Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
brYNN
The RNLI alarm splits the calm Monday morning air like a knife.
I’m halfway through stripping the fuel pump – seals corroded, gaskets shot, salt damage so bad it could turn a routine rebuild into an archaeology dig – when the sound reaches me. That low, urgent wail that carries across the harbour and up the cliffs and into every corner of Sea Salt Bay.
My hands still on the spanner.
Jude.
The thought surfaces before I can stop it. Unwanted. Inconvenient. He’ll be on that boat. Heading out into whatever’s gone wrong.
I shove it down hard. I don’t care if Jude Harding throws himself into the Atlantic.
I set down the spanner before I’ve even registered making the decision.
Nina.
I know what that alarm does to her. Wiping the grease from my hands, I grab my jacket, and head for the Lavender Café.
I do not think about Jude Harding.
I do not wonder if he’s safe.
The harbour’s grey and choppy as I walk. The lifeboat’s already gone – I can see the empty slip where it should be, the doors to the station still open. Somewhere out there, beyond the breakwater, people are in trouble.
And Jude’s heading towards them.
Not my problem. Not my concern. Not my anything.
I walk faster.
The café’s open but quiet. A handful of tables occupied – retired couples, a young mum with a toddler building a tower of sugar packets, the usual morning drift. Nina’s behind the counter, and she looks … intact. Upright. Hands steady as she froths milk for someone’s latte.
She spots me as I push through the door, and a tightness in her face eases. Just slightly. Just enough that I know I was right to come.
‘Coffee?’ she asks.
‘Please. Black.’
She makes it without asking anything else, slides it across the counter.
‘Lifeboat’s out,’ she says quietly, not looking at me. ‘Cal radioed ten minutes ago. Fishing vessel in trouble south-west.’
‘Right.’
‘It wasn’t as bad this time. The panic.’ She wipes the counter with unnecessary thoroughness. ‘I made it through the whole alarm without Tilly having to scrape me off the floor. Progress, right?’
‘That’s something.’
‘It’s something.’ She finally meets my eyes. ‘Thanks for coming.’
I shrug, awkward with the gratitude. ‘Told you I would.’
There’s a pause, deep and long. She tops up my coffee without asking.
‘I hate the crew is so short without Peter, but then I hate it more for taking him away, even though I know it does good.’ She gives a brief dry snort.
‘I mean, it’s the damn lifeboat crew, for God’s sake, how can I resent something that vital? That important?’
I shrug, because I don’t have an answer for her. What she’s been through in some ways I get, I understand, like watching my dad fade to alcohol, losing someone is hard, but losing someone to something that’s good? I don’t have words to soothe that pain.
We lapse into a silence that isn’t all awkward, there is room in the space for both of our unspoken thoughts. Until she looks up, gaze a little sharper. ‘Would you join the crew? If you’re planning on staying. I mean, you clearly know your shit about boats?’
I wrap my hands around the mug. The heat seeps into my palms, loosening the tightness in my fingers from two hours of spanner work.
If they asked. If someone walked into my shed and offered me a role – a purpose, a reason to stay that isn’t just stubbornness and a half-restored trawler and a list of plans I can’t afford.
‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
Nina nods slowly. ‘Peter would’ve liked that. You, on the crew. Using your skills.’ A pause. ‘He would’ve liked you, full stop. Every time you come in here with grease under your nails and that look like you’re solving equations in your head – he would’ve liked you.’
My throat tightens. ‘You keep saying that.’
‘Because it keeps being true.’
The door jangles. More customers. Nina straightens up, slips back into café-owner mode.
I take my coffee and leave. The harbour’s still grey, still choppy. No sign of the lifeboat yet.
I don’t look towards the station.
I don’t.
Dot’s shop hasn’t changed in twenty years, I’ve only got the vaguest memories, just snatches of images like faded photographs that my brain can no longer decide if are make believe or fact.
But it’s exactly how I think Dot’s shop should be. Cramped aisles and a bell that jangles when you push open the door. The smell of newsprint and peppermints and decades of dust that nobody wants swept away.
Dot is behind the counter, glasses perched on the end of her nose, newspaper spread in front of her. She looks up when I enter, and her eyes narrow, taking me in, placing me, deciding what to do about me – all in the space of a heartbeat.
‘Brynn Trelawney,’ she says. Not a question.
‘Morning, Dot.’
‘You remembered?’ She folds the newspaper with deliberate care. ‘Most of the blow-ins start with “Mrs Pendleton” and have to be corrected.’
‘I’m not a blow-in.’
‘No.’ Her eyes sharpen behind her glasses. ‘No, you’re not, are you.’
I grab a basket and head for the pet food shelf – tucked between the cleaning supplies and the tinned vegetables. Ghost has developed a preference for the salmon flavour, which is either refined taste or feline manipulation. Possibly both.
‘Keeping that old tom, are you?’ Dot appears at the end of the shelf, arms crossed.
‘He keeps coming back. Figured I might as well feed him properly.’
‘Peter’s waif and stray. I’m surprised he didn’t find a new place after Peter—’ She stops. Swallows. ‘Well. Since.’
‘He’s still there.’
‘Good.’ Dot doesn’t move. ‘You’ve been keeping yourself to yourself, I’ve noticed. Nearly a week now and barely a word to anyone except Nina and that Harding boy.’
Here it is. The village interrogation I’ve been dodging.
‘I’m here to get my boat working and my cottage habitable,’ I say. ‘Everything else I’m … taking slow.’
‘Mm.’ She makes a sound that manages to convey scepticism, approval, and gentle judgement simultaneously.
‘Have you got gas fittings?’ I ask instead. ‘The old cooker in the cottage just needs the jets clearing and a new thermocouple. Should have it working by tonight.’
‘Bottom shelf, next to the plumbing tape.’ If she’s surprised by the subject change, she doesn’t show it. ‘You’re fixing that yourself?’
‘I’m a mechanic, Dot. Cookers aren’t complicated.’
‘No, I suppose they’re not.’ Her mouth twitches, grudging respect, maybe. ‘Walter would’ve liked that. Practical girl.’
She rings up the gas fittings, and the other bits I’ve picked up. Then, without looking up, she says, ‘Your grandad used to come in here every Tuesday. Eight fifteen, regular as the tide. Newspaper, bag of peppermints, and a lollipop.’
‘A lollipop?’ I can imagine the face I’m pulling trying to reconcile my grandad with a lolly.
‘For you. He never left here without something for you.’
My hand tightens on the counter. The memory isn’t soft and gentle, it crashes into me. Those round globed lollipops nestled in a white paper bag. I’d spend ten minutes trying to peel the plastic wrapper from the stick before giving up and handing it back to him for help.
How have I forgotten that?
‘Talked about you like you hung the moon. Kept a photo of you on the dash of that old van. Little girl with engine grease on her face, grinning like you’d just been handed the keys to the world.’
‘As he got older and older he talked more and more of this place,’ I say, out of nowhere. ‘He missed it here.’
‘And now you’re here.’
‘And now I’m here.’
I pay for the cat food and the gas fittings. Dot hands me my change with a look that’s openly speculative, reading my face like it’s nothing more than a cheap Sunday rag. ‘You sleeping in that cottage?’
My cheeks burn, and as much as I hate that, the weakness it shows, they do it all the same. ‘It’s not habitable.’
She nods; eyes still tight around the edges, lips pressed into a bud. In response, I shift my weight from foot to foot. ‘My inheritance didn’t exactly come with a large bank roll.’
‘Well, it wouldn’t, would it, dear? Coastal living is only easy if you don’t actually live here.’
I stare out the shop window at the harbour that hasn’t come to life yet with spring tourists. ‘True, I guess.’
She sniffs, which I think articulates her thoughts on the matter. ‘Well, we have a bed in Andrew’s old room that I was planning to get rid of. I’ll get one of the crew and load it onto a trailer and bring it up.’
I stare blankly. Too much time passes before I respond.
‘A bed.’ It’s not a question, not really. Not a statement either, someplace caught between the two.
‘I’ll see what else we have.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ I say, which is the truth, and a rarity. ‘Thank you.’
Dot Pendleton waves me off with a businesslike flick of her fingers. ‘Let’s not get sentimental about it, shall we.’
I smile, clutching my purchases. ‘Never.’
I’m at the door and about to jangle the bell as I open it when she calls me back. ‘Brynn?’
‘Yes, Mrs Pendleton?’ Her lips twitch.
‘I can’t wait to see that trawler of yours in the water.’
‘My trawler? You know about her?’
She raises her eyebrow; another statement without words. ‘What you going to call her?’
A huffed laugh eases the tight band around my ribcage. ‘I haven’t thought that far ahead yet.’
Dot shrugs. ‘It’ll come to you.’
I give her a small wave, another thanks for the offer of a bed that might not collapse, and head out.
The name ‘Betty’ ringing in my head.
Who the hell is Betty?
Back at the shed, Ghost has relocated from his corner to the engine housing, where he’s draped himself over a coil of rope like a furry hood ornament. I fill his bowl and he descends with the studied indifference of a creature doing you a favour by eating your food.
I strip off my jacket, tie back my hair, and climb up onto the boat’s deck. The fuel pump’s where I left it – gaskets spread on a clean rag, replacement seals lined up by size. Methodical. Precise. The way Grandad taught me.
Patience, Brynn. It’s not a fight. You’re having a conversation with it.