Chapter 3
I freeze, and Charlie walks straight into the back of me. He tugs out his earbuds and looks as though he’s about to make a snarky comment until he sees my face.
He follows my gaze, and his mouth drops open.
We are about a minute’s walk away from our house—or at least the place where our house used to be.
Now there are crumbling walls and a roof tilted sideways and sliding away down the side of the cliff, which has encroached all the way inland. It’s a skewed, slanted fun-house version of our house, as though time has fast-forwarded a hundred years to when it is falling apart. I can’t quite believe what I am seeing. It is like something from a disaster movie, and I blink rapidly in case I am having some kind of stress-induced hallucination. It doesn’t help. My home is still a wreckage of bricks, pipes, and shattered tiles. The cliff face has moved.
The wind is screaming and the rain seems even more intense than before, my feet getting sucked into the mud of the field because I’ve been still for so long.
A wild gust lifts the roof momentarily, and it seems to float in the air like a kite before crashing down again. The tiles shatter and break, slipping away and down, into what would once have been my garden but is now just the new edge of the cliff.
The whole cottage has sunk low, parts of the walls completely gone, the rest reduced to crazy paving leaning and shaking to one side.
“Mum...,” murmurs Charlie, grabbing my hand. “What the fuck has happened?”
I grip his fingers and shake my head.
“I don’t know. The cliffs... they’ve eaten our house!”
“But the cliffs weren’t that close! There was the garden, and the vegetable patch, and the coastal pathway that everyone waves to us from when they’re walking past...”
I nod. There were all those things, once. But now they are gone. No more garden, or vegetable patch, or pathway. Just the sludgy brown edge of the cliff, and our home slipping away—down, down, down, onto the beach, into the sea, out of existence.
I drop my shopping bags and run toward the house. I have no idea why—I don’t think I’ll be able to stop it, but some instinct just makes me run anyway. I cover the field in about thirty seconds, water splashing around my legs with every step, hair plastered to my head, wind whooshing like thunder in my ears.
As I get closer, I see the entire front of the cottage is gone. The rest has collapsed and is inching down in the same direction. The chimney has sunk in the middle of it all, and only one doorway is left standing. It’s the door into the back kitchen, the one we use when we come home this way, and it is so odd, freakishly upright in the middle of the carnage, bright red and wavering in the wind. A door we’d have been walking through minutes from now, sighing with relief at being out of the rain. Now it is a door that leads nowhere, nothing behind it but smashed glass and twisted metal and ruined plasterwork.
I see flashes of color against the deep poison-gray of the sky, bright pops of vibrancy that catch my eye. The cushions of our burgundy sofa, now covered in rubble. The remnants of our pale blue curtains, the ones I made myself. Smashed plates and mugs, yellow and cream. Flapping gingham material that used to be a tablecloth. It’s a rainbow of destruction.
There is a trail of the weirdest items scattered around: paperbacks from my bookshelf, open, pages fluttering in the wind; the toaster I was battling with this morning lying on its side; clothes flying and flapping; a torn box of cornflakes, its contents dancing in the air. CDs and DVDs I’d picked up cheap at charity shops are lodged in the mud. My bed, along with its pretty floral duvet cover, is hanging half on land, half over the cliff, and the toilet has somehow landed on top of it.
I see Charlie’s Xbox rolling away toward the edge, his old school textbooks and his desk, legs snapped, the only things remaining from his room.
I am paralyzed by all of it until I notice the photographs. Loose, flying, whisking through the air—precious pictures that I can never replace. Pages torn from albums, the stray ones I’d tucked inside the covers, spiraling in a chaotic dance, caught in swirling wind currents. I can buy a new sofa. I can make new curtains. I can sleep anywhere—but I can’t ever get those pictures back. I run toward them, trying to snatch them from the air, grabbing at random and trying to collect them. I am jumping and stretching and crying, desperate to save as many as I can.
I hear Charlie’s voice somewhere nearby but a million miles away, shouting: “Mum! Stop! Leave them... you’re getting too close to the edge!”
He doesn’t understand. These pictures are pre-digital. These pictures are priceless. These pictures are all I have to remind me of Charlie’s childhood—there is no dad around, no family, nobody to reminisce with. Nobody else with a camera. It has always just been me and him, and if I lose those photos, I lose those memories. I lose that part of us. I have to get them.
I’m aware of one of my shoes coming off, getting stuck in the squelching mud, a strange sucking sensation as I leave it behind. I see a picture of Charlie on his fourth birthday, wearing a badge that is almost as big as his chest, and I try to snatch it. I miss and it flutters away, flying out of my reach.
I feel my balance deserting me, and have that dizzying moment when you know you’re going to fall, the adrenaline surging up into my brain. I stagger, throw my hands out in front of me to break my descent, barely aware now of Charlie’s voice and the relentless drive of the rain.
I am grabbed from behind, held, lifted, pulled back to collide with someone’s body. “It’s okay! I’ve got you...”
I glance over my shoulder. It isn’t Charlie. Charlie is yards back, a look of horror on his face, dark curls squashed flat to his head.
I look up into the face of a stranger... or maybe not.
He looks familiar, but I can’t place him.
“My photos!” I protest, struggling to try to get free.
His arms are firm around me, and he physically lifts me up into the air and starts to walk backward. I am half carried, half stumbling, watching forlornly as I see Charlie’s birthday badge picture blown away into the bleak distance.
“We’ll get them,” the man says, having to shout to make himself heard over the wind. “I promise. But for now you need to be safe. You need to stay away from the edge, and you need to talk to your son.”
Part of me wants to fight him off, to push his arms away, to scream at him. But the rest of me knows that he is right. I look up and nod.
“Come on,” he says, taking my hand and leading me away from the chaos. From the carnage. From my entire life.
I reach out to grab Charlie’s hand in my other, and together the three of us make our way across the field. It is a battle every step of the way, impossible to predict which way the gusts will come from, our bodies assaulted from every angle.
The man leads us on, and I see that he is taking us up toward the big barn where the donkeys live. Next to it is the long white motorhome that has been here for a good while now, and the pieces fall together—this is his motorhome. He is the man who has the little dog and sits on his steps with a mug of tea every morning, even in the rain. The one I have categorized as “rude and to be avoided” in my mind. And now here I am, clutching hold of his hand, breathless, soaked, confused. After what feels like an hour, we finally make it. He lets go of me and opens the door to the van. He holds it firmly, stopping it from flying wide, and gestures for us to get inside. I push Charlie through first, then stagger up the steps myself and follow him.
As soon as the door is closed behind us, the silence almost hurts my ears. I can still hear the storm, but it is removed, it is distant, it is shut out. The windows are rattling, and the place is rocking gently—nothing that feels like it might result in us flying away like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz , but a gentle sway that reminds me of the force of the weather out there.
All three of us stand, still and silent, caught for a moment in our communal shell-shock.
That moment is broken by a blur of movement from one of the other rooms, a flash of black as a tiny creature hurtles toward us. My eyes snap wide, and I step in front of Charlie, going purely on instinct, dropping into some kind of weird boxer’s stance.
“It’s okay, Mum,” says Charlie, laying a hand on my shoulder, “I think I’m safe.”
I look down and see a black-and-tan dachshund jumping up at me. It has its front paws on my shins, and is most definitely longer than it is tall. I reach down and pat its head. It snuffles its muzzle into my hand, and my fingers find the silkiest, softest, floppiest ears I’ve ever encountered. Weirdly, it immediately makes me feel better.
“This is Betty,” the man says, leaning down and scooping her up into his arms. She nestles into him and licks his face, and I see that her tiny body is trembling.
“Bless her,” I say, giving her another stroke. “She’s terrified.”
“So am I,” Charlie replies, moving in to scratch those amazing ears. “What the fuck happened out there?”
I don’t have it in me to reprimand him for his language. He is an adult, and he is also correct—in some situations, only the word fuck will suffice.
As if to back that up, an especially loud shriek of wind gives us all another gentle nudge.
“Don’t worry, we’re fine,” says the man, seeing my expression. “I moved it around to the side of the barn as soon as the wind got bad. I’m Luke, by the way.”
As he talks, he opens an overhead cupboard and pulls out a stack of towels. We all take one, and the act of rubbing my own hair makes me realize exactly how wet I am. In fact, we’re creating puddles on his floor.
We are in what seems to be the living area, and it is surprisingly spacious. There is a table that looks as though it folds back up, a banquette-style sofa that probably doubles as a bed, and a compact cooking area with a stove and microwave. Beyond the contents, though, it feels really nice and lived in—there are gorgeous framed photos on display, showing beautiful sunsets in beautiful places, and a small shelf lined with fossils and seashells and pressed flowers in glass. A battered acoustic guitar is propped up by the window.
I see a scattering of well-worn paperbacks, a newspaper folded open to the crossword, a pair of binoculars and a clearly much-used Guide to British Birds . This feels like a proper home, not like a holiday home. Despite the fact that there are three wet people and a dog in here, it doesn’t feel too cramped, and it even smells nice—probably due to the small tribe of scented candles in glass jars and tins that are grouped together on the table. My eyes run over the labels: bergamot, lavender, mint, rosemary, and sea salt.
I can imagine, under better circumstances, how nice this would be—a cozy night in, reading a book by candlelight, everything close by and tucked away. Safe and cocooned. Everything I once associated with my own home, which is now halfway down a cliff that didn’t even exist this morning.
I thud down onto the banquette, suddenly running on empty. Suddenly and totally exhausted, numb, incapable of staying upright for a moment longer. There was so much damage out there—even the stuff that hadn’t fallen was wrecked, coated in debris, buried beneath the bricks that once protected us, the roof that should be over our heads.
Everything is gone. Our clothes, our furniture, our books and games and precious photos. Our passports and paperwork and phone chargers and the laptop and the Xbox. Our bedding and towels and curtains and food and pots and pans and the slow cooker I never even use. Our flowers and our vegetable patch and our little patio set and my own scented candles. Our shoes and coats and Charlie’s collection of random baseball caps and my few items of jewelry. The cookie jar shaped like an owl; the trophy he won for the Good Citizen Award in year six that I’ve embarrassed him with ever since; his school certificates; all our fridge magnets.
So many things, all gone. A new one seems to crowd into my mind every second, and I feel the panic starting to rise. The panic, and the grief—because these aren’t just things, are they? They are memories. They are moments. They are the physical manifestation of a life lived together. And now they are lost.
It’s the thought of the baby scan picture that finally pushes me over the edge. I always meant to put it in a frame, along with the pictures of Charlie as a newborn, but somehow I never did. I just kept it, in an envelope, tucked inside one of the albums. I know it was just a fuzzy black and white outline, I know I have the real thing in front of me right now, and I know it is silly to react like this—but that is the loss that makes me cry. I feel big, fat tears rolling down the sides of my face and don’t even have the energy to wipe them away.
Charlie kneels down in front of me and pats my hands. He looks distraught, and about twelve years old, and I see that he is trying to comfort me even though he is still an overgrown version of the baby in that scan photo. I squeeze his hands in return.
“I’m all right, love,” I say as calmly as I can. “I’m just in shock. And sad. It’ll all be okay, I promise. I just needed to have a little cry, it seems...”
“You never cry, Mum,” he replies, still looking uncertain.
Ha , I think. As if. I cry all the time. I just do it when I’m alone, because nobody wants their child seeing that, do they? We mums are supposed to be invincible, unbeatable, unsinkable. We stay strong for the sake of our kids, even if that means we have our meltdowns in private.
Luke has remained silent so far, watching this minidrama unfold before him. It has taken perhaps five minutes.
“Tea?” he asks now, raising his eyebrows in question. I nod, and wonder if he has any brandy. I don’t think my much-anticipated bottle of wine will have survived today’s events somehow. Another loss to mourn—alas, poor Chardonnay, I knew him well.
Charlie sinks down next to me and we sit together, wet and shaking, holding hands. Betty jumps up to join us, and she is such a sweet little thing, I even consider a smile.
I glance at Luke as he goes about his business, filling a kettle, getting mugs. The kitchen is tiny but perfectly formed, everything in its place, little storage cupboards built in all over. He is a big man, I realize, and he takes up a lot of the space.
I have seen him before, of course, and part of my brain had registered that he was a good-looking human—but his standoffishness completely obliterated that aspect. Now things are different, and I find myself seeing him in a much more appreciative light.
He is as wet as we are, a black T-shirt with the logo of a rock band on the front plastered to his body, a pair of faded Levis dark with rain and mud. He has dark hair, so closely cropped it is almost shaved. He has the tanned skin of the outdoors type, the kind of nose you see on statues in museums, and a wide mouth. I stare at him as he concentrates on what he is doing, and wonder how old he is—there are creases on that face, laughter lines around the green eyes, a certain lived-in quality that speaks of challenge and experience.
He meets my gaze, and I am suddenly embarrassed. I know nothing about him, and he is not a stranger on a bus. I am silly to be trying to make up a backstory for him. He is clearly a seasoned traveling man, without a care in the world—I am simply filling in the blanks, pondering his life to stop myself from thinking about my own.
As though I have manifested it, he produces a bottle of brandy and holds it up. I nod, and he glugs a generous splash into my mug. He glances at Charlie, and I fight off the urge to say no. He is eighteen, and he has had a Very Bad Day as well.
Luke sits opposite on a small footstool, and we are silent for a few moments. The mug is warm against my palms, the brandy is warm against my throat, and it is helping.
“I called 999,” he says, once we have all savored our first mouthfuls. “Emergency services told me they’d get people out here as soon as they could—there’s been a pileup on the Norwich road, and all kinds of accidents because of the storm. They’re sending people out to cordon it all off, and to close the beach, in case...”
“In case my house falls on a dog walker’s head?”
“Yeah. That. It started getting bad about an hour ago, stuff flying around from your garden—but this... this happened pretty fast. It was like the sea just swallowed the cliff. It all collapsed, and then the cottage started to shake, and bit by bit... it fell. I’m so sorry. But at least you weren’t there—I saw your car was gone, but there was still a moment where I wondered, and that’s why I came down to check.”
“Thank you,” I murmur, really meaning it. “That was both kind and brave, running toward the disaster instead of away from it. I’m not sure I’d have done the same. And I know it’s lucky, really, that we weren’t in—we might have been, but my car broke down in town and we had to get the bus. I was pretty annoyed about that at the time, but... well, maybe it saved our lives, now I come to think of it...”
For a moment my mind drifts to a dark place; a place where Charlie and I were at home, getting ready for a quiet night in. Where Charlie was gone, along with his Xbox. It’s been an absolute shit of a day, but it definitely could have been worse.
“Do you have a phone charger?” I ask, suddenly aware of the fact that I need to start thinking about some practicalities.
Luke nods and retrieves one from a drawer. I root my phone out of my bag and find, naturally enough, that it doesn’t fit. Charlie’s, however, does. Success.
“What will you do?” Luke asks, frowning. “I mean, in the short term?”
“I was thinking maybe a brief period of anxiety followed by a full-blown panic attack... but after that, well, I don’t know. I have to speak to the landlord—he lives in London. I have to speak to my work colleagues and tell them I won’t be in tomorrow. I have to... find somewhere for us to live?” The last few words trail out limply, as though they ran out of energy halfway to being spoken. It’s all too much. It’s too big, and too weird, and too insane.
“That’s long term,” says Luke, looking at me with concern. “For now, let’s take it one step at a time. Get warm. Drink your tea. Make your phone calls. You can always stay here for the night if you need to. Betty won’t mind.”
A small smile makes its way to my lips, and I see Charlie has scooted Betty onto his lap. She’s like a canine comfort blanket.
“Again, thank you. I’m Jenny, by the way, and this is Charlie. Nice to meet you, and sorry it took my house falling off a cliff for me to introduce myself. I should have done it ages ago. Brought you some home-baked cookies or something...”
Charlie snorts in disbelief next to me, and I have to grin. He is right. The best I would have managed would have been a plate full of artfully unpacked Oreos.
“That’s okay,” replies Luke seriously. “I’m not exactly Mr. Sociable, to be honest. Plus, I don’t eat cookies. I only eat what I can forage in the wild. I live off nature’s bounty.”
“Really?” I ask, finding it hard to imagine. My idea of foraging is the bargain fridge at the supermarket.
“No,” he says, grinning. “Though I am honing my mushroom-gathering skills.”
He has a great grin, warm and infectious, which comes as something of a surprise. Both Charlie and I laugh much more than the joke called for.
For just a moment, I forget my new reality. I forget the wreckage, my lost belongings, my impending layoff, my financial strife. We are both safe and well, here in a cozy place, sipping brandy and petting a small dog. It could definitely be worse, and I need to focus on that instead of letting my mind race ahead too far.
Betty suddenly jumps off Charlie’s lap and starts barking at the door. It is a much bigger bark than you’d expect from a dog of her proportions. Her whole body is shaking as she wags her little tail.
“She’s a killer,” I say as Luke gets up and opens the door.
Outside, there is a man in a fluorescent vest, his fist raised as though he was about to knock on the door. His hard hat is blown to one side, and his eyes are screwed up against the wind. Luke gestures for him to come inside and quickly tugs the door shut behind him.
It now does feel a bit cramped in here, and Luke clears the items from the table and folds it back up against the wall, hooking it securely to create more space.
“Hi!” says our visitor. “Shocking out there, isn’t it?”
“Um... yes?” I reply. I’d say that having your house fall down definitely qualifies as shocking.
“I’m Bob. From the council.”
He is wearing a hard hat. And his name is Bob. So, automatically, I start humming the Bob the Builder theme tune, and hope that he can fix it. He doesn’t react—maybe he’s heard it before.
“Are you the property owner?” he asks, looking around. I’m guessing that Luke fits more into the mental image of a man who lives in a van than I do. And once upon a time, just a few hours ago, I was wearing office clothes and looking more respectable. Now I only have one shoe and I’m covered in mud.
“We rent it,” I reply. “Or we did. Not much left now. Do you think there’s anything that can be done to salvage it?”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t have thought so,” he says blithely. “Certainly not today. There are people on the way to make the scene safe, cut off the gas and electric, that kind of thing. We don’t want an explosion on top of everything else, do we?”
“No. We really don’t,” I say, my eyes widening. Bob is clearly not someone who is good at reading the room.
“The main thing now,” he continues, “is to make sure nobody gets hurt. I’ve done a quick survey and it looks as though the worst is over, and there won’t be any more land loss. The storm is peaking, and tomorrow the forecast is much better. Then we can do a proper assessment and take things from there.”
“Will we be able to go back?” asks Charlie. “And, you know, see if we can find any of our things?”
“I can’t say at this stage. We have dealt with this kind of thing before on this coastline, but it’s usually a lot more gradual. It usually happens over days or even weeks, which means we can do a planned evacuation, give people time to pack. This... well, this wasn’t that, was it? I’ve not seen this happen before.” He sounds genuinely intrigued, like this has all presented him with an amazing puzzle to solve.
“Wow. We just got lucky, I suppose,” I say, feeling a stirring of annoyance. I control it, because none of this is Bob’s fault.
“It’s the weather,” he says thoughtfully. “Climate change is real. What happens in a big storm like this, the cliffs get eroded. We saw it with the Beast from the East in 2018. This time, though, it’s on top of weeks and weeks of rain, which has softened everything up. That process has probably been going on for a while. We get quite a few landslides when the precipitation is heavy and constant. So you’ve got the rain, the erodibility of the cliffs here, and the erosivity of the waves being whipped up. Between those things, plus the geology, the local currents, the groundwater levels... well, I suppose it was the perfect storm.”
I meet Luke’s eyes, and he shakes his head. It’s not just me imagining it—Bob has said those last words with a total lack of irony.
“Totally,” I reply. “Pretty much the best storm I’ve ever seen.”
He nods eagerly, glad that I agree.
“For now, I need you to stay away from the building. I’ve classed it officially as being structurally unsafe.”
I blink, assaulted with images of cracked walls and the crumbling plasterwork and the roof flapping in the wind like one hand clapping. The toilet, perched on my bed.
“I have to say, I think you’re right,” I answer. It is better than what I wanted to say, which was a heavily sarcastic, “No shit, Sherlock.”
It is only just sinking in, now, how close I’d come to being structurally unsafe myself—running around out there near the new cliff edge, trying to save photos. I wasn’t listening to Charlie, and in that moment, I hadn’t been at all concerned with what might have happened if I’d slipped in the wrong spot and followed my lupins into the sea below. I shudder at the thought.
“Right,” continues Bob, all business. “Well. My team is on its way, as are the emergency services, so for now we need to get you somewhere safe for the night. Do you have family you can go to?”
It is a simple question, of course, but it has a complicated answer. Yes, I have family—but they live hundreds of miles away and I haven’t seen them for almost two decades. We’re not what you’d call close.
Bob doesn’t need to know any of that, so I just shake my head. I see a moment of sadness flitter across Charlie’s face and bite my lip. He has always wanted a bigger family, has always envied the chaos of his friends’ lives, the tangle of siblings and grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles. Whereas I’ve been content with our solitude—I chose it, after all—he has often said he always wished he had more relatives around him. He doesn’t understand that the upsides come with steep downsides, or how the people you love most in the world can also be the ones who hurt you the worst.
I feel a wash of melancholy, probably a combination of everything that has happened today and the brandy—yet another perfect storm.
“We can get you to a hotel,” Bob continues, oblivious to the swirl of emotions he has unleashed. “Find you some clothes, the basics. Maybe you could make me a list of what you urgently need, and I’ll see what I can do?”
“Um... how much will it cost? The hotel?”
I hate the fact that I have to ask. I hate the fact that I am worried about my card getting declined, about embarrassing Charlie, about the money that I don’t have.
“Nothing. We have a fund for things like this—don’t worry. It won’t be the Ritz, and you shouldn’t hit the minibar, but your accommodations and food will be covered.”
“No minibar?” I repeat. “Not even those stubby tubes of Pringles or a Toblerone that costs a tenner?”
“Um... well, under the circumstances, maybe the Pringles? Anyway. I’ll leave you to it and come back in a bit for that list. Are you okay here for the time being?” He glances between me and Luke, obviously uncertain of the dynamic here, of how we relate to each other’s lives.
“They’ll be fine here,” says Luke, my Good Samaritan in a Mot?rhead top.
Bob nods and leaves with a jaunty wave. The wind almost blows him off his feet as he steps outside, and Betty barks at it, just to be safe.
“Am I imagining it,” I ask, “or did we just make Bob’s day?”
“I think you did,” Luke replies, smiling. Weird how he’s been distant and grumpy until now, and in the midst of disaster there’s a whole new side to him. “He’ll probably be talking to people in the pub about this for years.”
“Yeah. I wonder if he’s married? Maybe he’ll go home and start saying ‘heightened levels of erosivity’ to his wife...”
“The dirty bastard.”
We all laugh, but it is strained. Luke has done his best for us—he has physically removed me from a stupidly dangerous situation, rescued me from my own recklessness, and he has kept us safe and warm and given us strong liquor. But these are not pleasant circumstances, and this is not a pleasant social occasion. It is a disaster zone.
I feel brittle, taut, like a string that could snap at any moment.
“It’ll be okay,” says Luke firmly. “It might not feel like it now, but it will. You’ll feel better after a shower, and some sleep, and maybe some more brandy. I’ll be here for the next week, and I’ll help in any way I can. Plus you have Betty on your side now, and in my experience there are very few situations that she can’t improve.”
Right on cue, Betty licks my hand. I hope he’s right.