Chapter 79
There was a flurry of indignant curses.
“Holy fuckwits!” yelled Sally.
“You’re not in my will, John, so it’s no use trying to frighten me to death!” Maeve declared loudly. “And shut the bloody door!”
Gemma’s comments amounted to a series of unintelligible squeaks.
“John, what the . . .” Annie began. She could tell from his face that something was very wrong. Oh God, please don’t let something have happened to Mari, she thought.
John cut her off. “Have you seen Alfred?” he asked her, ignoring everyone else. His voice was rough with desperation, his eyes pleading. Annie stood and looked at him, trying to read his face. John turned and, with some effort, shoved the door shut against the wind. The floor was soaking. He pushed his hair back off his forehead. Rain dripped continuously off his nose.
“Have you?” he asked, turning back to Annie.
“No,” said Annie. “I thought he was in the shelter.”
“Sit down, my boy,” said Maeve, wrestling him into a chair. “And tell us what the devil is going on.”
John ran his hand through his hair again, his other hand clenched into a fist on the table. Annie sat down beside him.
“Christ!” he said. “I should’ve known better. I’m such a fucking idiot!”
“What’s happened?” Annie asked; she put herself into his line of sight so that his eyes had to meet hers. “Tell me.” She ached to take his hand but didn’t.
“I got a call last night from the shelter. Alfred took off after a meeting with the counseling team and didn’t come back. I’ve been driving around looking for him ever since.”
“All night? For Christ’s sake, John, you could have had an accident. Why didn’t you call me?” Annie scolded.
“I grabbed a couple of hours’ kip at a motel, but my phone battery died.”
“You should have come to me!” said Annie. “I would have helped you look.”
“I thought I’d find him.” John looked pleadingly at her. “I tried the town center, then the wider town, I’ve been over most of Thanet. And then I thought, maybe he’d tried to get back here, hitchhiked or something.” He glanced around the room. “I guess not.”
The women shook their heads.
“What if he has come back and you just haven’t seen him?” said Sally. “You said he’s got a kind of hideout.”
“Surely he wouldn’t have gone into the cave?” said Gemma. “He must know it would be dangerous in weather like this!”
“Alfred knows the tides better than any of us, but we can’t rule out that he didn’t try and get into the cave when the tide was lower, thinking he could ride out the storm in there,” said Maeve.
“And if he’s panicked and bolted, he might not be thinking straight,” added Sally. “Anxiety can make the most levelheaded person act irrationally.”
“I just don’t know where else he would go,” said John. “This is all my fault.”
This time Annie did reach out to him. She took his clenched fist firmly in her two hands. “You are not responsible for Alfred,” she said with conviction. “He is an adult man and any choices he’s made, wise or otherwise, are his own. Okay?”
John didn’t look at her.
Annie repeated herself in a tone that demanded a response. “Okay?”
John looked at her and nodded infinitesimally. Annie nodded back.
Annie was first to her feet. Her heart was beating hard in her chest, adrenaline making her feel sick. She had a terrible feeling that Maeve was right; where else would Alfred go? The tide had been coming in fast when she’d been securing the shutters, and the storm made the swell far greater than normal.
“Right!” she said. “Coats on. Mari’s got torches in the cellar. We’ll sweep the beach as far as we can.”
She ran behind the counter and quickly swapped her ankle boots for the pair of wellingtons she kept there.
“What if a couple of us turn our cars around to face the beach and put our full beams on?” Sally suggested.
“Good idea,” said Maeve. “John and I both have 4×4s, so their beams should be high enough to reach over the prom. And yours is best placed of all, being parked right on the prom itself.” She nodded at Sally. “John, have you asked at the pubs yet?”
John shook his head. “No, I came straight here.”
“Okay, lad. In that case, Sally, would you mind driving up to the pubs and asking if anyone’s seen Alfred? Not too much of a pain to get in and out with the chair, is it?”