Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
P ete looked fragile, exhausted.
All Verity could think was that Sam’s gut feeling had been right. ‘You killed Joe? How?’
Verity knew her question was direct but a man had lost his life here and it seemed some kind of secret had been covered up for decades. There was no way to pretty up the questions that were burning inside her.
Suddenly aware of a figure standing in the doorway, Verity swung her head in that direction then briefly closed her eyes. Sam had arrived to make amends with Pete, to put the past behind them. She wasn’t sure whether his timing was the best or the worst it could be.
‘Now that’s a question I’ve wanted answered for years.’ There was a coldness to Sam’s tone, his eyes darkening.
Betty was up on her feet in an instant, grasped Sam’s arm and guided him to a chair. ‘Take a seat. This isn’t exactly what everyone is thinking and as much as you’ve been beating yourself up for years…’ She glanced towards Pete and moved closer to him. ‘Pete, I know you from old. And from what you’ve told me today, it was a set of unfortunate circumstances. I just wish you’d told me years ago.’
Verity could tell from Sam’s face that though Betty might be content to talk about ‘unfortunate circumstances’, he was going to take some convincing.
Betty took a deep breath. ‘By my reckoning, if anyone is to blame for the unfortunate set of circumstances that played out that night, it’s probably me. I pushed the first domino that toppled onto the next, creating the chain reaction of events.’
‘You, Betty?’ asked Verity, confused.
‘But I promise I didn’t know that Hetty had chosen that night to leave.’ Betty gave Pete a reassuring look.
Verity glanced towards Sam, who looked even more confused than she felt, and rushed to fill in the blanks of what he’d missed. ‘It appears my granny had men falling all over her. Your grandfather fell for her and Pete did, too.’
Sam looked like he was about to say something but Pete cut in. ‘To be clear, Joe never had a relationship with Hetty. He was just smitten from the moment he saw her.’
‘But then you swooped in and took her? You were his best friend. Why couldn’t you have stayed away from her? It’s not as though the girls weren’t swarming around you. Why would you want to pick the same one my grandfather had his eye on?’
‘It wasn’t quite like that. Hetty and I were attracted to each other straightaway and of course I felt shitty about it. Joe was my best mate and we tried to deal with the situation the best we could without hurting anyone’s feelings, but it seemed Hetty had other secrets that even I didn’t know about. We made each other promises that we were going to be together forever and I was going to sit down with Joe soon, so I was devasted when she left. I still don’t fully understand what made her choose that night to flee. I know she was your granny but she was also my whole world. If I’d known from the start that she had a life waiting for her back home, things might have been different.’
‘Do you mean you wouldn’t have got involved with her?’ asked Verity.
Pete nodded. ‘I sit here every day thinking what we had was so real and pure, hoping she would walk up that hill towards the cottage. I’d welcome her back with open arms. But now I know I was just a footnote in her story, and that the forever we talked about was nothing more than a dream.’
‘Hetty didn’t lie to you, Pete, and I do think she sincerely cared for you. She was just confused. She came for the summer because she needed space to work out what she wanted from the future,’ said Betty, kindly.
‘Apparently me and Puffin Island were just not enough.’
‘That simply wasn’t the case. Hetty loved it here, I know that, but there were circumstances that led her to leave.’
‘What circumstances?’ asked Pete. ‘What is it you aren’t telling me?’
Betty briefly closed her eyes. ‘Hetty left me a letter when she left. I didn’t know about you and her, so I assumed it would be Joe who was broken-hearted at her departure. I didn’t want him to hear the news from someone else so I headed towards the coastguard hut, as I knew you were both on shift that night. That’s when I saw you and stopped to tell you Hetty had left. I was so worried about breaking the news to Joe, I didn’t really take in your reaction, and then you took off in the opposite direction before I could say anything else.’
‘I did. I ran from the jetty all the way to the causeway to try and stop her, but it was too late. I couldn’t find her.’
‘I carried on to the hut to see Joe, and when I arrived, he was pacing up and down, extremely agitated, waiting for you to arrive. He told me that he thought he’d seen you and Hetty the night before, up on the cliff top together. He was waiting to confront you.’
Pete looked bewildered. ‘Why didn’t you ever say?’
‘Because what was the point? It wasn’t going to bring Hetty or Joe back after…’
Verity looked towards Sam, who hadn’t said a word. She guessed he was remaining quiet on purpose, not wanting to interrupt and cause Pete and Betty to clam up. He had waited a long time to know the truth of how his grandfather had ended up in the water that night.
Betty carried on. ‘I assured Joe that was impossible because surely I’d know if something was going on between you both. I thought at least one of you would have told me. Thinking he’d just got the wrong end of the stick, I gave him the letter that Hetty had left me, so he could see her goodbye for himself, but in hindsight…’
‘Why in hindsight?’ probed Pete.
Betty reached for her bag, and pulled out an envelope. ‘The letter made everything ten times worse.’
‘What’s in the letter?’ asked Verity, immediately recognising her granny’s handwriting as Betty leaned towards Pete and handed him the envelope.
‘I’m so sorry, Pete.’
Pete took the envelope then reached for his glasses, balanced them on the bridge of his nose and sat back in the chair. Tension hung in the air and Verity watched his eyes flit up and down over the cream-coloured paper. He eventually gave a tiny gasp and then his watery eyes locked with Betty’s.
‘Hetty was pregnant?’ Pete turned the paper over but the other side was blank. ‘It says she was pregnant.’
Betty nodded. ‘I’ve always thought that that had to be the reason she went home, to marry her fiancé and give her baby the family it deserved. Her future was decided for her.’
‘But how do you know the baby wasn’t mine?’
In that second a million thoughts exploded in Verity’s mind. Betty’s answer could change everything she had ever known or thought about her past. Glancing back at Pete, she saw he was staring at her. She suspected that they were having exactly the same thoughts. But as much as she stared, she couldn’t see any physical resemblance between them.
‘Because Hetty was throwing up most mornings from the day after she arrived. My own mother pulled me aside to ask whether she was sick, as we’d often heard her. It was only after reading the letter that I realised she was suffering from morning sickness.’ Betty looked towards Sam. ‘All the letter said was that she was going back home to have the baby, so when Joe read it he put two and two together and made five. After seeing Pete and Hetty up on the cliff he thought Pete had stolen his girl and the baby was his.’
Pete looked distraught. ‘But this is the first I’m hearing about this.’
‘Joe thought you hadn’t shown for your shift because you had a guilty conscience. You were his best friend and he’d confided in you how much he liked this girl, and how, after his previous relationship breakdown, he was taking his time to get this right. But having spotted you together on the cliff, he was angry. He kept looking out of the window waiting for you to arrive. I told him I couldn’t see that it was possible for you two to have been having a secret relationship, and I was just about to tell him about her marriage proposal, when a call came in. A tourist had alerted the coastguard that they’d spotted someone in the water. I told him not to do anything daft when you arrived, and that I’d come back in an hour, after the rescue was completed. I’m not even sure Joe heard me though, as he’d already started to race towards the jetty.’
‘But there was no one found in the water, according to all the reports, and believe me, I’ve combed every article, every logbook. Where were you at this point?’ Sam cut in, staring at Pete accusingly.
‘I was making my way back up Lighthouse Lane. Joe wasn’t at the hut when I arrived, but the rescue had been logged and the phone was ringing. The caller on the other end of the line was apologetic, saying he’d rung in only moments earlier, but the tourist had made a mistake. What he thought was a person was actually a huge log that had been washed up in the waves, wrapped in some sort of material. I hurried after Joe.’ Pete was trembling, his face pained. ‘You’ve got to believe me, I didn’t mean for it to happen…’ His voice was earnest.
‘Didn’t mean for what to happen?’ pushed Verity.
‘When I arrived at the jetty, there was pandemonium, a crowd huddled together, screaming and shouting. I waded through the people to get a closer look and saw someone had thrown a life ring in, but it was too late. Joe’s body was being battered by the waves and was heading out to sea fast, taken by the rip current. I saw it in his hand…he was clutching my cap. The cap I wore every day without fail, come rain or shine. When I took off to try and stop Hetty from leaving, it must have dropped over the side of the jetty into the sea. He thought it was me in the water,’ Pete gasped on a sob. ‘My whole world was plunged into despair. Everything came crashing down around me. In the matter of an hour, I’d lost Joe and Hetty both, my best friend and the love of my life.’
Betty cupped her hand around Sam’s.
Tears were flooding Pete’s cheeks. ‘My hat lost him his life – and now I’ve just discovered that even though he thought I’d been the worst friend in the world, he still jumped into the water knowing he mightn’t survive the rip current. We were quick to get the boat launched but it was too late. When we pulled him from the sea, he was already gone.’
Sadness bled through the room. Everyone was hurting, each for a different reason.
Verity wrapped her arms around her. It was such a brutal catalogue of events that had led to the awful tragedy. She took in the despair and hurt in Pete’s and Betty’s eyes. They had both suffered from holding onto their parts of the jigsaw until now.
‘One day, I hope you find it in your heart to forgive me,’ Pete said to Sam as he mopped his brow with his handkerchief. Profound sadness and tiredness were engraved on his worn face. Verity hoped that Sam understood the depth of Pete’s pain, which had no doubt engulfed him every day since that catastrophic night.
Hopefully, now that the truth was out, the guilt and the black cloud that had hung over them all would finally begin to lift.
As they watched, Sam stood up and walked out of the cottage without saying a word.
Turning towards Pete, Betty urged, ‘Let him go and make sense of it all. He’ll be okay.’ She stood and opened her arms. ‘I think we both need a hug.’ Pete nodded and hugged Betty tight.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I should have told you.’
‘And I should have told you. I’m sorry, too.’
Verity watched with tears in her eyes as they parted. ‘Pete, when did you send the postcard?’ she asked.
Pete and Betty sat back down.
‘The next morning. I just wanted Hetty to come back. The night of the accident, I came over to your cottage.’ Pete looked at Betty. ‘You and your mum made me a drink and there was a moment when neither of you was in the room and I noticed your mum’s rental book on the dresser. Inside were Hetty’s personal details, including her home address, so I took a punt and quickly scribbled it down on a piece of paper. I honestly thought she would get in touch and come back if she heard about Joe’s death.’
‘I suppose we’ll never know whether she knew or not. All we know is that she chose to get married and have the baby,’ Verity added tentatively.
Pete nodded and turned towards her. ‘You have the same laugh. That’s why you took me by surprise, that day up on the cliff, when you laughed about the mooing puffins.’
Verity smiled. ‘Will it be difficult for you if I did stay around?’
‘You mean on the island?’
She nodded.
‘Of course not. If anything, you lit up my life again. I felt like you’ve accepted me for me. Not many people can make me smile the way you do. Over the years I lost the zest for living.’ Pete looked around the room. ‘This room is still exactly the same as the last day Hetty was standing here. I’ve been stuck in a time warp, waiting for a return that was never going to come. I was so focused on the past that I forgot to live in the present…and I’ve certainly not looked after myself.’
Verity stood up and touched his arm. ‘That can all change now. I’m sure when Sam processes everything, he’ll come around. I do know he was coming today to talk to you and hopefully put things to bed before the vigil.’
‘Timing is everything,’ murmured Betty.
‘I’m glad you don’t mind me staying, Pete, because I’ve enjoyed puffin counting and working alongside you in the vet’s. Let’s hope I get the job and can find a home before winter sets in.’
‘Job? What’s this?’ asked Betty.
‘I’ve applied for a job with Cooper.’
‘Oh, Verity, that’s brilliant. I’ve got everything crossed for you.’
‘Me, too,’ added Pete.
Verity smiled at them and pointed to the door. ‘I’m going to leave you both to it.’ After hugging them tightly, she made her way back to the van, wondering whether her granny would have stayed on Puffin Island if she hadn’t been pregnant. Sadly, that was a question that was never going to be answered.