AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Afterwards
The power was still out across the region, except up at the Big House where the fire was lit and the Christmas tree lights sparkled absurdly in bizarre contrast to the mood of shock and disbelief.
Mrs Crocombe was crying into her daughter’s shoulder with all her grandchildren gathered around her. The Bickleighs, who had climbed onto the roof of the lean-to at the back of their property and had been accompanied by fire crews from there onto the Big House lawns, were ashen-faced and cracking weak jokes to comfort each other.
The older residents from Down-along passed Minty’s mobile around in the hopes of reaching relatives, but nobody was having much luck getting a signal.
Bella and Finan held onto each other for dear life, just as they had when they’d been lifted together from the roof of the pub. The Austens stuck close by them and baby Serena napped on as if nothing had happened.
Family groups, friends and neighbours settled themselves on the folding beds and deckchairs that Izaak and Leonid were quickly setting out around the ballroom.
The vicar had arrived only moments ago and had already been berated by Minty for not thinking to bring any biscuits. He had been positioned behind the tea urn with instructions to keep the hot drinks coming.
Magnús dashed between the groups. ‘Have you seen Alex Robinson?’ he asked each person, realising he didn’t have so much as a snap of her on his phone to show those who hadn’t met her yet. ‘Blonde and tall, with blue eyes… like a sort of amazing mermaid, really,’ he’d told one woman, who looked back at him with concern. He’d wanted to cry when he found that not one person had laid eyes on her all day.
Leaving the bustle of the Big House just as Jude was taking instructions from Minty to get baking in the kitchens – there were hungry mouths to feed – Magnús ran through the mud left in the flood’s wake.
‘No access to the village,’ a police officer told him, her hands outspread like she’d rugby tackle him if he tried to get through. ‘Residents can’t return to their properties until morning at the earliest.’
A ‘No Entry’ sign behind her, right at the top of the slope, reinforced her orders. ‘Too dangerous,’ she told him. ‘We don’t know the state of the path or any of the retaining walls, and there’s a lot of standing water inside properties. Can’t let you pass until they’ve all been checked.’
An Environment Agency van pulled up beside them and the officer left her post to talk with the men in hard hats stepping out and rubbing their faces as they surveyed the state of the place.
Magnús was about to run for it down the slope when he heard the sound.
‘Psst!’ It was Jowan at the turning to the estate and Aldous by his feet.
Magnús approached him.
‘You’re goin’ to search for our Alex?’
Magnús nodded, glancing over at the police officer still talking with the men.
‘You can get down to the harbour if you take the cut-throughs down the back of the cottages. Only locals use ’em, with good reason; they’re narrow and like a maze.’ Jowan pointed a finger to a gap between two posts in the hedge behind them. ‘Keep headin’ down and you’ll come out at the car park behind the Siren. It’ll be a mess, mind. The flood washed down those gullies and into the backyards like a waterfall, lot o’ debris. Mind your step.’
Magnús thanked him sincerely. As he was about to pass through the gap, Jowan reminded him to keep his phone switched on.
‘No signal,’ Magnús told him, pulling out his useless phone and checking it once more. He’d already tried ringing Alex at least twenty times. No one yet knew how all the phone companies were busy trying to reconnect the area but it would be hours before they could successfully get everyone talking again.
‘Want me to come with?’ Jowan asked, but Magnús thought Jowan was probably still in shock, judging by his worryingly grey pallor. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all through last night’s storm.
‘Get warm at the Big House. The fire’s burning and there’s tea.’
He didn’t stay to witness Jowan’s indecision, instead racing off down the back ways to the harbour.
What Magnús saw as he picked his way down past the cottages’ backyards turned his anxious heart to a jumping, frenzied pulp. Every cottage he glimpsed inside was flooded. Every back garden was lost under a layer of brown silt and stones. Gates hung off their hinges and whole fence panels were gone. At least the rain had stopped, making visibility better.
He called for Alex with every few steps he took, trying at once not to draw attention to himself from any police officers nearby, but wanting to rouse Alex if she was somehow sheltering in the steep confusion of narrow, twisty paths carrying him down to the Siren’s Tail.
Not a bird sang or dog barked. Even the sea was subdued and the waves at last receded with low tide.
Magnús didn’t realise he was crying – no, he was howling – until he stood on the harbour wall and saw not only theDagaliengone but most of the beach pebbles too. Instead of shining stones rounded from years of water-wear there was dirt and branches – whole trees, in fact – and masonry, bricks and splintered planks everywhere, and no sign of Alex.
She’d said she was nipping down to the boat. She’d said she’d be ten minutes. Even before the waters came, she’d been gone at least an hour.
Had she taken a walk along the harbour wall and been swept away? It was worth looking, he felt. Magnús ran its length, criss-crossing back and forth to inspect the, now shallow, waters on each side. There were no ledges or rocks down there where she could be stranded, nothing but churned up silty water. He stopped at the end of the sea wall where the big glass lantern stood, useless without electricity. She wasn’t here.
