Second Chance (26 page)

I let Paul in. ‘I'm afraid Annabel is missing,' I said. ‘She didn't come back from her walk and I'm getting worried about her.'

‘But I think we'll soon find her safe and well,' Sergeant Edwards said. ‘She doesn't sound to me like a suicide case. I'm off and I hope to let you have some good news very soon.'

As a rule, I'm not overfond of policemen, but I looked at Sergeant Edwards with real love. ‘Thank you.'

‘I've got the strongest feeling that Laurie Bridgewater will have found her by this time,' Paul said. ‘He's a very capable young man; he'll have tracked her down and taken her to some restaurant to calm her. He can't be expected to know that you've got into a panic because she's been away a few hours. They'll turn up together very soon, you shall see.'

I looked hard at Paul and didn't like what I saw. ‘Make yourself a cup of tea,' I said, ‘you know where things are. My cousin Rhydian is going to drive me round looking for her.'

‘Oh, but that's my job, surely,' Paul said.

‘No, I know the area,' Rhydian said. ‘It's my job.'

He and I left. He still had his arm around me.

‘She's two months' pregnant, she's been sick several mornings; she sleeps very badly. She's not physically capable of walking up Bryncelyn. Lewis Owen doesn't realise how frail she is. She ate like a horse last night when we were at the Indian restaurant in Abernon, so he thinks she's some sort of Amazon. Oh Rhydian, I'm so afraid she's been abducted by some pervert. And please don't say that there aren't any perverts in Cwmllys.'

‘I wasn't going to. The place is probably buzzing with them. I just think it's a bit more likely that she's had some sort of accident, sprained ankle or something. Lewis Owen was probably rushing after her instead of searching properly. We'll search properly – I've brought my lambing torch. And there'll be a moon later.' He parked his car at the side of mine. ‘Hold my hand. The quicker we get to the cliffs, the quicker we'll find her.'

Everything was silver, the sea and the sky – a strange phosphorescent light left over from the setting sun.

‘Oh, it's high tide,' Rhydian said, slowing down and sounding completely deflated.

‘What difference does that make? Tell me. For God's sake, don't keep things to yourself. Don't try to protect me.'

‘My little theory's destroyed, that's all. When you said she wasn't much of a hiker, I thought she might have walked on the beach, turned into the cave and been trapped by the tide. But the timing's wrong.'

‘When would it have started to turn? Even a trickle in the cave might have frightened her. She's not used to our tides. They always had holidays in Crete. She could still be sitting on one of those projecting rocks halfway up the cave. What can we do?'

‘We can't do anything about that for at least an hour, but we can walk on the cliff and shine the torch and shout for her. After all, we don't know that she's in the cave.'

‘Why isn't the coastguard here?' My voice broke and Rhydian stopped and put his arms tightly around me.

‘He's got a huge area to cover, but he will come.'

We started to walk up the cliff path and almost immediately someone shouted at us from the beach. ‘I think it's Lewis Owen,' I said. We waited for him to catch up with us.

‘I called in at the Ship in Morfa,' he said, ‘but no one had caught sight of her. What are we going to do now?'

‘My cousin Rhydian thought she might have gone into the cave, but it's high tide, so we can't do anything about it at the moment.'

‘I can. I'm a swimmer,' Lewis said. ‘No, I mean a good swimmer. No, I mean
good
. Brought up in New Quay, man. No, I'm going to go in. Great idea.'

‘I can swim, too, lad, but the currents are strong round here. And I mean
strong
. Not like New Quay. I'd be all for you risking your life if we
knew
she was in there, but we don't. It was only a hunch of mine, lad. Well, if you're going in, I'll come with you.'

‘At your age? No you won't. I'm not taking that responsibility.'

‘I think we should wait for the coastguard. If she is alive in there she can hold on a bit longer, can't she?' My voice was doing things I didn't know it could.

Both men were getting undressed so I started getting undressed as well. ‘I'm bloody terrified of the water, and I'm not a good swimmer, but if you two go in, I'm going in too. She's my stepdaughter.'

‘Put your clothes back on this minute,' Rhydian said. ‘I promise only to go as far as the mouth of the cave. I'll leave the heroics to the lad, but at least I'll be there to take over if he brings her out. If she
is
in there.'

I watched them wading out, their bodies silvered in the strange light, watched them plunging into the sea and then watched their two heads in the water until I could no longer see anything but sea.

I should never have contacted Rhydian, I realise that, he's fifty with three children and another on the way, and what if he's drowned? What if Annabel turns up safe and sound, and Rhydian – and Lewis – are drowned because of my panic? What if Paul turns out to be right; what if Laurie found Annabel and persuaded her to go off somewhere with him? It will be all my fault. Two good men drowned because of me. ‘And she gave a great sigh and with that broke her heart. And a four-sided grave was built for her at the side of the Alaw.' Was that Branwen? Or Rhiannon? My tears are for all of us.

‘Kate! Kate! She's safe. She's back in the cottage.' It was Paul, running across the strip of sand by the rocks, agitated and out of breath.

‘Oh my God. Rhydian and Lewis are swimming into the cave looking for her and it's highly dangerous.'

Without a second's hesitation, Paul pulled off his clothes and threw them at my feet with the pile already there. Everyone brave but me. I shone Rhydian's torch to light up Paul's path to the sea. The tide was already turning. ‘She lost the car keys,' he shouted back at me before being swallowed up by the sea.

Annabel was safe and sound in the house. She'd lost the keys of my car. Why had none of us been thinking of ordinary, small events? I was thankful, of course, for her safety, but my heart was still thumping with fear. I prayed to the God I didn't believe in to bring the three men back safely.

‘She's safe. She's safe.' I could hear Paul's voice behind the sea's clamour.

‘She's safe. She's OK. Come out of there, lad.' Rhydian's voice, fainter and further away.

And then the coastguard's Land Rover trundling over the pebbles towards where I was standing with the torch. ‘She's safe,' I shouted at him as soon as he'd slammed the door and was walking towards me. ‘The men are still out there, but I've just heard that she's safe.'

He took it in his stride, obviously used to, and perhaps even welcoming false alarms. ‘Well, they'll be fine. Lucky the autumn storms haven't started. It's calm as a pond out there tonight.' He shone his searchlight towards the headland. Calm? The waves, strong and regular, were making shuddery, moaning noises which made me feel seasick. I closed my eyes.

‘Can you see them?'

‘Yes, I see them. Looks as though they're having a bit of a swim around.'

‘How many do you see?'

‘There's two of them, if not more.'

‘There should be three. One of them was going to swim into the cave. Is he out? I can't bear to keep watching.'

‘Bloody idiot, swimming into that cave at high tide. What the hell was he thinking of? Stupid fool.'

Who was he calling a stupid fool? ‘It's our minister, Lewis Owen from Glanrhyd. He was trying to save my stepdaughter.'

‘Bloody idiot! Tell him to save souls on dry land from now on... Jesus, he's made it! Well done, boy! Jesus! Aye, they're making for shore now. I'll get some blankets from the van.'

And then I had three naked men around me, all in the highest spirits, proud of themselves, pleased to be on dry land again. ‘By God, he can swim,' Rhydian was saying, as he tried to dry himself with his shirt. ‘Got no shoulders to speak of, but he's cunning with those currents. Doesn't fight them, that's the secret.'

‘Nothing in the way of currents round here,' the coastguard said. ‘I had no worries on that score or I'd have been in myself. Didn't you hear about the inquest on the man drowned in Cwmllys? “Died of exhaustion while trying to commit suicide.” You're no heroes, none of you.'

I was the only one who accepted his offer of a blanket.

‘I've got some brandy up in the house,' Paul said as soon as he was dressed. ‘I hope you can all come back for a drink.'

‘Thank you,' Lewis said. ‘I'd love to come. Will my bike fit in the car?'

‘Another time perhaps,' the coastguard said. ‘I'll see you in the pub sometime.'

‘Another time,' Rhydian echoed. ‘I've got some paperwork tonight.'

Paul turned towards me, waiting for me to walk to the car with him and Lewis.

‘I'm staying here for a while with Rhydian. Give Annabel my love.'

When the others had left, Rhydian and I sat close together on a low outcrop of rock, the noisy slap and suck of the sea in our ears.

‘Are you going to stay here with me?' he asked, after several minutes. And after another few moments, answered his own question, ‘No, you're going to leave me, I know that.'

The uncaring ocean surged around us. ‘We met too late,' I said. ‘You've got too much to lose.'

I opened his jacket and his shirt and put my face against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart and smelling the sea on his skin. I thought of all the poets in the world who'd striven to put the race of their blood into simple, sincere words. Millions of words; letters, odes, sonnets. What could I say? I love you. I love you true. I licked my index finger and wrote it on his heart.

‘Did you understand that?' I asked him.

‘I don't understand anything. I waited years. Not for you, but for someone like you, someone who could make me feel as you do. And now it's too late. I can't leave my farm and my family.'

‘I waited years, too. There's never been anyone else. The others, all the others, were only substitutes.'

‘In the future, I'll think this is a dream. Tonight seems like a dream. I wish I didn't have to wake. But tomorrow I'll be up at half six as usual and it will be as though this never happened.'

‘It won't be like that for me. I'll remember it and carry it about with me.'

‘We've had so little time. Less than two weeks.'

‘When did you realise you loved me?'

‘The moment you opened the door that first night. You reminded me of the skinny little girl who'd cried so much at my mother's funeral. And you looked up at me and smiled. And that was it.'

‘Do you think Grace suspects anything?'

‘I don't think so... No, I'm sure she doesn't. Though Bleddyn said he knew as soon as he saw us together. And yet, what does he know about love? According to him, he fell in love with Helga, Siwan's mother, because she'd been able to solve some mathematical problem which had defeated him.'

We were talking together so sadly and gently, kissing and touching each other sadly and gently as though we were an old married couple with the urgency of sex long behind us.

The great moments are so few in a lifetime's toil and boredom, but surely their memory would shed a fleeting radiance. Surely I'd never sit by the sea again without feeling the lovely calm of this moment. Words like infidelity, forbidden love, treachery counted for nothing in this enveloping calm.

Yet, even as they were thought of, they exerted their power. ‘I suppose you'd better take me home,' I said. ‘Grace will be expecting you back.'

Holding each other so tightly that our bones crunched together, we stumbled over the wet stones to the car. There was no real sadness that night, only a memory of shared danger and an awareness of love flowing like a tune in the blood.

When I got home, Paul, Annabel and Lewis were playing Scrabble at the living-room table. For a while I watched them through the uncurtained window. (Paul and I used to play Scrabble with my mother. She usually won because she insisted on using Welsh words as well as English, many of them invented to use up whatever letters she happened to have left.)

I knew it was going to be a difficult evening and wished I could creep up to bed without having to discuss mundane matters and make plans. I didn't want to hear Paul singing Laurie's praises, didn't want to hear him trying to be understanding about Lewis, didn't want him talking about Francesca. And I wasn't prepared for even a mention of the future. All I wanted was to go to bed and think about Rhydian, going over all he'd said, hearing his soft intent voice in my head.