Prologue
Gwen lifted her eyes from her book and watched Alfie and Emily build sandcastles at the water’s edge.
‘Dinner is soon, we need to start packing up,’ she called out, lowering the book slightly to look at them.
The young girl nodded back at her, her wide smile exposing the recently lost front tooth. ‘Okay mum.’ She stood up, ‘Can you come in with me once before we leave?’
Gwen smiled but shook her head, ignoring the pang of mum-guilt, ‘I’ll come in with you when we come back tomorrow, promise.’
The girl looked sad for a moment but nodded, after a few moments she seemed to forget the rejection as she happily kicked up sand on her way to the water.
Alfie came back to join his wife on the sun lounger, ‘come on bookworm, come and join us once in a while. We didn’t come out here just to read.’ He swatted playfully at his wife’s book before plonking down on the lounger next to her.
‘You’re right. We came here to relax,’ Gwen closed her book and placed it on the table between the two loungers. ‘And I am relaxing,’ she laid back and closed her eyes.
‘Whatever,’ Alfie grumbled, ‘we came all the way out to Mexico just for you to sit by yourself reading your book, we might as well have gone to Brighton instead.’
Gwen took a deep breath, not rising to the bait. ‘Emily is having a lovely time,’ she said simply.
‘On her own,’ her husband added.
Another deep breath. ‘And the food here is lovely. Not to mention the beaches…. Stunning. It’s just what we needed,’ Gwen concluded.
‘Yeah,’ came Alfie’s reply. His tone ignited something in Gwen’s core, but before she could ever respond, the sound of a woman screaming made her eyes snap wide open.
‘Help, oh my god, help,’ the woman sounded absolutely petrified.
Gwen sat bolt upright and lifted her shades. Searching the coastline instinctively for Emily. Nothing. ‘Where’s Emily?’ she said. She tried to remain calm. Her eyes quickly scanned the water’s edge. But there was no Emily. She looked desperately for that light blue swimsuit that her daughter had begged her for before leaving home. Her vision blurred. She jumped up from the lounger so fast that she almost fell. The white plastic scraping the inside of her foot.
‘She was just going to be in the shallows,’ her husband sounded calmer than she was but sat up anyway. Joining in the search for their daughter.
The commotion persisted as Gwen moved quickly towards the water. ‘It’s a child,’ someone shouted.
Gwen’s blood ran cold. Without thinking, she turned and ran in the direction of the woman’s scream. A small collection of people had formed around something that Gwen couldn’t see. Her feet slipped in the hot sand. She was sweating by the time she reached the crowd of people.
‘Police, move out of the way,’ she said, it was second nature to her. Regardless of not having any jurisdiction in this country. She barged her way between the people but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw what they had been looking at. There in the centre was a small child face down on the sand. Her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. A small, blue swimsuit clung to her tiny frame. Gwen felt her breath catch in her throat. The little hands. The little feet. A child. She fell to her knees beside the body. ‘No,’ she breathed, her hand reaching towards the child. Everything around her seemed to disappear. All she could see was that tiny body. She braced herself for what was coming next. Either a nightmare or relief. She turned the body over slowly and let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t Emily. It wasn’t her daughter. Gwen sat back on her heels, trying to compose herself as best as she could. She heard sirens off in the distance, but right now, nothing felt real to her. Not any more.
A blood-curdling scream brought her back to reality as she felt herself being pushed to one side. ‘My daughter,’ the woman who had now taken her place, was screaming and crying as she cradled the child’s lifeless form in her arms. The crowd awkwardly made way for the first responders to reach the scene. Gwen watched on from her spot in the sand, and they tried their best to pull the child from their mother’s arms, trying their best to do so in a mix of both English and Spanish. The mother held on, regardless.
‘Gwen,’ Alfie said, his tone hushed. ‘Emily’s here, let’s… let’s go. Give the woman some privacy.’
Gwen nodded numbly as she clambered up to her feet. Once she was free of the crowd, she felt a small set of arms around her waist. ‘I’m sorry for scaring you mum, I was collecting shells. Like you showed me. I went a bit too far up there,’ her eyes were swollen. She’d been crying. She’d been told off. Gwen was no longer able to care about her going too far away. She was just relieved.
Gwen held her daughter close and placed a kiss on the top of her head. She kept her arm around her as they started heading in the direction of their things. ‘It’s okay, I’m just relieved that you’re safe.’ The three walked in silence, as the mother’s screams became more distant. Gwen glanced back over her shoulder. Just an hour ago, that woman had been living a normal life. Now she had to bury her own child. A white tent was quickly being set up where the crowd of people had once been. She watched as those who had been formed around the woman slowly dispersed. Although none of them would ever admit it, Gwen was sure that they were all thinking the same thing.
Thank god it wasn’t me.
Thank god it wasn’t my child.
