Phosphorescence Read online

  I hadn’t realized I was crying until I try to answer her.

  ‘I thought you were trying to drown on purpose.’

  Freda shakes her head, and starts to shake uncontrollably.

  ‘Where’s Dave? What are they doing?’ she demands, her voice rising hysterically.

  Josh wraps a towel around her shoulders.

  ‘Here, Lola, take her down below deck. Give her some tea from Dad’s flask. You’ll find a jumper too.’

  He opens the hatch into the small cabin, and Freda and I stumble down the steps into the warm, diesel-smelling hold.

  ‘What about the boys?’ Freda is trembling, juddering like a washing machine. I put both arms round her.

  ‘They’ll be fine,’ I soothe. ‘They’ll be fine.’ I do not believe this, but I have to calm her down.

  ‘Who will get them?’

  ‘We will, I suppose.’

  I can’t tell her that we have rounded Seal Point and are tearing down the long beach where we swam only last night, away from the boys, back towards Salt. I cannot believe it myself, and all my thoughts are whirling through my head, shaping to one dreadful repeated image of a tiny canoe riding huge waves with no one in it.

  Freda is silent, and has stopped shaking by the time we reach Salt. We wait on deck while Josh and Billy drop the anchors. The shingle beach is thronged with people, their stricken faces a freakish contrast to the summer dresses and bright T-shirts they are wearing. Little Sadie is holding her mum’s hand, pulling her towards the front of the group, waving at me. In response, I try to uncurl my fingers from the blanket I have shrugged around me, but I cannot wave, and she cannot see.

  Josh nudges me.

  ‘Sadie’s seen you,’ he says. ‘You’ll be playing princesses with her again in a minute. Everything will be back to normal then.’

  Coming in, with all these people watching, silent and shocked, is the most shaming moment in my life. I have been so stupid, and we have paid such a high price. My dad wades in the shallows for us, and I can hardly look at him I feel so ashamed and so frightened for the others. I am terrified that he will confirm that they are dead. His pale eyes tell me nothing. He has no reproach in his face, just loving concern.

  ‘Here we are, girls. Just a few yards to dry land,’ he says quietly. He lifts Freda across first and then turns to me. ‘I’m glad you’re back,’ he says simply.

  Freda stares at us in amazement. I think she expected more of a dramatic reunion considering I have been snatched from the jaws of death. I reach to put my arms round Dad’s neck and I hug him as tight as I can.

  ‘Let’s get you on to the beach,’ says Dad, and we wade out of the sea behind Josh, who has jumped into the water to help secure the boat in the rough sea. Caroline pushes through the crowd.

  ‘I think this is the moment to lay old ghosts to rest,’ she says, and instead of hugging me, or Josh, or even her husband, who is standing, looking sheepish in the shallows in his waders, she hugs Dad. Even more weirdly, he hugs her back and real tears stand in his eyes.

  ‘Thank you all for this.’ He turns to Josh and his dad, clapping his hands on each of their shoulders then pulling them awkwardly together so he is embracing both of them. ‘Thank you. I stand now and forever in your debt,’ he says, and both he and Josh’s dad get out huge handkerchiefs and blow their noses.

  Grandma suddenly appears, fear still draining her face of colour. She cups her hands around my head and looks searchingly at me.

  ‘Oh, Lola, my dear Lola,’ she says. ‘I thought we’d lost you. I must thank the Christies.’

  I struggle to free myself; all this gratitude, and Harry and Dave are still missing. I have to tell her.

  ‘The boys are still out there, and Dave was in the water—’

  ‘Where are the boys?’

  Mr Lascalles is suddenly at the front of the crowd with Pansy and Jessie; they are each holding on to one of his arms, as if he cannot stand without them. His voice is sharp with anxiety. Billy, still on the boat, hears him and shouts an answer.

  ‘They’re coming in now in the lifeboat. They’re both all right, I’ve spoken to the skipper on the radio.’

  With a blanket wrapped around me, and Dad’s arm steering me through the crowd, I am feeling stronger every second. And light-headed. The orange lifeboat dinghy bouncing on the waves, with the afternoon sun behind it, is a beacon of hope, delivering weedy Dave and Harry back to the land. Mr Lascalles and Pansy and Jessie wade into the water to meet them, with Carl and Pete just behind, offering to piggyback them in. Harry laughs, and jumps off the lifeboat into the shallows, where he greets Josh and they shake hands then hug. Dave is still very weak and coughing a lot, so he is lifted above the water to the shingle beach. No one speaks. It has been too immense an experience for conversation.

  Gradually the crowd drifts away, and the grey turbulence of the early afternoon dissolves into a still, hazy summer day. The sea is smooth as glass now, only the low sunlight sending sparks like a shiver across the blue stillness. It is beautiful and beguiling, beckoning. I know it has already won me back, but I’m not so sure about the others. Only time will tell.

  EASTERN DAILY PRESS 20 JULY

  A sea tragedy was narrowly averted this week when freak weather caught a group of young people by surprise. Former local girl Lola Jordan, 14, was canoeing round the Point with companions from the James Ellis Grammar School, Harry Sykes, 17, Freda Low, 14, and Dave Fisher, 15, when the storm blew up. ‘We were paddling on an outgoing tide and we couldn’t get in,’ explains Lola, who is the daughter of Conservation Warden Richard Jordan. Lola and her schoolmates struggled against ten-foot waves and were heading out over exposed Seal Point, with two of them in the water before rescuers were alerted. They are lucky to be alive.

  In an eerie echo of the past, we can reveal that the drama unfolded on exactly the same stretch of water where Richard Jordan’s elder brother James was drowned, aged 15, in 1969. On that terrible day James was crewing for Ian Christie, when a similar freak storm blew up and his boat capsized. Ian, knocked unconscious, was washed up on Seal Point, where Jack Jordan rescued him, sailing with expert precision over Seal Point as it was submerged beneath the tide. His own son James’s body was recovered several days later beyond Salt. History has gone full circle today; it was Ian Christie, now 50, who with his son Josh, 17, performed the courageous rescue of the girls today. The boys, Harry and Dave, were brought to safety by the lifeboat crew just moments after the girls had been taken on board Christie’s boat The Little Princess.

  The two families, who have lived in the area for decades, with Jack Jordan presiding over the sailing club until his death this year, are unanimous in agreeing that the rift created by the terrible sorrow of that long-ago tragedy has been well and truly healed today.

  The parents of the James Ellis Grammar School children have shown their gratitude by setting up a trust to fund a full-time coastguard on the Point. There are plans to start a summer school too, to bring urban children to the sea so they can learn to respect this unfamiliar environment. Josh Christie is hotly tipped as the best man to run the project.

  Epilogue

  We don’t exactly abandon the field trip after this, instead we all go and stay at my house for the next two nights and Caroline Christie and Grandma cook us endless meals. No one talks much, but the atmosphere is full of relief. On Monday morning I get up early because we are leaving for London today. Cactus and I walk along the coast path towards Hinkley Marshes, and the noise of the gulls and the sea whispering is familiar and safe in the morning sun. I sit on the sand by the water’s edge while Cactus careers through the samphire behind me and I am almost floating with thankfulness that everything has turned out all right.

  I can’t believe now that I thought I was going to die, or that the others were in such danger. It wasn’t even surprising to me when Josh and Ian arrived in their boat, but actually it was a miracle, and we would have drowned if they had not come at that moment. Dad has be
en amazing. I thought he would be so angry because we did everything we shouldn’t, but in fact I think he is so overcome with gladness, and now he has made up with Caroline and Ian. They came for supper last night, and Grandma was here too. A friendship that seemed impossible just a few days ago is suddenly normal and I saw Grandma wiping her eyes with her handkerchief, and Caroline hugging her and it was like a weight off my shoulders that I didn’t know I was carrying.

  At supper I sat between Josh and Harry and they both teased me, but Josh was like a brother, the brother I always wanted. Harry, though, is something else. I’m not sure what yet, but it’s exciting and I don’t think it’s just a holiday thing. Maybe we are going out together. I’m not sure, but there’s time to find out and the future looks exciting. I’m glad to be going back to London with him and all the others. Staitheley is here for me, with all my past, and I have learned that I can have both worlds now.

  Cactus bounds up and jumps on to my lap. He wriggles and wags his tail, delighted and wanting to let me know he has rolled in something. I don’t need him this close to realize it is something rank. He has covered me in it too. I leap up and take off my jeans and without pausing I run, carrying Cactus, into the sea and dive underwater. It is the best, most exhilarating feeling I know.

  A Note on the Author

  Raffaella Barker, daughter of the poet George Barker, was born and brought up in the Norfolk countryside. She is the author of seven acclaimed novels: Come and Tell Me Some Lies, The Hook, Hens Dancing, Summertime, Green Grass, A Perfect Life and Poppyland. She is a regular contributor to the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph, and teaches on the Literature and Creative Writing BA at the University of East Anglia and the Guardian UEA Novel Writing Masterclass. Raffaella Barker lives by the sea in north Norfolk.

  Also By Raffaella Barker

  Come and Tell Me Some Lies

  The Hook

  Hens Dancing

  Summertime

  Green Grass

  A Perfect Life

  Poppyland

  From a Distance

  Also Available by Raffaella Barker

  Come and Tell Me Some Lies

  ‘A gentle, charming account of a family of cosmopolitan sophistication living in a rural shambles’ Evening Standard

  Gabriella lives in a damp, ramshackle, book-strewn manor in Norfolk with her tempestuous poet father and unconventional mother. Alongside her ever-expanding set of siblings and half-siblings, numerous pets and her father’s rag-tag admirers, Gabriella navigates a chaotic childhood of wild bohemian parties and fluctuating levels of poverty. Longing to be normal, Gabriella enrols in a strict day school, only to find herself balancing two very different lives. Struggling to keep the eccentricities of her family contained, her failure to achieve conformity amongst her peers is endearing, and absolute.

  Come and Tell Me Some Lies is Raffaella Barker’s enchanting first novel – a humorous, bittersweet tale of a girl who longs to be normal, and a family that can’t help be anything but.

  ‘She writes beautifully … combining with apparent ease, emotion and admirable precision’ Independent on Sunday

  If you have a device with internet capabilities please click here or visit www.bloomsbury.com/raffaellabarker for more information

  Hens Dancing

  ‘Charming … Engrossing’ Sunday Times

  ‘A positive hymn to provincial living, it is an entertaining celebration of family life with all its highs, lows and eccentricities’ The Times

  When Venetia Summers’ husband runs off with his masseuse, the bohemian idyll she has strived to create for her young family suddenly loses some of its rosy hue. From her tumble-down cottage in Norfolk she struggles to keep up with the chaos caused by her two boys, her splendid baby daughter and the hordes of animals, relatives and would-be artists that live in her home. From juggling errant cockerels, jam making frenzies and War Hammers, to unexpected romance, Bloody Mary’s and forays into fashion design, Hens Dancing is like a rural Bridget Jones’ Diary as it charts a year of Venetia’s madcap household.

  ‘Glittering prose … Venetia is a disarmingly wry and engaging narrator with a keen eye for nature and the follies of urban chic’ Financial Times

  If you have a device with internet capabilities please click here or visit www.bloomsbury.com/raffaellabarker for more information

  Summertime

  ‘Very, very funny’ Independent

  ‘My advice is not to read Summertime in public. You’ll giggle, you’ll snort, you’ll make an exhibition of yourself … I loved Hens Dancing, and this is better yet’ Country Life

  After one year of being ‘buffered from single-motherhood’ by her boyfriend, David, Venetia Summers suddenly finds her life unravelling as he is sent to the Brazilian jungle and she is left alone in Norfolk. As chaos reigns in her home and her three children run wilder than ever she finds her life further complicated by a bad-mouthed green parrot, a burgeoning fashion career designing demented cardigans and her brother’s outrageous wedding. As emails languish unanswered, phone lines cut out and long-distance relationships prove both vexing and bewildering, life and love take some very unexpected turns.

  ‘I loved it. I couldn’t put it down’ Daily Express

  If you have a device with internet capabilities please click here or visit www.bloomsbury.com/raffaellabarker for more information

  Green Grass

  ‘So funny and acerbic’ Maggie O’Farrell

  ‘She writes beautifully … Combining with apparent ease, emotion and admirable precision’ Independent on Sunday

  Laura Sale has grown tired of her life. Her daily routine of dividing her time between pandering to the demands of her challenging conceptual artist husband, Inigo and those of their thirteen-year-old twins Dolly and Fred, has taken its toll. She longs to remember what makes her happy. A chance encounter with Guy, her first love, is the catalyst she needs, and she swaps North London for the rural idyll she grew up in. In her new Norfolk home Laura finds herself confronting old ghosts, ferrets, an ungracious goat and a collapsing relationship. As she starts to savour the space she has craved, and she takes control of her destiny, Laura finds it lit with possibility.

  ‘A light touch and a way with words that leaves you gasping ... With laughter as much as anything’ Marie Claire

  If you have a device with internet capabilities please click here or visit www.bloomsbury.com/raffaellabarker for more information

  Poppyland

  A Love Story

  ‘A modern day Brief Encounter’ Daily Express

  ‘Both lyrical and real, light and darkly full of yearnings for a profound and lifelong love’ Good Housekeeping

  On a freezing cold night in an unfamiliar city, a man meets a woman. The encounter lasts just moments, they part barely knowing one another’s names, they make no plans to meet again. But both are left breathless.

  Five years on they live thousands of miles apart and live totally separate lives, except that they both still think about that night. So when they meet again it seems clear that they will do all they can to try and stay together, but can it be that easy? Will they be able to escape their past? Will they be able to take the risk they know they should?

  ‘Rich, confident and emotionally convincing’ Sunday Times

  ‘An insightful, highly readable novel’ Daily Express

  If you have a device with internet capabilities please click here or visit www.bloomsbury.com/raffaellabarker for more information

  The Hook

  ‘Glorious’ Mail on Sunday

  ‘Stylish and insightful … With the pace and verve of a thriller’ Independent

  Christy Naylor was forced to grow up quickly. Still reeling with anger after the death of her mother, she abandons college in order to help her father uproot from suburbia and start a new life on a swampy fish farm out in the sticks, a prize that he won in a shady game of poker.

  Amid this turmoil, looms the mysterious Mick Fleet, tall, powerful and
charismatic. Unsettled and unsure of herself, Christy is hooked on his intense charm. She knows nothing about him yet she feels like she is being swallowed up in his embrace and she plunges into a love affair blind to the catastrophe he will bring…

  ‘Delightful … Expertly constructed … A true novelist with an engaging authorial voice and the imagination and skill to create a believable fictional world’ Evening Standard

  If you have a device with internet capabilities please click here or visit www.bloomsbury.com/raffaellabarker for more information

  A Perfect Life

  ‘To write well and with such open-hearted affection is an achievement’ Observer

  ‘Beautifully poignant, insightful and grown-up’ Mirror

  The Stone family live a fairy-tale existence in their home in rural Norfolk, complete with adorable children, glamorous parents and postcard-perfect seaside picnics. Nick, Angel and their family lead a charmed life. And yet beneath the surface all is not as it seems.