dressed in his pajamas, Elizabeth had to do something. Not long had passed since he’d left, and she wondered if perhaps she could still catch him. Snatching up the bag, she hurried down the stairs. “I’ll be back as quick as I can, Mum,” she called, locking the front door behind her.
The winding streets of her small village were imprinted in her mind, and she used that knowledge gained through years of childhood play to get to the main road as quickly as she could. The wind bit at her ears, and through the thick coastal dark she could hear the increasing intensity of the sea breaking ground as she inched ever closer. Then overhead a bright light filled the sky, an arc like a comet, followed by the accompanying boom of a flare as it was fired from the lifeboat station. Her fears grew as half-dressed men whizzed past her, en route to answer the lifeboat’s call. Following the commotion of harried voices, she took her first steps onto the sand behind the lifeboat station. It was then that she heard the chilling shriek of her father’s cry, and saw him down at the water’s edge.
Arms flailed as a small crowd did what they could to hold him back. Mr. Bolitho and another man, whose name she didn’t know, splashed their way into the water ahead, each of them in a state of undress. Flashlights picked out a figure emerging from the water, pulling with him another person, as lifeless and heavy as a wet rag doll hanging at the rescuer’s side. His face was familiar, a young man named Tom whom she once knew from school. He had changed, grown broad in the shoulders, different from the boy Elizabeth used to know. Then her eyes moved to the body hanging limply under his arm. Her father’s bag fell from her hands as she watched her mother slip from Tom’s grip, forming a lifeless heap on the sand.
Stumbling forward, Elizabeth saw Tom pressing his mouth against her mother’s, filling her lungs with his breath. Her father was still screaming, helpless in a way she had never witnessed before. Why wasn’t he doing anything? Wet sand hit Elizabeth’s knees as she fell to her mother’s side, just as a jet of water came spluttering from her mouth.
“Oh, Catherine,” her father called as he scrambled to reach her. Her skin had been touched by ice, a sheen of glacial blue that shimmered in the light of the moon.
“Will she be all right?” Elizabeth asked as she held her mother’s hand, her skin so cold it was almost painful. Gazing upward into the crowd, she searched the desperate faces for an answer.
“She’ll be all right, miss,” Tom said. He reached across, placed a wet hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder. Somebody draped a blanket over his back, and then another over her mother. His breath was warm as he leaned in close. “But we need Dr. Warbeck.” Dr. James Warbeck was Elizabeth’s fiancé, and they were due to be married next year. Tom glanced briefly at her father, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “Your father is in shock. He’s no help here.”
* * *
James was already on his way, having woken to the sound of the flare. He was still getting used to coastal life, but it had been a busy summer for the lifeboat crew, and the need for urgency when he heard the call for help was as familiar to him now as it was to hear the trundle of buses passing his window when he’d lived in London. Dropping down onto the beach, sand filling his shoes, he hurried toward the crowd, still unsure what lay before him. Moments later he saw Elizabeth, then her father, next to her mother lying on the shore. Elizabeth’s breathing was as quick and short as his own.
“James, do something, please,” she begged.
“She’s very cold,” he said after performing a brief examination. “Lizzy, go on ahead, get the fire going. And you,” he said, pointing at Tom. “I suspect you are suffering a little from the exposure. Go with her. The run will do you good. Now come on, gentlemen,” he said to the crowd of local fishermen who had gathered to help. “We need to get this good lady back to the warmth of her home. Who will help me carry her?”
* * *
Elizabeth burst through the door to her home, looking left and right as if she had arrived in a