‘That has a good ring to it.’
It sure did. Leo nudged Nina, ‘Great cake.’
‘Do you think there’s something going on between Walt and Camille?’ Adrian asked.
‘What, like … romantically?’ Nina floated. ‘I did wonder but I’ve never asked. It feels disrespectful.’
Leo demolished the rest of his slice. ‘Good on them I say. Finding love is hard, you need to grab it when you can.’ And he knew Nina was probably thinking the same, given the way she looked at him now, as though they were those same two people from twelve years ago, those same kids who’d been inseparable at the cabins and the bay from one year to the next.
Leo sensed Adrian was about to say something about him and Nina and romance, when the door to the boathouse flew open, taken by the wind.
‘Maeve?’ Nina immediately went to her side.
This wasn’t the Maeve from the café or the Maeve who’d braved being close to the sea after all this time. Her eyes were wide, her usually dark complexion paled, her hair was stuck to the sides of her face from the downpour.
And then she said the words that filled all of them with dread. ‘It’s Jonah … he’s missing.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Maeve
Maeve was shivering. It wasn’t that cold outside but she’d been in the wind, in the rain, and only now did she realise she’d come out without a cardigan.
Adrian took off his jumper. ‘Put this on, you’re freezing. Did you come straight here?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve been looking near the flat, the playground. He just ran off. We had a fight.’
‘What about?’ Nina’s voice cut into her thoughts.
‘Come, sit down.’ Adrian ushered her over to the stool nearest the till when she couldn’t say anything.
She had no idea where her son was. She’d messed up, he’d asked her again about who his father was and this time it had almost burst out of her, but she’d held back. She needed to tell the father first because he had no idea of the secret she’d been keeping. And when she wouldn’t share a thing with Jonah but promised him that very soon she would, he’d accused her of being a liar and he’d run off. She’d thought he’d gone outside and would come back because of the rain but he hadn’t.
Maeve had known all along, ever since she found out she was pregnant, that the right thing to do would’ve been to tell the father she was expecting a baby. But peopledidn’t always do the right thing, particularly when they panicked. She was living in a country that didn’t at that point feel like her own, she knew the father was married, and for all she knew, happy and with a family of his own. And so she’d become a single parent and with time it just became the norm. Perhaps things might have been very different if she’d come back to the bay sooner.
‘Do you think he might have gone to a friend’s house?’ Nina asked her now.
‘I don’t know. I scoured the pier, checked the chippy too, but he isn’t anywhere. I thought he might have come here.’
‘I haven’t seen him,’ said Leo.
‘Here.’ Adrian had speedily made a cup of tea and now he insisted Maeve take it. He got down on his haunches. ‘It’s camomile, bit girlie for Leo to have in the boathouse in my opinion, but it’ll warm you up, calm you down.’ His kind gesture, soothing voice and attempt at a joke was well-meaning but was never going to work.
‘I can’t sit here drinking tea when I don’t know where he is.’ She began to cry and her hand wobbled so much Adrian took the tea from her before she slopped the hot liquid all over herself.
‘You’ll be no use to Jonah if you can’t think straight,’ he said, urging her to take the piece of cake Leo had brought over to her.
But she shook her head. She couldn’t stomach anything.
‘We’ll find him.’ Adrian looked into her eyes, the person he’d always been still there. ‘He won’t have gone far, I’m sure of it.’
She managed a nod and reluctantly took a sip of the tea when he coaxed her to try it again. Whoever said a cup oftea solved all your problems clearly had no idea what they were talking about because it had little to no effect.
Nina asked again who Jonah knew around this way, whose house he might’ve gone to.
‘He doesn’t know that many kids yet and I don’t have anyone’s numbers. What was I thinking? I should’ve made sure I had numbers, numbers of everyone he has contact with.’
‘What you were thinking was that it’s nice he has friends, that back in our day we didn’t have phones with us,’ said Nina. ‘We went out to play until it was time for tea. Our parents never knew where we were and it was normal back then.’
