The Town Between the Sea and the Shore

Prologue

BEFORE

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Elise North looked at what she'd built and knew that it was going to be important. That she was going to be important.

At first glance, it was barely anything. Little more than a metal hook dancing around a miniature climbing frame, like an excitable child. Until it became obvious that, although the laws of physics dictated that it should slow and fall from the rungs, it never would.

But there it was, proven through the act of observation. Both possible and impossible at the same time.

Footsteps on the stairs made her jump, and she recognised them instantly as her mother's. Specifically her mother in a bad mood. Either Andy had been returned home by the police again or their dad hadn't paid his child support. Elise didn't really care which it was; it was easier just to ignore it and to withdraw, to create distance between herself and the rest of the world. People were messy and unpredictable and they made her anxious. That was why she built models. They behaved according to laws and logic.

At least they had until now.

Elise heard her mother's hand on her bedroom doorknob and swept her device behind the nearest curtain. She turned just as the door opened.

"Have you given up knocking?" she asked, hoping to sound more annoyed than panicked.

"Your door was closed," replied her mother. "What were you doing?"

Elise thought of the device, hidden but so close. It would be the easiest thing to take it out and set it going, to show her mum what she'd discovered. But before she could move her mother stalked across the room to peer at one of her new posters. It was a print of an Escher painting, showing water flowing along a channel before cascading down a waterfall that showed the channel to have actually been running, impossibly, uphill.

"When I was your age," she said, "I had posters of Mick Jagger and Roger Daltrey on my wall."

"I don't know who they are," said Elise. And then, left unsaid, but I bet you don't know who Escher is.

Her mother laughed, although Elise wasn't sure where the joke was. "You kids today, you wouldn't know rock and roll if it bit you on the backside."

Elise nodded, assuming it was true but still not really following, although as much as she was outwardly agreeing with her mother she was inwardly agreeing with a realisation that her mum had no hope of recognising either the significance or the magnitude of what she'd discovered, and it was just as likely that no-one else in this arse-end-of-nowhere town would either.

She needed to do more than just show them. She needed to make them understand, to see it as she did.

"Well, come on then," said her mother, turning away from the Escher and towards Elise. "What was so secretive that you had to do it with the door closed?"

"Oh, nothing," said Elise. "Nothing important."

Chapter One

Elise paused with her finger over the doorbell and wondered whether this was how coming home was supposed to feel. She found her breath, watched it, let it slow. Just like she'd been taught at the clinic. Seagulls cawed overhead, their cries carried on the salt-sharp air that whipped in from the seafront. Her gut churned with nostalgia and trepidation. She put her hands in her pockets and found the Science Museum keyring she'd brought from London, traced the empty shape of it with her finger; it held no keys.

Elise rang the bell. There was a click as the door opened and she clasped the wrists of her jumper tight to her palms as it swung open. Making sure that her wrists were hidden. Her mother rushed out in a billowing of arms and cries of delight, scooping her into a hug. Perfume made the air thick and syrupy; it was a scent Elise had bought her mum every Christmas until she could no longer find it, even in discount shops and websites filled with spoiled stock and off-brand copies of things normal people bought. It was floral and sweet, the smell of Turkish Delight. Either she'd ended up buying enough to last until the next ice age, or her mum only wore it for Elise and so no longer had many opportunities to dip into her stockpile.

"How are you?" asked her mum without letting go.

"Good. Squashed."

Her mum released her, reluctantly. Stepped back and looked at her daughter. She was smiling. Elise mimicked the expression in case the one she wore wasn't convincing. It was difficult to tell whether she was happy to be home or whether she just knew she should be.

"How was the drive up from London?" asked her mum.

"Fine. Long."

"I hope you stopped on the way. Kept yourself alert."

"Of course I did," lied Elise. If she'd have stopped then she wouldn't have been moving, and if she'd hadn't been moving then she wouldn't have been getting away. But she recognised her mother's facial expression. It was one of the hundreds she'd memorised over the years and it was not an invitation to be truthful. "I'm not stupid."

Her mum clapped, rubbed her hands. Smiled again as though it was the only thing her face knew how to do. "Well then, let's get some tea in you."

Elise followed her mum into the house. Her fingertips found the loose edge of the wallpaper in the hall that she'd picked at when she was a teenager while her other hand had been entwined in the plastic coils of the phone cable. There were only four small holes in the wall there now. Elise let the memory surround her, feeling the distance and the closeness of it all at once.

A clank of mugs from the kitchen broke her from her reverie and she hurried through. Most of the room was filled with a table too large for the space, leaving only a slender perimeter around which her mum had to edge almost sideways.

"Is this new?" asked Elise, immediately cracking her hip on it. And then, because she couldn't not say it, "it doesn't fit."

It looked as though it had come from another house and been left here by accident. It was clearly flat-pack, made of cheap chipboard and a skin of veneer that was already peeling at the corners, whereas the rest of the kitchen was made from old, solid oak that had been there when they'd moved in and would most likely outlast them. Elise's mum set down their steaming mugs of tea, contouring awkwardly where there wasn't enough space to manoeuvre, then took a seat. Elise pulled out a chair to sit down herself, knocking it against the too-close cabinets barely a metre behind as she did so.

She rifled through the spilt pile of post in the centre of the table. None was addressed to her.

Of course it wasn't. She didn't live here any more.

"It's an extending table," said her mum, as if that was some sort of explanation.

"I don't think it needs extending any more."

"No, I can't get it down. Bloody thing's stuck. I only opened it because we had a few people round for my birthday. I did a Nigella chocolate cake for everyone."

The numbers flashed instantly in Elise's mind. "That was four months ago," she said, before sliding off the chair and to her knees to get a look at the mechanism under the table. From this angle, the table was a series of slats and pivots. Nothing complicated. She could see how it was meant to move, how the movements of the hinges would interact with each other. And, within three seconds, why it had become stuck. One of the support bars that kept the table strong when extended had become wedged against a guide rail.

She emerged from beneath the table.

"See..." said her mother, pulling up at the edge of a centre section that was clearly supposed to raise. "It won't budge. If only your brother would stop by occasionally..."

Elise waved her mother's hand away from the table. Then, with a clean, sharp motion, she pulled the centre slat outwards and up, knowing exactly where the jolt was needed to free the stuck mechanism. The middle of the table folded up neatly like a swan's wings, then dropped down so that the sides slid together to cover it. The table was now two-thirds of the size it had been, and much more appropriate for the room.

"You don't need Andy. You just need me."

Her mother smiled at her. "You've always been so clever. Somedays I could do with your brain around here. God knows mine's starting to fail me."

Elise felt her jumper sleeves sliding, and pulled then back over her wrists. Her smile was forced.

"Sit down," said her mother. "I'll get some biscuits out. You must be famished."

Elise did as she was told, staring out of the window as her mother busied herself with plates and six different packets of biscuits.

"The greenhouse is gone...," said Elise, realising out loud why the garden had looked strange. "First the table, now this. Have you been giving the place a makeover now that me and Andy have gone?"

"Now that you and Andy are gone," replied her mum, "I finally have a few quid to spend on the place."

A familiar jolt of anxiety fluttered in Elise's chest. She hated sarcasm; it was too difficult to know whether the joke was for her or on her.

"I think you'll find that was all Andy and his surfboard obsession," she replied.

The kettle clacked off and steam billowed up from the spout, clouding the window. Elise's mum poured into two cups. "I know," she said as she stirred. "Trying to surf in Hemby. We've not seen a proper wave in fifty years, I'd bet. Don't know what's wrong with the boy."

"What's he up to now?"

Elise's mum scooped the tea bags out of the mugs and, after letting them drip dry for a moment, moved them to a little porcelain dish by the sink. Elise had never understood why. No reason to not just put them in the bin. Not that she ever made herself tea. It always seemed like too much effort, given that she was only ever making it for just her. Plus people in London only ever drank coffee. Or bitter drinks that called themselves tea but weren't.

Her mum sat down and clanked a mug in front of her. "Usual." It was more of a mutter than an answer. The smile had evaporated from her face. Another expression that Elise knew. One that she knew the words meant something other than what they said.

Then, in the span of a blink, the smile was back.

"But how are you darling?" asked her mother in a bright voice. "How's the big smoke?"

Elise, careful to keep the cuffs of her jumper in place, picked up her mug and took a sip. It was too hot to drink, and it burned the roof of her mouth, but she'd been longing for it since she'd got into her car and couldn't wait another minute. Even though she barely managed a tablespoon's worth of it, all of a sudden she was curled on the sofa again watching Saturday morning cartoons.

"Big. Smoky. Full of Southerners."

"Are you still seeing that boy?"

"Man, mum. He's a man. I'm an adult."

Her mother waved a dismissive hand. "You know what I mean. I like him."

A moment. The question of whether to lie.

"Liked him. Past tense," said Elise, deciding on the truth. This once. "You liked him. I, as it turns out, didn't."

He'd only been a pretence, really. Something that other people did. She'd been relieved when he'd stopped replying. Mostly.

"Oh, that is a shame," replied her mum. Silence seeped into the room like smoke and the two women sat it in, sipping tea and staring out at the window. The garden was the dark green of Autumn and glistened with recent rainwater. Elise felt the warmth of the tea radiating out from inside her, making beads of sweat start to prickle beneath her arms and along her chest. She wiped at her face, worried that if her mum thought she was hot then she would ask her why she was still wearing her jumper.

"I've moved," she said, the words coming out a little too hurriedly. "Well, a few months back. Into a new area."

"Moved? I thought you liked London."

"London's a little bigger than Hemby. I found a new flat, in the west." And then, when Elise recognised the faint confusion on her mother's face. "West London is the nice bit."

Elise declined to tell her that four other people lived in the flat, or that her room was smaller than the kitchen in which they now sat.

"Good. You deserve it." said her mother, her expression happy again. "Maybe I should come down one day, see the city lights for myself."

"So where's Andy working?" asked Elise, moving the subject of conversation away from herself.

Her mother coughed and drained the rest of her tea. She stood and thumped the mug into the empty sink. "You should go and ask him. See for yourself."

"See what?"

"Someone who could do with a kick up the arse from his little sister."

"I'm twenty four. I'm not a little sister."

"Well, he's nearly thirty and you've worked more days this year than he has in his entire life."

"That's not true."