Last Seen: A gripping psychological thriller, full of secrets and twists

‘Except when you walk over to my beach hut,’ Sarah added. ‘Because I’m going to buy the one next door.’

It was a girl’s wish, that’s all. Beach huts next door, long summers spent on a sandbank.

But neither of us could know that our lightly cast dream would come true – or what it would cost us both.

3. SARAH

DAY ONE, MIDDAY

I wait until midday before I call Jacob; it gives him long enough to sleep off the worst of his hangover, and enough time to feel he’s proved a point by not returning to the beach hut. When I pick up my mobile, I see that I missed a call from Isla last night. There’s no message and I wonder vaguely if she was ringing to apologize.

I scroll to Jacob’s number, press call, and then hold the mobile to my ear, my fingers drumming the kitchen counter.

Oddly, there’s no ring tone – just a recorded voice informing me that they’re unable to connect me, and I should try again later.

Jacob would never switch off his phone. His mobile is like a fifth limb, which he uses with an instinctiveness that eludes me completely. He can point his phone to the sky and name star constellations, or take over the car stereo with a swipe of the screen. It’s unlikely he’s got no signal either, as everywhere on the sandbank is in range. I suppose it’s possible that he’s run out of battery, although we all charge our phones from an attachment that Nick rigged up from the solar panels.

I wonder what to do now. I don’t like the idea of stewing in the beach hut, waiting for him to return. I keep replaying our argument, pausing on the narrowness of Jacob’s dark gaze, and the way he’d yanked his rucksack from the floor, then slammed the beach hut door so hard that the panes of glass rattled in their frames. I’d gone to the window, pressing my fingertips against the cool glass. The beach was in darkness, except for the lantern of a night-fisherman setting up for the evening and the glow of Neil’s boat going out, and I’d watched Jacob slide away into the night, a stranger to me.

What happened to the little boy I used to hold in my arms as a baby, with his inquisitive brown gaze that fixed on mine, the button nose that wrinkled when I made him laugh? It had been so much easier then. There were fewer mistakes to make.

I pick up my mobile again, passing it from hand to hand. Part of me is desperate to call Nick and tell him what’s going on, but he’ll still be in the pitch and, anyway, if I tell him that Jacob’s stayed out overnight, he’ll want to know why.

No, I need to handle this myself.

I slip the phone into my pocket, then leave the hut.

Luke’s beach hut is on the harbour side of the sandbank, near the wooden jetty where the ferry docks. I’ve known his parents for years: they are a lovely couple, both GPs, who take on gruelling schedules. Luke is the youngest of four brothers and I think, by now, his parents’ rules have relaxed so greatly that Luke spends the majority of the summer in the beach hut on his own.

A shining cloud of starlings rises from a hut roof as I pass, wings beating a bewitching pattern in the sunlight.

As I near Luke’s hut I pull my sunglasses down and go to smooth my hair back – forgetting I’ve recently had it cut so it now rests just above my shoulders. The space where it has always hung down my back feels strangely exposed, naked. Nick assures me he likes the change, but I worry I look too severe, the blonde bob sharpening my features.

Luke is sitting on the deck in his board shorts, opposite a girl who wears a black bikini, her skin tanned and tight. I glance beyond them, inside the dim hut, and can make out a cluster of young people sprawled across the sofas. I have no intention of embarrassing Jacob with a lecture about why he didn’t come home last night – I simply want to see him, know he’s okay.

‘Luke!’ I smile, lifting a hand.

He sits up a little straighter, squinting. ‘All right?’

He’s turning into a handsome young man, with his thick sandy blond hair and an open smile. ‘Good party?’

‘Yeah,’ he says, getting slowly to his feet. He climbs down from the deck and stands on the beach, leaning a hand on a weathered picnic bench as he squints against the sun. I don’t flatter myself that he’s come to greet me – he just doesn’t want me to enter the hut. It’s a space for teenagers, not mothers.

Up a little closer, it’s clear he’s hung-over. He’s got that glazed look, and a slumped, low energy, as if everything is a little too bright, a touch too vivid. His hair sticks up at one side of his head, and his eyes are bloodshot. I can smell the alcohol fumes rising from his pores. ‘Jacob still here?’

‘Jacob?’ he repeats, surprised.

‘He didn’t stay here last night?’

‘No.’ Luke glances back inside the hut, my gaze following his. Through the gaggle of teenagers I spot empty cans of beer, bottles of spirits, cigarette butts. I notice a plastic drinks bottle with the nose cut off and tin foil wrapped around one end of it, and can guess what they’ve been using it for.

I keep my tone light. ‘He did come to the party?’

‘Yeah, course. It was for him.’

Jacob has always dismissed any suggestion of a birthday party, which is why I was thrilled this year when he said he was going to Luke’s hut for drinks. I offered to buy some beers for them, and a few packs of burgers in case they were hungry later, but he said, ‘It’s sorted.’ Which meant, Don’t interfere.

Despite myself, I ask, ‘What time did he leave?’

Luke rubs the heel of his hand across the side of his head. ‘I dunno. Maybe around eleven, I guess.’

Early – especially as it was a party for him.

‘He said he was gonna come back here.’

Then I realize. I smile lightly as I say, ‘I should probably be looking for him in Caz’s hut, shouldn’t I?’

One of the young men in the hut adds with a smirk, ‘Maybe they were making up!’

Luke narrows his eyes at the boy.

I want to ask more, but instead I say, ‘Cheers, Luke.’

Cheers? I never say cheers.

I leave the hut feeling like an idiot. Of course Jacob will be at Caz’s hut! Robert, her father, must be away.

As far as I can intuit, Jacob and Caz have been a couple since the start of summer. I’ve known Caz since she was a little girl. She’s always been pretty – petite and blonde with sharp green eyes – and I’ve watched her bloom into a confident, beautiful young woman, but there’s a knowingness in her eyes that doesn’t escape me. Earlier in the summer I’d come across the pair of them lying on a rug by the shore, listening to music. A song they both knew was playing loudly and Caz began to sing. I was surprised to see Jacob joining in at the chorus. Their singing grew louder and more raucous as they half shouted the lyrics, nodding their heads, laughing together, the sun on their faces. Caz had jumped to her feet, the rug becoming her stage as she danced and sang. Jacob pulled out his phone and snapped pictures, Caz posing with a hand on her hip, laughing, pouting. As I watched, a spike of doubt stabbed the scene: Do not hurt my son.

As I’m walking away from Luke’s hut, I catch one of the girls saying, ‘Caz was a total mess.’

I slow my pace enough to catch someone else adding, ‘He didn’t need to march her out. She was just having fun.’

I strain to hear the rest, but the conversation swims away from me. Did Jacob have to help Caz back to her hut? Was she so drunk that he didn’t want to leave her? I like the idea of my son being the responsible one.

Caz’s hut is at the furthest end of the sandbank, near the headland. The walk from one tip of the sandbank to the other should only take fifteen minutes, but in summer it feels like you can’t go more than ten paces without a hut owner calling out a greeting, or inviting you in for a drink. I have to pass our beach hut on the way, so I pop my head in briefly just to check Jacob hasn’t returned in the meantime. I’m not surprised to find it empty still.

As I’m moving on, I notice Diane, our next-door beach hut neighbour, standing on her deck. Despite the warmth of the day, a navy fleece is zipped to her chin. She stands with her hands planted on her hips, staring out into the bay where her husband, Neil, is boarding his boat.

‘Neil going fishing?’ I ask.

She looks at me for a long moment. ‘The boat’s been dinged. He’s checking the damage.’

‘Oh, what happened?’

‘No idea.’

Neil will be on the warpath, then. The boat is his pride and joy. He spends more time tinkering with it than fishing from it.

Although Diane and Neil have owned the hut next door for over ten years, I’ve always found it disappointing that we’ve never grown close. Nick and Neil sink the odd beer around the barbecue – but I just can’t imagine sitting out late on the deck sharing a bottle of wine with Diane. I honestly don’t know what we’d talk about.

I ask, ‘You haven’t seen Jacob this morning, have you?’

Diane looks at me through the corners of her eyes. ‘Jacob? Why? Is something wrong?’

‘He didn’t come home last night,’ I say with a loose wave of my fingers, as if it is no big deal.

There’s something odd about the way her gaze travels searchingly over my face. ‘No. I’ve not seen him.’

‘He’s probably at his girlfriend’s.’

Her gaze still doesn’t leave me. ‘I do hope so.’

It’s an odd remark – although perhaps not in the context of Diane. As I move on, I think that, if Diane were one of my other friends with teenagers, I’d already be turning this into an anecdote: Jacob stayed out all night on his birthday. He didn’t bother to text, didn’t answer his mobile the next morning – nothing! I was in a total panic. I found him eventually – with his girlfriend, of course! I can picture the other mums doing that reassuring little roll of their eyes, which means: teenagers.

I’m a good sharer among friends; I trade just the right balance of lamentable parenting tales, with the occasional golden highlight thrown in for good measure: Jacob cooked for us all yesterday. Spaghetti bolognese. Without being asked. I had to stop myself demanding to know what he’d done.

But I am careful not to share everything. For example, it’s only Nick and I who know that Jacob’s head of sixth form called us in halfway through the term to talk about Jacob’s poor attendance. My hands trembled as I left the office. ‘Truancy? Where’s he been going? Do you think something is wrong?’

Nick had slung his arm around my shoulder, just like he used to do when we were younger, and said with a grin, ‘I seem to remember you and Isla bunking off your drama classes.’

‘That was different. It wasn’t school.’

Nick only grinned more.

I also didn’t tell my friends how Jacob broke two toes in the spring. He didn’t injure them in a skateboarding accident, but because he’d kicked the skirting board in our hallway when I’d told him he was too young to go to Glastonbury with his friends.

Just before I reach Caz’s hut, I become aware of Isaac at the periphery of my vision. He’s crossing the beach, his gaze fixed on me. I keep my eyes lowered, pretending not to notice him.

‘Sarah!’ he calls.

I flinch at the sound of my name from his mouth – but I don’t turn.

I can hear his footsteps hurrying through the sand. Heat suffuses my skin as I march on.

‘Sarah! Wait!’ he calls when he is almost at my shoulder.

I have no choice but to turn. ‘Oh, Isaac! I was miles away.’ I keep pace as I say, ‘Sorry, I can’t stop. Meeting Jacob. Already late!’

It’s a lie, of course, but at least Isaac doesn’t say anything further. From the corner of my eye, I see him hesitate. He looks anxious, his hands fluttering at his sides. Then thankfully he nods his head and lets me go.

Caz and Robert’s hut, painted a fresh sky blue, is raised slightly above the neighbouring ones. I scan the harbour to see if I can spot Robert’s boat – a large grey RIB with an oversized engine (which, to me, screams Penis extension!). I can’t see it moored up today, which most likely means he isn’t on the sandbank.

I call out as I climb the wooden steps leading on to the deck, not wishing to surprise Caz and Jacob if they’re together. I find Caz curled into the sofa with her headphones on, eyes closed. Her clear skin is deeply tanned, and her hair, bleached to a white-blonde, looks wild and mussed. I glance beyond her, looking for traces that my son is here. I suppose he could have left by now, deciding to see one of his friends, or to take a walk up on the headland. I am turning to leave when Caz’s eyes suddenly flick open. She sits up, startled, yanking off her headphones. There’s a red mark across her cheek from where she’s been lying, and I notice a slight glassiness to her eyes.

‘Sorry, I just came to see if—’

‘I was just … going out.’

‘Out?’

‘To catch up with a friend.’ Caz puts a hand to her head and ruffles her hair around her face.

I hover in the doorway, giving no indication of leaving.

‘I’ve got a minute though.’

I move into the hut, lowering myself on to the sofa opposite her. I take in the cream tongue-and-groove panelling, the expensive striped navy blinds, the antique barometer fixed above the sink. Caz’s mother decorated the hut before she left Robert to live in Spain with the manager of the timeshare she owned. I’ve not been in the hut since she left and I’m reminded how serene the view of the harbour is on a still day; only sailing boats and sea birds dot the water, the fishing quay visible in the distance. I do enjoy crossing to the harbour side of the sandbank to watch the sun go down in the evenings, yet it’s the sea view that I love; it’s wilder, more exposed.

‘Want a drink?’ Caz offers half-heartedly.

‘Thank you, but no. I was just passing and wanted to catch Jacob. But obviously he’s not here.’

‘No.’

‘He stayed last night, didn’t he?’

She shakes her head. ‘No.’

The word is clear and firm. It drops like a pebble into my chest, causing a ripple of panic. Then, where did he stay?

I look closely at Caz, wondering whether she is telling me the truth. She is perched on the edge of the sofa, as if she’s about to spring up – disappear. Perhaps she thinks I’d be cross if she admitted that Jacob spent the night. She reaches a hand to her left ear lobe, toying with a silver earring she wears in the shape of a seahorse. I watch as she turns it lightly through her fingers, over and over, like a rosary bead, and then removes it. She does the same with the second earring, placing them both on top of a pile of Coast magazines that are stacked neatly on the rustic coffee table between us.

I have the strongest desire to reach out for the earrings, feel the warm weight of the silver in my palm. I keep my focus on Caz though, asking, ‘Do you know where he is?’

‘No. No, I don’t.’

‘But you saw him at the party last night?’

‘Yeah, for a bit.’

‘I heard you left together.’

Colour spreads up Caz’s neck. ‘Oh, yeah. That’s right. We walked back together.’

‘But Jacob didn’t stay here?’

‘No,’ she says tightly.

‘Where did he stay?’

She sighs, exasperated now. ‘Look, we walked back along the beach. Stopped by the rocks near his hut to talk for a bit. Then I came back here. That’s it.’

‘Was he planning to return to the party?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

I think of the conversation I overheard in Luke’s hut – Caz was a ‘mess’ and Jacob practically had to ‘march her out’. ‘Did the two of you argue?’ I picture Caz standing close with one of the other boys at the party, looking up through her long lashes, while Jacob waited at the edge of the hut, watching.

It’s clear I’ve overstepped the mark by the way Caz lifts her chin and glares at me. ‘Jacob wasn’t in a brilliant mood last night.’ She pauses. ‘I’m sure you know.’

The comment, delivered so innocuously, holds a clear accusation. Heat builds in my cheeks as I wonder what exactly Jacob told her.

Caz’s barbed remark seems to have returned her composure, set her on some ledge above me that I didn’t know we were vying for. She uncrosses her bare legs and stands. There is an empty glass on the coffee table, and she collects it, carrying it towards the sink. ‘If I see Jacob, I’ll be sure to let him know you’re looking for him.’

I’m about to rise to my feet, but my gaze catches again on the silver seahorse earrings, lying right there in front of me.

As Caz fills her water glass, I stand, and as I do so I find my fingertips brushing the earrings. I tell myself I am only looking. I just want to see the detail of them. Touch them once. But, before I can stop myself, I feel my fingers closing tightly around them.

I feel the burst of energy filling my chest, the heat roaring through me.

Caz turns to look at me.

I meet her eye, smile. Then I leave her beach hut, heart thudding.

4. ISLA

My thoughts wander back through the events of this summer, turning each one through my mind, like a collection of pebbles I’m trying to arrange. I need to understand how I’m here. How any of this happened. Where everything went wrong between Sarah and me.

There was an evening jog in the mosquito-clouded air; a bottle of wine shared in the wrong beach hut; a stinging remark made on the deck of Sarah’s hut; a photo removed from a wall. Were those some of the events that led to this?

It wasn’t just this summer when things began to unravel – the first thread came loose years before. I meander further back through deep sands and beneath cloudy, salt-bitten skies, pausing on a boat returning to shore with only one boy on deck – not two.

There. That is the moment.

Maybe there’s a sense of inevitability, because how do you recover, pick up your friendship, after something like that?

Yet there was a time when Sarah was everything to me. When she was my family. Back then, I thought nothing could break us.

Summer 1997

My knees were pressed against the metal frame of my mother’s hospital bed, my hands squeezing hers. I was scared: scared by the smell of decay in the thick, still air; scared by the lightness of my mother’s fragile, bony fingers that had once danced with silver rings; scared by her tissue-thin eyelids that hadn’t opened in two days; scared by the watery rasp of her breath that dragged through her body like the tide drawing over rocks. I wanted to pull my hands away, clamp them over my ears. I wanted to run. I wanted to be anywhere but in the curtained space of a Macmillan ward watching my mother dying.

This could not be it. I wasn’t ready.

Our life together was walking at night through the woodland that backed on to our bungalow. It was reading books in front of the fire, me lying on the faded rug, my mother sitting in the oak rocking chair. It was picking elderflower heads and making thick sweet cordial that we stored in glass bottles in the pantry. It was strangers coming in and out of the house for Reiki appointments and reflexology. It was the smell of lavender and rosehip and orange blossom. It was the sound of laughter.

Cancer is a wicked thief. In four short months it had stolen almost everything my mother had: her energy, the songs she used to sing, the quickness in her steps. I’d watched her fade away until all that was left was her shadow. I knew the thief wouldn’t rest until it had that too, but I sat there, clinging on, not ready to let my mother go.

I squeezed her hand tightly, silently begging, I am nineteen years old. Don’t leave me, Mum. Please …

But she did.

She slipped away from me even while I was holding on.

A night-shift nurse with cropped black hair pulled the curtain back a little. Maybe that nurse had learnt to tell death from the expression on the living’s faces, or from the silencing of the hospital machines, or from that certain stillness that pervaded afterwards. She padded softly across the lino floor and gently placed her hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s all right, sweetie. You’re going to be all right.’

I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t let go of my mother.

I screwed my eyes shut and gripped tighter, already beginning to feel her fingers cooling within mine.

On the afternoon of my mother’s funeral, I stood in the hallway, watching people trampling across our rugs, smearing our glasses with their fingerprints, leaving their scents of perfume and aftershave lingering in our home – wiping away the final traces of my mother.

I squeezed into the kitchen, skirting a group of my mother’s yoga friends, searching for Sarah. She’d slept at the bungalow with me every night since my mother died; we’d grab a stack of blankets from the lounge and sit on the mildew-ridden swing-chair in the garden, smoking and talking. I had no siblings to grieve with, and my father – a Scottish chef who’d met my mother during a retreat – had never been a fixture in my life. Sarah was everything, now. It was easy being together because she’d loved my mother, too. She’d tried on wigs with us, striking silly poses in front of the shop mirror; she’d artfully wrapped bright scarves around my mother’s neck to hide the tumours that had spread there; she’d smoothed blusher across her cheekbones before hospital appointments. My mother called her ‘Sarah Sunshine’.

I saw her across the room carrying a tray of drinks, smiling, thanking people for coming – doing the things I hadn’t the heart to. Seeing me, she tapped the pocket of her trousers where I could make out the rectangular shape of a cigarette packet, then signalled towards the garden with a grin. A smoke outside. That’s exactly what I needed. We’d pull down the hood of the swing-chair and light up with our heads bent together, shutting out the rest of the world.

As I started to make my way across the lounge, a heavyset man with tufts of white hair sprouting from the crown of his head lowered himself into my mother’s rocking chair. The oak spindles protested beneath his weight as he rocked it back and forth, the back of the chair clipping the wall with each motion. He lifted a hand to his mouth, inserting a forefinger to work something loose from his teeth, flashing his thick pink tongue at the room. He sucked his finger clean, then drummed it against the polished arm of the rocker, leaving a glistening smear of his saliva on the wood.

My throat burned with red-hot outrage as I bellowed, ‘No!’

The room fell instantly silent. Every head swivelled in my direction.

‘Get out of my mother’s chair!’

The white-haired man looked horrified. His brow dipped uncertainly, shock making his mouth hang slack. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, apologizing. His eyes darted around the room, as if looking for someone to help him.

A hand wrapped around my arm. Heart thudding, I turned to find Sarah looking at me, worry etched in her high, pale forehead. ‘Isla?’

An enormous pressure was building within my chest. ‘I … I just … need to go.’

‘Okay,’ she told me. ‘Okay.’

I spun round, crossed the living room and raced along the hallway, bursting out of the back door. A blast of cool air hit me, and I ran with my head down, my red pumps flashing along the damp pavement in quick bursts of colour, like a heartbeat.

Some time later, I found myself at the quay, my dress stuck to the small of my back, my breath coming hard. I gripped the metal railing, sucking in the salt-tinged air.

The beach huts sat quietly on the distant sandbank, a comforting presence with their pastel-light colours cutting through the grey, rolling sky. When the harbour ferry arrived, I didn’t pause to think about the guests abandoned in my home, or worry that Sarah would be left to lock up; I simply climbed aboard.