It was on days like this that Sadie wondered what the hell she was doing with her life.
Why was she training to be a teacher and not working out on the glorious bay, as her parents did and as her brother, Ewan, and his wife, Kat, did? Sadie had always told them that a life on the sea wasn’t for her, that she didn’t want to be reliant on the fickle whims of tourism for her livelihood, which in turn relied on the fickle whims of the weather, or the strength of the pound, or the rating that the little town of Sea Salt Bay – the place she called home – had been given on TripAdvisor that year. She’d wanted certainty, a guaranteed income, a career that she could – more or less – predict.
She’d tried for a while to follow the employment route that almost everyone else in Sea Salt Bay took, which mostly involved looking after tourists in some capacity, but the only work available had bored her and she’d quickly tired of doing the same thing every day. She wanted more; she wanted to explore her academic side, to satisfy the part of her with a thirst to learn and a curiosity about the world to match. And so she’d bucked the family trend and gone back into education – a little later than her classmates at the ripe old age of twenty-two – sat a degree in modern history, and then enrolled on a teacher training course. It meant leaving Sea Salt Bay and its charms behind every day to commute to the nearest big town to study, but that was OK.
Except on days like this, when the sand of the bay was as warm and soft as demerara sugar and the gulls sang their songs of the sea and the waves rolled onto the shore in a hypnotic rhythm, crystal clear and iced with foam, and the sun was like an old friend, warming her freckled skin while the breeze whispered words of love as it gently lifted the auburn hair from her neck. On days like this she wondered why she’d taken the decision to sit in a gloomy classroom when the bay was at its best and brightest, when children were squealing and splashing in the rolling waves, when couples were walking the spray-capped line of the shore hand in hand, eating chips from paper or ice creams from sugar cones, or simply walking and saying or doing nothing else at all because they didn’t need to.
She wondered why she spent her days listening to a lecturer who didn’t care if she was there or not when she could have been sitting outside her parents’ boatshed. On a day like today, the radio would be murmuring in the background while the sun shone down and excited tourists waited to board their boat, hoping to see dolphins or seals or puffins out on the grey rocks that stood proud of the sea – the same grey rocks that looked like tiny teeth from the shore, but mighty and mysterious up close. As a child, Sadie had loved to sail round them with her parents, happy enough just to be on the waves but always excited to see some wildlife when luck was on their side.
But now, while her parents spent their days at sea, smiling at marvelling visitors as they pointed out porpoises or sea birds, or the way the light played on the ancient chalky cliffs, or while her brother took the same tourists beneath the waves to swim through magical forests of silky green seaweed as the sun sent white daggers of light slicing through the cerulean depths, Sadie studied in a dark room. She learnt about how children learnt, how to keep them safe, how to measure their progress and intelligence, how to check charts and fill in forms, how to keep control, how to instil discipline, how to turn them into fine, moral, sensible adults. Where was the wonder in that? She’d had a grand vision, once, that she’d be the teacher to inspire, to fire curiosity, to nurture creativity, and she’d thought that was what she’d learn to do on her training course. She’d believed that she was going to make a difference, that her job would be important, that she was going to shape young lives. Maybe the kids she taught would remember her long after they’d left her care, and maybe as adults they’d think of her once in a while and give silent thanks for the wisdom she’d imparted to them.
But that wasn’t what it was like at all. She’d tried to explain this to one of her lecturers once, but he hadn’t understood. He’d said that she’d be able to run her own class however she wanted once she’d qualified, but she didn’t think that was true, even though she couldn’t explain to him why she felt that. She couldn’t run her class however she wanted because there were all the rules she was learning right now that would make it impossible. She knew the rules had to be there, but sometimes she felt like there were just too many – so many they weighed her down so that she couldn’t think about anything else.
Class 3G of Featherbrook School had done little to allay her many doubts about whether this really had been the right career choice after all. Today had to be her worst day of work experience so far and she’d felt nothing but desperation and an overwhelming fatigue as she’d made the journey back to Sea Salt Bay. There had been no one at home when she’d arrived there – her parents were still working, making the most of the lengthening days and a fresh tourist season, and wouldn’t be back until the sun had started to sink below the horizon. Rather than sit in an empty house feeling like a wretched failure, Sadie had decided to make the most of a warm afternoon and head to the beach, hopeful that the sounds of the sea and the feeling of the sun on her face would go some way to healing her. If nothing else, she’d top up her vitamin D.
As she sat on the sand now, looking out to sea, she went over the day’s events again. She was supposed to get support from a qualified teacher so that she wouldn’t be alone with the kids, but that seemed to happen less and less often. In a way, it was easy to see why – the school was so understaffed and underfunded that they probably grabbed the chance of some cheap teaching with both desperate hands, support or not.
Today, one girl had come to her in tears because someone in the class had snuck up behind her and cut a chunk from her hair. When Sadie had quizzed the class nobody would admit to being the perpetrator – and why would they? Sadie was such a useless pushover of a teacher that they weren’t a bit scared of her. Not that she’d want anyone to be scared, but an air of authority might be nice. Then she’d had to leave the room for a moment and had come back to a giant chalk penis on the board that someone had kindly left for her. Throughout her lesson the volume of chat and raucous laughter in the class had grown and grown, as had the rowdiness, no matter how many times she’d called for order, until a teacher from a neighbouring classroom had come in to complain that they couldn’t hear the play they were trying to listen to. Of course, the kids had clammed up immediately at the sight of the actual scary, qualified and confident teacher, only to begin their verbal assault again as soon as he’d disappeared, but louder this time. Eventually the red-faced headmistress had had to intervene, beckoning Sadie to step outside the classroom and out of earshot of her young charges.
‘Miss Schwartz… I suggest you get your class in order!’
Sadie had nodded helplessly but hadn’t known what to say in reply, and perhaps the desperation in her expression had reminded the head of her own training, because she seemed to soften at this.
‘You know you can always come and see me if there’s anything you need help and advice on,’ she’d said. ‘I realise that some of the children think they can play the trainee teachers but you do have support in this regard. You must come and seek it when you need to.’
Sadie had nodded again, and she’d tried to mean it this time, but the head’s words hadn’t made her feel any better. While the woman had given the impression of being sympathetic and patient over Sadie’s doubts, Sadie knew that she had about a thousand other things that she’d rather be worrying about than the noise volume of a trainee teacher’s lesson, or whether she was managing. Sadie didn’t want to be that person who constantly sought help or reassurance. She wanted to be the reliable person who coped, the one that the head could leave to it, confident that she’d do a good job, but it certainly wasn’t turning out that way.
Thinking back on it all now made Sadie’s stomach sink and her face burn. She didn’t want to give up her training because – more than anything else – she didn’t want to admit she’d failed, but she was beginning to feel that she’d reached some unnamed and as yet unclear crossroads in her life. She was starting to wonder if fate had something different in store for her; if, perhaps, it had never really meant for her to be teaching at all. And if that was the case, was it really failing to let fate tell her what that thing was? Was it really so bad to stop and listen to the tiny voice for a moment while it whispered to her the real destiny, the one it had been trying to tell her about when she’d refused to take any notice? Perhaps she’d been landed with class 3G of Featherbrook School today for a reason that was not yet clear to her. But was that to steel her resolve, to make her a better and stronger teacher, or was it to make her think twice about the future she’d chosen for herself?
She brushed a fly from her leg and looked out on the white cliffs of the headland, tinged now with the rose gold of the sinking sun and gleaming like Greek marble, the glittering water of the bay swelling at their feet, a shell-pink haze scoring the horizon. A sudden cool gust blew up from the sea and she shivered, reaching for her cardigan and pulling it on. She checked the time on her phone, vaguely surprised that she’d been sitting on the sand a lot longer than she’d realised. If she took a slow walk home now she’d probably arrive back around the same time as her parents, and if she got back a little earlier then she’d make a start on dinner and surprise them with something nice.
Mulling over what she might cook, she shook out the towel she’d been sitting on and rolled it into a neat tube before stuffing it into a cloth bag. Then she poked her feet into a pair of denim flip-flops and headed across the beach to the promenade. Lined along it, windows like eyes looking out to sea, was a long row of terraced cottages that served as Sea Salt Bay’s main shops and restaurants. They’d once been fishing cottages, back when that had been the main source of income for everyone in the bay – at least, when they weren’t trying to sneak barrels of rum past the King’s men, which had been the other little sideline, spoken of only in hushed tones.
Sadie had read all the old classics like Moonfleet and Treasure Island where the smugglers were painted as romantic heroes and loveable rogues, and she liked to imagine that Sea Salt Bay had been filled with men like that once. But the reality, she acknowledged with some disappointment, had probably been a lot less romantic and a lot more dangerous. Her dad had once done some research on the bay’s history and had read some of the old records. Times had been brutal and tough in Sea Salt Bay all those hundreds of years ago, and many people got involved in the smuggling only because they’d had no choice – it was either that or starve. She’d sat at her dad’s side one Sunday afternoon just as she’d turned nineteen and looked over at what he’d been reading before wishing she hadn’t. It had only confirmed Sadie’s suspicions of a depressing reality – though, on days like today, she preferred to think about her version of Sea Salt Bay’s past. Her version was more fun and far less grim.
Looking at the row of cottages now, each painted a different pastel shade – apple green, cornflower blue, sugar pink, soft peach, primrose yellow, lavender and lilac – gleaming in the light of golden hour, it was easy to believe in Sadie’s preferred alternative history. Sea Salt Bay was still a small town – a village really – and still reliant on the sea, but it was a brighter, happier place these days. Every window of every cottage showed a different display: surfing supplies, beach games and toys, postcards and gifts, swimming costumes and wetsuits. One had freezers full of coloured ice cream standing in the shade of an opened-out frontage, one had tables set on the tarmac for fish and chip suppers and one had a little window-cum-counter where you could buy crab sandwiches and cockles and mussels caught out in the bay. As she passed this house, Reginald, who made the crab sandwiches, was outside rubbing something off the chalkboard menu that he must have sold out of. He looked across and, noticing Sadie, raised a hand.
‘How do, Sadie! How goes it?’
‘Good thanks,’ Sadie called back. ‘Business is good?’
‘Could be better but won’t complain,’ Reginald said, and Sadie smiled knowingly because he always said that even when business was astoundingly good. ‘Tell your folks I said hello!’ he added.
‘I will.’
At the last house the road forked off towards the Victorian pier. The pier was the jewel in the crown of Sea Salt Bay. It wasn’t much compared to the piers in other seaside resorts, but it was quaint and pretty and everyone loved it. The wrought iron of its fencing panels was painted a delicate sage green and it had old wooden boards that rattled and creaked as you walked them. If you looked down as you went you could see the waves below showing through the gaps between them. This was home to the amusement arcade and a gathering of tame rides, including the carousel and dodgems. And right at the end of the pier stood Sea Salt Bay Waffle House. It was perfectly square with a pointed roof, the exterior candy-striped pink and white like a stick of rock. The old paintwork was faded a little these days, battered by too many sea storms, and the shutters didn’t close properly at night and the posters in the windows had been bleached by the sun, but it still drew in a regular and faithful clientele. The best waffles on the South Coast, the sign outside said, and nobody could deny that they were.
Sea Salt Bay Waffle House made Sadie especially proud, because it was owned by her Gammy and Gampy. They’d be Grandma and Grandpa to anyone else, but as a small child Sadie had never quite got the pronunciation right and the names she’d given them by mistake had stuck. Gammy and Gampy were also known as April and Kenneth Schwartz, who’d moved to England from America before the birth of Sadie’s father and had run the waffle house in Sea Salt Bay for most of that time. When they’d first opened up in the sixties, for most of the locals waffles were an exotic treat that they’d never had. Through the sixties and seventies their business had grown, drawing customers from far and wide. People were used to waffles now, but for Gammy and Gampy, reputation had proved a powerful thing and business was still good – at least, good enough to keep them trading, even if the building was long overdue a facelift.
Sadie turned that way now. She’d pop in, say hello, see how things were going. If they needed help to clear up after the end of trading, she could do that too. But before she’d taken half a dozen steps she stopped and frowned at the sound of a siren. It was close, growing rapidly closer and louder. Looking around she saw the ambulance racing down the road that led to the promenade. It stopped at the gates of the pier, where it could go no further. Two paramedics leapt out, lugging black bags, one barking into a radio as they began to run across the old wooden boards.
Sadie watched them for a moment, something like fear building in her gut.
There had been two occasions in her life when Sadie had been struck by a strange, almost psychic feeling about something that was about to happen. One was when her dog, Binky, had been hit by a car. A neighbour had knocked on the door to tell her parents and, somehow, Sadie had known before they did. The second was when a girl at her school had drowned in the bay. Sadie had been about fourteen, and as the head teacher gathered them to announce the sad news, she’d already known that too, the information somehow beamed into her head moments before, yet nobody had told her. The last time had shaken her, and for a couple of years she’d lived in fear of it happening again. She hadn’t told a soul, thinking it would make her look strange and mad, and she hadn’t wanted the responsibility of that kind of gift or curse or whatever it was. Thankfully, nothing like that had happened in all the years since and Sadie had almost forgotten it had ever happened at all. Until now.
And then the truth crashed over her, the confirmation of the horrible, prescient thought that had only seconds before occurred to her, icy cold and breath-sapping. She watched, numb and stunned as the paramedics went into the waffle house.
Dropping her bag, Sadie broke into a run.
From the vast windows of Henriette and Graham Schwartz’s conservatory, Sadie’s gaze wandered to the sea as it churned into little rolls of milky foam that crashed against the distant rocks of the bay. It was easy to take for granted how lucky Sadie and her parents were to live in a house that had such an incredible position on the cliffs with such glorious views. Sadie’s mother, Henriette, had said often enough that if it hadn’t been for the (grudging) help of her own parents, she and Sadie’s dad certainly wouldn’t have been able to afford such a spectacular house by themselves. Henriette – Henny, as her friends called her – had turned the conservatory into a casual dining space and, summer or winter, they ate most of their meals in there, the drama of the bay a backdrop most people could only dream of. Henriette didn’t allow televisions or phones at the dinner table, but then, they hardly needed those kinds of distractions when the beauty of the Dorset coastline was distraction enough for anyone.
The sun was hidden today, struggling to break through low cloud, though it was still warm. Summer was coming into its height and the busiest time of the tourist season was upon Sea Salt Bay. The full Schwartz family, including Sadie’s sister, Lucy – who had only come over briefly for their grandfather’s funeral and was due to fly back to New York where she now lived – her brother Ewan, his wife Kat, and their children Freya and Freddie sat around a rare shared lunch. Someone was usually missing – there were extracurricular activities, hobbies, regular meetings, volunteer posts and, of course, as both Henny and Graham and Ewan and his wife Kat ran their own businesses, work rarely stopped. None of them kept the more forgiving office hours that other people did.
That was just another reason that Sadie had decided to train for a job where she could at least get some time off, even if it she might often have to do extra work during it. Ewan and Kat ran a diving school, and would go out with a client whenever it was required of them, no matter what day of the week it was, because business was business and they couldn’t afford to turn it away. One of them needed to be there in case they got a booking, and they got plenty. Henny and Graham had to run trips every day during the summer months, especially on Saturdays and Sundays because most people who visited Sea Salt Bay came for the weekend. Today, they’d decided the sea was too rough to go out, and Ewan had come to the same conclusion – if it was too rough to sail on, then it was most certainly too rough to dive beneath. So they were in the fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on how you viewed it) position of having a rare Sunday to get together. Only one member of the family was absent: Sadie’s beloved Gampy, Kenneth.
It had been a month since the day Sadie had seen the ambulance on the pier and her grandfather’s absence was still a gaping hole in the heart of the family, threatening to stop its beating, just as his had done that day. Her thoughts were carried back now like flotsam on the tide, and she recalled running blindly down the pier, the paramedics trying to stop her from gaining access, April’s cries for Kenneth that he couldn’t hear. She had finally forced her way in and caught just a glimpse of him as the ambulance crew fought to save his life, then wished she hadn’t seen it after all. When she thought of her grandfather now, it was hard to separate that vision from the happier memories of the man she’d grown up with. They felt forever tainted.
Sadie’s gaze turned from the sea now, where her thoughts had been vague and distracted as she’d watched the waves, towards her Gammy. Still the head of the family – if only by distinction of age and experience – she was surrounded by the chat and noise of a family who loved her very much, the smells of roasted vegetables and meat on the warm air, a light drizzle kissing the windows that looked out on the bay, and yet Sadie had never seen her look so lonely. Small and inconsequential and sad… so utterly lost. Even though her family were all squashed together around the table, it was like there was a space around her that should have contained Gampy – the man she’d loved so much. Gammy’s protection, her buffer, her steadying anchor, all her strength, had gone. Life still had to be lived, of course, even when some were lost to it, but though the Schwartz family were doing their best to soldier on, one member – April – was in serious danger of getting left behind.
‘Gammy…’ Sadie said gently. April turned to her.
‘Yes, darlin’?’ she replied, forcing a brave smile.
‘Do you want some wine?’
April shook her head. ‘Water will be just fine for me.’
‘It’s nice wine,’ Sadie said.
‘I’m sure it is. Maybe later.’
Sadie glanced at a side plate that had contained a small starter of melon and Italian ham. Everybody had eaten theirs apart from April.
‘Didn’t you like the melon?’
‘Oh yes, I liked it just fine,’ her grandmother said. ‘I just wasn’t so hungry.’
Sadie looked again. It didn’t look as if April had touched it at all – not even to taste it – but she let the matter slide. Before she could say anything else, her grandmother had turned to listen to something that Graham was saying.
Sadie had always thought it a little clichéd when people said that when someone died, a little bit of the people who loved them most died too, but she’d been able to see it clearly since they’d lost Gampy. The evidence was there now in the small figure of her grandmother. Once she had been April Schwartz, feisty, outspoken, quick-witted, smart and adventurous, the woman who had forged her own path in life in a foreign country with the man she’d loved by her side. Now she was only a memory of that woman, and even that was fading faster than Sadie could bear to see.
‘Sadie…’
Sadie shook her head to clear it. ‘Huh?’ She turned to see Ewan looking expectantly at her. Clearly he was waiting for an answer to something, though Sadie had no clue what the question had been.
‘Salt,’ he said, rolling his eyes. ‘Could you pass it?’
‘Salt?’ Sadie repeated.
‘Salt…’ he said. ‘Dopier than usual and that’s pretty dopey. Burning the candle at both ends again? Another late night with Whatshisface?’
‘No.’ Sadie handed her brother the salt cellar. ‘Whatshisface is now Gonehisface.’
‘Ah,’ Lucy said, tossing a dark curl away from her face and picking up her wine glass. ‘I didn’t dare ask about the love life but as Ewan opened up the disc. . .
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