Chapter 12
J ude woke the next morning to the shush of the high tide against the sea wall, no footsteps or pots clanking below to suggest Rob was downstairs, or chatter meaning Lou had returned.
Jude got up from the trundle, trying hard not to let his gaze land on the still-neat covers of Lou’s bed, holding on, as he had so many times that night while waking, to the idea that maybe Rob was right and she would still want to see him.
He paused, before unclipping his keyring from yesterday’s clothes and seeking some clean ones.
But what about his dad? Could Rob be right about a man he’d never met but who Jude had grown up with?
Would he ever have been accepting?
No. There was no proof to support that line of thinking.
The idea of a happy ending was fictional, like all those desert island storybooks piled up down at the boatshed, where rescue came in the nick of time, and shipwrecked families always reunited.
That thought at least made him stand a little straighter as he showered.
He hadn’t been able to make a storybook ending come true, but he’d be damned if he’d let Louise’s discovery of his secret carry her away from him like a typhoon had their parents.
He’d take whatever she threw at him; do his best to weather the storm until she spoke to him again.
Once dressed and full of resolve, he hurried downstairs where he found a note in the kitchen with Morning, sleepyhead as a salutation, certainty ebbing as he read.
Left for Marc’s place to see Lou at eight. Give me an hour before you come along too, okay? If you haven’t heard ambulance sirens by then, she probably hasn’t killed me.
He read the rest through twice more before setting it down. Rob taking a big-brother role with Louise still felt weird, and he might’ve been right about giving Lou space, but only seeing her for himself would loosen the coil of tension that pulled ever tighter inside Jude.
It hadn’t quite been an hour since Rob left his note, but Jude left the pub regardless, taking another narrow street that rose steeply from the harbour, the cottages crowded close together, walking so fast he almost went past his destination, a shopfront full of seascapes.
He doubled back just as the front door swung open.
“Marc?” he asked, wary, this broad, dark-haired man very different from the skinny goth he’d gone to school with.
Marc’s French accent confirmed it was the same person. “Jude.” He crossed thick arms, and narrowed eyes devoid of the eyeliner Jude remembered.
“Where’s Lou?”
“I’m here.” Marc stood to one side, and Jude saw her. He stepped towards her only to be stopped when Marc blocked him, one heavy arm dropping like a portcullis. Marc braced against the doorframe and then reluctantly gave Jude just enough space to pass through.
Jude found the next few steps the hardest he’d ever taken.
Lou looked slighter somehow this morning, surrounded by tall canvasses.
He barely noticed the paintings that caught the wind-whipped spirit of Porthperrin or the portraits of the people who had lived there.
Instead, he focussed on the shadows below Lou’s eyes—a smudged palette of mauve and bruised greys—and the way she hugged herself so tightly.
He didn’t even notice Rob until he stepped between them, dividing Jude from his sister as Marc had attempted.
“Lou wants a bit more time,” Rob said, one hand raised as if to catch his elbow to guide him back to the doorway.
“No.” Jude dodged around him on legs that felt like jelly. “Lou, let me explain—” He froze, just a few metres between them, waiting to hear if she would let him. “Please.”
Finally, slowly, she nodded.
Behind him, the bell above the gallery door let out a merry tinkle.
If it had done the same when he arrived, the sound hadn’t registered.
Maybe that was due to his heart beating like the clappers, far faster than a brisk walk from the Anchor merited, as if he’d sprinted the distance and more.
He did hear Rob say, “Come on, Marc,” and the door close again, but he didn’t look back to confirm they’d both gone.
Nothing could make him turn away from Lou, not even the fear that she’d blank him.
He started by saying what was most important.
“I’m sorry.” He drew in a breath that felt ragged and rough.
“I’m truly sorry I didn’t tell you, but I’m not sorry for being the way I am.
” He couldn’t be, no matter how often he’d wished it away when he was thirteen or fourteen, closing his eyes each and every night to hope that he’d wake up in a world where it didn’t matter. “I would have told you I was gay if—”
At that, a tear spilt, Lou almost shouting. “If what?”
If he hadn’t thought she’d look at him like he’d physically hurt her. He tried to verbalise that. “Lou, I couldn’t—”
This time she did yell, words sounding about as torn from her as his had felt. “Couldn’t what?”
He told the truth as he knew it, closing his eyes as he said, “Lose you as well, Lou. I couldn’t stand to lose you as well as Mum and Dad.”
“Even before?” she asked, her voice quieter and closer, only a few feet distant when Jude opened his eyes. “Even before they left? You didn’t tell me then either, Jude, did you?”
He shook his head. “I’d already lost them, by then.” He shrugged. “At least that’s what it felt like.” When she didn’t interrupt, he continued, opening up a box crammed full of beliefs that he’d kept locked for so long. “I felt like I lost them as soon as I knew that I was….”
“Gay,” she said, her voice shaky. “When was that, exactly?”
“I don’t know.” He looked anywhere than at her, gaze catching on a painting of Marc’s family cottage. “Probably around the same time Marc’s family moved here.”
“He says you never liked him.”
“Marc? It wasn’t him that I didn’t like.
” Although in hindsight the distance he kept at school probably told another story.
“Some of the things the other kids said got to me. About make-up meaning he liked boys. It was stupid, but the idea of anyone saying the same about me scared the crap out of me.”
“Did you fancy him?”
“No.” He glanced up in time to see something close to relief flash across her face.
“That’s not how being gay works. Him wearing eyeliner didn’t make him my type.
And even back then, something told me that anyone calling him queer was barking up the wrong tree.
But I guessed from everyone’s reaction that I couldn’t stay here and be me.
That’s when I felt like I lost Mum and Dad the first time,” he said, words almost punched out when Lou flew at him, her arms so tight around his middle. “Lou?”
“I only wish you’d told me. You know that, don’t you?” she said into his chest, dampening the same spot that she had when he’d returned home. “I’ve been up all night thinking about what it must have been like for you.”
That gave him pause. “You were thinking about how I felt?”
“Of course I was.” Lou let go, wiping her eyes. “What do you take me for, Jude?”
What had he taken her for? The same as his parents. He had for as long as he could remember.
“And why do you think being gay meant losing Mum and Dad, in the first place?” Her concern was so familiar, Jude could almost see their mother. “Is that really why you moved away and hardly ever came back?” She deflated at Jude’s nod. “You should have told me.”
The door opened with another tinkle, Rob calling out a warning. “Some tourists are heading this way.”
Of course there were, just when the whole village being deserted would be helpful.
Marc cursed in French before speaking in English. “Go through to my studio. I’ll let you know when they’re gone.”
Rob led the way through a door at the rear of the gallery. “Here,” he said, hesitating until Lou grabbed his hand and pulled him inside with them.
She cut to the chase right away, her eyes still damp but at least no longer leaking.
“I still don’t know what I think,” she said, backing farther into a room filled with half-finished canvasses, splashes of rose gold featuring more often than the blue-green of the seascapes for sale.
She crossed her arms as Marc had. “I feel like I need to think about everything I knew about Mum and Dad as well. They loved you so much, Jude. Talked about you all the time, so proud of you doing well in London.” And there were the tears again that Jude hated provoking.
“What you said about them yesterday doesn’t mesh with that at all.
” She hurried to add more. “I’m not saying what you thought doesn’t matter.
I just… I can’t stop thinking how awful it must have felt for you to believe they’d ever turn their back on you.
” She rubbed at her eyes leaving them even redder.
“I’m so tired. I didn’t get a wink of sleep and I think that’s making wrapping my head around it harder. ” She did look exhausted.
“How about we disappear?” Rob offered. “Me and Jude. Let you have some more space.”
“That… that might be good.”
“Jude?” Rob asked, his fingers brushing Jude’s, tentative, perhaps testing whether they were going to move forwards or backwards after everything that had happened.
“You up for coming out with me for the day?” he asked, fingers brushing Jude’s again for a scant second, his gaze switching between Jude and his sister as if monitoring both of their reactions.
Jude nodded. “We could do that, if… if it’s okay with Lou?”
When she agreed, Rob grabbed his hand like two men touching that way was normal and pulled him towards a backdoor, only stopping when Lou asked, “Are… are you two going to be together? Seriously?” It was hard to make out what her tone meant, or Rob’s either when he answered.
“Seriously?” His pause was a beat too long for the casual tone of the rest of his answer. “That’s up to your brother.”
The alleyway behind the gallery was too narrow to walk side-by-side, but Jude still felt Rob’s grip, phantom-like as they descended the hill, as though their fingers were still threaded.
When they rejoined one of the wider streets he almost expected Rob to reach for his hand again, wanted him to, he realised. Maybe that thought slowed him.
Rob glanced over his shoulder, the sun casting him the same warm gold as the paintings in Marc’s studio. It made the coolness of what he said next jarring. “We don’t have to.”
Jude stopped walking. “We don’t have to what?”
“Spend the day together.” He came back as Jude moved forwards until they met in the middle.
Both of his hands were rammed into his pockets, Jude noticed, his smile easy but superficial, now that he looked closer.
Rob inclined his head in the direction of the Anchor.
“You can go back while Lou stays at Marc’s.
Let him coddle her for the morning.” At that, his expression did warm, so genuine in comparison.
“He’ll take good care of her. And I… I had plans for this morning anyway. ”
This time, Rob tilted his head towards the village car park, and he pulled a set of keys from his pocket, staring at them like they were fascinating until Jude said, “I do want to.” His head shot up then, eyes deep pools Jude could have fallen into.
He found his voice came out rougher. “Spend the day with you, I mean.”
Rob didn’t answer but he smiled, and Jude felt a whole lot better, following Rob as he led the way once more into the car park. Two vehicles were parked there, one likely belonging to the tourists who’d interrupted them, the other a vintage sports car, well-kept and gleaming.
“What’s this? A present from Daddy? Didn’t have you down as a boy racer,” Jude said, taking in sleek lines and chrome. He noticed that Rob glowed again, watching as Jude inspected something special to him.
“Dad didn’t buy her for me. He wasn’t exactly pleased when I found her,” Rob said.
“And I wouldn’t ever race her.” He was reverent, his touch to the roof a caress, his turn of the key in the door lock, careful.
“You’d put all the other cars to shame, wouldn’t you, darling?
” He got in and reached over to unlatch the passenger side door, not one bit embarrassed about cooing over a car.
Jude lowered himself, having trouble folding his long legs until Rob reached down between them.
“The seat release is a bit tricky,” he said as the seat finally gave in and slid back.
“I know it’s not the most practical vehicle for business.
” Rob started the engine. It caught with a roar, despite the car’s advanced age.
He reversed out of the space and started uphill, taking care around the twists of cobbled streets that grew ever steeper.
“Got to admit, there were a few times last winter when I wished for a four-wheel-drive instead of an old lady like Betsy.”
“Betsy?”
“That’s right.” Rob made another confession. “Could have done with something bigger, to be honest, especially when I got carried away at auctions.”
“Not much boot space?”
“Virtually none,” Rob said, sounding strangely happy about that. “Just like Dad warned when I bought her.” He patted the leather-covered steering wheel as if still pleased at the inconvenience. “We managed. Besides, Marc helped us out with his car, if we needed.”
Jude was flooded with sudden questions, like how come Marc was back in Porthperrin if his family had left, and how come Lou had chosen to go to his place rather than to Susan and Carl’s.
He opened his mouth to ask, only stopping when Rob patted the steering wheel again, murmuring.
“You’re perfect for me, darling,” he said like the car could hear him.
The light struck Rob one more time as they crested the top of the hill, touching the tips of his dark hair fiery.
“Gorgeous,” Jude said without thinking as they left Porthperrin.
“She is, isn’t she?” Rob agreed as if Jude was still talking about his car, but his real smile was back along with a flush, as if he’d caught Jude’s real meaning.