‘The animal’s heart is the basis of its life.’
William Harvey, 1578–1657
SUMMER | PEMBROKESHIRE COAST, WALES
Ford leans out from the limestone rock face halfway up Pen-y-holt sea stack, shaking his forearms to keep the blood flowing. He and Lou have climbed the established routes before. Today, they’re attempting a new line he spotted. She was reluctant at first, but she’s also competitive and he really wanted to do the climb.
‘I’m not sure. It looks too difficult,’ she’d said when he suggested it.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve lost your bottle?’ he said with a grin.
‘No, but . . .’
‘Well, then. Let’s go. Unless you’d rather climb one of the easy ones again?’
She frowned. ‘No. Let’s do it.’
They scrambled down a gully, hopping across boulders from the cliff to a shallow ledge just above sea level at the bottom of the route. She stands there now, patiently holding his ropes while he climbs. But the going’s much harder than he expected. He’s wasted a lot of time attempting to navigate a tricky bulge. Below him, Lou plays out rope through a belay device.
He squints against the bright sunshine as a light wind buffets him. Herring gulls wheel around the stack, calling in alarm at this brightly coloured interloper assaulting their territory.
He looks down at Lou and smiles. Her eyes are a piercing blue. He remembers the first time he saw her. He was captivated by those eyes, drawn in, powerless, like an old wooden sailing ship spiralling down into a whirlpool. He paid her a clumsy compliment, which she accepted with more grace than he’d managed.
Lou smiles back up at him now. Even after seven years of marriage, his heart thrills that she should bestow such a radiant expression on him.
Rested, he starts climbing again, trying a different approach to the overhang. He reaches up and to his right for a block. It seems solid enough, but his weight pulls it straight off.
He falls outwards, away from the flat plane of lichen-scabbed limestone, and jerks to a stop at the end of his rope. The force turns him into a human pendulum. He swings inwards, slamming face-first against the rock and gashing his chin. Then out again to dangle above Lou on the ledge.
Ford tries to stay calm as he slowly rotates. His straining fingertips brush the rock face then arc into empty air.
Then he sees two things that frighten him more than the fall.
The rock he dislodged, as large as a microwave, has smashed down on to Lou. She’s sitting awkwardly, white-faced, and he can see blood on her leggings. Those sapphire-blue eyes are wide with pain.
And waves are now lapping at the ledge. The tide is on its way in, not out. Somehow, he misread the tide table, or he took too long getting up the first part of the climb. He damns himself for his slowness.
‘I can lower you down,’ she screams up at him. ‘But my leg, I think it’s broken.’
She gets him down safely and he kisses her fiercely before crouching by her right leg to assess the damage. There’s a sharp lump distending the bloody Lycra, and he knows what it is. Bone.
‘It’s bad, Lou. I think it’s a compound fracture. But if you can stand on your good leg, we can get back the way we came.’
‘I can’t!’ she cries, pain contorting her face. ‘Call the coastguard.’
He pulls out his phone, but there’s no mobile service down here.
‘Shit! There’s no signal.’
‘You’ll have to go for help.’
‘I can’t leave you, darling.’
A wave crashes over the ledge and douses them both.
Her eyes widen. ‘You have to! The tide’s coming in.’
He knows she’s right. And it’s all his fault. He pulled the block off the crag.
‘Lou, I—’
She grabs his hand and squeezes so hard it hurts. ‘You have to.’
Another wave hits. His mouth fills with seawater. He swallows half of it and retches. He looks back the way they came. The boulders they hopped along are awash. There’s no way Lou can make it.
He’s crying now. He can’t do it.
Then she presses the only button she has left. ‘If you stay here, we’ll both die. Then who’ll look after Sam?’
Sam is eight and a half. Born two years before they married. He’s being entertained by Louisa’s parents while they’re at Pen-y-holt. Ford knows she’s right. He can’t leave Sam an orphan. They were meant to be together for all time. But now, time has run out.
‘Go!’ she screams. ‘Before it’s too late.’
So he leaves her, checking the gear first so he’s sure she can’t be swept away. He falls into an eerie calm as he swims across to the cliff and solos out.
At the clifftop, rock gives way to scrubby grass. He pulls out his phone. Four bars. He calls the coastguard, giving them a concise description of the accident, the location and Lou’s injury. Then he slumps. The calmness that saved his life has vanished. He is hyperventilating, heaving in great breaths that won’t bring enough oxygen to his brain, and sighing them out again.
A wave of nausea rushes through him and sweat flashes out across his skin. The wind chills it, making him shudder with the sudden cold. He lurches to his right and spews out a thin stream of bile on to the grass.
Then his stomach convulses and his breakfast rushes up and out, spattering the sleeve of his jacket. He retches out another splash of stinking yellow liquid and then dry-heaves until, cramping, his guts settle. His view is blurred through a film of tears.
He falls back and lies there for ten more minutes, looking up into the cloudless sky. Odd how realistic this dream is. He could almost believe he just left his wife to drown.
He sobs, a cracked sound that the wind tears away from his lips and disperses into the air. And the dream blackens and reality is here, and it’s ugly and painful and true.
He hears a helicopter. Sees its red-and-white form hovering over Pen-y-holt.
Time ceases to have any meaning as he watches the rescue. How long has passed, he doesn’t know.
Now a man in a bright orange flying suit is standing in front of him explaining that his wife, Sam’s mother, has drowned.
Later, there are questions from the local police. They treat him with compassion, especially as he’s Job, like them.
The coroner rules death by misadventure.
But Ford knows the truth.
He killed her. He pushed her into trying the climb. He dislodged the block that smashed her leg. And he left her to drown while he saved his own skin.
SIX YEARS LATER | SUMMER | SALISBURY
DAY ONE, 5.00 P.M.
Angie Halpern trudged up the five gritty stone steps to the front door. The shift on the cancer ward had been a long one. Ten hours. It had ended with a patient vomiting on the back of her head. She’d washed it out at work, crying at the thought that it would make her lifeless brown hair flatter still.
Free from the hospital’s clutches, she’d collected Kai from Donna, the childminder, and then gone straight to the food bank – again. Bone-tired, her mood hadn’t been improved when an elderly woman on the bus told her she looked like she needed to eat more: ‘A pretty girl like you shouldn’t be that thin.’