The Sing of the Shore

It turned very cold. He stayed up late into the night with his ear to the kitchen wall, just the blue light from the fridge, and the white security lights coming in through the thin curtains. He paced the kitchen. When the baby cried he went straight to her and lifted her out of her cot and held her while he paced. She shaped her mouth into a sound and then gave up and blew a sticky bubble instead, and sighed.

‘It’s OK,’ he told her. ‘It’s OK.’

Then he went back to the wall and listened. He pressed so hard that bits of paint flaked off onto the floor.

He left Lorna sleeping in bed and came downstairs and listened all night.

He heard the music again, faintly this time, somewhere towards the back of the house.

Another time there was a hushed, crying sound, like someone had left a tap slowly running.

‘I no, I no,’ the baby said. She opened her eyes wide. ‘Sshhh,’ she said.

The phone next door rang, cut out, then rang again. Jay stopped turning his phone on. He put it under a box in the wardrobe, then in a drawer. After a few days he took it out and threw it into the brambles behind the back window.

Someone was leaving. He heard it clearly and distinctly.

The baby looked at him, her head to one side. ‘Wha?’ she said. She frowned.

A very cold feeling washed over Jay – it went from his neck down to his feet, almost rooting him to the floor.

The voice came again through the wall. It was a man’s voice, but not as deep as the one he usually heard. ‘Going,’ it said. ‘The only thing to …’ A cupboard opened, then drawers opened, and something heavy was dragged across the floor. A zip crunched.

Jay picked up the baby and held her to his chest. He stood by the front door. Footsteps thudded through the wall, more cupboards creaked open.

He put the baby in her coat, then went outside. He crossed the front yard. The van wasn’t there. It was cold and the dishes seemed poised, tensed. They were pointing straight at him.

His breathing was fast and shallow. He held the baby tight and she pressed into his neck. ‘Da?’ she said.

There was no sound except for a rook cawing from a wet branch.

The house next door was in front of him. The door was half-open. Jay walked over to it slowly. He went up the step.

The rubble was still there. It was wet and bits of plaster had spread over the ground like snow. He pushed the door slowly and it swung inwards. It was quiet in there. There were no shoes by the door, no coats on the hooks. The hallway was long and dark. He turned and looked back towards where Lorna would be working. He imagined her at a desk, by a computer, listening.

He thought of how he would tell her.

He suddenly remembered the phrase they used to say to each other.

The phone rang. He held the baby tight. He took a deep breath and stepped inside.

Dreckly

Tide: 7.5 metres

What I’m about to tell you is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. There was this one time when I bet Jory he couldn’t swim out to that rock with all the seagull shit on it and of course he went right ahead and did it and I lost my entire savings which weren’t really anything in the first place but still. I should have made sure the bet was for swimming out and back again because I had to call the coastguard for him on the way back, but there’s no time to go into that now. And this other time I wanted to pierce my ears but they were charging way too much at the hairdresser’s so I did it myself using an ice cube and a needle and a bottle of gin, and look how that turned out. I won’t even tell you about that time with Leon – remember him? I can hardly even think about it. If I even just glimpse a gold tooth now I get this deep-down shudder – less like I’ve walked over my own grave than I’ve fallen right down into it. But now there’s this, and this is probably worse.

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