Chapter 10 #2
‘Then act like it.’ His jaw works, grinding bitterness between his teeth. Then, turning back to his pint, muttered low enough that maybe only I catch it: ‘Need to tell Kit to keep an eye on things.’
‘Kit’s in New York, Dad. You said so yourself ten minutes ago.’
‘I know that.’ Too quick. Too sharp. He takes a long pull of his pint. ‘The Trelawneys break everything they touch. It’s best you don’t find that out for yourself.’
The pub has gone quiet. Even Malcolm and George have stopped arguing.
Everyone’s watching now – the Hardings, airing their wounds in public like we always do.
Bill’s at his usual table, eyes down, careful not to get involved.
Frankie’s pretending to read the racing pages.
Ayo’s polishing a glass with the studied concentration of a man who’s learned exactly when not to intervene.
‘Says you,’ I manage.
I stand. The stool scrapes. I drain what’s left of my pint and set the glass down too hard. Tom opens his mouth – probably to play peacekeeper, to smooth it over – but I’m already moving.
Already gone.
The door slams behind me and the rain hits like a punishment.
It’s biblical.
Sheets of water coming down sideways, soaking through my jacket in seconds. Torrential rain that falls in a deluge just to remind me how small I am, how little control I have over anything.
A swell like this would be firing at Fistral.
I’d give anything to be out there right now – board under my arm, the cold shock of the Atlantic, the simplicity of a wave that doesn’t care about your family or your feelings or your future.
Just physics. Just water and weight and timing.
I haven’t surfed in months. Another thing I’ve let go of, another thing swallowed by the business and the boats and being the son who stays.
And all I can think about is her.
Brynn. Alone in that cottage on the cliff.
The one with the leaking roof and the rattling windows and no heating and a cold so damp, so chill that it will get into her bones and stay there.
She’ll be freezing. The roof will be letting in half this storm.
And she’ll be sitting there with her lists and her stubbornness.
She shouldn’t be up there. Not alone. Not in this.
She shouldn’t be here at all.
But she is.
And so am I.
My feet are moving before my brain catches up.
Up the high street, past the darkened shop fronts, towards the cliff path.
The rain is relentless. My boots slip on the wet stone.
I catch myself on a fence post, keep going.
The bad leg’s screaming – always worse in the wet, the cold getting into the joint like a knife – but I keep going because stopping means thinking and thinking means asking myself what exactly I’m doing climbing a cliff in a storm for a woman I’ve known a week.
I don’t know her. Not really. A week doesn’t give you that.
But I know what she looks like because I see it in the mirror every morning.
The set of the jaw when you’re carrying worries too heavy alone.
The way you don’t ask for help because asking means admitting it’s too much.
The refusal to break, even when breaking would be easier, even when breaking would be a relief, even when everyone around you would understand if you just stopped holding on.
I don’t know Brynn Trelawney. I know the shape of someone doing what I do – holding on with both hands and pretending it doesn’t hurt.
And I know what happens when you do that long enough. You get brittle. You get tired. You get to a point where one more thing – one more storm, one more night alone, one more person telling you you don’t belong – is the thing that cracks you.
The cottage is dark when I reach it. No lights. No movement. Just a stone building hunched against the wind, rain hammering the roof she hasn’t had fixed yet.
I knock. Hard.
Nothing.
I knock again, harder, knuckles stinging against the wood.
‘Brynn!’
Still nothing.
The wind throws rain in my face and I step back, scanning the windows. All dark. Empty.
She’s not here.
Of course she’s not here. She sleeps in the shed, you absolute moron. She told you that. She sleeps in the shed because it’s warm and dry and she doesn’t have a bed here yet, and unlike this cottage in a rainstorm – it doesn’t leak like a colander.
I should feel relief. Should head home, dry off, forget this whole stupid impulse.
But I feel panic rising instead – sharp and irrational. Because what if she’s not in the shed either? What if she’s out in this, in a gale, getting hypothermic while I’m standing on a cliff talking to an empty house?
I turn and start back down the path. Running now. Slipping. My boot catches on a rock and I go down hard on one knee, catch myself with my hands in the mud, keep moving. The rain is hammering everything – the path, the rocks, the ocean below, hammering it flat and dark and endless.
By the time I reach the harbour, I’m soaked through. Shaking. From cold or fury or whatever else is driving me down this hill.
Then I see it.
The shed. A light glowing in one window. A shadow moving inside.
I cross the dock in six strides, boots pounding on wet wood.
I don’t hesitate. Don’t second-guess.
I slam my fist against the door.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
‘Brynn. Open the door.’
My voice comes out hoarse, raw. Rain drips from my hair into my collar. My hand trembles, from cold, from fury.
I don’t know why I’m here.
Except I do. I’m here because my father just forgot what he knew this morning.
I’m here because Kit’s table is empty and my mother’s been gone twenty years and Peter’s stool at the bar is just a stool again.
I’m here because I’m terrified of watching one more person disappear from this village – to death or distance or the simple, grinding erosion of time – and Brynn Trelawney, who arrived a week ago with nothing but a Land Rover and a grudge, is the first thing in this harbour that feels like it’s arriving instead of leaving.
I’m not leaving until she opens this door.