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Willa turns her head toward mine. She gives me a quiet smile, and, after a moment, I smile back. It is, after all, an innocent conversation, unweighted by anything other than the gamut of human concern. Bryce is away, and no one has a clue where he is or when he’ll be back. That’s all anyone knows.

It is all I know, really.

After lunch Cat says, “Are you lot up for a swim? Only I promised the boys we’d go when Willa got here and they’re driving me mad.”

“Love to,” Laika says, “just wait till you see my enormous swimmers.”

“Don’t get too excited,” I tell her, “you can’t do lengths. It’s about the size of a plunge pool, at the top of a waterfall. It’s kind of like a big natural jacuzzi. But it fills up only in years when there’s been a lot of rain, so it does feel a bit special. The boys love it.”

We go, all of us, the entire family, walking along the top edge of a steep combe where the bright temples of beech trees plunge steeply downhill to a distant river below. Edged by glossy rocks and surrounded by ferns, the small pool is crystal clear and, deep in the middle, its whorl of ever moving water a glistening celadon green. It’s fed by a hidden stream which appears like magic out of the ground at head height, its entrance hung by strands of tiny green leaves. Cat and I sit on one side of it with Sophie, next to my mum and dad.

“Don’t get too near the edge,” my mother says. “Boys—I’m talking to you.” The twins are lying flat on their stomachs where the pool plunges over the top of the combe, racing sticks over the edge. They have Nate on one side of them and Liv and Michael on the other. They’ll be okay.

Willa and Laika are the last to get in. Standing by the water’s edge, Willa turns to say something to Laika, her words lost to the rest of us by the sound of conversation and birdsong and the fast-running stream. Laika laughs, then Willa smiles and places her hands gently on the round of her sister’s growing child. Submerged up to her shoulders, I see my mother’s pale hand reaching for my father’s beneath the bright water. With a voice graveled by tenderness, he says, “That child will be loved.”

It is a blessing.

I can feel the faint warmth of Cat’s body through the water. I don’t need to look to know that she’s there. Rather, I’m looking at Willa, this beautiful woman whom I have known and loved for more than half my life, with whom I have traveled to unknown places, and to whom I have made, and kept, unbreakable promises. A woman about whom I know everything and nothing.

For a moment she and Laika stand in their bathers by the edge of the pool, holding hands for balance, then together they dip under the silver lines of its bright surface, gasping with the shock of the cold. And now the tiny pool is packed with bodies, so the sisters end up perching together under the actual stream that feeds it, letting the water pound over their shoulders and backs. Willa pulls her hair from its band and the almost-red of her hair catches the light and flashes like strands of pure gold. Then she and Laika tip their heads back and laugh like children as they let the water flood over their heads. The water is ice cold and as clear and bright as a new day. And it strikes me now as a strange sort of magic, how fresh water can appear from an underground stream, how it just keeps coming, how all of it is just endlessly replaced. And the water plunges into the pool and rushes past all of us and plummets over the edge and just disappears.

Acknowledgments

First, I would like to thank my brilliant, amazing agent, Felicity Blunt. Thank you, Felicity, for your guidance and keen insights, for your good humor and huge support, and for always pushing me in the right direction. You’ve made this whole thing a joy.

I count myself unbelievably lucky to have had the opportunity to work with two exceptionally wise and generous editors: Amy Einhorn at Crown in the US and Harriet Bourton at Viking in the UK. Thank you both for everything. My deep and heartfelt thanks also go to Lori Kusatzky at Crown and Ella Harold at Penguin. I’d also like to thank Donna Poppy for her eagle-eye copyediting. I’m incredibly grateful to all those people who have worked tirelessly to design, produce, and bring this novel to market, and my special thanks go to Chris Brand and Emma Pidsley for producing such a stunning cover design. At Crown, I am deeply grateful to Dyana Messina, Julie Cepler, Chris Tanigawa, Liza Stepanovich, Natalie Blachere, Heather Williamson, Michele Giuseffi, Karen Ninnis, and Mary Moates. At Penguin, I would also very much like to thank Emma Brown, Sam Fanaken, Autumn Evans, Eleanor Rhodes-Davies, and Sara Granger.

I would like to thank the entire team at Curtis Brown but especially Rosie Pierce, Florence Sandelson, Sophie Baker, Katie Harrison, Camilla Young, Katie Battcock, Jennifer Kerslake, and Alice Lutyens. My grateful thanks go to CBC Creative and especially to Charlotte Mendelson for being such an inspirational tutor. Not only was the three-month novel-writing course challenging, uplifting, and huge great fun, but it also introduced me to the most perceptive, talented, spirited, and supportive group of fellow writers that I could ever hope to meet. Thank you, Tessa Sheridan, Kas Twose, Jo Agrell, Paul Baird, Brooke Maddison, Jen Faulkner, Lucy Evans, Ange Drinnan, Kate Finnigan, Sam Olsen, Marise Gaughan, Roberta Francis, Sarah Gardner Borden, and Anni Walsh. You are all absolutely the best.

Thank you, Tony Cabon and Hélène Heurtevent, for sorting out my French!

I would also like to thank Olubunmi Adesanya at Oxford University together with Dr. John Ballam and my fabulous creative writing classmates. For their outstanding teaching, incisive feedback, and unfailing encouragement, I am deeply grateful to Lucy Ayrton, Claire Crowther, Elisabeth McKetta Sharp, Jeremy Hughes, Daisy McNally, Aleksandra Andrejevic, Michael Johnstone, Shaun McCarthy, Nicholas McInerny, Helen Jukes, Amal Chatterjee, and Elizabeth Garner.

Thank you, Paul Doctors, Giles Easter, Caroline Easter, and Jan Rayner, for helping me out with all those things that are so absolutely beyond me. Caroline and Giles, thank you for everything, I don’t know what I would do without you. Gi, relax. See? You’re really not in it.

Thank you, Camilla Luard and Katherine Luxford, for reading my first draft and, together with Annabel Turner, Andrea Dingley, Carolyn Heath, Christina McGregor, Emma Johnson, Natalie Lockhart, Kirstie Horgan, Fiona Gosden, Jill Davies, and Rachel More, thank you for being there along the way, and, as always and ever, for your steadfast friendship and support.

Families are at the heart of this novel, and I would like to acknowledge mine, and most especially my own Mum and Dad, who were both wonderful. Thank you to my wonderful son, Luke Easter, for being there at the start and for cheering me on. Thank you for believing in me, Peter Collins: without you this story would never have been written. Finally, thank you to my beloved Siddley, my beautiful, loyal, and gentle friend, who was by my side from the very first word right the way through to the last. Gone now but absolutely not forgotten.

About the Author

Sarah Easter Collins is a writer and artist. A mother to a wonderful son, she has worked extensively in the field of education, teaching art in the UK, Botswana, Thailand, and Malawi. Sarah now lives on Exmoor with her husband and their dogs, where she loves running and wild swimming. She is a graduate of the Curtis Brown Creative novel-writing course.

Things Don’t Break on Their OwnDiscussion Questions

Early on in the narrative, Robyn’s father explains that “There’s a Japanese process for mending pottery with tree sap which I’ve always wanted to try, where the cracks aren’t hidden away, but made a thing of, made deliberately visible…. The idea is that repairing something—something loved, something treasured—makes it even more beautiful. A nice idea, no? It’s called kintsugi.” How does this process mirror the themes explored in the novel?

What do you think about the use of multiple perspectives in the story? Which character resonated with you most?

Willa’s relationship with her father is very different from Laika’s. How does that influence the sisters’ bond—and the family dynamic in general?

“I didn’t mean to, but I kept thinking I’d seen her. She was everywhere. She’d be in a thick pack of younger girls ahead of me in a corridor or else running, a distant figure on the other side of the sports field….” This is how Willa describes her life about a year after Laika’s disappearance. If you were in her shoes, do you imagine you’d be reacting this way? Why or why not?

Laika’s father has a choice—give her her passport or take her home. He states: “I earned my place at that table, and don’t they know it. Earned myself the cars, the watches, the beautiful wife. Earned my right to have everyone jumping up and down.” How does this illuminate your understanding of why he made the decisions he did?

Laika’s father always knew the truth about her disappearance. Why do you think he never revealed it?

After staying with Freida for a bit, Laika states: “I wasn’t going to stay away forever. Just a little bit longer, to make my point. Meanwhile, I was happier than I’d been in a long time. I felt safe.” What do you think convinced her to stay as long as she did before Freida passes? What do you think Laika defines as safe?

Claudette views her life as “a lie.” Do you see it as a lie? At what point does a life become one’s own?

Willa finds her sister’s dolphin necklace and confronts her mother. Why didn’t Willa’s mother tell the police about it?

Who would you cast in a movie version of Things Don’t Break on Their Own?

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