Chapter 28
“Y ou were talking to someone when I woke up. Was it someone from the hotel?” Jude asked as they retraced yesterday’s steps, heading downhill straight for Trevor’s place this time despite the green glinting distraction of the sea that Jude could usually waste time watching.
“Or was it Lou on the phone?” He snagged Rob’s hand in his and held it just to see his pleased reaction, then added, “I like how close you are to her, how you talk to her so often.” The more he made himself talk, the easier it was, Rob’s visible pleasure a feedback loop that urged him to continue, if a little gruffly.
“She loves you.” And there it was, another smile, brighter than the glinting water.
Fuck it, Jude decided. Fuck keeping what he thought to himself.
He could spill whatever he was thinking to Rob all day long, and it wouldn’t even be work, not when Rob bumped his hip with his own as they walked, hand-in-hand.
“Sweet-talker.”
“Just telling the truth.”
“There’s no need, you know?” Rob’s grumble was almost authentic.
There was every need, as Jude saw it, that strange moment this morning still gnawing at him.
If Rob carried a weight anything like the one he’d helped Jude to shoulder, Jude would absolutely return the favour.
Carry it all for Rob, if he had that option, chip it out with one of his dad’s chisels, or drill it out with one of the power tools he’d taught Jude how to handle.
Do something practical to remove that whisper of Rob’s self-doubt when Rob was so exactly what they’d all needed.
Jude said so. “We’re both lucky to have you.
Can’t imagine where we’d be without you.
” The Anchor sold at auction, no doubt, and no work for Lou in a village left close to dying.
And nothing for him to come home to. That last thought had him squeezing Rob’s hand tight.
“Wow.” Rob took a minute to process, nearly walking into a lamppost until Jude pulled him closer, arm around his waist now, eyes only for him regardless of people who shared the same pavement. “And yes. I was talking to her about redecorating the bedrooms when we get back.”
“Redecorating? But we just finished? Or…. Or did you mean Mum and Dad’s?
” Maybe it was time both him and Lou faced facts: One storm here had washed away a whole beach.
A typhoon on the far side of the planet had to have done much more damage.
He’d read as much on Trevor’s navigation website where images showed whole tankers listing sideways, cargos unbalanced by strong winds then sunk by treacherous currents.
Some huge ships sank entirely even with a navigator to steer them around disaster.
The chances of the One for Luck surviving were negligible, he knew; they’d always known, both of them.
Preserving their bedroom as if they’d walk in the next minute was foolish when, if they were really lucky, they’d have guests soon wanting to book it. “I’ll clear it out when we get back.”
Rob stopped at a spot where the road was only separated from the beach by a rail, the sand a twenty-foot drop below them. “Oh, Jude. No, I didn’t mean that,” he said, shock widening his eyes.
“Well, I do,” Jude said firmly. “It’s time, Rob. I’ll still look for evidence… for wreckage,” Jude admitted. “But they’d want us to be realistic. That means making as much cash as we can this summer. Having another room for guests to rent makes sense.”
“Listen,” Rob turned and pointed, the hotel they’d come from visible up the hill, the windows of their suite postage-stamp-sized from this distance.
“I only meant that I love what they’ve done.
The owners let me sneak a look in a couple of other rooms this morning.
Each one’s completely different to the other, and to what I suggested at the Anchor.
” His lips narrowed, pressed tight together.
“I thought I knew what five-star meant, but….” He looked Jude’s way before his gaze darted elsewhere.
“I feel like I wasted our money making the rooms all so plain and simple.”
Our.
Such a small word for cash Jude had no real claim on that Rob had spent on the Anchor when he didn’t have to.
“No way am I doing it to your parents’ room too. It’s…”
“A mess? Full of clutter?”
“Magic,” Rob said, honest. His head dropped for a moment. “Your mum has the same perfume my mum used.” He swallowed. “Sometimes I go in there just to smell it.”
For the second time in twenty-four hours, Jude spoke around a huge lump in his throat. “Okay,” he finally managed. “So not that room, yet. What were you thinking of changing in the others?”
“You… you don’t mind if I do?” Rob asked, a hint of relief audible now that Jude was listening for it. “Redecorate when we get back, if the rooms aren’t booked already.” His eye-roll was a shared joke; they hadn’t a single booking when they’d left.
“I trust your judgement.” He did, God help him. “Completely.”
And for the second time that morning, Rob seemed close to speechless.
Jude summoned some self-forgiveness and hoped that Rob would hear it.
“Listen, you’re not the only one who threw themselves at solving a problem without thinking.
I flew around the world with no plan and then spent too many months getting nowhere.
You stayed here and helped Lou paint everything that wasn’t nailed down with a coat of white emulsion.
Changing tack now doesn’t mean either of us was wrong.
We’re adjusting course, that’s all. And we might have to again.
” A lot hung on whether Guy Parsons would write a review.
The jury was still out on whether he would, and if it would be a curse or a much-needed blessing.
“Believe me, everything feels easier the minute you admit you might have been wrong. I’ve been there and done that, so maybe just let me help you? ”
It didn’t matter that the moon was long gone, the sky blue instead of last night’s inky, Rob still looked at Jude as though he was star-struck.
They were met with delight, this time, rather than shock.
Trevor pulled his front door wide open, his hand a welcoming weight on Jude’s shoulder as he drew him inside.
“Good to see you again,” he murmured when Jude offered him a hug as if he was an uncle instead of a man he’d only met once.
“Breakfast’s ready in the courtyard,” he got out, holding on to Jude just as tightly.
“Come on through,” he said once Jude’s grip loosened.
Trevor showed them the way, walking through the living room with its low ceiling and wood stove that they’d visited yesterday, and through a study housing several PC monitors, maps on their screens covered in red and green dots, tracking shipping movements.
“You still work?” Jude lingered there instead of heading out into a courtyard where breakfast was visible, spread out on a table.
“A little. Needs must, you know?” Trevor said, still holding the door to the outside open.
“I don’t have much of a pension and my husband was all about living rather than saving.
” His smile was smaller in a way Jude had recently come to read well.
“I wouldn’t have changed a single minute.
” His gaze drifted to a wall full of photos similar to ones in Jude’s father’s study, only these featured the man Trevor had married. “Besides, it’s better to keep busy.”
Loneliness wouldn’t be a neat fit, Jude imagined, for someone like Trevor, living alone after sharing decades with a partner.
He glanced at Rob who met his gaze and nodded like he knew what Jude was thinking.
“You should come to visit us.” Trevor’s smile of surprise encouraged Jude to insist. “Soon. Next week, maybe? Come and meet Lou. Stay. We’ve got space.
” Lord knew those empty rooms might as well see some use.
Trevor came back to where Jude stood, Rob right behind him. “At the Anchor? I’d... I’d love to visit. Heard a lot about it. It would be quite something to finally see it.”
“You really haven’t been there before?” Rob tapped one of the PC screens showing the Cornish coast in craggy detail.
He spread his thumb and finger between St Ives and Porthperrin.
The distance was nothing compared to that between the Far East ports shown on the other monitors. “It’s hardly far from here.”
“I wouldn’t go where I wasn’t invited.” Trevor studied the screen rather than look at either of them.
Jude had some new insight into that reticence, as well.
“Once I left for London, I never wanted to go back. Not if I couldn’t feel…
.” Accepted wasn’t exactly the right word.
He said, “Wanted,” and that fit much better.
What this man had shown him yesterday had been life-changing, transformative in a way that flayed him.
“I wanted to meet you when I was a kid,” he admitted.
“I always wondered about you. While I have anything to do with the Anchor, you’ll always be welcome. ”
If Rob noticed their damp eyes he ignored it, a blessing when speaking again right then was beyond Jude.
“Are all of these dots ships?” His eyes widened as Trevor nodded and touched the mouse, zooming in over a shipping lane that suddenly looked cluttered.
“How the hell do they not hit each other? There’s so many of them.
Can you see every ship that’s at sea, this way? ”
“If they use AIS. That’s real-time tracking, although to be true, that’s a bit of a misnomer. Not all systems are accurate.”
Jude knew that much already, satellite records showing that the dot charting the One for Luck ’s direction had blinked its last well before the typhoon, leaving them no way to pinpoint her last location.
Maybe Trevor heard the sigh he couldn’t keep in. “I’m guessing you know a bit about this, Jude.” He moved the mouse again to zoom out, and then asked, “Yesterday, you said you been crewing out there while searching? Where were you, exactly?”
“All around here,” Jude pointed, then rattled off the Aphrodite ’s details only to watch Trevor type them. As the screen zoomed in a new direction, a green dot blinked, showing her safe and sound and almost back to where Jude’s nightmare had first started.
Rob’s frown asked a silent question that Jude made himself answer. “We tried tracking Mum and Dad’s yacht. I flew out to where their signal cut off, but when you don’t exactly know when or where a boat went missing, it’s….”
Trevor’s nod came with a hand on Jude’s shoulder again.
“If I’d known at the time… if you’d had more details, even a sighting of some—” He didn’t have to say wreckage aloud.
Jude had searched as many beaches for flotsam as he’d scanned horizons for sails.
Trevor did say, “I have used marine debris before to track backwards, lots of times in fact for insurance companies, but without a clear starting point to work back from, it’s…
.” He didn’t have to finish that sentence either; Jude had thought the word hopeless a thousand times, it seemed, before he’d come anywhere close to the same acceptance.
“I do know, but thank you. It means a lot to know that you would have, despite—”
“Despite nothing,” Trevor insisted fiercely, mirroring the same expression Jude was growing used to seeing on Rob’s face lately.
“Despite absolutely nothing.” Trevor’s gaze was sure and steady.
“Simon was my very best friend. He was for years, and he did more for me than I should ever have asked of him, Jude. I want you to know that like I want both you and your sister to know that I would chart the entire Indian Ocean to find him and your mum, if I had a point to start from.”
Thousands of dots still scattered the screen—yachts and fishing vessels, lone travellers and crowded cruise ships—all sharing the shark-filled waters that his parents had last sailed.
Maybe it didn’t matter that Jude had only vainly followed.
Perhaps following Rob and Trevor out to his courtyard today was more important, going forwards.
Jude sat quietly, and almost at peace, as those ships still made their blinking progress on the PC screen inside, sure as they shared breakfast—these were two men he wanted to keep track of.