I remember the day we found out what happened to that kid and the dog who went missing on the coast by Godrevy. By midnight last night the frantic parents had knocked on almost every door in the area. And although the police were reluctant to get too involved until the kid hadn’t been seen for 24 hours and they could officially label it a ‘missing persons case’, a couple of panda cars had pulled up in front of the café earlier in the evening, drawing the attention of the beachgoers. Some hastily organised search parties had been organised during the night, their headtorches as little pinpricks of light against the vast black backdrop of the ocean, and although I took little notice of the hum of activity, I was sure that the couple of hundred locals, if not the tourists, would be well aware of what was happening.
It was a bustling and busy morning. The surf was good and the by 8 o’clock when I arrived at the café to open up, I could already see the black specks of surfers bobbing out in the bay. By the time I had fired up the coffee machine, turned on the lights and unlocked all the doors, cars were already beginning to trickle into the carpark. It was going to be another beautifully sunny day, and no missing child or dog would stop the tourists from descending on the beaches in droves.
After having dished out hot chocolates to a father and his three young sons, shivering from their sunrise surf session, I served my first familiar face. I knew her only as Labrador Lady, for although she visited the café five days a week like clockwork, bringing in tow her bouncy brown lab Bernie, I had never asked her name. And now that the sight of Bernie pulling her up the steps into the café, both panting from their morning run, had become so familiar, I felt that it would be unnatural to ask what her name was. Nevertheless, as I reached for a mug, she didn’t need to ask: I knew her order, I broached the subject of the missing boy.
She apparently had heard more than me, having joined one of the search parties late last night. It seemed the boy had been last seen early yesterday afternoon on the beach. His family were down on holiday, staying in one of the small coastal chalets. Labrador Lady said that the last his parents had seen of him he had taken his little dinghy and the family dog off to the far end of the beach to explore around the rocks. She gestured towards the lighthouse as she said this, and I raised my eyebrows. I asked her if she thought he could have tried to paddle to the lighthouse and been swept away on the current. Both of us could well recall times when the coastguard had been called out to rescue surfers who had attempted to paddle across the enticingly small gap between the island upon which the lighthouse stood and the mainland. Far from being novices, the fact that the surfers were usually new to the area meant that they had fallen foul to the vicious outgoing tide. There was something about that lighthouse.
Labrador Lady didn’t mention Old Lady Jane before she left, but I knew we were both thinking it. I don’t like to gossip, and I don’t like to spread rumours, but when every local has heard the stories about the lady in the lighthouse, it’s hard to not to pass judgement. I remember finding out about her the first time I started working in the café. There was endless speculation about why she lived all alone in the lighthouse, what she had done before she moved here, and what secrets her life story held.
Jenny tapped me on the shoulder to let me know I could start taking breakfast orders and made to disappear back into the kitchen. I called her back and asked her if she’d heard about the missing boy. She shook her head and began muttering about how it was such a terrible business. I knew she was only putting on a show: her and her friends in the textiles society would be chatting about this event for months to come. Yanking tight the ties on her apron and swinging her rotund figure through the swinging doors into the kitchen, I just managed to catch the words “Old Lady Jane” before the door swung shut in my face.
When Mr Gordons came in around lunchtime to pick up three cakes, I could tell that the rumours had already started to spread. Despite his constant grumbling that it was either too hot or too wet or too windy or there were too many tourists at this time of year, I had grown fond of Mr Gordons. He lived not far from the café in a small cottage with his sister. They were both middle-aged and unmarried, content living in each other’s company. His sister rarely came to the café, but I recall him mentioning she was often away as she worked for some charity and spent a lot of time abroad. Despite having lived in the area so long he had almost become part of the landscape, I knew that Mr Gordons was never one to gossip, and so I was surprised when be started talking about the boy.
It was the first major development that I had heard that morning, and it was shocking. The boy’s dinghy had been found, deflated due to a puncture, washed up on the rocks opposite the island with the lighthouse. But that wasn’t all, as Mr Gordons began to tell me about how the family dog had been found wandering along the beach in the direction of Hayle. The dog was found caked in sand and dripping wet but was otherwise unscathed. Mr Gordons began to tell me about what people were thinking in the village. Some say she used to have children herself, and that’s why she moved here. A broken marriage apparently. She took the kids away from their father and Greg Wednesday who used to work in the force said he’d heard rumours of a case in London about a mother starving her children to get revenge on her husband for some reason or other. He says they never truly solved the case.
I was shocked that Mr Gordons was allowing himself to become so convinced and asked him if he thought it was not all a bit far-fetched. He shrugged and said that we would have to wait and see what the police thought, before scooping up his cakes and walking out.
I spent the rest of the day watching the tourists flood in and out of the café, oblivious to what was playing out around them. The locals that came in knew, you could see it in their rock-hardened faces that they believed the worst. But the tourists merely flooded in and out like the tide, blissfully ignorant and free of prejudice.
It was nearing closing time, Jenny was gone and with the kitchen spotless as ever I had begun to wipe down the tables and stack up the chairs. With ten minutes to spare, three police officers and a man who looked like he was from the coastguard came in and asked for some last-minute coffees. Annoyed as I was that they had come in so close to closing time, I said nothing, but merely listened into their conversation. The three policemen were arguing with the coastguard about the lighthouse. I recognised none of them but could tell that the coastguard was local because he was arguing that there was no way the boy could have made it to the island in such a small dinghy, not with those treacherous currents. But the policemen seemed adamant that they should get to the lighthouse and at least check it over. After all, one of them said, Old Lady Jane was the one common factor that everyone they had interviewed had mentioned.
I served them their coffees and heard the coastguard consent just as they left. I shook my head and frowned down at my cloth, marvelling at how quickly a whole community had turned against one outsider. I sniffed, shrugged, and began to lock up.
Such was the way in these small coastal villages. It was a collision of two worlds. The locals were as rigid as the cliffs, set hard in their beliefs making them impossible to reason with. It was the waves of tourists that brought some real diversity to the coastline, all along the strand they were a splash of refreshing sea-spray reminding us to have some perspective. As I walked home along the coast path, I gazed over the bay towards the lights of the policeboats bobbing near the lighthouse. I wondered what the truth of the matter really was. Would we ever find it? It didn’t really matter. Nothing was going to change. Some people don’t want to believe the truth.
Old Lady Jane – I