Page 94 of From Now On

Solid.

She just doesn’t know anymore. She remembers the horror in Sean’s voice as though nobody in their right mind would want to kiss her back and everything feels wrong.

Dirty.

Despite the warmth, she wraps her arms around herself and tries to get her bearings.

Colesby Bay conjures images of a picture-perfect village but this thriving tourist town is larger than she remembers. Along the harbour yellow and orange bunting flaps in the breeze pushing the smell of fresh fish towards her. Her stomach rolls. Bile rises up her throat along with the remnants of last night’s vodka. She rushes away from the fishing boats before she’s sick.

There’s a cobbled alleyway, an A-board at the entrance proclaiming ‘the best scones in Colesby Bay’ and this is where she heads. The café is dark and empty, the view from the table by the window, a brick wall. Nina scans the menu before wedging it back between the bottles of ketchup and mustard and she wipes her now greasy fingers on her jeans. She orders a mug of tea and deliberates between a bacon sandwich and a full English while the waitress tat-tap-taps her impatient pen against her pad. Realizing she needs to make her money last as long as possible Nina disappoints her growling stomach with the cheapest thing she can find instead.

Her drink is sloshed before her. Nina tears open the tiny packet of sugar, some of it spilling onto the plastic tablecloth as she tips it into her too-strong-tea. The toast is oozing with melted butter, which drips down her chin as she takes a hungry bite. She hadn’t spent the 25p extra on jam but this is still one of the best breakfasts she’s ever had. She can literally feel it settle her stomach, soaking up the last of the alcohol. She presses her finger onto the stray crumbs and pops them onto her tongue until her plate is clean. Then she wraps her hands around her mug and tries to formulate a plan.

The waitress slaps a bill in front of Nina and while Nina is counting change from her purse she says,

‘Can I ask you a question? I’m looking for a busker.’

‘Step outside the door and you can’t walk a hundred metres without falling over one,’ the woman replies.

‘This is someone specific.’ Nina opens YouTube and shows the clip to the woman.

‘I’ve never seen him but I know where that was filmed; it’s by the lifeboat station.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Look, there’s a bunch of flowers taped to the railing behind that little girl. There’s always a bunch there. Four people drowned here at New Year.’

Nina washes down the lump in her throat with the dregs of her tea. ‘Thank you,’ she manages to say, rummaging for a fifty-pence piece she lays as a tip.

‘Silly buggers,’ the woman says. ‘Went out on a boat at midnight in sub-zero temperatures. Would have been dead in minutes. They never had a chance.’

Nina swipes her precious coin back off the table and carries it with her anger back out into the alleyway where she sinks down onto the cobbles, rests her head on her knees and takes deep, slow breaths, feeling the toast fighting to claw its way free of her stomach.

Silly buggers.

She wants to march back into the café and tell the woman she is wrong, but she can’t.

Slowly she rises to her feet.

They never had a chance.

The woman has only said the same thing as the coastguard and the police. It isn’t news to Nina and yet it has hit her in a way it hasn’t before. Resignation is a heavy weight she carries back to the harbour. What now? She can’t just go home and give up though. Not when she’s come all this way.

Would have been dead in minutes.

Nina shakes her head, not caring what she looks like, wanting to rid herself of the woman’s voice. Instead, her mind is filled with Sean.

Nina, what the hell are you playing at?

She begins to hum ‘So What’. She wants to drown out the waitress, Sean.

Everything.

Music straightens her spine and strengthens her legs. It lifts and encourages her.

She remembers her dad surprising her with a clarinet. Teaching her how to gently twist the pieces into place.

‘Be careful. It’s not as tough as it looks on the outside,’ he had said. ‘Things rarely are.’

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