“I’m going to go,” I say.
“Are you sure?”
I nod.
“Emmie, I think you need to talk to your mum,” says Lucas, and I nod again, quickly, finger already hovering over the button to hang up.
“I’ll be okay,” I tell him. “I’ll text you.”
I watch Lucas and Marie disappear to black on my screen and curl up into bed, pulling the sheets to my neck. Thirty whole years of wondering, hours of searching, dead ends, barking up wrong trees. Lucas is right. These prove Mum knows more than she said she did. These prove my dad knew about me. Thought of me. These seven cards—the seven messages inside, exactly the same—tell me my dad cared. About me.
Dearest Emmeline,
Happy Birthday.
Thinking of you always.
Love,
Dad
WhatsApp from 073622819199 in group “OPERATION STEN!!!!”:
Hi guys and gals! It’s Tom Boding here. Luke gave me your numbers, so thought I’d start a group for operation STEN party. Stag/hen. Get it?! We’ve got best woman (hi Ems ;)), maid of honor (hi Lucille, stop us if you need to Google Translate lol!!!), brother of the groom (hi Eliot m8), and me, usher and legend :P
WhatsApp from 073622819199 in group “OPERATION STEN!!!!”:
Just thought it would be cool to have a place we can discuss ideas and touch base on this party shiz. Thoughts?
WhatsApp from Eliot Barnes:
STEN.
WhatsApp from Eliot Barnes:
legend.
WhatsApp from Eliot Barnes:
shiz.
WhatsApp from Eliot Barnes:
Who knew it could take only three words to make me hope for death?
* * *
“Right, I have an idea, Emmie. Lay down.”
“What?”
“Well, you’re always taking photos of me from above, so maybe you could lie down beside me and get some close-up, same-perspective—”
“But isn’t the sand… wet?”
Rosie tuts and pauses, splayed out on the sand at my feet. “Well, a bit but—”
“You have to suffer for art?”
“I was going to say a bit of wet sand is nothing when the end result is me looking like a frigging betty, actually.”
I look down at Rosie sprawled out elegantly on the beach like a 1950s movie star, her sunglasses huge, her white kaftan fanning out around her on the ground, the pop of pink of her bikini shorts.
“Fine,” I say. “But if Fox finds any sand on my back and makes me wear one of those smelly spare blouses again from Lost Property, I am coming straight for you.”
Rosie laughs, the apples of her cheeks glittering with bubble gum–pink blush. “Come on down, baby.”
I do as I am told, and crouch to lie beside Rosie on the cushiony, wet sand. Spots of water pierce my shirt. “Terrific.” I grimace, and Rosie grins at me, a dimple in each cheek.
“This is a bit cozy, isn’t it, Emmie Blue?” she says.
“Most romantic position I’ve been in for ages, to be honest.”
“Can you imagine Fox’s face if he was here?” Rosie says. “You do realize that the precipitation has rendered the sand utterly unfavorable for a photographic shoot, you fools.”
“You unfastidious fools.”
We both laugh, there on the wet beach, the summer sun high in the sky, Rosie in her new “gifted” kaftan from an Instagram-famous, plus-size fashion brand, and me in my hotel uniform of white blouse, name badge, and drab black trousers I often hope find their way to Lost Property, to never return. A man walks by us, a border collie trotting at his side, and he slows, staring at us as if we have just squatted naked in the street. I often find myself in these positions with Rosie.
Rosie is a fashion and beauty blogger, and almost every lunchtime it’s her blog she works on, either writing posts at her desk littered with coffee mugs and empty sandwich wrappers, or taking photos in various outfits I wouldn’t have the first clue how to put together. The only time Rosie doesn’t spend them working on her blog is when the builders are back working on the hotel, when she will invite me to have lunch in the courtyard behind the kitchen, where she will admire with wonder the worker with all the tattoos, the way Attenborough admires mating seals. Last time they were here, we watched them over sandwiches and tea, and when Fox approached and asked how long we’d be sitting there “wondering which poor bugger is single,” Rosie said, “Actually, Fox, I’m wondering how good the one who looks like Bradley Cooper is at giving head.” Rosie is smart and bold and has a confidence that rubs off and makes those around her walk a bit taller. Rosie is how confident I aspire to be.
“Get the bracelets in,” she says now as I snap away at her with her new iPhone.
“I’m trying.”
“Try and get the light reflecting off the topaz one.”
I stop and look over the phone at her. “Rosie, I’m a waitress with a fucking iPhone. I am not David Bailey.”
After a few moments, Rosie rolls over onto her front and I hand back her phone. “Thank you.” She smiles at me, unscrewing the top to a bright pink smoothie. The beach may be damp from a night of summer rainfall, but the air is warm and smells like deep-fried doughnuts and seaweed, and there isn’t a cloud to be seen in the sky. It is on days like these that I love Shire Sands. The novelty of living here, with its small, sandy beach, its orange-bricked Victorian houses, the chintz of the arcades, has never truly worn off. I knew I wanted to live here the second I stepped off the train. I’d made the decision to move after that first year of college finished, and Lucas and Amanda had come with me, helping me move two towns over from Ramsgate.
“A new start,” Amanda had said, positioning daffodils in the windows of the tiny studio flat I’d started renting. “You deserve that, my darling. You’ll be happy here.” And she was right.
Rosie sips at her smoothie. “Talk to me, Blue.”
“What about?”
She leans and touches her arm to mine. “Whatever’s been giving you that face all week. The constipated face. Where you look like you have a small village jammed up your arse.”
I laugh, picking out a petrol-blue mussel shell wedged in the sand. “I do not have that face.”
“You do. You always do when you’re thinking too hard about something. What is it? Is it the Frenchman?”
No, I want to say. Today there is something overriding Lucas: the seven birthday cards. From my dad. I can’t get them out of my head, and it has put my stomach into a constant churn ever since. I have spent a week with a ball of nerves, of sadness, and even a shred of excitement, in my chest. Excitement because I know I am closer to finding him, closer to the day I look my dad in the face. The man I am half of.
Rosie pulls her sunglasses down to look at me with big brown eyes. “Well?”
I look over at her. “It isn’t the Frenchman.”
“Okay,” says Rosie. “Wanna talk about it?”
I shake my head, but she watches me, allowing a warm space to expand between us, encouraging me to fill it. “Do you remember when I told you about my dad? That I didn’t know who he was.”
Rosie nods, fiddling with the label on the bottle in her hands. “Yeah,” she says. “French, wasn’t he? A sexy musician.”