Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan
Chapter Thirty-five
Startled, she jumped up, leaving the spoon in the ice cream, which wouldn’t balance, so she just took it with her.
She opened the door, the rain pouring down the lintels, the wind blowing round her ankles.
‘Um . . . ice cream?’ she said as she saw his large startled face.
‘This is not ice cream time,’ he said brusquely. Ah. Obviously their fight was not forgotten. No wonder the imaginary cellist had left him, she thought crossly.
‘This is obviously a time for ice cream,’ she said. ‘The power’s off, didn’t you know?’
‘Of course I know,’ growled Alexei. ‘I know what power cut is. But – we must go!’ he said. ‘Everyone must go. Is the . . . ?’
He waved his enormous hands crossly, searching for the word. Marisa looked at him.
‘The thing! That is between us!’
‘The door? The steps?’
‘The big thing!’
‘You?’
He flapped his hands, even more het up.
‘Is not funny! Come! The road. The road on the sea. The road that is on the sea.’
‘The causeway?’ gasped Marisa.
‘Yes! That! It is washink away! We must go!’
Marisa peered out fearfully into the flashes of lightning, the sheeting rain.
‘Yes!’
‘I don’t think—’
‘Yes! Everyone is needed.’
‘But I don’t know what I could do.’
He regarded her with that long unblinking dark gaze.
‘You haff tools?’ he growled, not willing to continue the conversation. He dropped eye contact entirely.
‘What kind of tools?’
‘Tell me you haff tools, we discuss that later.’
‘Uh . . . no,’ she said.
‘Lantern? Torch?’
She shook her head. ‘I have . . .’
She ran into the kitchen, panicking, and returned with a soup ladle.
He nodded.
‘I have no time,’ he said.
And his vast, yellow-clad form – he had somehow acquired a fisherman’s sou’wester, presumably from whoever had woken him up – disappeared into the crashing rain and the storm and as she watched him go, she saw, in the distance, other doors opening, and the shouts of men and women as the village joined together to try and save their own community, to try and save their world from the vagaries of the storm and the weather – and she was the only person sitting there and doing absolutely nothing, as worthless as she was.