Chapter 5 #2
A woman with a mass of curly dark hair, caught in a wild ponytail, twisted and held in place with a pencil, is behind the counter, back to me. She’s arranging pastries with surgical precision, as if the croissants not being at exactly the right angle might cause the universe to stop spinning.
‘We’re not really open yet,’ she says without turning. Her voice is low and a little rough, like she’s either been crying or hasn’t been sleeping. Maybe both. ‘But I can do coffee if you’re desperate.’
‘Desperate is a strong word.’
‘It’s the only word before eight am.’
She turns, and Christ, she looks hollowed out.
A ragged and destroyed version of tired that sleep doesn’t fix because the problem isn’t physical.
Pretty, underneath the exhaustion – dark hair that needs cutting, caught up in a clip that’s losing the battle.
Eyes that might be green or grey depending on the light, currently red-rimmed but trying.
Hands that shake slightly as she reaches for a mug.
‘Tourist?’ she asks, pulling shots with mechanical efficiency that makes the stacked bangles on her wrist clink and clank. The machine’s proper Italian, the kind that’s the price of a small car, more temperamental than an Alfa Romeo, and runs on fury and prayer. ‘Bit early in the season.’
I should tell her. I’m Brynn Trelawney, I’ve come home, my grandad built the boat shed and my dad drank himself to death and I’ve been sleeping on a collapsed bed in a damp cottage and I think your dead someone used my shed and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, even though I don’t even know what I’m sorry for yet.
Instead, I say, ‘Something like that.’
‘Here for the fishing?’ Small talk on autopilot. ‘Or just passing through?’
‘Bit of both.’
‘That’s usually code for running away from work, romance, or existence.’ She slides the coffee across, and honestly, it smells like salvation. This woman knows her way around an espresso machine. ‘Not that I’m judging. Half of Sea Salt Bay’s here because they were running from somewhere else.’
‘The other half?’
‘Never left in the first place. Not sure which is worse.’
There’s a story in the bitter twist of her mouth, but before I can decide whether to pull at that thread—
The siren.
It cuts through everything. The lifeboat call – that low, urgent wail that carries across the harbour and up the cliffs and into every corner of the village. My hands go still around the mug.
Nina’s mug doesn’t go still. It goes through her fingers like her bones have dissolved.
Shatters on the tile floor in a spray of porcelain and coffee, and she’s backing away from the counter, hands pressed to her ears, making a sound that isn’t crying and isn’t screaming.
It comes from somewhere deeper than tears. Somewhere words don’t reach.
‘Hey,’ I start, already around the counter, broken porcelain crunching under my boots. ‘Hey, it’s okay—’
‘He was supposed to be careful,’ she says to her knees. ‘Promised he’d be careful. But Kit needed – and Peter couldn’t just—’
Peter. Pete. Pete’s Sweet Stuff. The sugar tin in the shed. The camp bed, the oiled hinges, the shadow boards. Peter was the one who maintained the workshop. Peter was her someone.
I don’t know what happened. But I know what grief sounds like when it’s ambushed by a trigger, and I know that right now the best thing I can do is stay low, stay quiet, and not touch her unless she reaches first.
The door bangs open before I can decide what else to try.
A woman rushes in – not old, maybe late forties, with sun-bleached hair, stacks of bangles that jangle as she moves, and flowing clothes that suggest she either runs a yoga studio or deals tarot cards.
She takes in the scene with one sharp glance – Nina on the floor, me crouched beside her with porcelain dust on my knees, the general air of catastrophe – and she’s across the café without breaking stride.
‘Nina, love. It’s all right. I’ve got you.’ She’s already gathering Nina into her arms, making soothing sounds that are both nonsense and exactly right. ‘That’s it, breathe with me. In and out. Just like we practised. That’s my girl.’
Nina collapses into her, sobbing properly now. The woman guides her towards the door behind the counter – the flat above, probably – with the steady competence of someone who’s done this before. Many times.
‘Through here, love. That’s it. One step at a time.’
Once Nina’s through the doorway, the woman turns back to me. Studies me for a moment with eyes far sharper than her flowing scarves suggest.
‘Brynn Trelawney,’ she says. Not a question. ‘You won’t remember me. I’m Tilly – run The Ship Inn with my husband. You were tiny when you left, used to steal peanuts from the bar and drink fizzy pop with a straw.’
Before I can respond to this unexpected piece of my own history, she’s gently but firmly steering me towards the door.
‘Thank you for staying with her, dear. You did well. But I’ve got her now. This happens when the siren goes. We have a system.’
‘Will she be okay?’
‘Eventually.’ She’s already turning the sign to CLOSED, hand on the door. ‘She lost her Peter. Six months now. The siren takes her back every time.’ A beat, then softer: ‘Your grandfather was a good man, by the way. Shame what happened.’
Before I can ask what happened, she’s closing the door in my face – not unkindly but definitively – leaving me on the wrong side of the glass with questions stacking up and the unexpected image of myself at three feet tall, fists full of stolen peanuts.
I stand on the harbour wall, coffee-less, feeling like an intruder in grief that doesn’t belong to me but sits in a shape I recognise.
She lost her Peter.
The siren’s still going, and now I can see them – the crew converging on the lifeboat station from various directions, pulling on gear as they run, the choreography of emergency.
An older man, moving faster than his age and his limp should allow. The bloke who was with Jude yesterday, also in gear, covering what should be two positions. And Jude, of course, because apparently he has to be everywhere I look, every time I turn around.
‘Not enough,’ I mutter. ‘That’s not enough crew.’
An old fisherman beside me – one I hadn’t noticed arriving – shrugs. ‘Make do with what we got.’
‘Didn’t the Hardings have another son? Older?’
The fisherman grins, showing more gaps than teeth. ‘New York City. Kit Harding’s off with that actress.’
My brain clicks random jigsaw-shaped pieces of information into place. ‘Isla Quinn?’
‘That’s the one. You know, the Marcus Vale business – was all over the news.
She’s from here originally, or her grandmother was.
Kit and her, been together since last autumn.
He’s out there with her while she does some Broadway thing.
’ He spits into the water, an old habit, I’m guessing and a disgusting one at that.
Why do men have to spit? Ugh. ‘Six weeks, they reckon. Little brother holding the fort, as per bloody usual.’
So Jude’s not playing at responsibility. He’s actually carrying it. The business, the boats, Reuben, the lifeboat crew. All of it on those broad, scowling shoulders while his brother’s three thousand miles away.
The boat launches with well-practised efficiency despite the gaps in their ranks, and I watch it disappear into the morning haze that sits on the water like the sea’s keeping secret. The engine sound fades. The tension in the harbour doesn’t.
More people gather. Standing in small groups, not talking much, all watching the horizon. This is what they do. They wait. They watch. They count them out and count them back in and hope the numbers match.
‘How often?’ I ask the fisherman. ‘How often do the RNLI get called out here?’ I try and trawl through my memories, but they are sandy and hazy, faded like a photograph left in the sun.
‘Often enough.’ He’s watching the water with the flat, steady gaze of a man who’s seen it give and take in equal measure.
‘Tourists, mostly. Sometimes fishermen who should know better. Sometimes…’ He shrugs.
‘Lost our Peter to it, six months back. Same water. Same station. Kit Harding – the older lad – went out alone, got himself in trouble. Peter jumped in off the lifeboat to get the line on him.’ A pause.
‘Wave took him. Kit came back. Peter didn’t. ’
He says it like weather. Like fact. No drama, no embellishment. Just the shape of what happened.
‘Peter,’ I say. ‘He was Nina’s—?’
‘Her bloke, aye. Two years they had. Good man. Big fella, beard like a Viking, could fix anything with an engine. Everyone reckoned they would get married.’ He spits into the water.
‘Whole village felt that one. Still feeling it, truth be told. That woman in the café – she’s holding on, but the siren takes her back every time. ’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and mean it.
The fisherman nods, like that’s all that needs saying. Then he wanders off along the wall, leaving me with the weight of it.
This is what I’ve come back to. A place held together by people who shouldn’t have to be, doing jobs that need doing because no one else will. A village where sirens trigger panic attacks and the lifeboat goes out short-handed and everyone just keeps going because what else is there?
The harbour feels different now – charged with waiting. More people drift in, drawn by the siren or maybe just the routine of disaster. They bring coffee in travel mugs, share quiet updates, check their phones for news that won’t come until the boat does.
An older woman appears at my elbow – hair in curlers under a headscarf, glasses on a chain, a woman who looks like she’s been ready for anything since 1987 and refuses to back down. She touches my arm with a hand that’s surprisingly warm.
‘You helped Nina?’
News in small places. Faster than broadband, twice as unreliable.
‘Not really. Just happened to be there.’