Chapter 19 #2
‘Yeah.’ I glance back at the window. Both of them gone. ‘It does.’
Dot bags my shopping. ‘Whoever you’re cooking for,’ she says, ‘I hope they’re worth it.’ She winks, which tells me she knows exactly who I’m cooking for, and why, and then pushes her glasses back up the slope of her nose.
I think about Brynn. Sharp tongue. Certain hands. The way she looked at me in the shed yesterday, a complication she hadn’t budgeted for.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I think she might be.’
Dot doesn’t respond, only raises her eyebrows as she returns to a folded newspaper and an unfinished crossword. ‘Four letter emotion beginning with L?’
I grab the bag and head for the door. ‘You’re making it up.’ I chuckle, swinging the door, setting the bell above ringing.
‘I’ll have you know, young Harding, that I never make anything up.’ Her focus drops back down. ‘Ah, Love, that’s it.’
‘Or lust,’ I add, before shutting the door quickly behind me.
I’m early for training, hoping the extra time will settle my head.
The boathouse smells the way it always does – diesel and salt and old rope. Familiar. Usually grounding.
Not today.
Today I’m checking my watch every thirty seconds.
Pathetic. Truly pathetic.
Cal arrives first. He nods, starts his checks.
‘Big night tonight,’ he says, not looking up.
‘What?’
‘Cassie mentioned you’re cooking for someone. Wouldn’t say who.’ Eyebrows raised. ‘She’s a vault, my wife. When she wants to be.’
‘It’s not—’
‘None of my business. Good luck.’
I say nothing.
Brynn arrives at ten past. Slightly breathless, hair escaping its ponytail, a smear of grease on her cheek she doesn’t know about.
She’s wearing those overalls again. The ones that shouldn’t look good on anyone but somehow look incredible on her.
I am in so much trouble.
‘Sorry,’ she says, not sounding sorry at all. ‘Fuel injector’s being a bastard.’
‘The boat’s on your face.’ Tom gestures at his own cheek.
She swipes at it, examines her fingers, shrugs. ‘Occupational hazard.’
She moves to her station without looking at me. Fine. Good. Professionals.
Until she glances at me, quick and almost shy, and not at all what I expect. She’s nervous too.
Somehow that makes it worse. And better.
Cal runs us through man overboard recovery. I know the drill cold, but today I keep losing focus.
Because Brynn is good at this.
Precise. Efficient. Asks smart questions, spots problems before anyone else. When we run the recovery manoeuvre, she catches a positioning error that would’ve cost us seconds in a real shout.
‘Nice,’ Cal says. ‘Most people miss that.’
She shrugs, but I catch the flush. ‘Grandad was thorough.’
I’m staring. I know I’m staring. Her hands on the equipment. The way she moves on the boat like she belongs there.
She catches me.
Our eyes lock across the deck. She raises an eyebrow – challenge, question, both – and heat crawls up the back of my neck.
‘Harding.’ Cal’s voice, dry as sand. ‘You planning to participate, or just stand there looking decorative?’
Definitely Tom who snickers.
‘I’m participating,’ I mutter.
‘Then tell me what’s wrong with the kit log from yesterday’s drill.’
I look at the clipboard. The log sheet, neatly filled in. I scan it – not the equipment specs, but the procedural entries. Dates, sign-offs, compliance codes.
‘Expiry date on the flare pack,’ I say. ‘Showing next month, but the batch number doesn’t match the supply order. We got a replacement set last Tuesday – someone logged the old batch number on the new stock.’
Cal stares at me. Then nods, ghost of approval. ‘Good. Anything else?’
‘The VHF check column’s got last Thursday’s date but no signature. And the fuel log shows a top-up that doesn’t match the marina invoice.’
Silence. Tom looks at me like I’ve sprouted a second head.
‘Right,’ Cal says. ‘Someone’s been paying attention.’
Brynn’s watching me. Although not with surprise, more like confirmation.
I shrug. ‘Someone’s got to do the boring bits.’
Training ends at six. Others drift off. I hang back.
Brynn hangs back too.
‘So,’ she says, leaning against the boat, arms crossed. ‘Tonight.’
‘Tonight.’
‘You’re still cooking.’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘At my cottage. With my disaster kitchen.’
‘You warned me about the wallpaper. I’m prepared.’
She studies me.
‘Seven o’clock. Don’t be late. And Harding?’
‘Yeah?’
‘If you poison me, I’m haunting you for ever.’
‘Noted.’
She pushes off from the boat, heads for the door. Pauses at the threshold.
‘See you tonight.’
And then she’s gone, and I’m standing alone in the boathouse with a racing heart and the growing certainty that I’m about to ruin everything.
I’d like to say the cottage has improved, but it hasn’t.
Although the kitchen is tiny, with its cooker from another era, it’s clean, scrubbed, clearly in working order.
Counters are chipped Formica and the lighting is one bare bulb, and there’s a damp patch on the ceiling that looks like it’s expanded since I last came in.
But.
The renovation list on the kitchen wall now has items crossed out. Tools are hanging on hooks by the back door. A mug tree with mugs that don’t match.
The bit that stops me dead, in amongst this disaster of a building – no, let’s be real and call it what it is, recovery – project is a jar of wildflowers on the windowsill. Just some early spring flowers and foliage.
It’s so stupid, but that jar of flowers literally harpoons me to the spot. Beautiful, careless, surrounded by rotting destruction.
Just like Brynn herself. And now I’m becoming a poetic sap who should probably ask the local vet to put him down.
The front room has a space heater humming in the corner and Peter’s research notes stacked on the table.
Steel-toed boots by the door, laces muddy.
There’s a blanket thrown over a faded wing-backed armchair, and the lingering smell of woodsmoke.
I didn’t make it this far in that early morning I stormed in here like an asshole spoiling for a fight, and now she’s standing back, leaning against the wall and watching me evaluate her space, her inheritance.
‘Told you,’ Brynn says, watching me take it in. ‘Architectural disaster.’
‘It has character.’
‘It has mould. There’s a difference.’
She’s changed out of the overalls. Jeans, a soft green jumper that makes her dark eyes look warmer. Her hair’s down, still damp from a shower, and she smells like wild herbs that grow on cliff paths. It’s not a perfume, not exactly. Just her.
I’m holding a bag of groceries like a shield.
‘Right.’ Clear my throat. ‘Where are your pans?’
‘Bold of you to assume I have pans.’
‘Brynn.’
‘Cupboard by the cooker. They’ve seen better decades.’
They have. Wobbly handle, suspicious bottom. But it’ll do.
‘You can sit,’ I tell her. ‘Relax. I’ve got this.’
‘You want me to watch you cook in my own kitchen?’
‘That’s the idea.’
She shakes her head, smiling. ‘Fine. I’m opening wine. If I’m witnessing a culinary disaster, I’m doing it fortified.’
She finds a bottle, pours two glasses, and settles on the counter beside the cooker. Close enough that I can smell that cliff-path scent. Close enough that her knee almost brushes my hip.
Focus, Harding.
‘So,’ Brynn says, swirling her wine. ‘Where’d you learn to cook?’
‘Who said I could?’ I grin up at her, only to find her biting her bottom lip, staring at my mouth. My heart thumps once, then twice. ‘I’m not big on cooking, I suppose Mum used to make us help out before she left.’ My memory takes a small journey into the distant past, but I swiftly pull it back.
Brynn’s quiet. ‘Nina mentioned her. Your mum leaving when you were young.’
‘Nina talks too much.’
‘Nina’s my favourite person in this village. Present company included.’
‘Harsh.’
‘Accurate.’ She takes a sip, watching me over the rim. ‘You don’t have to talk about it.’
I focus on the tomatoes. Start chopping, the rhythm steadying.
‘I was nine,’ I say, eyes on the knife. ‘Kit was twelve. One day she was there, the next…’ I shrug. ‘Gone. Dad told us she didn’t want us anymore. That she’d chosen to leave.’
‘And you believed him?’
I look up. Brynn’s watching me with an expression I can’t read.
‘He was my dad. I was nine. What was I supposed to believe?’
‘Fair enough.’ She sets down her glass. ‘My dad didn’t leave physically. He was always around. But he was gone. In his head. In his heart. Looking for something none of us could give him.’
‘What was he looking for?’
‘Someone, I think. Someone he lost.’ Her voice is careful, choosing each word carefully. ‘But all he found instead was a bottle.’
The kitchen feels very small. Very quiet, except for the hiss of garlic hitting hot oil.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘About your dad.’
‘I’m sorry about your mum.’
We look at each other. Two people shaped by absence.
‘Yesterday you said this was the only place that ever felt like yours,’ I say, turning back to the pan. Adding tomatoes. ‘Is it? Feeling like yours yet?’
She’s quiet. I can hear her thinking.