and she’s going to set traps, you can bet your life on that!’ Nina turned to follow the woman’s gaze, but her shouts appeared to be directed towards nobody in particular, as if she were conversing with the harbour front itself, a hundred metres away.
As Nina and Laurie entered the tiny shop, the woman clomped in behind them.
The shop was small, but the junk overflowing from its floor-to-ceiling shelves and pinned to the walls made it even more claustrophobic. It felt to Nina like a cave with its walls covered with sharp barnacles. Everyday provisions seemed to comprise only about half the stock. Most of the items in the doorway and leading up to a counter littered with paperwork and stacks of boxes were tourist tat and toys: water pistols, fridge magnets, pink sombreros, police officer dress-up sets.
‘Saw you arrive yesterday!’ the woman shouted, her voice even more blaring in the confined space. ‘You’re not little Laurie Fisher no more. Getting to be quite the young lady, aren’t you? Bet the boys are all crowded round you these days.’
Laurie actually blushed. ‘It’s nice to see you again, Mrs Rasmussen.’
‘You know, if I’d had her looks when I was young, I’d have used them,’ Mrs Rasmussen said, winking at Nina. ‘You her mom?’