Secrets of the Tides (25 page)

A body.

They were talking about Alfie’s body, his chubby little legs, his cheeky smile and that fuzz of straw-blond hair that refused to stay flat on his head no matter how many times she brushed it straight. Until then she’d still entertained a small ember of hope that he might be brought home eventually, tired and smiling, wrapped in a blanket and demanding fish fingers and beans before a bath and bed. She’d allowed herself to imagine the indulgent smiles and cheers of the locals as Richard carried him back into the house, hoisted triumphantly on his shoulders. But as she heard the serious talk of the operations around her, she realised, suddenly, that the images were nothing more than an indulgent fantasy.

And then, midway through the first week, there was a sudden flurry of excitement. Police examinations of the registrations at the local campsite had discovered a convicted paedophile had been staying at the time of Alfie’s disappearance. He had not come forward, but left the very same day that Alfie disappeared. To Helen, it seemed perverse to suddenly wish Alfie abducted by a paedophile. But at least that way there was hope of him being found alive. There was a series of lengthy conversations between Richard and the police that Helen simply couldn’t bear to be a part of. But in the end it turned out there was nothing to suggest the man’s involvement. He had a watertight alibi playing bingo in Lyme Regis on the day Alfie had disappeared. It seemed it was nothing more than an eerie coincidence. And with the two adults Dora had witnessed on the beach near the Crag still frustratingly elusive, it seemed all other leads were drawing to a dead end. They were back on the downward slope of the rollercoaster, and it seemed the carriage was speeding faster and faster into a deep, dark tunnel.

Time passed in a fog, each new day melting into the last until on the twelfth, the nice policeman with the strong brown hands and the kind face came back to the house. He sat in his usual position in the living room and broke the news to Helen and Richard that the search would be called off the following day and the enquiry taken back to the station. There were no leads, no evidence of foul play and no proof of any suspicious circumstances. It seemed Alfie’s disappearance was nothing more than a beach outing gone wrong.

‘Nothing more? Nothing more?’ Helen had whispered. ‘How can you say that? Our son is missing. Until I know what’s happened to him how can I give up hope that he is still out there, that he might still be alive? Tell me that. You haven’t even found that couple Dora saw. Where are they? What kind of an investigation are you running? They could have our son,’ she sobbed. ‘They could have our son!’

‘Mrs Tide,’ the officer had said gently, ‘it has been nearly two weeks. We’ve explored all the possibilities, but I’m afraid we believe it to be most likely that Alfie was playing on the rocks. If he were swept into the ocean he would have stood very little chance. The water is very deep off the promontory there and the currents are strong.’ He paused for a moment before continuing. ‘I’m afraid, Mr and Mrs Tide, that we may never find his body.’

Helen closed her eyes and put her head in her hands.

‘Just a few more days, please, officer,’ Richard pleaded. ‘If it’s a case of money I’m sure . . .’

‘It’s not about money,’ the policeman assured him. ‘We’ll keep the file open, of course, in case of any developments but we need to scale back the operation, move resources. There will be an inquest at a later date.’

‘You can’t!’ It was Dora. She was standing at the door, her eyes wide with horror, her face drawn and pale. She looked awful. ‘You can’t do this! You have to keep looking,’ she shrieked. ‘You have to. He’s out there. I know he is.’

Helen turned to look at her daughter. ‘Get out,’ she hissed.

‘But Mum, they can’t do this. He’s out there.’

‘I said get out. You’ve done enough already.’

‘I . . . I . . . I only want . . .’ Dora clutched at the door handle, the blood draining from her face. Helen didn’t let her continue.

‘If it wasn’t for you Alfie would still be—’

‘Helen!’ It was Richard. ‘Dora, your mother is distraught. She doesn’t mean what she says. Why don’t you go into the kitchen? Put the kettle on for us. I’ll come and explain what’s happening in just a moment.’

Dora stood transfixed in the doorway like a statue, frozen under Helen’s icy stare.

‘You think it’s my fault?’ Dora whispered, still staring at Helen.

‘Dora, go into the kitchen. Now!’ Richard commanded.

Dora turned on her heel and fled from the room and Helen, seeing her go began to rock back and forth in her seat. She bit down on her cheek and tasted blood as a strange keening sound left her body.

‘It’s my fault. It’s
all
my fault. I’m his mother,’ she cried, ‘I’m his mother. I’m supposed to protect him. He’s innocent, just a baby. It’s
my
fault, isn’t it? I’m the one who was supposed to protect him. Punish me. Punish me. But not my baby.’

It hit her then, like a sledgehammer. It
was
her fault he was missing. It was her fault her baby was gone. A mother was supposed to protect her children. A mother was supposed to fight like a tigress when it came to the safety of her babies. Yet here she was, an abomination, a monster, more concerned with her own selfish pleasures than the care of her children. She had brought this upon Alfie; she had brought this upon all of them and she didn’t think she could bear the guilt or the shame of it any longer. If only she hadn’t answered his phone call. If only she had said no to meeting him. If only she had stayed home with her children instead of sauntering off to play her sordid games with Tobias. If only . . .

As Helen silently ran through the weight of her unbearable guilt Richard pulled her into his chest and gripped her tightly.

‘Ssshhh,’ he urged. ‘Sssshhh, none of that, you hear me?’

She could make out the thud of his heart through his sweater. It sounded too fast.

The policeman looked down at his shoes. ‘I’m so sorry, I really am.’ He couldn’t meet their eyes. ‘On behalf of the whole force I’d like to offer our sincere condolences for your loss.’

Helen let out another sob.

‘I’m so sorry, but we really have done all we can; you understand.’

They didn’t understand. They couldn’t.

But there was nothing more they could say. The search was drawing to a close.

The following day the police packed away their files, drank their last cups of tea in the kitchen, rinsed out their mugs and bade the family a solemn farewell. Even the one remaining journalist, who had stayed doggedly at the end of the drive for the last two days, had packed up her belongings and driven away. The scent of a big story had gone. There were new tragedies to chase. The world, it seemed, had given up on Alfie. And there they were, just the four of them, left to pick up the pieces of their lives, a family in tatters, never to be the same again.

DORA

Present Day

It is obvious from the stillness of the air around her that the flat is empty but Dora still feels compelled to yell out as the heavy metal door slams shut behind her. ‘Dan, I’m home!’

Silence.

She throws her weekend bag down by the door and makes her way through to the living room. She is pleased to be back and has been looking forward to seeing Dan, so she is disappointed to find the place empty. Dora walks through the echoing white room until she stands by the closed door to Dan’s studio. She knows what lies behind it. It is an austere, concrete-floored room with a soaring skylight and wide glass windows, the perfect sculptor’s studio. Dan had fallen in love with the space at first sight and it was at the initial viewing, as he had stalked around the room, stroking the brick walls with his hands, that she had known the flat was meant to be theirs. It is where he designs his sculptures, casts his wax moulds, and pours his bronzes.

Cire perdue
. The lost wax method. Memories suddenly come flooding back of their second, or perhaps third date, when Dan had shown her around his modest rented studio in Camden and the handful of completed bronze sculptures awaiting shipment to a gallery in Bristol. They were large, ever so slightly distorted figures of people, in poses that suggested the flash of a camera capturing a random moment in time. An old man stood in one corner, painfully hunched as he reached for something on the floor. A little boy with socks sagging round his ankles was caught in an energetic kick at a football. A tall, elongated figure – a businessman, she assumed, from the briefcase in his hand – strode out confidently, mobile phone to his ear and his mouth open in a brash shout. A tired-looking young woman with a shopping basket slung over one arm stood on tiptoes with her other arm outstretched to an unseen aisle of food. The figures crowded the small workspace with their solid metal presence.

She had walked around them slowly, marvelling at the intricate, lifelike detail on each one – fingernails, hair, a scabby knee. Each was strangely realistic and yet, at the same time, oddly impressionistic in its surreal, slightly stretched dimensions. The harder she had looked at each one, the more they had seemed to blur into indefinable pieces of molten lava.

Dan had explained the painstaking process he undertook to produce each one and she had sat spellbound. She had never really thought about it before. She had supposed he would just take a big lump of metal and chip away at it until the image he had been striving for emerged. But the reality was, of course, very different. She found it fascinating that he should have to produce an initial clay cast, absolutely perfect in every single detail that would then form the basis for his bronze sculpture. When he was happy with the detail in this first sculpture, he would slather it in a layer of wax, and then another layer of clay. And finally, when this wondrous layer cake of clay and wax had been created, the mould would be heated, the wax melted and drained, and a hollow cavern created between the layers of clay into which he would pour his molten bronze.

‘It’s very expensive. Not a process you want to get wrong,’ he admitted.

‘No, I can see that,’ she marvelled, stroking the bronze sleeve of the businessman. He wore tiny cufflinks in the shape of chess pawns. ‘But all that work in clay and wax, just to create a void into which to pour the metal, isn’t it frustrating? Doesn’t it feel like a waste, just to see it melting away, or being chipped off afterwards? Why not just work in clay?’

‘But that’s the beauty of it, you see,’ exclaimed Dan passionately. ‘That moment, when you remove the clay and there it is, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, standing before you. It’s a moment of truth, in pure bronze. And there’s something about bronze that’s just so solid; so permanent. It’s so
real
.’

‘But what about those first sculptures, you know, the ones in clay and wax? You spend so much time on them, only to then discard them. I feel a bit melancholy just thinking of it.
Cire perdue
. It even sounds sad!’

Dan had laughed. ‘You are so sentimental. Look at it this way: those earlier sculptures are necessary. They are what give life to this final bronze sculpture that stands before you. If they hadn’t existed, this now couldn’t exist. It’s all part of a process, a life cycle.’

Dora had nodded, still a little unconvinced. ‘I just don’t know if I’d have the patience,’ she admitted.

Dan shook his head. ‘It’s not patience. It’s passion. Or perhaps,’ he admitted truthfully, ‘more like obsession. I’m obsessed with capturing that moment, that single moment of movement in a human being’s life when everything can change. I try to find that moment, and then capture it in a split second; I freeze it in time.’ He paused and then shook his head, ‘Actually, it’s more than that. It’s not just about freezing it. The challenge for me is to cast fluid movement permanently, in one of the most fundamentally enduring and fixed materials available. It doesn’t get much more permanent than bronze, after all. Transient movement versus enduring solidity, do you see?’

Dora was a little lost; but she knew she loved his sculptures. They were alive and exciting and breathed vitality into the dingy workroom they wandered around. Looking back now, she knows that was the moment she fell in love with him. Seeing him standing there amidst his work, his flushed face illuminated by a shaft of light as dust particles danced all around; she had felt his passion and something warm and fluttering and terrifyingly real had stirred deep within her.

That had been nearly three years ago, and here she is, in the home they share, standing on the other side of a shut door, listening for sounds of him. There is nothing but silence and she knows he is out. She is tempted for a moment to sneak inside the studio and take a peek at his latest work, but then thinks better of it. It doesn’t seem quite right without him there. Like spying. There’ll be plenty of time to catch up properly. First she needs a cup of tea.

In the kitchen there is evidence of Dan everywhere. Half-drunk mugs of coffee and dirty plates are stacked precariously by the draining board. A pad of scribbles and sketches lies discarded by the telephone. Dora flicks through the pages and glimpses Dan’s distinctive hand in the rough sketches of women’s necks, arms, legs and shoulders. The images are eerie in their dislocation, an array of dismembered limbs stark in dark charcoal against the whiteness of the page. Next to the pad is a stack of invoices from his suppliers. It is obvious it’s been a productive weekend. She is glad. It makes his absence in Dorset more bearable, knowing that he’s knuckled down to his new piece. As she turns back towards the sink to rinse out a mug she sees his note on the table. It is held in place by a dirty cereal bowl.