Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
NINA
The Ship is packed.
Wet the baby’s head. Village tradition. Any excuse for a gathering, really, but this one feels earned. Baby Peter is two weeks old and Isla has finally emerged from the newborn fog long enough to put on actual clothes and drink half a glass of wine before Kit confiscates it.
‘Half a glass won’t hurt,’ she protests.
‘The book says—’
‘The book can bugger off. I pushed a human being out of my body. I deserve wine.’
‘You deserve everything. But maybe tomorrow. When you’ve slept more than three hours.’
‘I’m never sleeping again. Sleep is a distant memory. Sleep is something that happened to other people in a past life.’
Kit takes the wine glass anyway. Isla doesn’t have the energy to fight him.
‘Here.’ She lifts Peter towards me. ‘Take him. My arms are dead. Everything’s dead. I’m just a milk-producing zombie at this point.’
‘You’re a radiant milk-producing zombie,’ Kit says.
‘That’s not the compliment you think it is.’
I take the baby. He’s heavier than two weeks ago – filling out, losing that scrunched newborn look. His eyes are open tonight, dark and unfocused, staring at something over my shoulder that only babies can see.
‘Hello, you.’ I settle him into the crook of my arm. ‘Causing trouble already?’
He makes a small sound. Not quite a cry. More like a comment.
‘He’s got opinions,’ Isla says. ‘Strong ones. About everything. He gets that from Kit.’
‘I don’t have opinions.’ Kit is all growly and grumpy for a split second until his utterly stunning smile breaks through and he laughs. When Kit Harding smiles the whole world knows about it.
‘You have nothing but opinions. You’re made entirely of opinions and stubbornness.’
‘That’s not—’
‘See? Opinion.’
Helen – Kit and Jude’s mum – laughs loudly and rubs Kit’s hair.
He honestly looks like a cat that’s preening, but who can blame him after a lifetime without his mum, and now she’s back.
Lily, her daughter, is talking to Brynn across the room.
‘I can’t believe I’m a granny again,’ Helen says, but I can’t help but notice she averts her gaze from the bar where Reuben is sitting.
‘Now we just need Jude to step up and the family will almost be complete.’
Isla laughs. ‘He’s only starting university next week; I think you might have to wait for that.’
Helen nods, but her face is full of pride. ‘I can wait. Marine biologist first, and then he and Brynn can give me a baby.’
It’s adorable that although they’ve only been together for a few months everyone assumes – no, everyone knows – that Jude and Brynn will be together forever. I wonder if that’s what people thought when Peter and I got together. I’ve never thought to ask.
My thoughts of Peter have become less painful the last couple of weeks, no longer jagged little sharp stabs, more rounded, like a rock that’s become a pebble under the sea. They don’t sting; they just are.
I think the joy of my little godson might have something to do with it.
The pub swirls around us. Dot’s holding court in the corner, telling everyone who’ll listen about the time she delivered a baby in the back of a taxi in 1987.
Bill and Frankie are arguing about fishing quotas, again.
Tilly’s brought a cake shaped like a boat, which makes no sense for a baby celebration but nobody’s questioning it.
And at the bar, Kit’s moved to join Jude, who looks like he’s three pints deep and getting louder by the minute.
Reuben’s with them. He looks different these days – slower in his movements, more careful with his words, like a man checking the ground before each step.
But he’s here. He showed up. He’s nursing a pint and standing close enough to Kit that their elbows touch, and Kit hasn’t moved away.
Reuben doesn’t look at Helen, the same way she doesn’t look at him.
I guess some things can’t be healed. Maybe some things shouldn’t be.
‘To Peter!’ Jude raises his glass. ‘Future heartbreaker. Future fisherman. Future pain in his father’s arse.’
‘Oi.’ Kit clinks glasses. ‘He’s going to be a saint. Perfect in every way.’
‘Maisie’s already teaching him to burp on command.’
‘That’s … that’s advanced for two weeks.’
‘She’s a prodigy. It runs in the family.’
Brynn drops into the seat beside me. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Perfect. Look at him.’
‘I meant you.’
I glance at her. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You look better than fine. You look lighter.’
‘Maybe I am.’ I look down at Peter, his fist curled around my finger. ‘The boat. The baby. Ellen. All of it. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for ten months and I’m finally starting to exhale.’
‘That’s really good, Nina.’
Peter snuffles against my chest. His tiny hand tightens on my finger, instinctive, trusting. I look down at him – this new life, this new beginning – and for the first time in a long time, the grief is pocket-sized. Still there. Always there. But I can carry it and carry other things too.
‘He suits you,’ Brynn says, nudging my shoulder.
‘Don’t start.’
‘I’m just saying. You’re a natural.’
‘I’m his godmother. That’s different from—’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. Godmothers give nice presents and show up at Christmas. They don’t—’
‘Change nappies at 3 am? Because I’ve seen your texts to Isla.’
‘That was one time.’
‘Three times.’
‘She was desperate.’
‘Mm-hm.’ Brynn grins. ‘Natural.’
‘Shut up.’
From the bar, Jude’s voice rises above the noise. He’s swaying slightly, three pints into the kind of looseness where the filter comes off and the volume goes up.
‘—should see him up there. Pretending he’s fine. Pretending Scotland’s everything he ever wanted. It’s painful, honestly.’
I look up. Jude’s gesturing with his pint, sloshing beer onto Kit’s sleeve. Kit doesn’t seem to notice.
‘He called last week,’ Jude continues. ‘Wanted to know about the baby. And then—’ He shakes his head. ‘The way he asked about Nina, mate. Like he was trying so hard not to but he couldn’t—’
Kit puts a hand on Jude’s arm.
Jude doesn’t register it. He’s in the flow now, the beer doing the talking, and his voice carries the way voices carry in The Ship – over the heads and the noise and straight to the one person who shouldn’t be hearing it.
‘Eleven years.’ Jude takes another swig. ‘Eleven years of being in love with her and he’s stuck in bloody Scotland because he couldn’t—’
He stops.
Kit’s grip has tightened on his arm. Reuben is staring into his pint like he’s trying to disappear into it.
Slowly, Jude turns. Sees me watching. Sees my face.
The colour drains from his.
‘Wait.’ His voice has lost its cheerful slur. Completely sober now, in the space of a heartbeat. ‘You … you knew that, right?’
The pub noise is still there – the laughter, the glasses, Dot’s voice from the corner – but it’s muffled, like hearing it from underwater. Like standing inside a bell that’s just been struck.
Eleven years.
Eleven years of being in love with her.
‘Nina?’ Brynn’s hand is on my arm. ‘Nina, what’s—’
‘Did you know?’ I’m looking at Brynn. My voice doesn’t sound like mine. ‘Did you know?’
Her face tells me before her mouth does.
‘Nina—’
‘Did everyone know?’
The silence from the bar answers that. Kit looking at the floor. Reuben looking at his pint. Jude looking at me with the expression of a man who’s just pulled a pin and can’t put it back.
Everyone. Everyone in this pub, in this village, on this harbour. Dot with her crossword and her pointed observations. Bill with his knife and his stories about Peter. Tilly with her slides and her not-subtle glances. My mother.
Everyone saw it except me.
I think about him at seventeen That first date, the one I laughed off to my friends afterwards. Like kissing my brother. I said that. I said those words, and he—
My hands are shaking. I look down at them and they’re shaking, and the baby is still in my arms and I need to put the baby down because my hands are shaking.
‘Here.’ I transfer Peter to Brynn. Carefully. My hands are steady enough for that, at least. ‘I need – I need air.’
I push out of the booth. The pub is too hot, too loud, too full of people who’ve been watching this slow disaster for over a decade and saying nothing. The door. The cold air. The harbour.
I stand on the cobblestones and I breathe.
The water is black and still. The boats creak at their moorings. A halyard clinks somewhere in the dark – that small, persistent sound – and the air is cold on my face, cold on my arms, raising goosebumps.
Tom Darcy is in love with me.
Tom Darcy has been in love with me for eleven years.
And the memories aren’t arriving in order.
They’re coming in a rush, overlapping, piling on top of each other – Tom at the funeral, his hand under my elbow when my legs buckled.
Tom painting the café shutters, lavender on his cheekbone, laughing.
Tom introducing himself to Peter, shaking his hand, stepping back.
The stepping back. How many times has Tom Darcy stepped back to make room for someone who wasn’t him?
The fuchsias. The dog. The phone calls when I couldn’t sleep. The way he always, always answered before I could count to five.
The ring. Carrying Peter’s ring in his head for eight months because telling me would have meant watching me grieve for a future I didn’t know I’d lost. I called that betrayal.
I stood in his kitchen and called it betrayal and watched his face absorb it, and he let me, because that’s what Tom does.
He absorbs. He stays. He stands in the dark and waits and doesn’t ask for a single thing in return.
Eleven years.
I sent him to Scotland. I was so angry about the ring, so hurt, so wrapped up in my own grief that I pushed him away without ever understanding what I was pushing. Who I was pushing. Not a secret. Not a lie. A man who loved me so much he’d rather lose me than cause me pain.
And before that – before the ring, before Peter, before any of it – I was seventeen years old and a boy kissed me and I told my friends it was like kissing my brother because I was scared.
Not bored. Not repulsed. Scared. Because he looked at me like I was the whole room and I didn’t know what to do with that, so I made it small.
I made him small. And he heard me do it.
He heard me, and he stayed anyway.
Footsteps behind me. Brynn.
‘Nina—’
‘Eleven years, Brynn.’ My voice cracks. ‘Eleven years of him being right there, and I was the only person in Sea Salt Bay who didn’t see it.’
‘You weren’t ready to see it.’
‘That’s not an excuse.’
‘No. It’s not.’ She comes to stand beside me, looking out at the harbour. ‘But you see it now.’
The question underneath the question. The one I can feel pressing against my ribs, too big to name, too urgent to ignore.
Because I do see it now. And seeing it has rearranged every single memory I have of Tom Darcy, and the rearrangement is still happening, still shifting, still showing me things I don’t know what to do with.
‘He’s in Scotland,’ I say. ‘With Cara. Building a life.’
‘He’s in Scotland,’ Brynn agrees. ‘But I don’t think he’s building anything. Not really.’
‘But he left. He chose to leave.’
‘Because staying was killing him.’ Brynn’s voice is gentle but firm. ‘He didn’t leave because he wanted to, Nina. He left because he couldn’t watch you not love him back anymore.’
The words land somewhere deep. Below the shock.
Below the guilt. In the place where I’ve been carrying a feeling I didn’t have a name for – the feeling that started the night I saw Cara’s hand on his arm at the pub, and grew when I saw the chalkboard without Peter’s name and chose to pack up his things.
A feeling that solidified when I found Peter’s ring and the first person I ran to was Tom – not Brynn, not Jude, not Isla.
But Tom, who shattered my heart more than he should have by keeping a secret from me.
I know what it is now. I’ve probably known for longer than I’ll ever admit.
‘What do I do?’ My voice is barely there.
‘What do you want to do?’
I look at the harbour. At the boats. At Lavender Dreams, half-converted, her outline just visible against the dark water.
I think about Tom in Scotland, lying awake listening for a sea that isn’t there.
I think about eleven years of not seeing, and ten months of grief, and a seventeen-year-old girl who was too scared to let a boy love her.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Not tonight.’
‘That’s okay.’ Brynn links her arm through mine. ‘You don’t have to know tonight.’
‘But I have to know soon.’
‘Yes. You do.’
We stand there, arm in arm, looking at the water. The pub noise drifts out behind us – laughter, glasses clinking, someone starting a song. Life going on. The way it always does in Sea Salt Bay, regardless of what’s breaking or mending in the hearts of the people who live here.
The air is cold. The stars are out. The boats creak and settle.
And somewhere in Scotland, seven hundred miles north of this harbour wall, Tom Darcy is awake. I know he’s awake. I know it the way I know the tides, the way I know the café, the way I know the sound of his voice on the second ring.
I just don’t know yet what I’m going to do about it.
But I know I’m going to do something. And for now, standing here with the salt air on my skin and my best friend’s arm through mine and a village full of people who’ve been holding this secret like a lantern in the dark – for now, that’s enough.