Chapter 7 #2
By nine, the wind’s bad enough that I check the shed window seals twice and drag the camp bed away from the wall where a new drip has started. Grandad’s half-carved seal is on the workbench. I pick it up, find the carving knife in the third tool drawer, and start working.
See there, little fish? Follow the grain. Let the wood show you.
I carve until my fingers ache. The seal is emerging – Grandad got the shape right, as always. Nose, flippers, the curve of the back. I just need to find the details he never got to finish.
By eleven, the storm is at its worst and I’m thinking about someone who isn’t me.
Nina. I know her name from Tilly, from the fisherman on the harbour wall, from the way the whole village says it like a prayer they’re not sure is working.
I keep seeing her on that café floor. Keep hearing that broken sound she made when the siren went.
And I know what it’s like to carry grief that ambushes you, that turns everyday sounds into landmines.
Not the same grief – I haven’t lost anyone to the sea, just to silence and whisky and giving up – but grief’s grief.
It doesn’t care about the specifics when it’s got you by the throat.
The shed’s not going anywhere. The seal can wait.
I pull on my jacket, step into the storm, and walk to the Lavender Café.
Not the café – that’s locked up tight, CLOSED sign still crooked from two days ago. This is the side entrance, narrow stairs leading up to the flat above.
I’ve been standing here for three minutes, which is two minutes and fifty seconds longer than someone who doesn’t care would stand anywhere.
I knock before I can talk myself out of it.
Footsteps, then the door opens. She’s not broken anymore, or at least not visibly. She’s wearing a tea towel as a headband, a jumper that might’ve once been cream but now looks like the inside of a teabag, and mismatched socks – one with sheep, one with what might be puffins or might be blobs.
‘You okay?’ she asks, like I’m the one who fell apart two days ago.
‘Just checking in.’ I aim for casual, probably miss by a mile. ‘Wanted to make sure you were … you know.’
‘Not having a complete mental collapse on my kitchen floor?’ She steps back, opening the door wider. ‘Jury’s still out, but I’ve upgraded to the sofa at least. Tea?’
I should say no. Should maintain boundaries. Should remember that getting involved with locals complicates everything.
‘Yeah, all right.’
‘I’m Nina, by the way.’ She says it over her shoulder, already heading for the kettle. ‘In case you were wondering how to address the village basket case.’
‘I know. Brynn.’ I pause in the doorway. ‘Tilly told me. Among other things.’
‘Tilly tells everyone everything. It’s basically her job description.’ She’s filling the kettle with the mechanical ease of someone who makes tea the way other people breathe. ‘She told me about you too, you know. Brynn Trelawney, back from the dead. Or Leeds, depending on who’s telling the story.’
‘I was never in Leeds. That was my mother.’
‘Right. Well, Tilly also said you helped me through the worst of it. And that you fix boats.’ She sets two mugs down – mismatched, but somehow belonging together. ‘Thank you. For staying, that morning. Most people just hover anxiously and don’t actually do anything.’
‘I’m not good at hovering.’
‘No. You’re more of a door-kicker, I’d guess.’
Her flat is exactly what you’d expect from someone who runs a café – organised chaos with emphasis on the chaos. Cookbooks on every surface, plants in various stages of thriving or dying, a cat that looks like it was assembled from spare parts of other cats.
‘That’s Catastrophe,’ Nina says, following my gaze. ‘Cat for short, or Arsehole when he’s knocked something off the counter. Which is always.’
The cat blinks at me with eyes that suggest he knows exactly where I live and will be visiting later to judge my life choices.
‘Sit,’ Nina says. ‘Unless you’re one of those people who stands awkwardly in kitchens making everyone nervous.’
‘I’m definitely that person.’
‘Then definitely sit.’
I take the sofa, which is surprisingly comfortable despite looking like it survived several wars.
The whole place smells like cinnamon and coffee and another scent I can’t place straightaway – sourdough maybe, that yeasty alive smell that makes you think of home even when sourdough has never been within an inch of it.
‘I should apologise,’ Nina says, picking up her tea. ‘For yesterday morning. You didn’t sign up for … that.’
‘No apology needed. Tilly said it happens sometimes.’
‘Tilly says a lot of things.’ But there’s affection in it. ‘She’s good people. Bit overwhelming with the crystals and the unsolicited aura readings, but good people.’
‘She knew my grandfather. Before we left.’
Nina pauses, mug halfway to her lips. ‘Tilly knows everyone, that’s the perk or the downfall of running the only pub in the village, depending on what way you look at it.’
‘She seems nice. I don’t really remember her from when I was here as a child. How long have you been in Sea Salt Bay for?’
She shrugs. ‘Family’s originally from here.
Moved to Hampshire when I was a baby. Came back at sixteen when my gran died – did sixth form at Pencarrow, met Tom.
’ A breath. ‘Then uni, a brief stint in London, which was pretty close to surviving a stint in hell. Then I came back for good.’ She stops, pauses and hauls in a breath that makes her wince, makes my own arms ache at the fleeting expression of loss on her face before she clears it away with a brief smile. ‘Then Peter. Then … well.’
Her grief is fresh and livid and I can almost feel the ghost of the man she misses in the space around her.
‘I think you might be the only person in a twenty-mile radius who doesn’t think I’m something the devil spawned.’
Nina laughs into her tea, unexpected and genuine. ‘I assumed you were some sort of mythical sea-witch. You just have that energy.’
I snort, which ruins my attempt at looking detached and mysterious. ‘Sea-witch. I’ll take it.’
‘Better than what Reuben Harding called you. According to the harbour telegraph, anyway.’
‘Let me guess – harbinger of doom? Curse upon the peaceful waters? Destroyer of family values?’
‘All of the above, plus some creative profanity I think he invented specifically for the occasion.’
‘He’s got a gift.’
We sit in comfortable silence for a moment, rain hammering the windows, Catastrophe judging us from his perch on the cookbook stack.
‘I’ve moved into the Trelawney shed,’ I say finally, because it feels like she should know. ‘The one by the harbour.’
Nina goes very still, mug suspended between table and mouth.
‘Peter used that space,’ she says, her fingers twist together in a way that makes my gut ache uncomfortably. ‘Every morning before the boats went out, every evening after they came back. It was his … sanctuary, I suppose. His thinking place.’
‘I know. His things are still there. His notes.’
Her eyebrows lift. ‘You’ve read them?’
I nod. ‘He had good ideas. Conservation corridors. Rewilding the inlet margins. Sustainable fishing quotas that actually make sense.’
Nina blinks hard, sets down her mug with hands that aren’t quite steady. ‘He really cared. Thank you for reading his notes. He was a clever man – I’ll always regret the fact he didn’t get to show it to everyone.’
And just like that, we’re not strangers anymore. We’re two people holding different pieces of the same ghost.
‘His ideas are good,’ I say. ‘Really good. Someone should—’
‘Someone should implement them. Yeah. He was supposed to present to the council, had this whole PowerPoint thing with graphs and projections and…’ She trails off, lost in the what-might-have-been.
‘I could—’ I stop. It’s not my place. Not my ghost. Not my mission.
But Nina’s looking at me with a hope, that’s almost dangerous and contagious, but definitely heartbreaking. ‘You could what?’