Page 95 of From Now On

But she is. She feels stronger now as she walks towards the lifeboat station. Filled with purpose.

If her dad is here, Nina will find him. She clutches hold of that thought as tightly as the seagull clutches in his sharp orange beak the stray chip he had swooped onto the pavement to retrieve.

Nina reaches the place where the video was filmed but it isn’t what she was expecting. Ridiculously, she had hoped that everything would have remained static. The child frozen in time, holding out her ice-cream cone. The busker singing an endless song. Disappointment is crushing. It’s like when Dorothy whisked open the curtain inThe Wizard of Ozand the sight before her was so unexpected, Nina actually felt Dorothy crumple through the pages of the book.

Nina feels herself crumpling now, crumbling, turning to dust where she’ll merge with the sand. Disappear with the waft of a breeze, carried over oceans. Forever searching.

To anchor herself she holds on to the rusty railings and when she’s taken a few deep breathes she examines the flowers that are bound to the iron with a frayed piece of rope. They aren’t roses, which were Mum’s favourite – does that mean Dad hadn’t been here? Hadn’t left them? They are dying, the purple petals curling brown scatter under her touch. There’s still some green in the stalks though, so she doesn’t think they are necessarily very old. Nothing would last long in this heat without a drink.

Nobody could last long in those freezing temperatures.

That’s what Alan, the coastguard, had said.

She wonders if he’s working today. If he’ll remember her. She waits until she’s sure the tears that threaten to fall have been contained and then she heads into the lifeboat station.

‘Hello?’ she calls.

‘Hello.’ ItisAlan.

Her heart lifts and sinks when he doesn’t recognize her. How can it be that he had been present at the most significant time in her life and he does not know who she is?

‘I’m Nina. I met you New Year’s Day. My parents…’ She falters.

‘Ah, Nina. Of course. How are you? Are you here with your brothers?’

‘No. I’m alone. Look—’ she pulls out her phone, swiping past her notifications, which shout of eighteen missed calls from Charlie, and she shows him the clip. ‘They’ve found two of the others but not my mum or dad and this looks like my dad and I thought he might have, they both might have…’ she garbles, trailing off when she notices that the confusion on his face turns to pity as he realizes what she has hoped.

‘Nina, I’m so sorry but—’

‘I shouldn’t have come.’ She turns and runs away from his words, away from the truth.

They never had a chance.

She is not giving up.

Nina drifts, dazed. Heading back into town without knowing exactly where or why. She passes a pub, the Crow’s Nest, a ‘live music every evening’ sign outside. She picks her way through the garden packed with pink-shouldered tourists, past the wooden picnic benches laden with pints of fizzing cider, the sweet smell attracting the wasps. The grass is patchy and littered with cigarette butts. She steps inside and waits a moment for her eyes to adjust to the gloom before she approaches the bar.

‘Got any ID?’ the harassed-looking barman with a red mohawk asks.

‘I’m not here for a drink. I’m looking for a man.’

‘A little young, aren’t you?’

‘A musician?’

‘The worst kind, darling.’

‘My father. You have live music here every night? Look.’

She pulls out her mobile, opens YouTube. Stupidity is a needle pricking her skin as she sees the red battery flashing in the top right-hand corner of her screen. She hasn’t brought her charger.

The screen turns to black while the video is still loading. The barman wanders off to serve someone else. She shakes her handset as though she can dislodge a smidgen of life left in the battery but it won’t switch back on.

Nina, what the hell are you playing at?

Sean had made her feel like a child last night and this is the way she feels again.

Small.

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