Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
brYNN
Ishouldn’t go in.
The nurse said one visitor at a time.
But I’ve been sitting in this plastic chair for forty minutes, staring at the door to Room 4, and I can’t stand it anymore.
He’s in there alone. With a father who threw him out three days ago.
And I’m out here, holding secrets of my own.
Tell him, the voice in my head whispers. Tell him now, before it gets worse.
But how? How do I walk into that room and say, By the way, your mother had an affair with my father, and I found out yesterday, and I didn’t tell you because I’m a coward who didn’t know how?
There’s no good way. No kind way.
I stand up anyway.
The corridor is quiet. That particular hospital hush – rubber soles on linoleum, distant beeping, the murmur of voices from the nurses’ station. I walk toward Room 4 like I’m walking toward my own execution.
The door is slightly ajar.
I can hear Jude’s voice. Low, rough, talking to someone who isn’t answering.
‘You scared the hell out of me, you know that? Lying there on the dock like a…’ He trails off. ‘Cal had to do compressions. Cal. Because I just froze.’
A pause. The beep of monitors.
‘This is probably the universe telling you to stop trying to run everything. Let someone else carry the nets for once. Delegate. I know it’s a foreign concept, but—’
His voice cracks. He clears his throat.
‘Kit’s coming. Maisie too. So you’d better wake up, all right? You’d better be here when they land, because I’m not – I can’t—’
Silence.
I raise my hand to knock. Hesitate.
Tell him, the voice screams. Tell him now, before it gets worse.
But not here. Not like this, with his father unconscious and his world already cracking at the seams.
I’ve made some sound – a breath, a shuffle – and he’s turning, looking toward the door.
I’m frozen in the doorway, hand still raised, caught between entering and fleeing.
‘Sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I just wanted to see if you—’
Movement from the bed.
Reuben’s eyes are open.
But he’s not looking at Jude. He’s looking at me. Through me. Past me. To someone else entirely.
‘Helen.’
The word hits me like a physical blow.
‘Helen?’ His voice is a whisper, cracked and searching. ‘Is that you? I knew you’d come back. I knew you would.’
‘Dad, that’s not—’ Jude starts, but Reuben’s eyes are glazed, unfocused, locked on the doorway like he’s seeing through twenty years of walls. He’s not looking at me. He’s looking at a ghost.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. He’s staring at me with tears streaming down his weathered face, and I know – I know – what’s about to happen.
No. No, no, no.
‘I’m sorry.’ The old man is pushing himself up. ‘I’m so sorry. I had to – I couldn’t let you take them. You and him. That Trelawney bastard.’
Jude turns to look at me. Confusion on his face. Expecting to see the same confusion mirrored back.
I can’t give him that.
‘I made you leave. I know. I know what I did.’ Reuben is sobbing now, twenty years of guilt pouring out of him in ragged, broken waves.
‘I told the boys you didn’t want them. You understand, don’t you?
I couldn’t let you take everything. But it’s your fault, Helen, your fault.
If you’d just stayed away from him, stayed happy with me. ’
‘I’m not Helen,’ I stutter, pulse hammering.
‘The letters,’ Reuben chokes out. ‘I burned them. Every one. You wouldn’t stop writing but I burned them all. The boys never knew. They never knew that you still loved them, never knew that I made you leave.’
Tell him, the voice screams inside my head. Tell him now, before he sees your face, before he—
Too late.
Jude’s face. Fuck, Jude’s face.
I watch it happen – the confusion shifting to shock, the shock to horror, the horror to worse. Understanding. The pieces clicking into place.
And then he looks at me.
Really looks.
I try to arrange my features into surprise. Confusion. Anything other than what I’m actually feeling, which is guilt and grief and the terrible knowledge that I’m watching everything fall apart.
I fail.
‘You knew.’ It’s not a question.
‘Jude—’
‘You knew.’ He’s on his feet, moving toward me, and his eyes – his eyes are the worst part.
Not angry. Betrayed. ‘About my mother. About your father. About all of it.’ He pushes his fingers through his hair, not even noticing the knots he’s tearing at.
‘My mum and your dad?’ He’s so pale. ‘I think I’m going to be sick. ’
‘Please, let me explain,’ I take a step towards him, but he backs away, ‘I swear I didn’t know. I found letters, Jude, letters between them.’ It’s all coming out wrong, this isn’t the right way to explain, but all these sounds are falling out of my mouth and making words that aren’t right.
‘How long?’ The words rip out of him. ‘How long have you known? Since you came back? Since before you and me?’
‘No! Jude, it’s not—’
‘Everything.’ He’s not hearing me. Doesn’t want to hear me. ‘Every moment. Every time you looked at me, every time you touched me – you knew what your family did to mine. What he did to her. And you never said a word.’
‘That’s not – I didn’t—’
I want to tell him. Want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and say, I found out yesterday, I was going to tell you, I just didn’t know how. But the words won’t come. They’re stuck in my throat, jammed behind the tears that are spilling down my face.
‘Get out.’
‘Jude, please, if you’d just let me—’
‘GET OUT.’
The words echo off the walls. Behind him, a machine beeps faster – Reuben’s heart rate spiking.
I open my mouth. Close it.
What can I say? He’s not going to listen. Not now, with his father’s confession still ringing in the air, with everything he thought he knew lying in pieces at his feet.
I could fight. Could plant myself in this doorway and refuse to move until he hears me out.
But the look on his face.
‘Get out,’ he says again. Quieter. Colder. ‘I can’t look at you right now. I can’t—’ His voice breaks. He turns away, back toward his father. ‘Just go.’
I stand there for a long moment.
Reuben is staring at us both, bewildered, frightened. ‘Jude? What’s happening? Who was that?’
‘No one,’ Jude says. Flat. Final. ‘Go back to sleep, Dad.’
No one.
I back out of the doorway. One step. Two.
The door swings shut between us. I stand in the corridor, shaking.
This is what it feels like. To lose everything in the space of a breath.
I did this.
I could have told him yesterday. Last night. This morning.
I didn’t.
And now—
Now I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance.
The plastic chair is cold against my back.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here. Long enough for the fluorescent lights to start buzzing inside my skull. Long enough for two nurses to walk past and give me pitying looks. Long enough for the coffee in my hand to go from lukewarm to cold.
The door to Room 4 stays closed.
I could knock. Could push it open, make him look at me, make him listen. I’m good at pushing. It’s what I do – charge in, demand answers, refuse to be ignored.
But the look on his face.
Get out.
I’ve been told to leave plenty of places in my life. Flats I couldn’t afford. Jobs that didn’t work out. My father’s hospital room, at the end, when he didn’t recognise me anymore and my presence only agitated him.
This is different.
This is Jude looking at me like I’m the enemy. Like everything we built was a lie.
And the worst part? He’s not entirely wrong.
I should have told him. The moment I sat up in the dark with his mother’s name ringing in my ears, I should have shaken him awake and said, We need to talk.
Instead I let him make me pasta. Let him take me to bed.
Let him stand in that boat shed and tell his brother he was in love with me while I stood there knowing – knowing – that everything was about to fall apart.
One day. I had the truth for one day and I couldn’t find the courage to speak it.
Now here I am. Sixty miles from Sea Salt Bay with no car, no plan, and a man on the other side of that door who won’t even look at me.
A nurse pauses by my chair. ‘You all right, love? Visiting hours are nearly over.’
‘I’m waiting for someone.’
She glances at the closed door. ‘The gentleman in Room 4?’
‘His son.’
‘Ah.’ There’s sympathy in her expression, or recognition – she’s probably seen this before, family members shut out during a crisis. ‘He’s been in there a while. Might be staying the night.’
Staying the night. Of course he is. His father just had a heart attack and he found out his whole life is built on lies. Why would he leave?
‘Is there someone who can collect you?’ the nurse asks.
I think about calling Nina. Cassie. Anyone.
I think about explaining why I’m stranded at a hospital in Truro at nine o’clock at night while the man I love refuses to speak to me.
‘I’ll get a taxi,’ I say.
She nods, pats my shoulder in that way medical staff do – comfort without attachment – and moves on.
I sit there for another twenty minutes. Watching the door. Willing it to open.
It doesn’t.
I can’t afford a taxi back to Sea Salt Bay so I get the train to the nearest place and then call Dot asking if she can organise me a cab. It’s not easy, but I swallow my pride and admit I can’t pay. She tuts and tells me I’m a silly girl. My eyes don’t just sting. I fucking cry.
The driver makes small talk about holiday traffic, weather, the air ambulance that passed overhead earlier (he saw it from his garden, he says, wondered where it was going). I make appropriate noises. Nod in the right places. Stare out the window at the dark hedgerows flashing past.
Eventually he gives up and turns on Radio Cornwall. Some phone-in show about local planning disputes. I let the voices wash over me without listening as I wait to get home.
Home.
Is that what this is now?
Home?
With Jude.
Jude, who looked at me like I was a problem to solve and then like I was something precious. Who told his brother he was in love with me while I stood there holding a grenade with the pin already pulled.
The taxi turns down the lane toward the cottage.
‘Just here’s fine,’ I say.
He pulls over. I climb out into the night air. Cold. Salt-sharp. The smell of the sea underneath everything, the way it always is here.
The taxi pulls away. Red lights disappearing around the bend.
I’m alone.
The cottage sits dark at the end of the path. I didn’t leave any lights on when I left the house this morning.
His holdall is still in the bedroom. His toothbrush next to mine. His jumper draped over the chair where he left it this morning, a lifetime ago.
I stand in the hallway, lights off, breathing in the smell of old wood and salty air and, underneath it, him.
The cottage is still rough. The cooker works now, the roof doesn’t leak anymore, Dot’s bed is solid enough, if lumpy with springs. But it’s still a long way from finished. Walls that need replastering. A kitchen that belongs in the last century. Windows that let in the drafts.
But that’s not what’s making it feel empty.
I sink onto the sofa. The cushions smell like him. Everything smells like him.
It’s probably in my head. It’s got to be in my head, right? I don’t do this. Feelings. Messy. Heartache.
The tears come then. Quietly at first, then harder, until I’m curled on my side with my face pressed into the cushion that still holds the shape of his body.
I fucking hate crying.
Crying is for wimps.
I can’t stop it all the same.
I did this.
Whatever happens next, I did this.
I don’t know how long I lie there.
Long enough for the tears to stop. Long enough for the cold to seep through my clothes, through my skin, settling into my bones. Long enough for the silence to become unbearable.
I sit up. Wipe my face with the back of my hand. My eyes feel swollen, my throat raw.
The box is still in the corner. Helen’s letters. My father’s silence, preserved in yellowed envelopes.
I should leave them alone. I’ve already read them – already know what they say, what they mean, what they’ve cost.
But I’m pulling myself off the sofa anyway. Crossing the room. Sinking to my knees beside the box like it’s an altar.
The second letter. The one from 2020. I find it, unfold it, read it again by the light of my phone.
Jude and I share a sister? It seems ridiculous. Impossible. The thought still makes my head spin. All those years – all those fractured, lonely years – and somewhere in Bristol there was a girl who belonged to both of us. Who grew up without knowing any of us existed.
She wants to know about her brothers. About you. About why she’s grown up without any of you in her life.
Her brothers. Kit and Jude. Who don’t know she exists.
I trace Helen’s handwriting with my fingertip. The loops and curves of a woman I only remember from shadowy childhood recollections, writing to a man who never wrote back.
My father never saw this letter. It must have arrived years after we’d left, slipped through the letterbox of an empty cottage because where else would Helen send it?
This was the only address she’d have known.
And it sat here, behind the door with the junk mail and the council tax reminders, while Dad drank himself to death in Plymouth thinking she’d forgotten him.
He never knew she was forced out.
He never knew she tried to reach him.
He never knew he had a daughter.
He died thinking she didn’t love him. And the proof that she did was sitting in an empty cottage, waiting for someone to open the door.
I fold the letter carefully. Slide it back into its envelope.
Helen’s address is at the bottom. Bristol.
She’s still there, probably. Still waiting. Still hoping someone will come.
I could go.
The thought surfaces before I can stop it. I could get in the car tomorrow and drive to Bristol and knock on her door and say, I’m Gareth’s daughter. I found your letters. I’m so sorry it took this long.
I could meet Lily. This sister I never knew I had.
I don’t know.
But sitting here in the dark, surrounded by secrets and silence, I know one thing for certain.
I have to do something. Not just for me, and not just for Jude, who may always resent me now he knows the truth about my dad and his mum.
I’d do it for the tragedy of everyone involved and for the little girl who never knew her dad.
Whether I’m talking about myself or Lily, I no longer know.