Nicola Barker - Darkmans

She inspected the sparse assortment of tiny cottages dotting the shingle around them. For the most part: ramshackle, wooden huts, old train carriages or ancient, flimsy-looking prefabs, often ornamented quaintly with the spoils of the sea — pieces of driftwood, skeins of seaweed, the rotting hulls of old rowing-boats, abstract hunks of what looked like rusty farm machinery, lop-sided flagpoles, broken anchors…

Each property was self-consciously open plan. There were no real fences — no boundaries — as if the fearless inhabitants were perfectly content to own both everything and nothing, concurrently.

She felt lonely — like one of those dilapidated huts: solitary, care-worn, old . She sniffed, mournfully. Her nose was running. She shoved her spare hand under her mac, angled it, carefully, then slipped it into a small pocket hidden inside the folds of her skirt. Here she felt the sharp edges of a neatly folded piece of paper. The time-table. Next to it? A tissue. But she didn’t pull it out — not immediately. Her slim fingers dug down still deeper and touched something else. Something cold and metallic.

The lighter . Kane’s lighter. She grabbed a hold of it, curled her fingers around it, drew a deep breath and squeezed ; ducking her head, closing her eyes, almost smiling, as she etched its keen shape into the pliant flesh of her palm.

The lifeboat was out on call. The station was empty. Elen stood in the small shop, utterly panicked, desperate to find any visual evidence of this phantom vessel with which to distract her already dangerously recalcitrant son. She unearthed a pamphlet by the till: The East/South East Stations and Museums Guide, 2002 . On the front was a photo of an orange, motorised dinghy bouncing through the surf manned by four volunteers in white crash-helmets.

‘There we go… That’s what it looks like,’ she told him, pointing. Fleet didn’t look. He was staring ahead of him, blankly, rubbing his index finger up and down on his lip.

The kindly woman behind the till instantly took pity on them.

‘Is he terribly disappointed?’ she asked, smiling down at the boy. ‘Just a little,’ Elen smiled back.

‘Well there’s a few nice photos of our actual launch — the Pride and Spirit —on the wall over there,’ the woman said, ‘just next to the door. And once you’ve shown him those why don’t you pop outside and take a look at the launch tractor? If you’re very good…’ she spoke to Fleet directly, ‘one of the men on standby might even start it up and take you for a quick ride. Would you like that?’

Fleet completely ignored the woman. He continued rubbing his finger on his lip.

‘Wow,’ Elen said, ‘a launch tractor! Did you hear that, Fleet?’

Fleet gave no sign of having heard her.

‘He’s a little overwhelmed by it all,’ she explained, with an apologetic shrug.

‘Did you travel far to get here?’ the woman asked.

‘Only from Ashford.’

‘Well that’s not too bad, is it now?’ The woman spoke to Fleet again: ‘I’m sure Mummy will bring you back again very soon, and you’ll be able to see the boat next time.’

‘Of course he will.’

Elen squeezed Fleet’s hand, encouragingly.

‘Ow!’ Fleet said, snatching his hand from his mother’s grasp.

The woman smiled, distractedly. Another customer wandered into the shop.

‘We mustn’t get in the way,’ Elen said, stepping back from the counter, ‘I can see it’s all systems go today…’

The woman nodded. ‘There’s a trimaran in trouble on the other side of Rye Harbour,’ she explained, checking her watch with a slight air of anxiety, ‘the crew’ve been out for around half an hour…’

Elen hadn’t actually given a second’s thought since her flustered arrival at the boathouse to the crew and the probable reasons for their absence. In fact she’d given little thought to anything beyond mollifying her husband and pacifying her son. As the woman spoke her cheeks reddened. She felt mortified, ashamed, embarrassed for having allowed her own pathetic, little, domestic drama to play itself out in a theatre generally reserved (and deservedly) for tableaux of a far more heroic stamp.

‘You all do such an amazing job,’ she gushed.

The woman ignored this. ‘Why don’t I go and have a quick chat with one of the men and see what we can arrange?’ she said.

‘That’s terribly kind of you. Fleet will be thrilled…’

As she spoke, Elen placed a warning hand on Fleet’s shoulder. Just in case.

The woman smiled at the new customer. ‘I won’t be a minute,’ she said. ‘We’ve just got to try and muster up something extra -special to turn the day around for this little chap…’

The new customer chuckled, sympathetically. The woman headed off.

Elen turned to the new customer, embarrassed. ‘He loves boats,’ she said. The customer gazed down at Fleet, benignly.

‘What’s your favourite kind of boat?’ he asked.

Fleet didn’t answer.

‘He built a model of an old clipper once,’ Elen said. ‘From a kit. Made a really good job of it, didn’t you, Fleet?’

‘Gracious me!’ the man exclaimed. ‘That’s quite impressive, isn’t it?’ Fleet grimaced. He gazed up at his mother.

‘I want to go home now,’ he said.

Elen shot the customer an agonised look. The customer smiled.

Elen took Fleet over to the wall near the door. Here — just as promised — were a series of smart, colour photographs of the station’s Mersey Class launch, both on and off the water.

‘These are some pictures of the wonderful lifeboat which is normally stationed here,’ she told Fleet (determining to make up for her previous inadequacies), ‘and the very brave people who sail on it.’

Fleet gazed up at the photographs, blankly. Then, ‘But there isn’t any boat here,’ he said.

‘ This is the boat,’ Elen explained. ‘It’s called the Pride and Spirit . It’s out at sea right now rescuing some people who’ve got into trouble on a trimaran.’

Silence

‘A trimaran is a boat with three hulls,’ the other customer explained, helpfully.

Silence

‘Aren’t those lovely, bright colours?’

Elen pointed to the boat’s blue and orange finish. As she reached up her sleeve slipped back revealing the row of fading bruises circling her wrist. She quickly dropped her arm.

‘I don’t know,’ Fleet said, yawning nervously, ‘I want to go home. Where’s Papa?’

‘Daddy?’

Elen glanced around her.

Through the open door of the shop she saw Dory deep in conversation with one of the standby volunteers. The volunteer was handing Dory a leaflet. Dory was writing down his phone number on to a piece of paper and passing it back.

Dory looked tall and handsome and extremely dashing. Quite the part, in fact.

‘Oh God, what on earth’s Daddy doing now?’ she murmured, her throat contracting.

Fleet turned to look.

‘John likes the water,’ he confided (with a slight smile), ‘almost as much as he likes fire.’

‘Hush now,’ Elen whispered as the woman from behind the till came bustling back into the shop.

‘That’s all fine,’ she said, beaming. ‘Toby says he’ll happily show your boy around the tractor if you just head on out there in the next five minutes or so…’

‘That’s fantastic,’ Elen enthused. ‘Say thank you to the kind lady, Fleet.’ Fleet gazed up at the woman. ‘John burned down the barn,’ he said.

‘Really?’ The woman seemed briefly thrown off her stride by this unexpected piece of information. ‘Which barn?’ she wondered.