Chapter 12 #2
Cal hits the launch switch. The boat slides down the ramp with a mechanical whine, hits the water with a slap that sends spray over the bow. I’m aboard before the echo fades, clipping in, running checks on the equipment while Cal guns the engine.
We’re out of the harbour in under three minutes.
The sea’s choppy but manageable – grey-green swells rolling in from the Atlantic, foam-topped and cold as death.
The Jenny B’s transponder puts her south-west, towards the shipping lanes, and Cal takes us there at full throttle.
The boat hammers over the waves, jarring my spine with each impact, and I brace against the gunwale, eyes scanning the horizon.
It’s just the three of us. Three.
Peter would’ve been here. Kit should be here. But Peter’s dead and Kit’s in New York and I’m the one who’s left, because I’m always the one who’s left.
‘There!’ Bill shouts, pointing.
I see her – the Jenny B wallowing in the swell, listing hard to port, her deck already awash. Three figures in orange life jackets cling to the wheelhouse, waving frantically as we approach.
Cal brings us alongside with precision that makes it look easy.
It’s not easy. The Jenny B’s rolling badly, her hull grinding against ours with each wave, and I can see water pouring through a split in her planking near the waterline.
Osmotic blistering – a type of progressive hull failure I used to write about in my marine biology notebooks, back when I thought understanding the sea meant studying it rather than just surviving on it.
‘She’s going down,’ Cal says, voice flat. ‘Get them off. Now.’
Bill and I move in tandem – him on the lines, me on recovery. The first man’s easy, a middle-aged bloke with terror written across his face but enough sense to follow instructions. Bill hauls him across the gap, I catch him, shove him towards the deck seating.
‘Stay down,’ I bark. ‘Don’t move.’
The second man’s younger, panicking, and he nearly takes Bill into the water with him when he lunges for our boat. I grab Bill’s harness, brace my legs – bad knee screaming – and haul them both back from the edge while Cal fights to keep us steady against the Jenny B’s death roll.
‘Calm down!’ I shout at the younger man. ‘You’re safe. Just sit down and stay put.’
The third man’s older – the skipper, probably – and he’s white-knuckled around the Jenny B’s railing, staring at his sinking boat like he’s watching his whole life go under.
Because he probably is.
‘Sir,’ I call across the gap. ‘We need to go. Now.’
He doesn’t move.
‘Sir!’ Louder this time, cutting through the wind and the slap of waves. ‘She’s going. You need to come across.’
He looks at me then, and I nearly lose my nerve. But he nods. Lets go of the railing. Reaches for the hand I’m extending across the gap between boats.
The Jenny B lurches. Hard.
The skipper loses his footing, stumbles, and for one heart-stopping moment I think he’s going over the side. Bill’s there before I can even process it – lunging across, grabbing the man’s life jacket, hauling him bodily across the gap with strength that shouldn’t exist in a sixty-year-old’s frame.
They tumble onto our deck in a tangle of limbs and curses.
‘Go!’ Bill shouts at Cal. ‘Get us out of here!’
Cal doesn’t need to be told twice. The engine roars. We pull away as the Jenny B gives her last death shudder and starts to slip beneath the surface, stern first, her bow pointing at the sky like a prayer before she disappears.
Gone.
Just like that.
The three men watch in silence as their boat vanishes into the grey-green Atlantic. The older one – the skipper – has his face in his hands.
The trip back to harbour takes fifteen minutes that feel like hours. No one speaks. The rescued men are wrapped in foil blankets, shivering despite the thermal layers we’ve bundled them into. Cal radios ahead to the coastguard. Bill does the post-rescue safety checks with methodical precision.
I stand at the stern and try not to think about how close that was.
How if the Jenny B had gone under thirty seconds earlier, we’d have had men in the water. How three of us isn’t enough for that scenario. How we’d have had to choose who to pull first.
And we don’t even have a mechanic on board anymore.
If our engine had failed out there – if the fuel line had gone, the way it went the night Peter died – there’d be nobody to fix it.
Nobody with their hands in the guts of the machine, keeping it alive while the rest of us kept people alive. Peter did that. Nobody’s done it since.
How Peter would’ve been the one to make that call.
By the time we dock, there’s an ambulance waiting and the coastguard’s already taking statements. The three fishermen are handed off to the paramedics – cold and shocked but alive, which is all that matters.
Cal secures the boat with grim silence.
We were lucky today.
Luck doesn’t last for ever.
The debrief happens in the station locker room over cups of tea that no one really wants but everyone holds anyway because holding a mug is easier than standing still.
Cal leans against the wall, weathered hands wrapped around his mug. His face is grey beneath his tan – it’s the shade of grey that comes from running on adrenaline for an hour and then crashing hard when it’s over.
Tom’s there too – although not on today’s call, he’s been scaling back this past year, since his dad announced his slow retirement from the Darcy Vet’s practice. In this village time spent on the crew earns you a permanent seat whether you’re active or not.
‘Right,’ Cal says finally. ‘We need to talk about crew.’
No one argues. We all felt it out there today – how understaffed we were, how close it came to going sideways when that young lad panicked.
‘We’re two down,’ Cal continues, voice rough. ‘Peter’s been gone six months. Kit’s in New York for – what, another month?’
‘Five weeks,’ I say. Five weeks until my brother gets back and I can stop running his business and covering his RNLI deputy duties and pretending I’m not drowning under the weight of all the things Kit does better than me.
That’s not fair. Kit didn’t leave. Kit’s supporting Isla – she got offered six weeks on Broadway, and of course he should go, of course he should be there for her and Maisie, and I told him to go, and I meant it.
I just didn’t expect it to feel like this.
‘Five weeks,’ Cal repeats. He sets his mug down on the bench with a decisive thunk. ‘We can’t keep running calls like this, lads. Today was too close. If that skipper had gone over the side, if that young one had dragged Bill under—’
‘I had him,’ Bill interjects quietly, but there’s no heat in it. We all know how fine the margins were.
‘You had him because you’ve got good instincts and more nerve than sense. But what about next time? What if there’s three in the water instead of on deck? What if the conditions are worse?’ Cal crosses his arms. ‘We need another crew member. And we need a proper mechanic. Yesterday.’
Tom rubs the back of his neck. ‘I’ve been covering the engine checks, but I’m a vet, Cal. I know enough to keep things running, but if the engine fails out there—’
‘Exactly.’ Cal looks around the room. ‘We need someone who knows what they’re doing with an engine. Not making do. Actually qualified.’
The silence stretches. We all know he’s right. We also all know that finding someone in Sea Salt Bay with offshore experience and the willingness to commit to lifeboat duty is like finding hen’s teeth.
Bill clears his throat. ‘Saw the Trelawney girl this morning. Down at the harbour before dawn, working on that trawler she picked up.’
My stomach flips.
‘Walter’s granddaughter?’ Cal asks, eyebrows rising. ‘Thought she’d gone to Australia or somewhere.’
‘I doubt it was Australia, but she’s come back,’ Bill says. ‘Inherited the cottage and the business. Been here a few days now, back in the shed and working on a boat, from what I gather.’ He pauses. Takes a sip of his tea. ‘If Walter shared half of his knowledge, she might be what we need.’
‘Right,’ Cal says slowly, thinking it through.
‘Only.’ Bill shifts his weight. Sets his mug down carefully, the way he does when he digs in. ‘We’ve never had a woman on this crew, Cal. Not in forty years. And she’s – well. She’s young. And she’s been gone twenty years. Can you really call yourself local if you left when you were seven?’
There it is. I watch Bill’s face – not unkind, not malicious. Just calcified. He’s a man who’s been doing things one way for so long that a different way feels like a threat.
‘She’s got skills better than half the people in this room, Bill.’
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
All three of them look at me. Cal with interest. Bill with surprise. Tom with a steady look that means he’s already decided you’re worth backing, or saving.
‘I’ve seen her work,’ I continue, because apparently my mouth has disconnected from my brain and is operating independently.
‘Her work ethic is insane, she was out there in the dark this morning, doing her own engine overhaul – not paying someone, doing it herself, and doing it properly. She trailered a day-trawler from Plymouth and had it on blocks in the shed inside an hour, without letting me lift a finger. And she’s not just some blow-in – she’s a Trelawney.
Her grandad built that shed. Her family fished these waters for generations before—’
I stop. Hear myself. Close my mouth.
Cal’s watching me with an expression I can’t read.
Bill’s watching me with one I can.
Tom’s studying his tea.
‘You seem to know a fair bit about her capabilities, lad,’ Cal says, eyebrow drifting up his weatherworn forehead.
‘Small village,’ I manage, grinding the toe of my boot into the cement floor. ‘Hard not to notice.’
‘Mmm.’ Cal uncrosses his arms. ‘What about the water knowledge? Bill’s right that she’s been gone twenty years. She won’t know the currents, the shoals, the way the swell runs off Pencarrow—’