Living with Jonathan by Sheila Barton

Living with Jonathan by Sheila Barton

Author:Sheila Barton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Living with Jonathan
ISBN: 9781780284194
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2012-04-10T00:00:00+00:00


We are in north Devon again. This year the weather isn’t so good. Everyone is older. Hannah wears a little blue-spotted swimming costume and plastic shoes on the warmer days. Mostly though, I make her keep on a towelling top with a hood, which I pull up over her salty curls and she pulls down again. She paddles and jumps in the sea. Ben makes sandcastles for her. We’re on the beach of the nature reserve because, although it is windy and grey, it isn’t actually raining. There’s a limited amount of time you want to spend indoors with three children.

The beach is absolutely vast. Across the expanse of ribbed yellow, swirls of dry sands blow, getting in our eyes and clothes. The sea is wild and beautiful but very far away. We have windbreaks to put right round us – difficult to put up, blown this way and that, but once up they create some shelter. We’ve brought the mats and buckets and spades, as well as a picnic lunch. The beach appears to be deserted but there are a few other windbreaks dotted around, presumably sheltering people behind them. At each end of the bay, green hills meet the sea. I’m trying to read a paper, which is shivering in the wind, and I get quite absorbed in an article about a music project in an inner-city school. Hannah and Ben have decided to brave the wind and walk down to the sea. I watch their receding figures for a while, getting smaller and smaller. They seem to be all right. Ben keeps looking back to check that he can still see us. He’ll hold her hand all the way, I know. Jonny is just lying beside me, flapping his boat. They asked him if he wanted to go, but there was no response of any sort. I’m just finishing a second article when I hear the excited return of the children.

‘The sea’s really crashing. You can’t get near – you’d get soaked! It’s such a long walk, though, we’re tired, and Hannah cried because she got sand in her eyes.’

‘It hurt, Mummy. It’s sore. I’m not going again.’

‘Where’s Jonny?’

The question hangs in the air. Where, indeed, is Jonny? He’s no longer lying beside me, and when I stand and survey the beach beyond the windbreak, he’s nowhere to be seen. How can I possibly have been so negligent? How quietly must he have slipped away? We stand and look around the beach. There is no sign of him in any direction, no sign of anyone walking or running, just the scattered windbreaks and the swirling sand. Both of the other children start to cry.

‘Where’s Jonny? Where’s Jonny? We’ve lost him. We’ll never find him.’

‘Yes, we will,’ I say, but my voice is shaky and doesn’t sound at all convincing. They cry more loudly. ‘Come on now, we need to look for him. No, no, you must stay here. No one else must get lost.’ I’m panicking and they know it.



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