Episode Two

On the shore, silence; dawn was still a distant hope, a promised kindness in the face of the ice and gloom blanketing Clayham-on-Sea. In heralding the coming light, a sharp breeze had pushed all clouds from the pale sky, leaving a clear view from the mainland right out to the horizon. The vista was a small mercy amid the cold January cruelty; Havannah reckoned it was something to be thankful for.

During her first time at the water’s edge, there had been a certain defiance, even as the air stabbed at her skin. Stepping into the water had felt natural, automatic; some unknowable instinct had drawn Havannah to this spot, and the pull was too strong to question. That first bite of icy waves at her ankles - followed by the swell of it against her lower back - had broken the spell she had felt herself under since the summer - since the fire. 

All at once, the sleepwalking had ended at her first cold communion with the sea. Small waves had risen playfully to wipe the tears from her face before she had even noticed their presence, and Havannah finally found some peace surrounded by the tide. 

Shivering on the shore some time later, however, she had started to miss the dreaming, the ruminating, the imagined conversations she would never have with those now lost to her. Perhaps this exercise in patience and strength of will was the tide that had kept bringing her back to the beach, day in, day out.

Only a fortnight earlier, the new year had begun with the triumphant yelps and crazed laughter of people running into the water in frantic celebration just as Havannah was towelling herself off. Now she stood alone on the vast stretch of sand, beckoning the rolling tide to gather at her feet before taking the first of many steps into the water. When all others had given up, this had become her ritual. 

Havannah paused just out of reach of the desperate grasp of small waves. Between her toes, damp sand had clumped together, leaving her skin feeling gritty and choked. Just a few more steps and it would be washed away; for a time she wouldn’t need to think about it, numbed to all sensation. 

Overhead, what remained of the night had started to bleach into white. Eventually it would become a pale blue, against which the moon would loiter, unsure of its cue to leave. Then the day would begin properly, and this quiet moment - just Havannah and the sea in a private conversation - would end. 

She took a step forward and paused. Underfoot, water gently stroked her toes, an invitation to follow. There was no more time for waiting. A shiver came, but not because of the grasping of the frozen tide, nor the unpleasant coldness all about her; there were sights that chilled her to the bone instead - sights that Havannah was always acutely aware of. Somewhere to her left lurched the pier, a monument to all she had lost. Once its lights and the hustle and bustle had echoed out to sea, broadcasting hope from a hopeful place. 

Now it was a burnt-out shell that moaned and creaked with every exhalation. 

The pier stared at her accusingly every morning, and Havannah would attempt to keep her eyes fixed ahead on the grey-blue-brown expanse before her, or down on the sand that heaved beneath every footstep. But, as with every morning, she couldn’t help but let her eyes wander down the shoreline, to graze the sharp outline of the broken structure. 

It was always a haunting sight these days, but in the half-light of early morning, the pier’s twisted corpse was especially sinister. It resembled a great arachnid, legs curled in helpless death. Somewhere in its grip, Havannah’s father had died, all alone and terrified. 

At that thought, a familiar sadness rose through her limbs, growing warm beneath Havannah’s skin. 

Satisfied that she could recall what it was she wanted to remember and what she needed to forget, Havannah felt ready to step into the water - to let it prickle her skin and squeeze the air from her lungs. It was a welcome torture, to dredge up the hurt before drowning it in the sea; she would return to the shore anew.

Her eyes flitting back to the waves, Havannah took a purposeful step forward, followed by another, and then another. She barely noticed the sand turning from compacted and cold to wet and loose underfoot, nor did the stabbing of waves lapping against her shins shake Havannah from her focus. 

Eventually, though, the water would meet her waist, and the only choice would be to push herself forward and swim; she would have to move, or stay frozen in place forever. Havannah stared at the horizon, limitless and so very far away from her. As if to launch herself towards it, to travel the great distance to the very edge of the world and leave Clayham-on-Sea and all its misery behind, she reached her arms forward, pushed with her feet, and imagined herself free at last.

***

The graveyard had not been spared winter’s oppressive touch, cold enough to keep the dead shivering in the ground.

From the seafront far below its rocky perch, the edge of the graveyard seemed like a tangle of dead bramble and misshapen, grey teeth gnawing at the sky. Upon closer inspection, however, it became apparent that the brambles were naked trees, and the teeth were the graves that had previously taken shelter beneath the shade. Death had risen from the grounds, taking with it the green and the calm. All that remained was the stark reminder that such a place waited for each who visited… and in winter, there were so very few visitors.

Dread weighed heavy on Damon’s mind as he parked up a few steps from the wrought iron gate. Even outside of the graveyard’s influence, the misery had spread. The trees that stood up and down the street were no longer friendly, having lost all of their foliage. They left behind only bare branches that clawed at the air whenever the wind rose. Beneath them, thick roots had swollen and knotted, displacing paving stones and leaving the pavement uneven and treacherous, all in an effort to escape.

Upon reaching the gate, Damon paused with his hand upon the chipped black paint. The church loomed eerily to his left. It was empty, and yet there was the unmistakable feeling of being watched. He turned his attention from the stained glass window back to the collection of graves set in pale surroundings. Had the graveyard always been so bleak? Or had he simply not attended the place enough to warrant a more vivid memory? Would it even be appropriate to think of such a place as one that could warrant fondness?

With great hesitation, he crossed the threshold into the sacred grounds, grimacing at the few bronze leaves still turning to mulch underfoot. The flowers Damon had brought with him hung lazily from his grip, the cold breeze ruffling the plastic and agitating the petals. He didn’t think to move them out of harm’s way. What was the point? They’d be abandoned here to rot anyway, another layer added to the dirt packed on top of the coffins beneath his feet. For a fleeting moment, at least, the flowers could enjoy standing out, their parade of colour brighter than all the dead foliage and the dying roses dumped at the feet of epitaphs etched in stone.

In truth, Damon didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to stop his work to pull on the long black coat waiting for him by the door; he didn’t want to pull up to the petrol station on the outskirts of town to spend a tenner on some wilting flowers, haphazardly bundled together without taste or flourish; and he certainly didn’t want to drive up to the church, find somewhere to park along the crammed pavement, tread on sanctified ground, and pretend to care. 

The guilt was dripping from his insides, and he almost turned to leave before he’d even reached the corner of the church building. It didn’t help that straight in front of him – directly facing the gate, as if to torment him – was Patrick Shaw’s grave, sitting dutifully beside his wife’s. To see the graves and the shambling wreckage of the pier in the distance together, in a single frame, would be too much to bear, so Damon bowed his head in shame. Should anybody ask, it was a sign of respect – he was very respectful of the dead, he would tell them – and the lie settled so neatly into his being that it became easy to believe. Of course, the graveyard was empty of the living so deep in winter, and nobody would ever ask. 

The lie would only come undone if Havannah asked after her parents’ resting place. In preparation for such a scenario, Damon afforded himself a quick glance at Patrick’s grave. The turf had only recently settled, and the sunflowers which Havannah had placed lovingly at the foot of the headstone were dull and rotten against the soil and the polished black granite. The yew tree arching over the Shaws’ graves even seemed to bow closer as if to shelter the sunflowers, or to taste a drop of the sunlight they promised. Clearly, it had failed in both regards; winter had worn down even the evergreen yew tree, violently cold breezes leaving its branches rattled and patchy. They stretched but could not reach the promise of yellow petals. Nothing was forever.

Nagged by Havannah’s imagined questioning, Damon swept some stray moss from the top of Patrick’s headstone, dropped there by a bird. Should she ask, he would not be able to deceive her, the secret too flaming hot and overwhelming to stay hidden in his depths for long. Perhaps out of respect or regret - and definitely in aid of his own superstition - he gave a small nod towards his former business partner’s grave. Hoping to ward off Patrick’s spirit with the bouquet of white roses and yellow lilies, Damon held them closer to him before moving on. They weren’t for him; he probably deserved better.

Picking up the pace in case a ghostly chill reached for the back of his neck, Damon rounded the corner of the church to face the path running behind the building. There, several other graves lined either edge, a silent honour guard between which a procession of mourners had to travel if they were to reach their own loved ones at the farthest point of the graveyard. In this regard, Damon was lucky: nobody he loved was buried here, and the grave he was visiting was close to the corner, squeezed into the last available spot along the row. Regardless of the proximity, his arrival wasn’t quick, footsteps heavy and slow with reluctance.

There was the name he was looking for: Kristi Hallett – etched on local stone, standing an inch or so taller than her mother’s grave beside her. It had been weeks since his last visit, the whole gesture feeling like an empty charade – like visiting a relative in hospital with whom he had so little to discuss or convey. At the realisation that somebody had long since cleared his last offering from the plot, the flowers in Damon’s hand started to feel limp, cheap and lifeless. Since arriving, they had dulled to match their surroundings. He let them slip from his fingers, falling onto the soil unceremoniously. 

The errand was complete; should he say something now? There was nothing to say. In the silence, Damon was left alone with an admission he had been fending off all day: now that she was in the ground, his interest in Kristi had waned. There was no future for them, and in the harsh light of a winter’s day, he came to understand that there had never been a future anyway – just the thrill of a pursuit, the pining of a victory, the desire to tame her wildness. This, he decided, would be the last visit.

There was no point waiting around. Kristi wasn’t there to absolve him of the guilt which had brought him to the graveyard on a cold Tuesday morning. Damon rested his hands within his pockets, relieved at being unburdened of the flowers, and walked away from Kristi’s grave. As he passed, his eyes avoided Patrick’s grave, and relief sprouted in the self-reassurance that he wouldn’t have to look at the man’s resting place again. He really wasn’t coming back.

Besides, if he followed his own thinking – if he pulled on the thread that trailed loosely from the tragedy of that night – Damon found it easy to convince himself that he wasn’t to blame. Neither of the two graves, newly dug and filled, had been his fault – not really. They were victims of circumstance; the fire had simply been the backdrop. 

Patrick’s office had long been a chaotic firepit of his own making, with reams of paper stacked high and dodgy smoke alarms that had surely run out of batteries in the mid-nineties. It had become a comfortable burrow into which he could disappear long before his wife’s death, though afterwards he’d leveraged the excuse to become a workaholic. Perhaps he’d always known he would die there; he was simply doing everybody a favour by fashioning a coffin for himself out of cheap picture frames and shoddy filing systems. Patrick Shaw had – in Damon’s mind – doomed himself.

At that part of his thinking, Damon often encountered a snag, catching on the thread he was pulling. Knowing Patrick well enough to know that he’d be working late, he surely should’ve checked the building was empty before starting the fire – it was careless to do otherwise. But he hadn’t, rushing to finish the deed and be done with the evidence. A quiet voice spoke up in the back of his mind, whispering possibilities to Damon of a world where things played out differently. Had Patrick survived, would he have put the truth together? Would his lies and exploitation of the pier’s finances have been discovered already? Would Damon be in prison right now, rather than walking free and enjoying the luxury of considering what if? Almost certainly.

And then there was Kristi, the great tragedy of Clayham-on-Sea – or so everybody believed, weaving their own story out of her fallen stardom and the cruel shortening of her life. It was a narrative Damon himself had spun in conversations to his contacts at the paper and to anybody who would listen to him eulogise his favourite employee, if only to disguise himself among everybody else’s mourning. Despite knowing his own role in the fire, part of him still believed there was a mystery to be solved when it came to Kristi’s death. Even so, repeating back everybody else’s belief had Damon investing in the supposed truth: Kristi Hallett had died of misadventure, falling – leaping to escape – from the pier as the flames erupted all about her.

Damon paused, a few steps from the graveyard’s gate. He felt compelled to turn back. His imagination had conjured up the scene as clear as day, Kristi desperately scrambling to safety, only to drown beneath the pier. It didn’t feel real.

There was no returning to the grave. Not now. He carried on walking, crossing the threshold and turning right onto the uneven pavement. The abandonment of Kristi gave rise to thoughts of Patrick once again. Damon reached the same awful conclusion he always did: it was a good thing Patrick died that night. Though he still denied it was his fault.

The self-dispensed absolution settled into Damon’s cavernous chest and rested in the depths of his blackened soul. He didn’t think of himself as a bad person – wilful, maybe; perhaps even ruthless – but the ease at which he digested that private revelation chilled even Damon. 

Reacting to the chilling abyss weighing down its centre, his whole body shivered. Or perhaps a spectre had followed him from the cemetery after all. 

He sped up to reach his car, parked beside one of the many trees that had turned unkind in the winter. As he did so, a blue car pulled away nearby. Damon’s attention was drawn too late to see the number plate, but he recognised the make - a Fiat Punto - and the shade of blue, like a deep summer sky. It was fairly new, though its owner had used it thoroughly; splatters of dirty water had dried across the mudguard, dull light dipped along a generous dent on the bonnet, and a fresh splatter of bird droppings crowned the vehicle.

Despite the uncanny familiarity, the blue Fiat didn’t maintain its grasp on Damon for long, an incoming call from Havannah interrupting him. He started to pull his coat off, before balancing the phone between his shoulder and his ear.

“Hang on, I’m just getting in the car, two seconds. I’ll switch you over to bluetooth,” he said, hurrying. 

A pause followed as he checked the road again. The other car was gone now, leaving only a faint trace of recognition nagging at him. It was probably nothing.

Shrugging the sighting off, Damon ducked inside the vehicle and threw his coat onto the back seat. A dead leaf clung to his white shirt. He brushed it off and tossed it outside. The sound system crackled into life with the purring of the ignition. Havannah cleared her throat on the other end of the call, the only hint of impatience.

“Go for it,” Damon instructed as he pulled the seatbelt across his body and adjusted his mirrors. Briefly, the blue car returned to his mind’s eye, only to vanish again when Havannah spoke.

“Just checking you’re going to make it to lunch on time? You’re still picking me up, right?”

“I’m leaving now. I’ll be five minutes.” Damon looked at his watch. “Maybe make it ten.”

“Great, I’m just finishing getting ready. Couldn’t decide what to wear.”

A smirk curled across Damon’s face. There was something about Havannah’s naivety that he found endearing. He imagined her fretting over what to wear to a business lunch with the same anguish as a night out, and a similar feeling not felt since Kristi swelled in his chest. Maybe, if he was lucky, Olivier wouldn’t even turn up.

“I’ll be outside yours. Just come down when you’re ready,” he replied, graciously.

“Such a gentleman.”

Damon scanned the street one last time, feeling eyes burning in his direction as he pulled out. He checked his watch as the call ended. Ten minutes. There was enough time to pick up flowers for Havannah - a gesture she would surely appreciate. 

At the junction, he took a left, aiming for the florist in town. In his mind, the petrol station bouquet on Kristi’s grave had already started to wilt. Better to save the best for the living, he thought.

***

Outside, bleakness clamoured at Claire’s window, though she paid it no mind. Alone in her bedroom with the curtains drawn tight, she could bask in the imagined warmth of her faded pink walls, wrapped tightly in an old duvet from childhood. 

The room had remained largely untouched for some weeks now, the bed unmade yet also barely slept in. The air was thick and pungent, choked by dust and stained by the mounting pile of unwashed clothes. Although she had largely avoided her room at nighttime, the upstairs too empty and full of shadows for her to venture alone, in the handful of days since receiving her sister’s phone, there was nowhere else on Earth that Claire had wanted to retreat to more. 

Even after a stretch of finding comfort sleeping on the sofa with the sound of the shopping channel to lull her to sleep, she was welcomed back to her bedroom, still a sanctuary, built from comforting memories and familiar smells.

Somewhere downstairs, Rahim’s recognisable knocking had come and gone multiple times. His calls had been ignored, Claire’s own phone buzzing desperately from the floor while she kept her sister’s plugged in, staring at it in determined contemplation. 

In truth, Claire was tangled in theories and questions, their thorns catching on her limbs every time she tried to leave the bed or think about crawling downstairs to find something to eat. Could there be an explanation for Envy’s recent avoidance hidden in the voicemail she had left? How deep was Damon’s relationship with her sister, and how had it gone so unnoticed for so long? And, of course, did Damon start the fire? The fire that had distracted the sisters, had fuelled their own confrontation, had boiled their senses and burned away any patience? They might never have clashed, might never have ended up in the sea, might never have scrambled between them if the fire had never broken out. 

This is all Damon’s fault. It was decided with ease, and accepted without question.

As she had come to realise about herself, however, the peaks of Claire’s fury faded so very quickly when the truth was remembered. Besides, the idea of accusing Damon felt dangerous - specifically because he felt dangerous. The memory of Damon so viciously snarling at her even when they discovered her sister’s lies made Claire’s fists clench in phantom retaliation. Then again, unlike the usual rise in her anger, this time she had proof that someone else bore responsibility. And hadn’t she already proven that her rage could be extensive - could sweep him away if she liked? That’s what happened to her sister, after all.

And then there was the other reason Claire was taking refuge under her duvet, patterned with flowers and the pixies that danced among them – the real reason she didn’t want to venture downstairs: a letter. 

It was typed on the crispest paper, straight from the desk of a solicitor whose name she had no idea of, signed and dated and as official as it could possibly be. For months, Claire had dodged the calls and the letters, refused to answer the door to a man she could now presume to be one of the firm’s namesakes, and buried any questions that occasionally surfaced, asking after the state of the house’s ownership. In her childlike imaginings of independence, Claire had supposed that, in the wake of her sister’s death, ownership of the house - the home she had lived in her entire life - would surely go to her. But as this fresh letter confirmed, her dad was the legal owner and had always been such. It seemed like a sick joke, really. The man who had walked out of their family home now had possession of it. Ready to wretch with rage, she had called her dad to demand an explanation, though had quickly fallen apart upon hearing his voice, quietened by his insistence that she was acting like a child. Outburst abated, Claire could only sit in silent dread as her dad delivered the news. He was selling the house.

“You can come and stay with me and Jan for a while, I suppose. Just until you find a place of your own.” 

Paul Hallett delivered the offer with little care or consideration, making no effort to hide the burden in his voice. His only surviving daughter burst into tears, pleading for some alternative, but he could not be moved.

“I can’t justify the expense, Claire. Not with the baby on the way.”

Whether Paul had meant to share this information with such cold nonchalance, it couldn’t be said. But it landed in Claire’s heart with a sharp, determined stab. He was, in Claire’s mind, trying to unbalance her to win the argument. She searched for a memory of being told, but found nothing; there was no existing pang of jealousy or the feeling of a bruise where her heart might have been crushed had she been informed of a new half-sibling. 

So Claire reacted the only way she knew how: an explosion of expletives and the launching of her phone across the room. She hadn’t looked at it since.

Instead, she stayed scrolling through her sister’s phone, browsing the photos and re-reading all the messages over and over again, squeezing out the last of the sadness from her heart.

A little voice spoke up as Claire once again lingered on Damon’s messages, fretting over her sister’s wellbeing. I wish someone would look after me, it said. The way Damon looked after her.

Rahim’s knocking had ceased now. Claire was all alone once again. But she didn’t have to be, the little voice reasoned. Maybe, with the right motivation, Damon could extend the same courtesy to her as he had done to her sister. Maybe it was time to make a play, before she lost everything.

For the first time in so very long, Claire felt herself stirring with some faint sense of determination. She rose from beneath the duvet, scrambled around for some suitable clothes, and started to rehearse exactly what she would say. 

And, the little voice reassured her, by the end of the day - if she played her cards right - life might just get a little easier.

***

Nestled between rolling hills some fifteen miles from the pier, Chapel Newsom was a reminder that the world didn't end at the shore. Here, where the air was free of salt and the rumbling of unsettled waves were out of earshot, winter had seemingly failed to settle. On the approach, the barren wastes of the hilltops were left behind, the landscape tipping into a palette of colours. The trees that had survived winter shone a vibrant green, and even those less fortunate and bare were still saturated with a healthy hue, promising a resurgence when the weather was warm enough. Along the edge of the road, buried surreptitiously in the grass verges and among a bed of leaves – gold and brown and some even a lively yellow – were the first snowdrops of the year.

From the other side of the car window, Havannah made a game of counting each sign of spring’s approach. She counted thirteen snowdrops and was sure there’d even been a patch of daffodil shoots, though that didn’t seem possible.

Counting the flowers had been a welcome distraction from the car sickness, though the appearance of a sign welcoming them to Chapel Newsom loosened her from the game. Back to business, she supposed.

With a stifled reluctance, Havannah glanced once again at the manila folder open on her lap. Papers, aligned and stapled with fastidious attention, went half-read. With this, she was expected to form an opinion of Olivier – a challenge to herself more than a reassurance for Damon. But the words were dull and flat, and had started to blur on the page even before the churning in her stomach began. 

Damon had been uncharacteristically quiet the entire car ride over. In the back seat, a bouquet of bright posies lay slumped atop his black coat. Their presence, silent and vibrant, was nevertheless loud and uncomfortable in the gloomy quiet. Havannah had caught sight of them when she pulled the seat belt tight across her body, but said nothing. It wasn't that she supposed they were for her. If that was the case, any awkwardness could have been defused with a joke or some gentle ribbing. No, her avoidance was because she hoped they weren't for her.

Instead of handing her the flowers, Damon had handed her the folder. He had backed out at the last moment, his hand lingering as he tried to make a decision; suddenly, the idea of the flowers made him feel small and weak. Maybe he would go back to the graveyard and swap out the cheap petrol station stems left on Kristi’s grave earlier that morning. Then again, what if somebody saw? Even the dead had the power to make Damon question himself.

When Damon did finally speak, it was as they parked up. He clicked his seat belt free and sighed an empty right, we’re here to fill the empty air between them. Havannah smiled weakly, a little nervous. 

“It'll be fine,” Damon stated. Seeing that his words had done nothing to reassure the young woman beside him, Damon tried again. “He's probably more nervous than we are. Remember, we have what he wants.”

“Well…” Havannah started, ready to correct Damon. She had what Olivier wanted; the pier belonged to her alone. Catching a flicker in Damon’s face, Havannah swept her eyes to the car door as she opened it and stepped outside. Looking back, she smiled and continued, “We should get going then. Let's not keep Monsieur Boutain waiting.”

The door swung shut firmly without being aggressive, and Damon allowed himself a guilty glance at the flowers. He smiled to himself. Maybe she’d earn them after all.

The Rookery had lived a dozen lives before taking on its most recent role as a restaurant. At its inception, it had been a school house for the children of Newsom Chapel. Eventually, it could no longer accommodate the burgeoning population, and as more modern schools rose, The Rookery fell into disrepair, an empty shell pointed at by the last adults to learn there, telling their children of a history that bore no relevance to them.

As is the way with such things, The Rookery was given new life after decades of abandonment; a turn of modern thinking saw the old school house gutted – save for the exterior stone walls and its old slanted roof – and reimagined as a chain pub.

Now, several owners later, it was – in Damon’s disdainful words – a self-proclaimed ‘contemporary dining experience’ lingering on the outskirts of the town. A visitor to Chapel Newsom could quite easily pass the squat little building by, slipping back into the countryside without another thought, given how well hidden it was among its green surroundings.

Inside was just as unremarkable, the walls repainted once again, this time with the same bland shade of sage that Havannah had seen in a dozen other places. With so little of the history remaining, it was no longer somewhere special; nobody who had studied at the old school was alive anymore, and much nicer, more modern places to eat had risen to compete.

Upon entering The Rookery, Havannah was taken aback by how startlingly quiet it was, even for a Tuesday lunchtime. Spotting his guests, a young man rose with haste from his chair, waving them over as if he had been waiting his whole life to see them. He stood alone in a sea of empty chairs, a glass of water held close to his body. The waves crashing against the sides were a clear measurement of his enthusiasm for company in this lonely place.

Although there was no doubt that they were the same person, the Olivier Boutain beckoning them over was very different to the person portrayed in black and white on the pages Havannah had studied – even more so compared to the image she had constructed in her imagination. There were many things that stood out to her: Olivier was taller than she had expected, more cheerful, and beautiful too. Handsome would have been a fair word to use, she reasoned, but the angle of his jaw, and the sweeping of his blond hair along a sharp side parting, and the way the circular glasses perched on his slender nose drew attention to eyes that beamed with life…well, it all felt beautiful. What’s more, she could tell Olivier was a romantic, just by the way he was dressed and the warmth with which he greeted them. A thin, off-white shirt was tucked haphazardly into his burnt brown chinos. His sleeves were rolled up, gathering in the crook of his arm, while the hems of both trouser legs had also been folded and rolled twice, surrendering a glimpse of his ankles. On the flesh exposed by the three open shirt buttons, Havannah could spy the creeping hint of a tattoo. 

There was so much about Olivier to mesmerise her, so many details – almost as if nobody else in the world had so many intricacies about them. In another life, he was a poet, Havannah was sure of it. He could so easily have been transplanted into the past exactly as he was now, where Olivier would spend his days committing his soul to the page from a sun-soaked desk.

As Damon led their approach, weaving between empty tables, Havannah murmured through her gritted teeth, hoping her words would reach his ear – and no further. 

“You didn’t say he looked like a model.”

“It’s not something I tend to notice in other men,” Damon replied, flatly.

Upon reaching the table, Damon’s entire demeanour changed. He threw his arms almost as wide as his smile, faint crows feet clawing at the side of his eyes as the two men embraced and patted one another’s backs in a display of bonhomie that made Damon seem like even more of a mystery to Havannah.

She caught her single raised eyebrow and brought it downwards in time for Olivier to turn his attention her way. Although a handshake was offered, Olivier instead pulled Havannah close and proceeded to plant kisses on either cheek. Taken aback by this gesture, her hands found their way to his elbows, readying herself to move him away should more kisses follow. The Frenchman relented at two - one either side - however, and so Havannah let go, allowing him to pull out her seat before settling in. As she had learnt to her chagrin, it was often easier to let boys pretend to be gentlemen, if only to show a willingness to play along with the charade.

Without a word, a waitress appeared as if from the ether, bringing with her a bucket of ice which she placed in the centre of the table. In front of Olivier, she placed a fresh glass, before plucking a bottle of white from its cosy resting place inside the bucket and uncorking it. Havannah expected the usual ritual that she had seen her dad partake in so many times - a splash of the bottle’s contents, a chance to examine the nose and flavour, and then an agreement that it was OK to pour a little for each of them - however the waitress simply went ahead and half filled each of their wine glasses, replacing the bottle in the bucket when she was done.

“It’s a good wine,” Olivier said, noticing Havannah’s thoughts. 

“You’ve had it before?” she asked, raising the glass and letting the wine roll around its edges.

“Yes, it’s good,” he replied, quickly. 

He offered no further information, though the light sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead gave enough away to anybody paying attention.

But Havannah was more focused on the wine now. As she sipped, the warmth and the tartness stung as it rolled down to her stomach. A welcome heat flushed beneath the skin, the chains loosening. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so uncomfortable after all.

Much like the decor and the service, The Rookery’s food was also unremarkable, and Havannah found herself bored as she nudged the last of the unseasoned chicken around her plate. Thanks to Olivier’s persistence, her wine glass had yet to fully empty, and a second bottle had been ordered before Damon had finished even one glass. There was some relief, at least, in his insistence that he was driving – a decision which Olivier seemed to respect.

The conversation had also failed to stimulate Havannah, with the men chatting among themselves about old times and Olivier’s father. She tried to participate, tuning in and out, but stumbled over some of Olivier’s words, a little slurred by wine and the oscillating depth of his French accent. The pier had yet to come up, and the sub-par food barely made the afternoon excursion worth her time. Only the wine held any interest to Havannah’s senses, and Olivier had drunk the most out of all of them.

Desperate for something to do, Havannah took the chance to let her eyes wander across the view of empty tables and the small glass vases of dried flowers sitting atop each one. A vague memory stirred, slowly becoming a clear recollection in her mind’s eye. Once, when The Rookery’s walls were a deep maroon, and the food was even less sophisticated, and the dried flowers were instead small tea lights in rounded jars made of textured glass, she and her parents had eaten here. 

It had been during a rainy weekend, a diversion after a cinema trip; like many of its diners even then, they hadn’t intended to eat at The Rookery. But they were hungry and passing by, and the mood had been soured by a downpour that blurred all the lights in the car windows. The restaurant had seemed quiet then, too, though with the expectation that the situation would change once the weather changed. 

If Havannah let her eyes fall out of focus just enough, she could see the candlelight and smell the cheap air freshener and hear the rain on the roof. A shiver danced on her skin at the thought of stormy weather outside, fading as she blinked and cleared her vision of the past. 

Back in the present, she looked upon a landscape vastly different to the one she remembered, even if its bones – the stone walls outside, the timber beams overhead, the diamond-shaped window panes around the edges – were the same. The thin carpet, soiled from years of messy eaters and muddy boots, had been pulled up and replaced with varnished wood, while the sticky bar top had been replaced with fresh, newly-varnished wood to complement the dull sage paint job. Somehow, it was even colder than the day they’d run through the rain just to get inside.

Checking that neither of her companions had noticed her non-presence in the conversation, Havannah turned a little in her chair, seeking out the staircase that had once led up to the toilets. Was there still a scuff mark left behind by her tripping on the top step? Her shoes had been wet and heavy, and she’d misjudged her stride. As clear as day, the memory played out for Havannah. Hearing a sudden thump, her mum had let her cutlery clatter onto the plate in a race to comfort her daughter while the few diners present momentarily let their conversations dim.

Wrapped in her mother’s arms, Havannah had felt comforted. Callie Shaw’s hand rubbed the mark on her daughter’s knee, soothing the site where bone had connected to the stiff carpet. More than anything, Havannah had been embarrassed, holding back tears in the hopes of becoming invisible. Only a lone diner had looked briefly, a reaction to the sudden noise, but he had quickly turned his attention back to the plate of oven chips in front of him. Everybody had already returned to their conversation.

In the present – on a grey Tuesday in January – the pained throbbing in Havannah’s knee was instead a weight taking hold in her chest. A question posed itself: if there really were ghosts wandering their once-beloved corners of the world, would this place hold a piece of her mother? At the idea of Callie’s bright smile and her favourite floral perfume being stuck in such drab surroundings, Havannah felt herself becoming unsettled. She took another sip of the wine. The glass was almost empty again.

Without a word – his eyes still focused on Damon, nodding along to his anecdotes – Olivier reached for the centre of the table. Expecting the offer of another refill, Havannah hovered her palm over the rim of the glass. But he wasn’t offering wine. Olivier instead plucked a napkin from the wooden holder and handed it to her. Only with his bright, beautiful features blurring in front of her did Havannah realise that there were tears in her eyes. She took the napkin and Olivier seemingly noticed her for the first time, winking with his right eye.

Noticing of the silent scene playing out across from him, Damon cut his anecdote short with the clearing of his throat. He excused himself before leaving the table, squeezing Havannah’s shoulder for the briefest of moments, before vanishing into the restaurant. The gesture, though quick, flooded Havannah with a multitude of imagined meanings. Was his departure calculated so that talk might finally turn to the pier? Or was he simply being kind, spotting an emotion rising in her? Regardless, there was the more pressing concern of her tears to address. 

Taking great care not to smudge the black eyeliner, underscored with a hint of gold, she blotted the tears away. The napkin was taken, folded, to her lap where she could arrange and rearrange the edges over and over again. 

“Sorry.” A smile was offered with the apology. Olivier’s face turned sympathetic, his glowing smile dimming to a polite pursing of lips, eyebrows arching upwards. A hand reached out to rest on the white tablecloth, though Havannah didn’t take it; she was too busy folding the napkin, the same folds forming the same square over and over again. In an attempt to save face, Olivier lay his palm flat against the polyester. Instead, it looked as though his hand had been gunned down on that very spot, fingers outstretched uselessly.

“Don’t be sorry. They’re just feelings,” he said.

“Thanks.” The kind words just made the tears worse. 

“Do you miss your papa?” His words were clumsy, and when Havannah dropped her head to hide the tide rising to her eyes, he shuffled his chair closer and placed an arm around her.

“Shh, shh, it’s OK,” he said, stroking Havannah’s back as he spoke. It was a strange consolation, and the smell of wine was heavy on his breath. But she was too swept up in the emotion of being asked a question that nobody had thought to put to her. Yes, she wanted to say - she wanted to scream – yes, I do miss him and I’ll keep missing him forever. 

Instead, the same automatic insistence came from her lips, a quiet, “I’m fine.” 

Despite her discomfort at his proximity, Havannah found herself hanging onto the lingering scent of Olivier’s after shave, woody and sweet and soothing all at once. As Olivier withdrew his arm, Havannah peered at the patch of skin where the tip of the tattoo had snuck its way across his chest. It was like a curled finger, beckoning her to look more closely. Luckily, nerves trumped curiosity, and Havannah refrained from asking to see the tattoo in its entirety –  even though it was certainly on her mind.

“Everything OK?” asked a breathless Damon upon his return to the table. 

Havannah read his expression as worry, but it was a thin veil draped over something more immediate and concerning.

“I’m fine,” she smiled, weakly. Olivier had shuffled his chair back to its original spot by now, clearing his glass of the last dregs of wine.

“Shall we get another bottle?” he suggested, the slurring smearing his words and accent together. It took Damon a moment to catch up to the question, at which point Havannah noticed he hadn’t yet taken his seat.

“I’d love to, but something’s come up and I need to get back. I’ve settled our bill already.”

“You shouldn’t have!” Olivier declared in playful outrage. “I wanted to pay! And we didn’t talk business.”

“Next time?” Damon offered with a smile, hurrying Havannah with a quick glance and a raise of his eyebrows.

“I hope we can have more conversations,” Olivier said, rising from his seat to join them. 

Suddenly rushed, Havannah followed suit. The men exchange a fierce, rushed handshake, Damon making it clear he was keen not to linger. He left Havannah to say her goodbyes, marching on ahead in the direction of the door. 

“Wow, it must be serious. He turned down wine,” Olivier joked.

“Yeah, sorry about that. And thanks for, y’know,” Havannah said, pointing her finger in the general direction of her tear-filled eyes. She sniffed and smiled, hoping not to need any further words.

Drinking in one last view of the young Frenchman, Havannah saw how Olivier’s bright eyes had become bloodshot and sunken by the booze-filled lunch. She chose to remember them as they had been on her arrival instead.

“Not at all. I hope you feel better. And let’s talk business properly very soon, yes?”

Before Havannah could offer to shake his hand, Olivier half-turned away to grab something from the blazer draped over the back of his chair. He returned to their conversation with a business card between his index and middle fingers. “Here. Damon has made the introduction, so we can talk together now. Just us.”

Another flash of a smile preceded two kisses on the cheek, and Havannah took the opportunity to inhale Olivier’s scent one last time before they parted.

“I’d better go or he’ll leave without me,” she said, glancing over at the door to make a point. 

“He’s a strange man,” Olivier commented. 

The furrow of his brow and the persistence of his smile reminded Havannah of cloudy days when the sun still inexplicably managed to pour through. She liked those days – found them to be a reassuring reminder that things were never all bad. Olivier leaned closer and lowered his voice. 

“Take care of yourself, Havannah.”

“Thank you,” she replied, letting her eyes wander just once more down to the bare skin and the curl of the tattoo.

“No,” Olivier continued, suddenly more serious. “Really, I mean it. Take care of yourself.”

“I…I will,” Havannah promised, trying to disguise her discomfort despite taking a step back from Olivier. 

Before turning away from Olivier, she saw the sunlight vanish from his sky, a face overwhelmed by the clouds. And so, Havannah didn’t look back as she wove between the tables – fearful not of the ghosts that might be haunting the memories of this place, but instead of the ominous words that decorated the present she had found herself in.

***

Damon said nothing as they pulled away from the restaurant, nor as they wound their way through Newsom Chapel. Eventually, the Welcome sign disappeared behind them, and Havannah felt completely alone among the hills and her silent business partner. 

“Damon?” she asked, not expecting much comfort from the question.

“Huh? Sorry?”

Each blink of his eyelids was heavy and convincing; the yawn was just for show, hoping to satisfy Havannah’s curiosity without having to confess that he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. The noisy rushing of thoughts demanded his attention instead.

“Is everything OK?”

The question brought with it a great stretch of hesitation, during which Damon could feel his chest contracting, squeezing both the breath in his lungs and the length of this singular moment. Usually, he enjoyed these stretches, letting people contemplate what he would do next; on this occasion, the pause was involuntary and natural. 

Without taking his eyes off the road, Damon deftly swapped which hand steered, while the other grabbed the phone from its cradle. Knowing that Havannah would express her unease if he took his eyes from the road for too long, he used quick glances at the screen to thumb his way from the GPS to his messages. He fumbled a few times, moving the map or opening the wrong app, but at the approach of a clear stretch of road, he corrected his hand movements and opened the message that had robbed him of an appetite. It had sunk to the base of his stomach like a stone, dragging his mood down to match its depths. Showing Havannah - who had been watching his every movement with a respectful, patient confusion - would surely loosen said stone from where it was lodged and help him to breathe again. But it would also expose too much of himself - of what he considered to be the real Damon - which could only lead to vulnerability on his part.

The hand holding the phone rested on his thigh as Damon contemplated what to do. There was every chance, of course, that this could work in his favour. It was extending trust, which might be what he needed to keep Havannah close. He could faintly smell the aroma of flowers still resting on the back seat.

“I got this in the restaurant. Someone sent it to me.”

Damon held out the phone for Havannah to take. For a moment, his hand hovered over the gearstick as Havannah seemed to be weighing up her response. There’s still time to take it back, he thought, ready to retract the offer. But before he could, Havannah took it, carefully avoiding touching the screen.

She read. Then, she furrowed her brow and read it again. Then, Havannah asked the only question she could think to ask.

“What is this, Damon?”

“I don’t know.”

“It says it’s from Kristi.”

“I know.”

Behind their words, the car strained. Damon knocked it up a gear, and the sound eased into a dull roar.

“But she’s…” Havannah paused then looked at Damon, her brow knotted in confusion.

“I know,” he reiterated, firmly – quietly.

It was only then that Damon’s eyes moved to the rear-view mirror, a sharp movement that only lasted a fraction of a second. Then he repeated it, holding the gaze this time, even narrowing his eyes.

“Are you joking?” he muttered.

“What is it?”

Without a word, Damon increased pressure on the accelerator, switching up gears as they reached the heart of the upcoming bend. The momentum carried them out of its cradle, but not fast enough. He pressed the accelerator down to the footwell, upping the gear once again. He had meant to tell Havannah to hold on or to reassure her before he acted, but the adrenaline coursing through his body had constricted his throat and instinct had taken over. At the sudden acceleration, Havannah let out a yelp and dropped the phone into the footwell. The screen locked as it slid beneath her seat, camouflaging itself in the shadow. 

“Shit, I’ve dropped it. Can you slow down a bit please?” Havannah clamped her hand around the mid-length of her braids, holding them to one side as she leaned forward in her seat. The empty hand stretched as far as it could beneath her, fingers patting their surroundings for any sign of the dropped device. No luck.

Defeated, Havannah sat up, though her left hand remained holding onto her braids.

“Damon, what are you doing?” she asked, taking in the stern expression on his face. An hour earlier, it had been a mask of smiles and pleasantries; now it was furious and perhaps a little fearful, melting snow revealing the rocky terrain underneath.

“Why are you going so fast? It’s dangerous!” she yelled over the sound of the engine desperately trying to keep up with its driver.

Tracing the trajectory of his eyes as they shifted back to the mirror, Havannah pulled her seatbelt loose and strained to turn so she could see through the rear windscreen. Trailing behind them, just far enough back to almost be inconspicuous, was a small car - deep blue, splattered in dried mud and still managing to maintain a steady distance despite Damon’s speed. 

“Who is that..?” It was a demand for information, rather than a question, Havannah’s voice rising and wavering as she spoke.

“I don’t know,” Damon snapped. “But they’ve been following us since we left.”

“Maybe they’re from our way?” Havannah suggested, sitting back in her seat – all the better to grip the grab handle above the door. 

“Maybe.” Damon hesitated again – was ready to hold the secret in – but it slipped out between the distraction of rushing wind and bumpy, unkempt roads. “I saw the same car earlier. Twice, I think.”

“OK, but can we slow down a bit please?”

Despite Havannah’s plea, her real fear wasn’t the speed at which they were hurtling down narrow country roads, nor the sinister way tree branches and bare hedgerows scraped and scrambled at them as they passed. It was seeing Damon unnerved – truly, properly afraid – that really prompted Havannah’s pulse to quicken and turned her breathing shallow.

“Can you see the make?” Damon barked, suddenly.

“What?”

“The car make! Can you tell what it is?” He snapped with such force that Havannah jolted in surprise. She turned away from him, gathering herself before making an attempt to identify the car through the wing mirror.

“I’m not sure,” she said, swallowing a shuddering breath as they passed over a brutal pothole. 

“Just look for the fucking badge!”

“I’m not good with cars, Damon!”

Another stretch of road opened up ahead of them, empty of cars and surrounded on both sides by trees and hills. They had dipped between the rolling landscape now, far from prying eyes and speed cameras. Still, Damon surveyed his surroundings just in case before slamming on the brakes. Havannah let out a yelp, tightening her grasp on the handle in a panic. Like a puppet swinging by one arm, she was thrown forward before slamming back into the seat as Damon quickly moved into reverse.

“Damon, what are you doing?!” Havannah yelled in protest as their car rapidly sped towards their pursuer. 

Mercifully, Damon’s deranged gambit paid off; at the sight of their prey charging backwards towards them, the driver of the blue car screeched to a halt.

“What about now?” 

Without realising, Havannah had let go of the handle, covering her head with both hands instead, hoping to shield herself from the anticipated collision. 

“Havannah!” Damon shouted. “What about now?!” 

Shaking, she lowered her hands. This time, rather than relying on her eyes, Havannah pulled out her phone and took a picture in the wing mirror. It was blurred by a tremble, so she took another one. The manufacturer’s badge was just about visible.

“A F…Fiat something, I…I can’t make it out.” 

“Good enough,” Damon said, slamming the brakes on before the two cars could collide. 

Both drivers reached a momentary stalemate. Determined to maintain the advantage, Damon took off once again, forcing the car through gears as he accelerated forward. Their pursuer, meanwhile, stalled; they left the blue car behind, the driver still reeling from what could have been.

“You’re scaring me, Damon.” Havannah’s words came as a confession, and as a prelude to the tears swelling in her eyes. “Please slow down.”

“When we’ve lost him. It’s the same car,” Damon announced, slapping the steering wheel in a confusing display of both triumph and disbelief. “It’s the same fucking car!”

“W-what car?”

“The arcade, the church, and now here. I knew it.” He let out a manic ha! It did nothing to reassure Havannah of her safety.

“What are you talking about? Damon!”

At the stern, insistent use of his name, Damon finally acknowledged Havannah. She looked smaller, shrunken into her seat in terror, the tears glistening. He almost eased off the accelerator – anything to calm her down – but instead saw a different opportunity.

“Hold on,” he ordered, lowering their speed as he scoured their surroundings for the turning he knew was nearby.

“Please be careful,” Havannah begged, holding onto her seat belt now, comfort found in the way it wrapped tightly around her body.

“Just trust me,” he said through gritted teeth, his focus entirely on the search. 

Somewhere up here…it’s somewhere up here…there! This time, Damon reached a protective arm across Havannah as he hit the brakes, holding it there until he needed to move down gears. With the braking, there was enough purchase to swing the car down a narrow road obscured by hardy bushes – a little-known shortcut too dangerous for two-way traffic, and so disregarded by local motorists.

In the summer, the touch of the overgrown foliage was softened by leaves, but in winter the bushes were scant and the tree branches were sharp, brittle claws scratching to get inside and snapping at the slightest contact with the car. Regardless, they were still hemmed in on all sides, leaving no room for a second car to follow.

Up ahead, the road vanished into a blind bend; even the winter sparseness of the surrounding greenery wouldn’t allow Havannah to establish a view of where the bend led. She tensed up, bracing for a collision. In her imagination, an unwitting car would meet them head-on at speed, Damon’s recklessness killing them all in one fatal hit. Her eyelids closed tightly at the thought; if this was the end, she didn’t want to watch its approach.

They made the bend without incident, bursting free of the cluster of trees and bushes, finding themselves once again surrounded by fields instead. Damon exhaled.

Had she not been blinded by panic, Havannah might have recognised the backroads snaking their way through the countryside outside Clayham-on-Sea. As it happens, she didn’t; Damon’s sudden dangerous manoeuvre could have involved reversing up any of a dozen narrow tracks, defined by nothing more than the tracks left by years of vehicles weighing down upon the dirt.

Here, just out of sight of the main road, Damon stopped the car. Already, the afternoon was growing dim; hopefully, he thought, that would work in their favour.

Venturing from her panic, Havannah examined their surroundings. From doing so, she remembered this road from another time – another life. She knew that if they had followed the path onwards, beneath the trees and along the twists and turns, they would have reached a car park marked out in the gravel by wooden posts. From there, it was a short trek to the hilltop where, a summer and a lifetime ago, Havannah had desperately met with Ronan. It had felt like they were standing on the edge of the world together, surrounded on all sides and doomed. But still, he had looked beautiful to her, and in his beauty – in the way the sunlight had caught his hair in a promising glow – there had been hope.

Havannah blinked and fear recoloured the scenery. The golden light was gone, replaced by grey skies, trees both dead and dying, a blue car and Damon’s wrath. 

They waited in silence for the pursuer to pass them by. The thundering of their heartbeats was deafening in their own ears, each privately fearful and unwilling to say so aloud. In the air, a panicked pant overtook Damon as he seized control of his breathing. Sure enough, the blue car traipsed past at a leisurely pace, exposing the driver’s face to a watchful Damon.

Recognising their opportunity – as well as the difficulties their pursuer would have if he were to try and suddenly turn on the narrow country road – Damon pulled out of their hiding spot and returned back the way they came. This time, the trees kept their claws to themselves. 

Upon emerging back onto the main road, Havannah’s heart was still pumping faster than she could count. It didn’t slow even as Damon gently manoeuvred the car towards another familiar location at a more restrained speed.

“Nobody’s here. He won’t think to check,” Damon explained, his voice hoarse from where fear had gripped him. As he spoke, Havannah raised her gaze from where it was fixed on the bottom of the windscreen to see where they were. The campsite, quiet and abandoned in winter. A sudden, hopeful pang rose in her stomach nonetheless. Maybe, she thought – she pleaded with the universe – maybe Ronan’s here. She could wander over to a caravan – any caravan – and he would answer if she knocked.

But there was another possibility that choked the hope inside.Had Damon brought them here on purpose? Either to reassure her or – more likely – to be cruel? 

“We’ll give it a few minutes and head back,” Damon added. He switched the engine off just outside the chained metal gate that kept visitors away from the field and the caravans that lived where they stood. “Are you OK?”

The words felt like an attempt at humour, a sick joke in the face of the caravan park’s locked gate and in the wake of the chase. Neither nostalgia nor panic could soften Havannah's resolve. He could have killed them both, and then to bring them both here, where Ronan felt momentarily close by, was the wound that went too far. Havannah rounded on Damon, her voice trembling as she unbuckled her seatbelt to confront him. At first, he thought she was about to storm from the car – she caught it in his eyes and the way a hand moved to negotiate for her to stay. Havannah cut through the gestures. There was no intention of leaving just yet.

“What the hell was that about?”

“I don’t know,” Damon sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose. He might have been telling the truth to some degree, but it was rare for a man who wore his arrogance like armour to admit himself vulnerable.

“What have you done?”

“Nothing!” he snapped. 

Havannah drew herself back, a child scolded. The furious resolve withdrew as quickly as it had risen. The sight of Havannah recoiling returned Damon to his senses. He settled back into his mind, reminding himself of the mask that needed to be worn at all times. It was starting to suffocate him, but there was no choice; too much relied on her trust in him. And so, the mask went back on, covering the unpleasant surface – the truth of Damon Fox – that lingered beneath.

“Sorry. Fuck, sorry, Havannah. I don’t know who it is – honestly. But I’ll find out.”

Having her answer, Havannah gave a slow nod. She waited for him to try to reach out before turning away and opening the door.

“Wait. Havannah, come on. It's too far for you to walk back from here.”

She paused, the door held open a fraction, a metal barrier between them. Confronted with the metal gate, Havannah felt a pull. On the other side was summer and ignorance, and on this side was the cold and the dark. Overhead, daylight strained through the trees, deepening the chill that accompanied the breeze sweeping towards the campsite. Was it trying to carry her there? Havannah shivered. If she closed her eyes and waited, maybe it would be summer again and Ronan would be back. She obeyed the compulsion and felt the sweet warmth of his hands over her face. The teasing breeze dressed itself as a voice, carrying the illusion that Ronan was nearby to ears that longed to hear such a thing. Hey there, sunshine. 

But he wasn’t there. When she opened her eyes, all Havannah saw was the gate, the bleak trappings of winter, and – sitting patiently behind the wheel – Damon. He could've driven off during the daydream, but he hadn't.

Swallowing any ire at the sight of someone waiting for her, Havannah rejoined Damon in the car. At least the warmth was something to be thankful for.

“I’ll drop you back home,” Damon croaked. The cold air had tried to hollow out the car, but had only succeeded in drying his throat. 

Havannah pulled her seatbelt into the holster and leaned her head against the window. She said nothing else – there was nothing else to say – as they pulled away from the campsite and turned back to Clayham-on-Sea. Instead, Havannah simply watched breath catching on glass, blooming and then fading before her very eyes. Some breaths lasted longer than others, spread further, left more of an impression. If there was any reassurance in this, Havannah could not find it.

***

The cold had seized Claire’s bones long before she reached the seafront. Although she’d made an attempt for the bus, waiting patiently for the 15A to arrive, upon counting the scant change in her pocket, walking had become the only option. 

Even with the movement and the thick coat enveloping her sickly frame, Claire’s body seemingly refused to generate enough heat to fend off the icy winds rolling their way in from the coast. It wasn’t so bad during the walk through town, where shops sheltered winding streets, but the sun had already started to dip low in the sky. Burnt orange seethed through the cotton-like clouds, and the air grew colder without the sun’s embrace. It would be dark before she reached the shoreline, and in the meantime, the icy shadows could fill all the corners where the wind could not reach. 

Eventually, Claire reached the top of the road that curved downward and around towards the seafront. As a child, she had imagined the sweep and the incline of the tarmac as forming a slide for a giant; as an adult, it was merely another obstacle to struggle through. At its base, the 15A bus – having made one-and-a-half circuits of the town by now – passed her by, and Claire let a little growl catch behind her teeth.

Even so, she continued onwards, at the mercy of the wind, which whipped away the skyward congestion to reveal the last of the sunset’s amber tinge. Any sweat that had collected on her forehead or neck became sharp icicles at the touch of each gust. Meanwhile, inside the coat, some semblance of warmth had finally formed, but it was already growing uncomfortable and sticky. Relief meant allowing it to escape, however, and so Claire focused on the pinching ache of her nose and ears.

The thought made her think of Envy. Her best friend would surely enjoy this weather; autumn and winter were always her seasons. I wonder what she’s doing now, Claire mused. The thought rattled around emptily. There was no attempt at an imagined answer. 

On Claire’s right, the souvenir shop where Envy had spent three summers working was shuttered and dead. Envy hated the summer – hated being hot and clammy and uncomfortable. She described it once as feeling trapped and choking. Claire had rolled her eyes and poured another drink, but maybe she could understand what Envy had meant.

A little further along the shoreline, Foxy’s stood quiet. It was too early for the drinkers, though there was a faint light straining out of the upstairs window.

Over the road, Claire was staring with frozen intent; she was too numb to remember what had pulled her to this place. And yet, it was the nearest sanctuary from the bitter evening. Out of kindness, the streetlamps began to switch on as the last of the sky’s pale blue deepened into navy. The illuminations started at the point farthest from where Claire was standing and, one by one, came to life – a phenomenon without any other witnesses but her and the sea. When it was the fifth streetlamp’s turn, it flickered and flashed, casting a spotlight on Claire. There was only the illusion of warmth in its pale orange glow. A quiet buzz whispered secrets and warnings, but Claire couldn’t understand.

Regardless, this felt like a sign – a clear indication that the universe was throwing its support behind her mission. The sea was quiet and distant, and Claire remembered why she had traipsed down to the shore in the first place.

From the safety of the spotlight, Claire let her eyes gravitate towards the pier’s silhouette. Playing the voicemail from her sister’s phone one last time, she dared the tide to come rushing in and overtake her. If it came when welcomed, then it would be a divine signal to turn back. The wind quietened to listen to Damon’s words said aloud. All the while, Claire maintained focus on the pier, remembering the way the flames poured into the sky and the sound of her sister’s head striking the ornate metal railing.

Nothing happened. There was no rushing tide, no imaginary waves filling her lungs. Claire’s convictions were upheld by the universe, it seemed. Surveying the pier’s blackened, decaying remains she listened to Damon’s admission one more time to ground herself. 

It was his fault. I lost my sister because of him. It was all his fault. 

Claire glanced up at the window of Damon’s office, a dull light struggling to stay afloat above the door to Foxy’s. Checking the road out of habit alone – there were no cars to watch out for – she began making her way across to the club. 

And behind her, out of sight and unheard, the lamp’s buzzing faded. The spotlight it had cast waned and went out, darkening the path Claire had walked to reach this place.

***

Home was no longer the two bedroom flat Havannah had shared with her dad. Those familiar four walls now contained only boxes stacked high, around which memories played out. It had become too full of ghosts to stay, and so Havannah had relocated herself closer to the seafront. From the vast windows of the third floor property, it was possible to take in a view of the entire sea. The thought of seeing such a sight in summer was what convinced Havannah to sign the lease, though first she would need to wade through the depths of winter; first, she would have to overcome the appearance of her reflection, staring back at her. There she was, dressed in an oversized t-shirt from a concert she, Envy, and Claire had been to when they were far too young to go. Her braids were split, some falling over one shoulder, while the others ran down her back – half in front, half behind. The reflection sized up the real Havannah, but brought little concern as they both watched each other take a sip of shiraz. After all, she would only need to switch the lamp off behind her, and the reflection would vanish. 

More ominous was what lay beyond Havannah’s other self. A vast expanse of nothingness yawned at her from the other side of the glass, the crests of waves nothing more than misshapen etchings onto rolling obsidian. Without the light of the pier to illuminate the water, the encroaching abyss couldn’t be held back. ‘Forever’ had never seen so far away to Havannah - not until she could see the growing darkness and the fading horizon that haunted the depths of winter. 

She looked away, took another sip, and – out of mercy – glanced apologetically at the reflection still waiting for her. That was enough. She switched the lamp off; her reflection was the last thing Havannah wanted to see right now.

A determined buzzing disturbed the silence. The mere sound of her mobile phone showing any signs of life always gave way to a feeling of rising flutter in Havannah’s chest. It might be Ronan, she thought – as she always did – heading back towards the sofa to retrieve the fussing device. She forced herself to move casually; even muted by darkness, she could feel her reflection watching, judging.

It wasn’t Ronan calling, but neither was it a number she recognised. Fighting the urge to ignore it, Havannah contemplated who it might be, flicking through a number of potential callers she would hate to talk to. Her thumb slipped, ruining any plan that might involve waiting for a voicemail or searching the number online.

“Hello?” The greeting was rushed, made the more awkward by trying to negotiate holding the phone and her wine.

“Hello! It’s Olivier. How are you this fine evening?”

Havannah glanced behind her to inspect the deepening night. Was it fine? She hadn’t noticed, nor had a decision been made. A default answer would have to do.

“I’m good, thanks. Sorry, Olivier, I wasn’t sure who was calling me. I didn’t recognise your number.”

“Not at all! I had a great time at lunch and I feel we have much to discuss.”

A groan curled in Havannah’s stomach. She didn’t want to think about business - not right now, not with the curtains open and the pier’s silhouette haunting her from outside the window. Slumping down on the sofa, Havannah inspected the glass’ deep ruby contents. It was a distraction, naturally; it was either looking at the shiraz or searching out her reflection for guidance, knowing that Havannah would be just as clueless. Olivier waited patiently for her to speak.

“I’ll have to check with Damon, but I’m sure we can get a call in to discuss the sale and everything. I’ve got some thinking to do.”

“Bien, mais… I envisioned something more intimate. No business. Just us. A rendez-vous?”

“Oh…”

There was no denying she was flattered – not even Havannah was willing to lie to herself about that – and Olivier was certainly handsome and interesting. But…

She had left the sofa and meandered again, without warning and without notice, to the single shelf installed on the far wall of the living room. Upon it were only a handful of small picture frames, the rest still in boxes at the old flat. There was one of her dad beaming with pride by the pier, one of her mum graduating from her master’s degree, a couple of them as a family…and then a selfie, printed and slotted into a plain frame that still seemed brighter by its presence. In the photo was a stranger: Havannah from before the fire, before she lost her father, before she felt winter wearing down her spirit. Beside her was Ronan, sandy-haired, bright expression, biceps soaking up the sun through his black sleeveless vest. The phone was reflected in the sheer black of his sunglasses, though Havannah never let her eyes linger on it long enough to let it ruin the photo. They roamed elsewhere. In Ronan’s hands was a cone of chips which they had been sharing at lunchtime, their plastic forks saturated by the sun, turning an even deeper blue than the sky barely visible behind them.

“Havannah?”

This time, she had been silent for too long.

“Sorry, something caught my eye.” A pause. She could hear him waiting, holding his breath until she answered. “I really appreciate the offer, but I’m not sure that’d be a good idea.”

There was a sigh from the other side of the line, though the friendliness never wavered in Olivier’s voice, despite the disappointment.

“I hope to change your mind. Until then, have a beautiful evening. Bonsoir!”

The line went dead before Havannah could even say goodbye. 

There had been no lying; she truly appreciated the offer. It was just… at that moment all Havannah really wanted was to curl up on the sofa in her too-big band t-shirt, her dad sitting beside her, watching one of their favourite films as he stroked her hair until she fell asleep. Instead, Havannah would settle for taking herself to bed, where the sea couldn’t stare at her and she couldn’t be haunted by summer ghosts.

***

Because of her plain looks and the way she shrank in the shadow of her sister, people could quite easily find themselves surprised by Claire. She might raise her voice suddenly, or share a dirty joke, or be caught dancing recklessly on the tables in Foxy’s or Vista, and witnesses would almost deny that it was the same, boring girl they knew and barely thought about.

But of all her surprising quirks and moments of outlandish – if memorable – behaviour, it was Claire’s sudden temper that caused the most shock. The impact of her palms against his office door, for example, jolted Damon out of his tired stupor. The intrusion was so unexpected, he felt the adrenaline pulse through his body – felt his jaw and fists clench at the expectation of a fight before his head had even registered the source of the noise. 

The sunlight had long abandoned the office, leaving Damon skulking in diluted pools of orange, half-soaked by the streetlamps outside. In the gloom, Claire’s pale face shone eerily, an unfamiliar and feral creature staring at him through the dark. He exhaled with relief, the only acknowledgement of her entrance. When had Damon become so certain that ghosts were real, and that they sought only to interrupt his solitude and sanity with accusing stares?

Shaking loose his newfound superstitions, Damon’s relief at seeing Claire – living and breathing – quickly turned to impatience. Irritated by the disruption, Damon made a point of slamming his drink down on the desk. Specks of whisky spat out in all directions, forming amber drops on the glass surface. He swept them away with a lazy hand, further irritated by the feeling of stickiness already taking hold on his skin.

“Just to warn you, Claire, I’ve had a really shitty day and I’m not at all interested in making it worse,” Damon growled.

One hand stayed devotedly wrapped around the glass, poised to medicate himself with more alcohol at a moment’s notice, while his free hand started to massage his forehead as if to work out the growing knots before they could become visible. The whole act was automatic, rehearsed, subconscious. He had found early on that it made people feel small and unimportant, like a child at risk of wringing out the last drop of their parent’s patience. But there was also a truthfulness to it; he was exhausted, and the day had left Damon more on edge than he was willing to admit.

“Well it’s about to be,” Claire spat, though the lashing of her words faltered with uncertainty as they came out. Hearing herself speak, she almost stopped, turned, and walked away – Damon could see the contemplation in the twitch of her eyes and the way her body was still half-turned towards the open door.

“Shut the door, will you?” Damon instructed, forcing a decision in the same way her mother used to. Are you in or are you out? She wanted to fold her arms and pout. Why couldn’t she stay where she was, lingering in safety? She was quite content haunting doorways with her indecision. But her mother’s lesson had stuck, and Claire did as she was told.

Damon beckoned his guest closer, observing her clumsy gait as she unzipped the oversized coat. In doing so, Claire revealed her famished body. She had grown thin since they last had a conversation. Whereas Damon had always considered her to be the more awkward, plain-looking of the two Hallett sisters and not worthy of his attention, this new look elicited a reaction: disgust. The frame had wasted while the plainness had sunken into sallowness. A pot belly – the only softness on a personage that had become angular and sharp everywhere else – was swelling from beneath a top that was clearly two sizes too small. The dark blue leggings beneath her skirt were worn and thinning around the knee. Even the scarf – a raggedy jumble of loosening threads – hardly looked like it could keep the cold at bay. 

As she reached the desk, Damon switched on the lamp, further illuminating Claire’s decay. Light deepened the hollows of her eyes and highlighted how paling skin was starting to stretch over bone. A sheen reflected off of her greasy hair, cut awkwardly by her own hand, unkempt and miserable.

For the briefest of moments, painted with the obnoxious buzzing of the desk lamp, Damon’s disgust turned to pity. He had never been particularly fond of Claire, a pale imitation of her sister, but even his callousness needed time to catch up with the haunting vision in front of him. She reminded him of a mewling animal, struck by a car and stranded away from its pack. To put such a wretch down would be a kindness.

With a roll of his eyes, Damon motioned for Claire to take the seat, though she declined.

“I’m fine standing,” she snapped, though the gravity of her words was undone by the wooziness in her voice. From the pit of her empty pot belly, a pitched growl sounded out.

Damon pulled a protein bar from the top drawer of his desk.

“Here,” he said, tossing it in her direction. It landed on the desk with a clunky slap, the metallic wrapper shining a rainbow pattern under the light of the desk lamp.

Like a starved animal, Claire eyed the treat and then the chair. She took a seat and began opening the wrapper patiently at first, before tearing at its centre. 

Even with its bare surroundings and draped in shadows, the office was so much warmer than her house, and the coat felt oppressive now. Crumbs collected in its folds as her teeth ripped off chunks of chewy protein bar. All the while, Damon simply watched and waited.

At last, when she was done, he held out an open hand. Obediently, Claire placed the empty wrapper in his palm and Damon dropped it in the waste basket by his feet. He fought back the urge to smirk at how easily she could be handled. 

“Better?” he enquired, though there was no expectation of an answer. He clasped his hands together, all business, and began the conversation afresh, his voice thinly-veiled condescension. “Let’s start again. Hi Claire. What can I do for you today?”

Taken back by the kindness and overwhelmed by the sweetness of the protein bar and how it sat so pleasingly in her stomach, Claire had seemingly lost the wind in her sails. The fury – once a sharp edge with which she had been prepared to strike at him with – had softened into a jumble of thoughts and feelings. Damon noticed this. He could tell she had a lot to say and no way to say it, loose threads that would need to be gathered all over again. That left an opportunity for him to offer some steering.

“Is it money?” he asked, plainly. A surge of power tensed from his crotch to his jaw. Kristi had been in a similar position of need, and he’d helped her – the odd advance here, extra tips there.

Claire shook her head, her gaze wandering aimlessly about their surroundings. From the club downstairs, a faint thrumming of music had started up, though she knew there would be hardly anybody on the dancefloor at this time. 

As she mused on Foxy’s dwindling clientele, Damon took the chance to look Claire up and down; to consider the weak points and vulnerabilities at his disposal. They were evident everywhere, unkempt hair and the sour stench of unwashed skin telling him how deeply his guest was struggling. But there was more. She couldn’t look him in the eye, though the way they narrowed in their sunken sockets told him that she wanted to; the way her fury had been so easily extinguished suggested she was now contemplating whether there was any truth to her reason for being here; and no matter where Claire’s gaze roamed, it never reached for the window, where the pier’s shape was becoming oily black in the tailend of dusk. There was plenty to work with.

Damon felt his trousers tighten. He would enjoy toying with his prey, remembering every obnoxious thing he’d ever seen her do in his club, every frustration Kristi had muttered under her breath to him, every time Havannah had talked of her bitterness towards Claire.

“Are you lonely? Did you just want to see me?” he smirked. Claire’s wandering ceased, her head snapping in his direction. The way she wore disgust was pronounced even more than her sister - more pantomime. And then it dawned on him. Damon leaned back in his chair, rapidly tapping a thumbnail against his lip as he considered the possibility. No, he was sure. There was no better explanation. “It was you, wasn’t it? You texted me from your sister’s phone, didn’t you?”

Damon let out a short laugh and felt his face flush a little at the embarrassment of not sooner recognising Claire’s hand in the message that had pulled him away from lunch with Olivier and Havannah. In truth, she so often fell from his attention, that he was hardly surprised at his own oversight.

“You sick fucker,” he laughed in amusement. The stone that had weighed on his stomach all afternoon became lighter – became a flutter of relief. Finally able to relax, Damon cradled the back of his head with his hands. “Wow. So you were desperate to see me then?”

Ignoring his insinuations, Claire rifled through the coat’s pockets, wearing an exaggerated grimace on her face in the hopes of disguising her own embarrassment at having been caught out. Unfortunately, the flush of colour – weak against her cold-kissed, underfed skin – gave her away.

Again, Damon waited patiently, delighting in the sport and giddy with the solving of a mystery. The mobile phone slipped out of the inner pocket, embraced tightly by bony fingers. This was enough to pique Damon’s curiosity. He leaned closer as Claire fiddled with the screen and placed the phone between them. A silence followed, during which Damon’s expression entered freefall. He was taking her seriously now, and for the briefest of moments, Damon could’ve sworn that Claire’s lips had curled into the slightest of smirks. He was too distracted by the notification to look for very long.

“What is this?” he asked, swallowing hard.

“Let’s listen,” Claire said, tapping the screen. The words were more delicious on her lips than all the food in the world – and certainly more energising than the paltry rations and gifted meals she’d been subsisting on. But even more invigorating was seeing Damon’s eyes widen in horror as his own voice started to speak aloud from the phone.

“I’ve done something stupid…but I did it for you. Swing by and see me tomorrow and I’ll explain everything.”

There was a detachment distorting the intake of sound in Damon’s ears. It was him speaking, he knew that without a doubt. But it sounded alien, foreign, completely detached from himself. He’d spent so long listening to his own voice through his own ears, that to hear it aloud made him believe somebody had stolen his words – maybe even his voice – and attempted to wear them. He could deny it was his voicemail, but the whole world knew what he sounded like; he would be denying everybody’s reality to appease his own, and Damon knew that very rarely worked.

Luckily, he was clever. After the initial shock had washed over him, Damon made sure his face stayed frozen in neutrality, staring straight ahead at Claire as she made the recording play again. But then, if he had been so stupid as to leave a shred of evidence behind, could he even trust his face anymore? Was it really remaining solemn, unmoved, unemotional? If he couldn’t trust his voice – the excitement and the rush underlying his recorded confession – what was stopping his face from betraying him as well?

Damon swallowed again, roughly caressing his stubble with a hand. The gesture extended to the rest of his face, as if he could wipe away the stress of the day in such a move. He reclined again. 

Silence fell upon them in a heavy shroud. Either of them could have spoken, and it would have brought great relief to break the tension – a volcano erupting, a cloud breaking, a wave crashing. They were both poised, waiting for the other, caught in a stalemate.

Feeling brave and giddy and thrilled, Claire tapped the phone screen with a trembling index finger and the voicemail played for a third time.

The repeat performance – meant to intimidate as part of a rehearsed script – gave Damon the time he needed to think. There would be ways to spin this, to re-shape the narrative; he could’ve been talking about anything in that voicemail. But then the preceding robotic voice had time-stamped his half-confession: the night the pier burnt down, barely an hour after the flames had begun tearing through the structure. The gloating in his voice, his connection to Kristi…there were threads to untangle for somebody with the intelligence to do so. Was that Claire? Certainly not. But she only needed to play it to the right person. That would introduce an extraneous element. If Damon was to navigate this, he would need to maintain control.

Then again… it was tempting to remember that there was always an easier way to remove a knot should it be too stubborn. He could simply snip it and watch the threat fall away. After all, Claire barely looked like she was taking care of herself as it was, retreating into her own misery. And who would miss her?

Having the option in reserve reassured Damon. First, though, he would try other tactics.

As the recording came to an end, Damon joked, “I should do podcasting.” It sounded smarmy and self-assured, sure, but the point was to disarm Claire; the confidence would be unexpected, knocking Claire from her high ground and giving him back the advantage. 

No comment was returned, but Claire’s expression spoke for her: she was no longer savouring Damon’s discomfort, curling back inwards on herself. The phone was snatched from the desk and shoved back into the pocket it had come from. With her insurance policy safe and sound, she pulled the coat closer to her frantically beating heart. There was something about the tightening of Damon’s jaw, the visible pulse at the side of his forehead, the terrible joke; all these signs told her she was in danger. Still, she had to go on, even though her mouth had dried and the words would come out wobbly and uncertain.

“You started the fire on the pier.”

Damon looked the frail young woman up and down, and wanted to laugh. It twitched at the edge of his lip, almost becoming a sneer.

“That would be difficult to prove, with one voicemail,” he countered, ready now to push back against the rapidly shrinking threat. “But I’d like to show you something before we start throwing around accusations.”

Rising from behind his desk, Damon’s body eclipsed Claire’s face with shadow. He walked over to the single filing cabinet, neatly tucked in the corner behind him. A potted plant sat atop it, clinging to life in its shady surroundings, kept company by a collection of photography books he’d collected over the years, gathering dust. He would probably throw them all away soon, toss them aside to maintain the order he had instituted elsewhere in the office. How often did he open their pages anymore, poring over artistic snapshots of the pier in its heyday? Had he ever been interested in the first place? Dismissing the books, Damon slid a key into the filing cabinet’s cylindrical lock. There was a great satisfaction to be had in letting the mechanism turn slowly, building the anticipation of a click. 

All the while, Claire kept her eyes fixed on Damon, a spider that might not move if she could keep it in her vision, willing it to stay in place. Unlike a spider, he was impatient; agitated fingers rifled noisily through the cabinet’s contents, stopping only when they finally landed on the item he was searching for. Or…had he found it immediately, with everything else simply a performance to keep Claire on her toes? To slowly drive her mad with psychological warfare, until she left with no idea of why she was ever there? Claire’s eyes narrowed, her foot tapping either out of impatience or fear – she hadn’t decided yet.

Damon returned to his seat with the treasure buried – allegedly – at the bottom of the cabinet. It was a USB stick, black and silver with an asterix scribbled in silver pen on one side. On the other was a date, though the writing was too smudged for Claire to make out the exact numbers, the ink spreading into fat digits that bled together. She squirmed in the tangle of uncertainty now knotting itself around her insides. Damon just smirked, teasingly rocking the USB stick back and forth between his index finger and thumb. Claire stopped moving; her body had said too much. 

The USB stick slipped into the waiting slot and Damon began clicking, navigating through folders within folders within folders. Again, Claire couldn’t be sure if this was a performance or not. This time, fearful of giving herself away, she kept her legs still, picking at the skin around her fingernails instead. 

Eventually, Damon found what he was looking for. The smirk became a grin, and they both knew in their own ways that he had won.

“I’ve been reviewing our CCTV cameras. Security’s really important to me, as you can imagine.” With a smooth motion, Damon turned the screen to face Claire. “And I found something interesting.”

Deep in Claire – deeper than the darkest depths of her stomach, further into her being than even her soul could hide – the sound of the ocean began to rumble once more. She could hear distant waves, feel the tightening of her throat, sense that her hands had begun to wring one another desperately. Her brain had no reasoning just yet, but her body felt the fear – geared up to face it – and she knew only the worst thing could be about to appear on the screen.

The video began to play. A scene blinked into life, with its main character distant yet recognisable. There she was, slipping onto the pier the day of the fire, the handles of a plastic bag straining at the weight of cheap cornershop booze. In her own way, she looked happy - healthy, even. Damon looked at Claire with a raised eyebrow, amused at the silent stillness overtaking her face as she watched a past version of herself – a stranger, really, given the differences between them – retracing familiar steps.

“Turn it off,” she whispered, words catching on the ragged edges of a closing throat. She knew what – who – would come onto the screen next.

“Our cameras face the pier,” Damon informed her, doing nothing to hide his smugness. “And this is just one of two interesting things to happen that day.”

Dragging the cursor across the tracking bar, Damon sped up the scene and its actors. Various supporting characters came and went as time slipped by, bit players in a greater story. The hurried video moved fast enough to hide the missing footage from casual eyes, and Claire didn’t notice the time stamp skipping ahead; her focus was firmly on the pavement, waiting to see a face she’d been hiding from. 

Shadows began to grow as the sun dipped off-screen. Damon let go of the mouse and the video came to a sudden – yet perfectly-timed – halt. This time, there were two people in frame, the world revolving around them. Passers-by gave them no notice. 

Claire watched as Victor and her sister made their way through the pier’s gate, frantically. The latter paused, glancing back in the direction of the nightclub. It was the first time since the fire that Claire had looked at her sister’s face in any meaningful way. She had covered the incriminating photo of Victor with her hand, avoided photo albums, and even tried not to dream of seeing her sister. Now, though, with the dead staring back at her through time, Claire realised an unspoken fear: what if she had been remembering her sister’s face wrong? Determined to rectify this potential problem, she leaned towards the screen, taking in her sister’s dark hair, her ponytail, the flush in her cheeks and worry in her eyes. It was Claire she had been searching for, and it was Claire who was now staring back through the screen.

And then it came in full force. A rushing of waves. A scream. A thunderous drumming that was once a pulse but was now a deafening soundtrack to the moment. Whatever it was filling Claire’s ears, it was overwhelming. She tensed, holding herself at bay. The slightest movement either way – the slightest straying of consciousness to the past or the very real present of an empty house – threatened to bring her skin in contact with the sharp knives of realisation surrounding her. Claire’s eyes had gone lax, staring through the screen, which had now become a blur. The waves – yes, it was definitely the waves – carried her mind closer to the pitch black edge. Should they carry her over it, she would tumble into oblivion, her body left behind as an empty shell as her mind vanished from the world.

For Damon, the cascade of emotions revealing themselves in Claire’s eyes presented an opportunity. He closed the video player and turned the screen away. Rather than snapping out of her stupor, Claire continued to gaze hopelessly ahead – not at the monitor, but through it, through him.

“Do you know what I’ve been wondering?” There was no reply, his words sounding from the watery depths. Still, he continued; it was too tempting to prod the ever-paling young woman with needled words. “Don’t you think it’s odd that three of you went onto the pier, but only one of you washed up? There’s no footage of you ever leaving the pier, so I’d be curious to know what exactly happened.”

Before Claire could answer, Damon moved from around the desk to beside her, a shadow passing through shadows, barely noticeable in her distant vision or the gloom of the office. He crouched down beside her, stroking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. The tide that had swallowed her was too deep for his touch to register on her skin.

“So, what do you think?” Damon’s voice lowered with indulgent pleasure, before slowly jerking into a snarl with each question that followed the last. “An errant prank gone wrong? A bunch of hooligans looking for a laugh? Start a fire, leave one of them to fall to their death?”

A single tear shed itself from Claire’s frozen visage, a drop escaping through the bulging planks of the dam she was so desperately holding in place – a reminder that, no matter how close to the edge guilt brought her, there were still worse things being held at bay.

Damon inched closer and softened again, insinuations becoming life rafts of hope. 

“Or maybe…it was a freak accident? Maybe there was an accident and this USB stick just…goes missing? We could say you came by for a chat and it fell into your coat.”

Claire could barely hear Damon’s words, but she began to thaw at his scent and the heat of his breath on her bare skin. She inhaled lightly. Woody aftershave, cigarette smoke caught in stubble, the draw of his chest visible through an open shirt button… These unfamiliar elements colluded to unlock Claire, bringing an awareness of how rapid her breathing had become. She gasped, the dam breaking and the true torrent of her panic flooding the room. Even Damon recoiled as she started to wail uncontrollably, her ragged breath catching on itself, over and over again until it sounded like hiccups.

More out of a desire to contain the situation – to regain control of it – than to comfort Claire, he placed a hand on her back and began to rub.

“It’s OK, let it all out. That’s it.”

The wave of surging drums that had briefly deafened her began to settle into Claire’s bones, limbs rattling and jangling in response. At the contact of Damon’s hand on her spine, she wrapped her arms around Damon’s midriff in impulsive desperation. They stayed like this for a moment, while he considered all the ways he could pull free of her grip before the abundance of tears soaked his shirt. In the end, frustration won out; Damon yanked himself away and strode over to the bar, where he poured a brandy. He returned with a softer voice, kneeling beside Claire as he held the glass close to her face.

“Sniff the brandy, then take a sip,” he instructed. She obeyed, inhaling the burning vapour. There was no time to come to terms with the sensation; Damon tipped the glass towards her lips. Again, it burnt, but this time she could feel it searing all the way down to her stomach. A welcome warmth was carried with the brandy, and as she became accustomed to the taste, Claire began to enjoy the sensation of weight it brought to her limbs. She finished the rest of the glass before Damon took it from her.

“I think we have a lot to talk about, don’t we?” he offered, once again rubbing Claire’s back to soothe her. She nodded in reply, her eyes already running dry. “You know you can tell me anything, right? Your sister was important to me and I know she’d want you to be looked after.”

Claire watched as Damon plucked a tissue from the box on his desk and handed it to her. Such care, such tenderness… The gesture only worsened her sobbing. The building panic had started to congregate in her sinuses, attempting suffocation. She blew into the tissue, catching the trapped scent of brandy as slimy mucus rushed from her nostrils. Damon offered another one and held the waste bin close by, hoping she would discard the used, balled up tissue into it before he caught sight of its contents. Disgust rippled to the surface of his face as Claire repeated the motion, barely aware of the thunderous sound her nose made as it emptied itself of gunk and misery.

“I know,” she said at last, the words tiny and choked. A small smile of appreciation accompanied her voice. Damon had forgotten what he’d even asked, and so gave just a slight nod and returned the smile. Catching how dark, hollow eyes had become fleshed out – puffy and exaggerated and reddened by the outpouring of sadness – Damon considered the idea that Claire looked better this way, less skeletal.

“Is there anything you’d like to tell me?” he ventured, softly. In response, Claire dropped her gaze down to the sleeves of her coat, now rain-stricken by tears. There was a chance to get out of this alive – to get out of it with an ally who could look after her. But doing so would mean sacrificing Victor. Or worse…she would need to admit a forbidden truth aloud. That couldn’t happen without the imaginary sea driving her mad. The spotlight returned to Victor. Had he not betrayed Claire? She still remembered watching the recording of her sister and her supposed boyfriend having sex together in his bedroom, though there’d be no admission as to how many times she had watched it in fascination. Had that wrong been accounted for yet?

“There is something,” she started, considering how close her phone was to her fingertips. But they wouldn’t move, and she wasn’t ready to hear the now-receding ocean threatening to swallow her again so soon in one night. Claire stepped back from the edge of an imaginary shore, content to part with the haunting sea; she was tired and felt too heavy to swim to safety if it returned. “But I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”

A lingering pause followed. Damon’s eyes left a trail across her face, searching for something she couldn’t quite guess. Claire met his gaze and tried to read Damon’s expression in the same way, but she was illiterate in the intricacies of his neutral countenance.

When their eyes met – when Claire felt she might be about to peek at the truth of him – Damon stood. 

“OK, I understand,” he said, pulling a twenty pound note from his wallet.

A twenty pound note, pulled from Damon’s wallet in a smooth movement, “Here. I’ll call you a taxi. Buy yourself some food with the rest.”

Their eyes didn’t meet again. Claire sniffed and thanked him, disgusted at the idea of meaning it. The desperation, however, had sapped the fight from her, and she couldn’t imagine dragging her heavy bones all the way back home on foot.

Damon sat back down, watching as Claire stood and shuffled over to the door. As she reached for the handle, dazed at how the evening’s events had strayed so far from how they had been imagined, Damon called for her attention one last time.

“I’ll call round in the morning. Go home and get some sleep. You look terrible.”

She nodded – there was nothing else to do – and left Damon behind. 

Alone once again, Damon sighed with a mixture of relief and thrill. He reached for the phone on his desk, letting his hand rest on the receiver while contemplating how long he could make Claire wait for a taxi. Delaying the call, Damon turned his attention back to the computer screen – to the scene frozen in time. There was Kristi, as he remembered her. Or a little different, perhaps. Had he paid enough attention to the details of her face to keep an accurate picture in his mind’s eye? Probably not. Maybe he would go back to the graveyard one last time after all, his interest renewed by the sight of her alive again.

Damon’s focus moved to Victor. He lifted the phone receiver, clutching it close while he squinted at the angry young man’s worried face. There was undoubtedly more to that day than he yet understood. Curiosity folded itself into a new shape: opportunity. The voicemail had momentarily threatened Damon’s peace of mind, but it had quickly become obvious that Claire was hiding something – a truth that might just help him to walk away from the whole affair unscathed, free of suspicion clinging to him. And Victor, he suspected, was the key.

***

There was no answer at Claire’s. This had been the third attempt of the day, made once the sun had dipped and vanished from sight on the off-chance that a stray lamp would give away her presence. Rahim sighed, somewhat in frustration at being frozen out, but mostly out of exhaustion. He couldn’t keep coming here, couldn’t keep wasting his time going back and forth. The dish in his hands was cooling in the below-freezing night air, and his cheeks hurt from the beaming smile he always had ready when Claire came to the door. The mask was growing more uncomfortable each time it had to be worn.

Ever the optimist, Rahim stepped back from the front door and scanned the first floor windows for any sign of light or life. There was nothing, not even the fluttering of a shadow. Nobody was home. He turned on his heel and left, unsure what he would do with the uneaten dish.

To Rahim, winter felt like the most dangerous of months. Sure, in summer he might have some of the rougher lads from his school asking from across the street if he tans, or muttering slurs pointedly in his direction on the beach as they passed him with their girlfriends. But it always felt safer, with everything unfolding under the sun’s omnipresent gaze. Winter, on the other hand, provided too many shadows to hide in, too many dark street corners where real-life horrors could hide. Walking back to his from Claire’s took less than ten minutes, and yet he still imagined dozens of ways he could end up getting hurt, or cornered, or worse. He was too grounded to have any faith in his imagined escape plans and the fantastical scenarios where he took on a group of lads with nothing but a lasagne dish and his wits. And so Rahim took fast footsteps, head down, no earphones, rushing from one sickly puddle of light to another. 

Although there was safety beneath the streetlamps, their glow couldn’t stretch to penetrate the alleyway. Rahim only needed to pass it briefly, steering clear of the shapeless black abyss that ran down the back of two rows of houses. Even so, it prickled his skin and set the hairs on the back of his neck on edge. 

When bathed in sunlight, the alleyway was nothing more threatening than a useful shortcut, leading wanderers from one part of the estate to another. Under winter’s long shadows, however, it was a terrifying thing, a great maw which threatened to swallow any who stepped into it. There was no telling who was hanging around in the midst of the alleyway, waiting for trouble – or for prey. In Rahim’s imaginings – and his nightmares – hands lurched out of the darkness to snatch at him as he passed by. As a result, he had developed the habit of arcing his path the closer he got to the alley, steering himself towards the far edge of the pavement and within touching distance of a nearby tree. That way, he was too far away for the imaginary hands to grab him. But the dish weighed heavy in his arms, and the shadows seemed deeper tonight. So instead, Rahim picked up the pace and hoped that it would be enough simply to outrun the anxiety.

Lost in calculating the speed of his footsteps and the length of time before the ache in his arms forced him to drop the dish, Rahim didn’t see the hand or its owner until he felt fingers clamping on his bicep. This is it, he thought; he had swerved a little too close to the dark.

The sudden grip was accompanied by a voice, a small, “Hey,” that was overshadowed by the sound of the lasagne dish hitting the pavement. Even when confronted by his worst fears, Rahim still clung to the concern that it might have cracked. Mum’s going to kill me, he thought, comforted by the idea that he might make it home alive to be scolded.

As the stranger pulled him closer and into the pitch black, all thoughts of home fell away. Blind, cold panic flooded Rahim’s body, a sprawling freeze suspending his limbs. To his disappointment, even his own voice failed him; he could muster even a protest. Only when Rahim’s back connected with the brick wall could he make any sound, and even that was winded yelp.

The stranger loomed over him now, the shadow somehow spreading even in the pitch black where it should certainly be lost. Rahim was afraid to look up. If he did, the face looking back at him might be the last one he ever saw. There was something terrifyingly lonely about that image, and Rahim started to wonder if he’d wasted his life.

“Please…please don’t hurt me,” he finally managed to croak. Tears squeezed out of the edges of where his eyelids had clasped shut.

“Rahim, it’s me. Relax.”

The voice was recognisable, comforting. The hands too had taken a familiar placement on Rahim’s body – not around his throat or pinning him back against the wall, but one on the hip and the other on his shoulder. The scent, though faded, brought back memories that had been preserved in Rahim’s senses. It would take little effort to tune into the sound of the sea and the heat of the sun, imagining himself back under the pier at the height of summer, kissing a handsome boy.

Reluctant to leave the memory behind, Rahim slowly fluttered his eyelids open. It took a moment to adjust to the darkness. Sure enough, there he was. A hoodie obscured where once closely shorn hair had become shaggy, and there was poorly managed stubble over the sharp jaw he’d often dreamt of. Even so, the stranger was no stranger at all. 

Rahim smiled with relief, followed by longing. He wanted to throw his arms around the young man, to be held tightly in this dark and dangerous place so that he might know it was safe – reclaimed by the simple fact of them being there. A kiss came first – lingering, sweet, full of yearning and the promise that summer would return. At last, they parted, and Rahim raised his hand to the face he had missed so painfully over the last few months. The smile widened as he named the not-a-stranger aloud.

“Victor.”