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SEVENTY-EIGHT

They stand on the beach in awe, all of them, watching the disappearing outline of the man they each know by a different name, and then the boys are in the water, Sam and Joel, fully clothed, going in after their father.

They stride through the surf until the water is up to their thighs and then they dive, start to swim, thrash through the small waves, breaking the surface of the water into a foamy soup.

They go down and come back up, go down and come back up, but there is a current and it tugs them away from the place where the man called Simon Smith was last seen, his silver hair swallowed up by the gray sea, like a light being extinguished.

Martha looks at Nina. “Where is he?” she asks in a loud whisper.

Nina simply shakes her head, her arms crossed tight around her chest, the wind blowing her dark hair across her cheeks.

They stand like that for fifteen minutes, watching the two young men in the water, until the women call them back.

It’s too cold. They will get hypothermia.

Someone has called the emergency services and an ambulance arrives just as the boys finally pull themselves from the sea, and then the police arrive, followed by sea rescue and a police helicopter.

Within half an hour, the tranquil cove is a mass of flashing lights and action and noise.

The boys are wrapped in foil cloaks, someone has brought them hot drinks.

But still, as Martha stands on the sea’s edge, staring into the thin line of the horizon, there is no sign of him.

Of the man she called her husband. Of the man she called Al.