Finding Home by Kate Field (read book .txt) 📗

Mim first, even though her head was partly in the sea and water was clogging her ears. It started as a low rumble and turned into a roar, ending in a crash like the longest, loudest clap of thunder that Mim could imagine. Her feet found the sea bed and she wiped the water from her face so she could see what was going on. In the distance, on the far side of the beach beyond the village, a huge cloud of brown dust rose into the air, covering the shore.

‘It’s a land slip,’ she heard Karen shout. She didn’t wait to hear any more. She waded out of the sea, ignoring the tired ache in her legs, and started to run down the beach, slipping and sliding on the pebbles, struggling for each breath but determined not to slow down. Lucas had gone that way with Corin on their fossil hunt this morning. She had waved at them when she arrived to swim, happy that they were getting on so well. Where were they? Were they safe? Water ran down her face and she wiped it away, but it made no difference. She couldn’t see them. She fixed her eyes on the distance, willing them to appear, but there was no movement at all. Her heart thumped against her chest. She’d only just found a brother. She couldn’t lose him now.

‘Lucas,’ she yelled. Her foot slipped off a stone and she fell to her knees with a painful bump. She got straight back up again. ‘Lucas!’

She hobbled on, concentrating now on where she placed her feet so a few seconds passed before she looked up and saw a figure running in the opposite direction, away from the dust. She hesitated, trying to work out who it was, then picked up speed again until she met Lucas near the path back to the village centre. She threw her arms round him, not caring how wet she was, and hugged him tightly, relishing each ragged breath she could feel shuddering through his chest.

‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘You’re alive. When I heard the noise…’ She closed her eyes and rested her head against his, unable to finish the sentence. Memories of Corin’s safety talk at the fossil hunt had rushed back in as soon as Karen had said the words ‘land slip’. All she’d been able to think about was those pictures of huge fallen boulders and how Corin and Lucas might have been crushed underneath something similar. She shivered, horrified by the idea of what might have been.

Then she opened her eyes and looked over Lucas’s shoulder. Corin… She’d assumed that he had followed Lucas. She’d assumed they were both safe. But all she could see behind Lucas was a huge pile of rubble and the dust that continued to billow everywhere. There was no one else in sight. Her heart wasn’t thumping now. It seemed to be frozen.

‘Where’s Corin?’ she shouted, pulling away from Lucas. ‘Lucas, what’s happened to Corin?’

‘I don’t know. He was further down the beach. He yelled at me to run this way and I did.’

Mim didn’t stop to think. She started running again, on towards the huge pile of rocks that now created a barrier over halfway across the beach, ignoring the shouts of Lucas, Karen, and Heather urging her to turn back. Her legs ached down to the bones and every breath was a struggle, but still she pushed herself on. She had to find Corin. She would find him. Corin couldn’t be under those rocks, she told herself as she ran, skirting towards the sea and well away from the cliff, because he knew about geology and things like that. Corin couldn’t be under the rocks because he was far too clever to be caught. She’d heard him warn people to stay away from the foot of the cliffs, so he wouldn’t have been there himself. Corin couldn’t be under the rocks because… The truth struck her with the speed and force of her own emotional rock fall. Because she couldn’t imagine life without him if he was.

She ran past the barrier of rocks towards the next section of beach, waving her hands to shift the dust that was still flying in the air. She picked her way forward across the pebbles, looking up and down the beach, desperately scanning the shore again and again. He wasn’t there. She couldn’t see Corin anywhere. He wasn’t in the sea and he wasn’t on the beach. That only left…

Mim sank down onto the stones, wracked with coughs as the dust caught in her throat. This was her fault. She’d insisted that Corin stay on the beach until she’d finished her swim. She remembered the warmth of his smile as he’d promised to wait for her. Had he been trapped because he was keeping his promise to her? How would Bea and Bill ever get over this? How would she?

And then, as she became aware of a crowd gathering on the beach from the village, she heard a quiet bark. Dickens! She hadn’t given him a thought. She scrambled up towards the foot of the cliff, hardly caring whether it was safe or not, and as the dust finally settled she saw a sight that made her heart flicker back to life. Corin was sitting close to the fallen rocks, cradling Dickens in his arms. He looked dazed, dirty and undoubtedly alive.

‘Dickens strayed too close to the cliff,’ he said. There was the slightest shake in his voice. ‘I couldn’t leave him. He mustn’t have paid attention to the safety talk.’

Mim stared at him. Was he making a joke, at a time like this? He smiled. She hadn’t thought she would see that smile again.

‘Where’s Lucas?’ Corin asked. ‘Did he get past? Is he okay?’

She nodded. She couldn’t speak. The relief was too great. Relief and something more, something she didn’t recognise and had no name for, something that scared her more than anything else that had