The Missing Link by Kate Thompson

Author:Kate Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448172771
Publisher: RHCP

PART SEVEN

1

THIS TIME THERE would be no hiding for Danny; no turning away and pretending it wasn’t there. It was broad daylight, now, and the sea was vast and bright.

We were barely out of Inverness when it came into view. Danny stopped dead in his tracks and stared. I stopped beside him and put a hand on his arm. His entire attention was taken, and his face registered acute anxiety. For a long, long time he stood there, and I was afraid to break his mesmerised state in case I nudged him the wrong way, over into a wobbler. But in the end I had to do something.

‘Come on, Danny,’ I said. ‘It’s just the sea. Let’s get on, shall we?’

I mightn’t have been there, for all the notice he took of me. He continued to stare, and I saw, or maybe I just sensed, that every one of his nerve-ends was taut and trembling.

A car passed and Tina tried to thumb it, without success. Danny didn’t even see it. The breeze was fresh and kept changing its mind about where it was going, so the waves were hitting the shore with an irregular sloshing sound.

‘Just the waves,’ I said to Danny. ‘Hear them? Whoosh, whoosh.’

‘They can’t get you,’ said Tina. ‘They’re stuck on the beach, see?’

Abruptly, Danny’s trance broke. He took a few faltering steps, then shied away violently and began to run along the edge of the road, making a distressed keening sound. I was certain he was about to loop the loop in a major way, but his attention was beyond my reach and there was nothing I could do but follow. He turned back, bumbling along the other way, and Tina and I followed again, calling uselessly after him. Again he turned, running along the road but looking the other way; out to sea.

I caught up with him. ‘What is it, Danny?’ I said.

He stopped, finally, and looked at me. His expression was full of anguish, like nothing I’d ever seen on his face before.

‘The big sea, Christie,’ he said. ‘People can’t live in it.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Not for long, anyway. But it can’t hurt you, Danny. It can’t come out of its bed.’

I don’t know if he heard me. ‘Can’t live in it,’ he repeated, apprehensively. ‘Can’t live in it.’

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