A Song for Issy Bradley (42 page)

Indistinct cries sail on the wind—they could be avian or human; she defers judgment, twists away from the sounds to review the
horizon. And as she acknowledges the permanence of the uninhabited skyline, she detects the germ of a feeling that isn’t sadness, but something else: a coalescence of the fear of being caught and the comfort of being found. The wind carries more cries, words now. She will not answer yet. Instead, she imagines they are echoes of the many memories that ghost the beach: iterations of kite flying, shell collecting, crab catching—slivers of an irretrievable past that will always exist here.

“Claire!”

“Mum!”

The sea is reeling and she wonders whether she has left it too late. She digs the toe of one wellie into the heel of the other and extends her arms, balancing with none of the elegance of the heron as her foot emerges. The empty wellie drops and is joined seconds later by the other.

Damp seeps between her toes, crawls up her socks, and as this secondary cold banishes tiredness, it occurs to her that the contrast between the bare horizon and the promise of the shore marks the difference between heaven and earth.

The waves rock inexorably closer. Lacy spume swamps her toes; the tide licks and retreats, licks and retreats. She waits for the inevitable surge, watches as its expanding arc is held high, until it heaves like a long exhalation, pitching past her knees. The nightie tangles her legs. She staggers then straightens, standing fast as the island is buried. And as the last of her lonely, waterlogged footprints melt under the rush of the tide, she turns to face home.

I’d like to thank my Ph.D. supervisors, Ailsa Cox and Robert Sheppard, for their ongoing support and friendship. I’d also like to thank the members of Edge Hill’s Narrative Research Group for valuable feedback and Edge Hill’s Postgraduate Research Bursary Fund for funding an Arvon Course. Special thanks to Amanda Richardson and Jenn Ashworth for reading draft chapters, and to Sarah Franklin for reading and critiquing the final draft.

Thank you to Jo Cannon for help with medical details and Tony D’Arcy-Masters from the Southport Offshore Rescue Trust (Southport Lifeboat) for answering numerous coastal questions. Thanks to Dialogue—a Journal of Mormon Thought for publishing an early version of “Miracle Boy” as a short story.

A huge thank-you to my agent, Veronique Baxter; my editor, Jocasta Hamilton; and everyone at Ballantine Books.

Finally, love and thanks to my lovely children—wearers of smelly football boots and tellers of terrible jokes. And to Neil, for everything.

A Song for Issy Bradley
Sweet Home (stories)