Page 110 of Take Me Away

She’s clutching me back. ‘I’m going down to the harbour.’ Her words come out a vow, and as much as I want to run down there to help, probably to hinder, but just to be there, I grab Nina’s hand. ‘Nina, no, it’s safer here.’

But she’s pulling away. ‘I have to.’

Fuck. She’s gone out of the door, leaving Ayo and the rest of the village staring after her. And I follow.

Because there are two in the water. Peter and Kit.

Kit is in the water.

The harbour’s a screaming mess of sea and spray and salt-slick stone. It wants to knock me over. I keep going. Everyone with sense is indoors. But I’m past sense, past reason. Past anything but the need to be closer to where Kit might be.

The storm has transformed the familiar inlet into something monstrous. Waves crash against the stone wall with such force it vibrates through my boots. Spray explodes upward, catching in the wind, raining down salty needles that sting my face, my hands. The boats still moored buck and strain against their lines like panicked animals.

I’m drenched within seconds, coat useless against this onslaught. But I push forward anyway, one hand against the wall to steady myself as gusts try to snatch me sideways.

I’m not alone. Other figures huddle near the harbour master’s office – a makeshift coastal command post. Radios crackle. Voices shout coordinates and instructions that the wind tears to shreds.

A coastguard helicopter hovers in the distance, searchlight probing the churning darkness. Visibility can’t be more than a few metres in this weather. They’re searching blind.

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ someone shouts near my ear. A woman in coastguard uniform, clipboard clutched to her chest. ‘It’s not safe.’

‘I know one of the missing,’ I yell back against the wind.

She hesitates, then nods once. Moves away without trying to make me leave. She understands. In places like this, everyone understands.

I find a spot along the wall where I can grip an old iron ring, anchoring myself against the wind. From here, I can see the harbour mouth where the lifeboat will return.

The rain doesn’t stop.

The sea has risen up in full fury now – waves smashing against the sea wall, spray leaping over the docks, wind howling like it’s got something personal to say.

I stand on the edge of the slipway, just out of reach of the worst of it, eyes locked on the harbour mouth. On the empty black.

The summer I was nine, there’d been a storm, Kit’s father had been out on the lifeboat, and I’d watched from the doorway of the Ship with Jude and Kit as the lighthouse blinked out over the water, illuminating the waves, the bob of the all-weather boat as it forced its way home. But it’s currently useless, wrecked in a storm that must have been worse than this one. Kit’s face had been pale in the darkness, but his shoulders had been pushed back. Brave. Determined.

I watch for the boat.

I wait.

Time loses meaning on the harbour wall. Minutes, hours, heartbeats – all just waymarks in a stretch of dread that seems to have no end.

More people arrive, Reuben among them, his tall frame easily recognisable even hunched against the weather. His face is a worn rock of worry as he takes up position at the harbour master’s door, where the radios live.

‘Any word?’ I shout when I make my way to him, the wind whipping my hair across my face.

He shakes his head, but his arm comes around my shoulders. ‘Peter’s still in the water. They’ve called in the Pencross boat for backup.’

Pencross is the next village over. Two rigs out means things have gone from bad to worse. I swallow hard, taste salt and fear.

‘What can I do?’

‘Nothing.’ The word is a gunshot. ‘None of us can. Just wait.’

So I wait. We all wait. The vigil moves from pub to harbour, bodies against the storm, faces into the wind.

A shout goes up from the harbour master’s office. The radio’s crackling again, but I can’t make out words. Just Reuben’s face, suddenly animated, his mouth moving.

‘They’ve got something,’ someone yells. ‘Port side, two hundred metres!’