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He searched his memories of the night before. She’d told him she’d sent a message and everything was going to be fine now, hadn’t she? And she’d seemed so peaceful at last, after so long being locked inside herself and fretful.
He knew she was struggling with real loss, just like he was, in a way. He’d felt it in everything she did and said – or rather, it was there in the things she couldn’t bring herself to say out loud.
‘Was one of the things she couldn’t say that she was in love with someone else, and that he was coming to get her?’ he muttered, shaking his head, trying not to allow himself to be convinced he’d been conned.
‘Nei,’ he said again, quieter this time, holding the jumper to his face and taking a deep inhalation. The perfume she’d tried on at the visitor centre still lingered there, mixed with her own good, clean smell. ‘Therewassomething between us, something bigger than whatever escapist fantasy brought her here. She really was happy yesterday, I know it.Wewere happy. We were…’
His thoughts were abruptly halted by the loud sound of the bedroom window cracking.
Bounding up the spiral stairs and pushing the door aside, he found one of the little panes had a crack running the length of it and, outside, a long piece of snapped iron guttering hung down, bumping off the glass in the wind.
Unlocking the undamaged pane and reaching out into the cold air, he grabbed the rusty piece of piping, wrenching it free. He let the whole section drop down into the overgrown shrubbery below.
Wild wind rushed into the Borrow-A-Bookshop and whistled downstairs and through the shelves. The front door bumped and rattled in the stiff gale that was now tormenting the entire coastline.
With some effort he closed the window. He’d have to tape over that crack and quickly or the whole pane would end up in pieces across the bedspread. It was getting worse out there and the cracked glass had sharpened his mind.
‘Red weather warning?’ he said, thinking of Mrs Crocombe’s words. Was Alex really leaving in these perilous conditions? ‘Think, Magnús!’
Had she embraced that other guy when they kissed? Hadn’t her arms in fact been flailing around like a person knocked off balance? Had she really wanted to leave or was she being whisked away against her will? She hadn’t said anything like as much but he could piece the puzzle of Alex Robinson together and conclude she’d more than likely set to sea in her ferry boat to escape them.
He pressed the heels of his palms against his temples.
Where was Alex now? Was she on the road already? Was she safe? He had to know. He threw open his suitcase and pulled out waterproofs and warm layers. He was going to find her. He was going to get answers.
The birds all along the coast already knew what the people had been too distracted to grasp. The robins, always so smart and the first to recognise a threat on the horizon, had flitted to their hidden winter pockets in hedgerows and potting sheds, watching with black eyes as wrens darted for cover and the blackbirds turned silent.
The dairy tankers struggled to get along muddy B-roads while the farmers brought every living thing under cover and shut up their barns.
All the hard-working sheepdogs would spend the day ahead dozing by the fire, sleepily unfurling their ears at each creak and clatter outside. It was a day for Christmas movies accompanied by the kettle boiling and home comforts.
School children across the county had already forgotten term time and last week’s nativity plays and were so deeply entranced by the wonder of Christmas Eve coming tomorrow they didn’t mind the storm one bit, while their parents fretted about relatives driving for Christmas visits.
The news reports ran on a loop. Windblown reporters planted their feet for pieces to camera on wild promenades where waves leapt over sea walls or on motorway gantries overlooking high-sided lorries lying prone on the tarmac. With hoods blown back and microphones buffeting, their voices distorted by the gales, they all repeated the same grave words of warning:Do not attempt to travel. Wherever you find yourselves now, the Met Office urges you to take shelter there.
This was to be the great one-hundred-year storm our scattered little islands had been waiting decades for, hoping it never came, praying it was a myth.
Red ticker-tape banners ran along the foot of every news channel. ‘Danger to life from falling trees and debris; Flash floods likely,’ they read.
The whole of Devon and Cornwall held its breath while some blithely shared comic Facebook posts about flying trampolines and wrecked fence panels and Father Christmas giving up on his journey and heading home to the North Pole where they were enjoying better weather. It was all rather fun, in a way, if you were safe at home with loved ones.
Alone in Port Kernou, Mrs Thomas wrung her hands and wished her husband, son and the girl she wanted as a daughter-in-law were back already, safe and sound. She had everything prepared, the perfect Christmas; enough food and wine and chocolates to last until January even, if only they’d walk through the door right this minute, but as much as she stared out at the rain-soaked driveway and wrung her hands, they still didn’t come.
