Chapter 32
“T his is stupid,” Jude said, the wind outside cooling his hot face while waves lashed against the far end of the harbour.
“So bloody stupid. I don’t know why I’m crying,” he gulped, angry, dashing away tears he had no control over and zero power to stop falling.
“We all knew they had to be dead. Wreckage finally turning up solves a lot of problems.” He drew in a breath that staggered so his next words were breathless.
“I’ll call the coroner tomorrow. I’ll do it as soon as Tom sends more details.
” More tears seeped. “For fuck sake.” He pressed the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, pressing so hard that the horizon blurred once he dropped his hands. “It’s so stupid that I—”
“That you what?” Rob stood behind him again, like he had done since Tom’s phone call, arms around Jude’s middle, with one hand over his belly and the other exactly where it felt like his chest must now gape wide open. “Tell me, Jude.”
“I just…” Jude wiped at his face again. “Fuck, saying it is so stupid.”
“Saying what?”
Jude didn’t—couldn’t—answer.
Rob murmured just loud enough to hear over the waves and gulls.
“You’re allowed to be upset,” Rob promised.
“This has been a long time coming. You’ve been amazing, both of you.
At least with my mum… well, we knew, and we got to say goodbye to each other, and if Dad and I reacted differently, maybe I can see now why he kept so busy.
But you two have been in a holding pattern of having no news for a long time.
” His quick kiss to the back of Jude’s neck was cool against skin that felt hot enough to blister.
“Both you and Lou kept going and going and going, no matter what, no matter how far apart you were. Both of you kept hoping. Being emotional now is normal.”
“That’s not what I’m feeling stupid about. Mad about. I-don’t-even-know-what about.”
“What do you mean?” Rob shivered against his back but showed no sign of letting go until Jude was ready.
Jude tried to swallow around a vain wish that now seemed to choke him. “You said that we both kept hope, right up until now.” He let out another hitching breath before asking. “It’s stupid to still hope, isn’t it? Despite everything?”
Rob’s hands which had rubbed in soothing circles over Jude’s chest now stilled.
He asked, “Because your dad could fix anything in his boatshed? And because your mum was once a nurse who knew how to cook whole meals from rock pools and hedgerows?” He sounded nearly as choked as Jude felt, his next words thick with what could be laughter if he didn’t sound so gutted.
“Like both of them chucking their kids over the sea wall meant they had to be great sea swimmers as well?”
“Yeah,” Jude blurted, hope that had been lodged between his ribs for so long still firmly embedded.
He couldn’t shift it, even now; especially now.
He knew he must sound desperate. “I can’t stop thinking that if anyone could survive capsizing…
If anyone might have to swim to safety… Set up camp, light a fire and find ways to collect fresh water…
If I just keep looking…” he turned in Rob’s arms, face wedged against his throat, his voice hoarse. “I’d get to tell them.”
“About?”
“Me. And about you.” He looked up to find Rob’s face just as tear-streaked as his must be.
“And about what you and Lou have done with the Anchor.” Once he started, the words kept coming, unstoppable instead of dammed by that old wall of shame inside him, a tide that spilt now, endless, flooding over its top to drench him.
“I didn’t get to tell them about Marc not being gay, or that he painted Lou like a French girl, or about Susan beating cancer and Carl turning into a massive softy.
They don’t know about how special Betsy is to you, or why, or about your dad being almost as much as a dickhead as you, who keeps trying to say sorry by giving you restaurants and Range Rovers that you throw back at him, you numpty, instead of sitting down and talking.
I need to tell them about you being a good chef, but a much better hotelier, and a terrible liar, and my best friend on the planet, and about how much I love you, and Jesus fuck we used the last of Mum’s blackberries from the freezer.
She’d kill me for that, but I’d tell her, right now, if I could. ”
Rob heard what was important. “You love me?”
Jude’s chest hitched a few more times and he nodded, more words so far beyond him right then, or even a half-hour later when photos sent by Tom arrived in an email that took forever to open.
It was way beyond midnight by then, with the first paying guests arriving the next morning, but Lou sat on Jude’s lap clutching Trevor’s postcards as an image finally appeared, pixel by painful pixel.
The faces of the survey team emerged first, young yet terribly solemn, the same logo on all their T-shirts. The wreckage they held was about as raw-edged as Jude felt, splintered around two words Jude remembered his dad painting with careful, steady brush strokes.
One and for appeared on the screen.
Only Luck was missing.
Later, dawn streaked the sky pink and purple when Rob came to find Jude.
“Woke up and you were gone,” he mumbled after Jude had chosen to look at photos of wreckage rather than stare sightlessly out of the portholes in the boat shed for any longer. “What are you doing here, Jude?”
Jude shook his head, his eyes sore as he picked up a postcard Lou had left on the desk, one of the last his dad had ever written.
Rob’s voice was low and soothing. “You know, if you want to fly back and keep looking right now, we’ll find a way to make that happen.
” Rob ignored the second shake of Jude’s head and went on to discount everything that Jude knew was true about their current cash flow, months away yet from clearing enough profit for any more wild-goose chases.
“I’ll buy you a ticket to the closest airport to the Aphrodite . ”
“What with?” That came out harsher than he intended. Closer to a shout too.
“I’ll find the money,” Rob promised. “I’ll phone the bank; get my credit limit increased,” he said even though they both knew that couldn’t happen.
“No.” Outside, Carl chugged past in his trawler, life going on as normal, making Jude butt in before Rob could speak again. “And I’m not asking Carl or Susan for cash or getting you to ask your dad for any either. We’ve spent too much already. Besides… I do have some cash left.”
“But not enough to fly halfway around the planet.”
Not after paying to stay in St Ives, or chipping in towards the last of the redecoration, money he’d hoped to replace by the end of the summer. Now, leaving it that long to go back seemed pointless, only… “I want you to tell me something.”
“Anything.”
Jude dug deep and admitted what he couldn’t stop thinking; hadn’t been able to let go of; needed to say at least once before quitting. “Tell me it’s pointless to phone Trevor right now.” He turned the postcard over, the picture on this side just as brightly vibrant as his mother’s hair had been.
“Not pointless, but maybe leave it until later?” Rob offered. “He’ll want to know about the wreckage, I’m sure, but maybe tell him about it when it isn’t so early in the morning.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Jude turned the postcard over again, rubbing a thumb over the raised corner of its stamp, maybe as his Dad had right before he sent it, hoping to rebuild a bridge with his friend, never knowing how pleased Trevor had been to read it. “Tell me not to waste his time.”
“How?” Rob asked quietly.
“He’s got all that software, doesn’t he?” Jude closed his eyes and pictured a myriad dots locating yachts, tankers, and cruise liners. “Tell me there’s no point asking him to figure out where they might have….” Gone down was too hard to say aloud. Sunk just as impossible.
“You want him to plot where they found the wreckage into his navigation programs? Get him to work backwards using all his tide and weather records until…?”
What Jude next hoped for was much harder to picture.
Which coastguard or Navy did he expect to lend yet more manpower to a months-old search that spanned so many bodies of water?
Jude said what both he and Rob had heard from Trevor firsthand.
“There are still too many variables for him to be anywhere near accurate.” Rob stayed silent but his arms tightened around him as Jude continued.
“We don’t know exactly when this wreckage washed up.
It could have been right after…” His swallow was a dry click.
“Or it could have been months later, and Trevor said he’d need as close a date as possible along with a last known location.
” That alone was impossible. Suddenly, tiredness overwhelmed him, the postcard loose now in his hold, Jude unresisting as Rob took it from him to scan the writing closely while frowning.
Jude didn’t argue either when Rob steered him upstairs, Lou asleep next to a wide-awake Marc in their parents’ old room.
Marc switched places without comment, leaving Jude to lie next to his sister while dawn lit the horizon visible through his parents’ window with a warm blush.
“No. None of that,” Rob said, drawing the curtains. He said, “Close your eyes, fish face,” very softly, and Jude did.
He closed his eyes and let hope go as sleep slowly took him.
Jude woke at the sound of footsteps in the hallway outside his mum and dad’s room, Louise’s side of the mattress vacant. She was outside, he realised. He heard her say, “I do hope you enjoy your stay with us at the New Anchor,” to someone.
Jesus.
Their first guests of the summer, here right when he felt least able to put on a brave face.