Chapter 4
J ude followed his sister to the pub’s front door, stopped by Rob hooking a hand around his elbow. His grip was as intent as his tone. “We need to talk.”
“Not now.” Jude pulled free and stepped outside to see his sister jogging along the harbour.
He followed as she hopped up onto the sea wall and then clambered down its far side.
The rocks there were slippery, streaked with seaweed, the purple domes of anemones visible while their fronds were tucked away until the next high tide.
Louise was nimble as she splashed through shallow rock pools, headed for the curving jut of the nearby headland.
They’d played here so often as kids, their dad teaching them about all the good things to eat that were usually hidden—shrimps, seaweed, and winkles a diet he’d promised anyone could survive on.
Now, Jude splashed through those same pools of chilly water, not yet sun-warmed as they would be by noon.
Rob cursed, and Jude looked back.
He didn’t seem half so carefree here as he had with Lou in the kitchen, or as relaxed as he had asleep in the boatshed.
Rob’s arms were now outstretched as if he walked a tightrope, face drawn tight with concentration.
He flailed, seaweed slippery under his feet, close to falling until Jude doubled back to save him.
It was his turn to extend a hand, Rob’s whole body rigid as he tried to keep from falling.
Somehow, despite their previous standoff, teasing him came easily, as it had towards the end of the contest. “What’s this?
” Jude asked. “Don’t you know how to keep your balance?
Have I finally found something Daddy couldn’t buy you? ”
“Fuck yourself, fish face,” Rob sing-songed, another reminder of a past life where ribbing each other had started to feel normal. Had been something Jude looked forward to. Had begun to feel like foreplay.
Jude kept hold of Rob even after he steadied, letting the distance between them and Louise increase. “Listen. You’re right. We do need to talk.”
Rob nodded. “We do.” The breeze ruffled hair that Jude recalled threading his hands through only once after wanting to for ages.
He watched Rob do exactly that now, fingers pushing it back as he added, “Jude, you have to know that I got the shock of my life this morning when Lou said you’d actually come home.
” His gaze darted to Louise in the distance.
“I didn’t know how you’d react to me being here.
” His lips pressed together like they’d used to while he cooked against the clock, focussed in a way he apparently never managed for his father.
“I haven’t told her about us.” His eyes only met Jude’s for an instant.
“What was I meant to do? Say, ‘Oh, by the way, things might get a bit awkward because I once snogged your brother, but don’t worry, he left before I got a chance to fuck him? We’ll keep things strictly business from now on?
’” Rob pulled free and started to cross the rocks.
“Besides,” he cast over his shoulder. “I figured out pretty quickly that she doesn’t know about you.
I’m not here to out you.” He sounded firm, but he almost lost his footing again.
“Hold onto me,” Jude ordered before checking where Louise was.
She’d already reached the headland where the coastal path led to the beach and campground.
This was the perfect time to speak without her hearing, and perhaps his last chance.
“Tell me, honestly, what are you doing here?” Rob had such a bright future in London, his dad’s restaurants a legacy no one sensible would abandon.
“I don’t understand. What on earth is here for you? ”
Rob’s gazed dropped to his lips.
Jude kept talking rather than poke at an ember that months away had done so little to tamp out. “I heard you won,” he said to change the subject. “The contest, I mean. Congratulations.”
“You could have told me that yourself at the time.”
Jude shook his head. “I’d left by then.” He’d left all right, and not for a chance to work on his suntan for months. Instead, that had been the start of a living nightmare.
“You could have called me,” Rob said dryly.
“Or replied to one of the messages I left you. Didn’t you hear?
There’s this brand-new thing called email.
It’s only been around for a few decades, but some people say it’s handy.
” He whipped out his phone, the sharp edge to his tone barely sheathed by humour.
“And all the cool kids these days are using this thing called social media.” Arty snapshots of food filled a grid on the screen.
“See? You take a photo with your phone, and then you add a message.” He thrust the phone towards Jude, a photo of Louise on the screen, her eyes crossed and a dab of white paint on the end of her nose.
“Staying in touch is so easy, even someone as challenged as you could do it. I’ve heard it works right the way around the planet.
” He held his phone up for a second and then typed a few words.
A photo of Jude’s face now filled the screen with the words “I’m a thoughtless dick” as a caption.
Rob’s voice dropped. “I’m not saying I expected dick pics from you, but I wouldn’t have minded knowing that you were still alive and kicking. ”
Jude was thrown by Rob sounding wounded. “I’m sorry.”
“No need.” Rob shoved his phone into his pocket. “We had a one-time thing. Not even that. One kiss. That’s nothing, is it? It’s not like we were dating. I got over you just fine.”
That wasn’t what Louise had said last night unless she’d been talking about someone else Rob had been involved with during the contest, but surely Rob couldn’t have kept his mouth shut if he already had a partner?
Somehow, imagining that stung like seawater in a small cut—sharp and unexpected.
Jude made himself continue. “You’re right.
I should have found some way to talk to you, but…
” Finding the vocabulary to explain took everything that he had, draining him as he admitted, “I-I don’t know if you can imagine what it was like to get the news that we did.
There was so much to take care of, and nobody had any answers. ”
“I would have helped.” The wind almost blew Rob’s next words away before Jude heard them.
“I would have wanted to. But that was before you ghosted me. I get it, even if I thought ghosting was only for randoms—for hookups you regretted rather than for someone—” Rob huffed and then strode off, picking up speed once he got past the last of the treacherous rock pools.
Jude hurried behind him. “Rob…”
“Forget about it,” Rob insisted, clambering up the headland. “I have.”
“So why are you still here?” Jude followed, taking Rob’s outstretched hand near the top.
“Because of this,” Rob said as he pulled Jude up the final steep step. He then stood next to Louise, both of them watching as Jude took in the view of the beach for the first time.
Rather than a glorious cove, all he saw was devastation, not a single grain of sand left.
Instead of a campsite behind low dunes, ravines gouged the landscape.
Gone was the beach that had attracted families year after year for generations, eradicated so completely it might have never existed.
If Jude had sailed home in full daylight, he would have noticed its absence.
Now, from the vantage point of the headland, it looked like the coast bled, ferrous-red soil bloodying the seawater as if the land were wounded.
The lane that linked the main road to the campground was empty, no way for tourists to traverse the fissures at its entrance.
Even if they could, there was nowhere left to pitch their tents, and no safe way for them to reach the coast path that would bring them to the Anchor.
“Th- that storm…” Jude stuttered. “That storm you showed me, online…”
“Yes,” Louise said simply. “That storm changed everything here, overnight, and with no warning, just like the typhoon that took…” she left the rest of that sentence unspoken. “Jude,” she said, much quieter. “Jude, it was the storm that broke the Anchor, not me.”
“Almost broke it.” Rob’s voice carried the kind of confidence that could make a whole kitchen listen.
He sounded so like his dad at that moment that Jude almost said so until Rob looked right at him.
“There’s no way to fix this aspect.” He gestured to a scene of devastation Jude could hardly stand to look at.
“There’s no way to beat nature, or to magic back the Anchor’s old customer base of low-budget campers. ”
He was right. “There’s nothing here for them now.
” Jude took his sister’s hand in his. And this had all happened shortly after he’d left?
“Why didn’t you…?” He choked on his words, imagining Louise waking up for a second time to disaster so soon after their parents had gone missing, and this time he hadn’t been here for her to lean on. “How did you…?”
“Manage?” Louise offered, bleak and teary for the third time since he’d returned.
“I didn’t. Couldn’t. Not on my own. I couldn’t manage any of this.
” She gestured to where the beach had once curved, now cordoned off like a crime scene.
“But I knew that you couldn’t either. There was no point calling you back.
I could have dealt with the insurance paperwork if there’d been storm damage to the pub just as well as you could have.
But if there’s an insurance policy to cover losing all of our trade like this, for so long, Mum and Dad never bought one. ”
“So what did you do next?” Jude asked, louder, as the wind picked up and blustered.
“What did I do?” Finally, Louise brightened. “I did exactly what Dad always taught us if we got in trouble in deep water.” She grasped Rob’s hand, her own tiny in his. “I called for help, and then tried my best to stay afloat until Rob came to save me.”