Read Losing You for Free Online

mean?’
    ‘Never mind. We’ll be there.’
    I stood for a moment at the window. The tide was advancing now, creeping up the mudflats. Far out at sea, boats floated free at their buoys. It was misty, a fine gauze hanging over everything, but I could still see from where I stood the shapes of the old hulks and, beyond them, the stocky concrete pillboxes. They had been built as a defence against invasion during the war. Soldiers would have hidden inside and poked their rifles out of the narrow slits to prevent the Germans coming ashore on Sandling Island. So much effort, so much concrete, but the Germans never came and here they were, still waiting, cracked, immovable, half toppled on the cliffs and sands.
    On the way downstairs, I had to push through a group of young people. I didn’t recognize any of them and they didn’t seem to recognize me.
    ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m Nina.’ Blank faces. ‘Charlie’s mother.’
    ‘Is Charlie in her room?’ The youth who spoke was tall and skinny, with a shock of black hair and eyes that were green in the subdued light of the stairwell. Everything about him seemed a bit undone: the laces on his heavy boots were trailing, his shirt was half unbuttoned, his sleeves frayed.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘Only Jackson. Where is Charlie anyway? You haven’t seen her?’
    He shrugged. ‘I said I’d meet her here. Typical Charlie, to be late at her own party.’
    ‘My party, theoretically. If you do hear from her…’
    But they were gone and I proceeded downstairs to where the party had become an independent noisy organism. I stood and looked at it, feeling like an imposter in my own home. Nearly two years ago I had moved from London. I had left behind an old world and this was the new. But I hadn’t really made it my own, not the way Jackson and Charlie had. This was where their friends were, this was where they felt comfortable. I hadn’t settled in that way. There were people whose names I knew, people I nodded at in the street, people I drank coffee with. And there was one person I had slept with. But even so, as I gazed at these islanders I wondered if they were laying claim to me, if they were asking me for something I couldn’t give them.
    They were crammed into the tiny kitchen, and the living room beyond. I knew enough about them to recognize the different strands that connected them. I saw Karen speaking animatedly to Alix, gesturing largely with one hand, pausing only to drain her wine glass, then refill it from the bottle she was holding. They worked together: Karen was the receptionist at Alix’s GP surgery in the town. Rick was in conversation with Bill. Probably about boats. Rick was a senior science teacher at Charlie’s school, a few miles from the one I taught at, but his passions were sailing, kayaking and windsurfing, anything out on the water. He taught them during the summer. And Bill worked at a boatyard. His face was like carved dark wood from years of toil in the sun and wind.
    There was a cluster of people round the fridge, and Eamonn was sitting on the rocking-chair by the window. He was wearing a black T-shirt with widely flared sleeves, black fingerless gloves and wide black trousers that came down over high black boots. His hair was tied back in a beautiful green and black ponytail. He looked ready for a night out in some sleazy London club and didn’t seem to notice that he was sitting in a kitchen surrounded by middle-aged men and women, talking about Christmas presents and traffic congestion. I felt a kind of admiration for him. Sludge was wedged beneath him, whining pitifully. I bent down and scooped up the pile of dirty sheets on which Eamonn was resting his boots.
    ‘You don’t know where Charlie is, do you?’
    I noticed the flush that made him look so young and awkward. ‘Isn’t she here?’ he asked.
    ‘She’s disappeared on me. Unless there’s some extra surprise she’s arranged, the icing on the cake.’ I turned and searched among the