A few seconds later, the call ends.
For a heartbeat I just stand on Sean and Molly’s porch, the phone pressed to my ear, listening to the silence.
Thunder booms, the dark clouds I saw building on the horizon now churning overhead, heavy and tinged with a strange ochre glow.
Then the stillness hits me, cold and absolute, and my mind blanks except for one thought: I have to find Lily-Anne.
Keys. Door. Engine.
I don’t delay, not for a second, not even to find Sean, but he appears at the door just as I’m reversing. He must have heard me shouting.
“Follow me to the cottage,” I yell, and then tyres screech as I tear down the road. The wipers can’t keep up with the rain. Streetlights streak past, ghosting across the windscreen. My hands are welded to the wheel, knuckles white. I keep replaying the sound—the scream, the rush of air, the silence after.
It could have been an attack. It’s the first place my mind goes to, the distorted sounds of a scuffle. The thought chills my bones, but I force myself to think rationally.
It could’ve been a slip. Maybe she dropped her phone.
Please, God, let it be that.
When I reach the cottage, someone’s taken my usual spot. I don’t care. I mount the curb and leave the car half on the naturestrip.
I don’t go inside. I stride to the beach, calling Ellenor as I go—only to hang up when I realise she’s already there, scanning the shoreline.
I run to meet her, pebbles scattering beneath my feet. The wind is blowing in hard from the sea, and the storm has lit the world in a strange yellow haze, clouds boiling above, the tide crawling closer. Lily-Anne is nowhere in sight, the beach stretching empty left and right.
At least it’s not raining here.
“Did she tell you which way she went?” I yell over the wind.
“No, she just said she was going for a walk,” she replies in panic. “We had a fight about something stupid—and she was already upset because Jack was being a real cunt earlier.”
I fill her in on my phone call with Lily, short and to the point. “Something’s happened to her.”
Ellenor looks at me fearfully. “She promised she wouldn’t go far. Brandon, what if someone took her? What if Jack hurt her?”
My thoughts race.
Violence? Abduction? Jack? Unlikely, but I can’t make that call. Not when I’m rigid, unable to breathe.
Lightning flashes, breaking apart the sky.
“Call the police—999,” I tell her. “Stay here and meet them.”
“Where are you going?” Ellenor shouts.
“I’m not waiting. There’s a chance she walked further.”
There’s no use standing around if she has. I have to find her.
But which way?
Following the shoreline left will lead to the harbour.
Going right leads to a long stretch of beach that I’m certain is less familiar to Lily-Anne.
If she were distressed, would she chase the unknown or cling to the familiar?
My pulse drums as I veer left, hoping I chose well.
