Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
brYNN
Isuppose I don’t really know what I’m expecting. Maybe because my life after Sea Salt Bay was painted in shadows of shadows and festering disappointment that eventually ate my dad away, I think Helen Harding’s home will be the same.
That’s if it is still her home.
All I know is I’m standing at the end of a garden path, lined with daffodils bobbing their heads under the April sun, staring at a semi that’s gleaming with shiny windows and a pillar-box-red front door.
Am I doing this?
Am I really going to walk up that path and knock?
One thing that can’t be said about me is that I’m chicken shit. So I do, hand unsteady as I press the doorbell, stomach in knots.
‘Coming,’ a voice calls the other side and I’m holding my breath.
The door opens.
She’s older than I expected. Which is stupid – of course she’s older. Twenty years have passed. But somehow I’d frozen her in my mind as the woman from my father’s letters, the Helen who existed before everything fell apart.
Her hair is silver now, cut short and practical. Lines around her eyes, around her mouth. But there’s familiarity in the shape of her face, the placement of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin. Something I’ve seen before.
In Jude.
‘Can I help you?’
Her voice is warm. Cautious but kind. The voice of a woman who answers doors to strangers and doesn’t assume the worst.
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
Say something, Trelawney. You drove hours for this.
‘I’m—’ My voice cracks. I clear my throat. ‘My name is Brynn. Brynn Trelawney.’
The colour drains from her face. For a long moment she just stares at me. Her hand tightens on the door frame, knuckles going white.
‘Trelawney,’ she repeats. Like she’s tasting the word. Testing it.
‘Gareth’s daughter.’
Her other hand comes up to her mouth. Pressed flat, like she’s holding something in.
‘I found your letters,’ I say. ‘At the cottage. In Sea Salt Bay. You wrote to him, and he never—’ I stop. Breathe. ‘He never got them. He never knew.’
‘Never knew what?’
‘Any of it.’ I swallow hard. ‘But I think that you loved him.’
Helen makes a sound. Small, broken. Like something cracking open after being sealed shut for decades.
‘He thought you chose Reuben,’ I say. ‘He thought you didn’t want him. He spent the rest of his life believing that.’
‘The rest of his—’ She stops. Her eyes search my face. ‘Gareth. Is he—’
I nod and I can almost imagine my blood draining like sea water through a fishing net.
She closes her eyes. Sways slightly against the doorframe.
‘When?’
‘Two years ago. His heart,’ I say with a gentle tap against my chest. I don’t mention the drinking.
The slow collapse. The way he’d stopped wanting to live long before his body gave up.
I also don’t mention Rueben Harding whose heart has also given out.
‘Walter, my grandad, he left me the cottage and the boat shed.’
Helen’s crying now. Silent tears sliding down her cheeks, twenty years of grief finally finding somewhere to land.
‘I wrote to him,’ she says. ‘For years. I sent letters to the cottage, to the boat shed, to everywhere I could think of. He never answered. I thought—’ She presses her hand harder against her mouth. ‘I thought he hated me.’
‘The cottage was empty. You know me and Dad left.’ I hesitate. ‘The letters were still there. Behind the door. Unopened until I arrived back.’
She makes that sound again. That small, shattered noise.
‘I told him—’ She’s struggling to get the words out. ‘In those letters, I told him everything. About Reuben. About Lily. About—’
She stops.
Looks at me.
‘Mum? Who is it?’
Footsteps in the hallway. A figure appearing behind Helen, peering over her shoulder.
And the ground drops out from under me.
She’s young – nineteen, maybe twenty. Dark blonde hair falling past her shoulders.
Slim and long-legged with baggy ripped jeans and a blue hoodie that’s the same style choice her older brother would make.
Grey-green eyes that I recognise instantly.
My father’s eyes. The ones I didn’t inherit but saw every day of my childhood.
‘Mum?’ The girl looks between us, confused. ‘What’s going on? Are you okay?’
Helen reaches back. Takes her daughter’s hand.
‘Lily,’ she says quietly. ‘This is Brynn. She’s—’
Helen stops. Looks at me. There’s a question in her eyes. Can I? Should I?
How do you explain this? How do you compress twenty years of secrets and silence into something a doorstep can hold?
‘She’s your sister,’ Helen finishes, putting it right out there. No secrets. No half-truths. ‘Your father’s other daughter.’
Lily stares at me.
I stare at her.
My sister.
I have a sister.
All those years of being alone – after Mum left, after Dad disappeared into the bottle – I had a sister. Growing up in Bristol, in this house with the red door and the daffodils, wondering about the family she’d never met.
‘Holy shit,’ Lily breathes.
I almost laugh. Almost.
‘Yeah,’ I manage. ‘That about covers it.’
Lily is staring at me wild-eyed and I’m staring right back. I see so much of me, but stamps of the Harding brothers too. Her nose is cuter than mine, a little upturn at the edge. Freckles are all Jude. I haven’t seen Kit Harding in a long time, but I bet he’s there as well.
Time lapses. I don’t know how long I’ve been standing on this doorstep rerouting the trajectory of all our lives. ‘Can I…’ I end up prompting, ‘I mean, if you don’t mind.’
Helen’s laugh is a watery tide pool but she pushes her palms against her cheeks and wipes away the tracks of her tears. ‘Of course you can. You’re family, Brynn, no matter how much time has passed.’
Family.
The concept is so alien to me it lodges a lump sideways in my throat.
The kitchen is warm. Yellow walls, herbs on the windowsill, a cat curled on a chair who opens one eye to assess whether I’m worth moving for. Decides I’m not.
Helen puts the kettle on. Because that’s what you do in England when the world turns upside down. You make tea.
Lily hasn’t stopped staring at me.
‘So,’ she says, dropping into a chair across the table. ‘This is mental.’
‘Lily—’ Helen starts.
‘What? It is.’ Lily props her chin on her hand. ‘Yesterday I was an only child with a dad I never met and two half-brothers I’m not allowed to contact. Now I’ve got a sister standing in our kitchen.’ She tilts her head, studying me. ‘You look like me. Around the eyes.’
‘You look like your brothers,’ I say before I can stop myself.
The kitchen goes very still.
Helen’s hand freezes on the kettle.
‘You’ve met them?’ Lily’s voice sharpens. ‘Kit and Jude? You actually know them?’
I should have kept my mouth shut. Should have eased into this, let Helen control the conversation. But I’ve never been good at careful.
‘I’ve recently moved back to Sea Salt Bay,’ I say. ‘I’ve been restoring my grandad’s boat shed. The village isn’t big. You can’t avoid anyone for long.’
It’s not a lie. It’s not the whole truth either.
Helen turns around slowly. The kettle’s starting to rumble behind her but she doesn’t seem to notice.
‘You know my boys,’ she says. Not a question.
‘I know them.’
‘Are they—’ She stops. Swallows. ‘What are they like? Kit must be… God, he’d be thirty now? And Jude—’
‘Twenty-seven.’ The number comes out automatically. His age. His birthday. The way he takes his coffee. All the details I shouldn’t know, shouldn’t have memorised, shouldn’t be carrying around like stones in my pocket.
Helen’s watching my face. She’s got twenty years of reading between lines, of parsing silences. I see the moment she clocks something.
‘How well do you know them, Brynn?’
Lily snorts. ‘Mum. Seriously. Look at her face.’
‘Shut up,’ I say, but there’s no heat in it.
‘Oh my God.’ Lily sits up straighter, delighted.
‘Lily.’ Helen’s voice sharpens.
‘It’s fine.’ I pull out a chair. Sit down heavily. The cat on the other chair opens both eyes now, offended by the disturbance. ‘It’s Jude. Was Jude. I don’t know what it is anymore.’
The kettle clicks off. Steam rises. Nobody moves to deal with it.
‘And Kit?’ Helen asks. ‘Do you know Kit too?’
‘I haven’t actually met him. He’s been in New York – his girlfriend Isla’s in a Broadway show, so he’s been out there with her. But he’s a fisherman, like his dad. Runs the business with Jude.’ I pause. ‘They’re both RNLI. Volunteer lifeboat crew.’
Something flickers across Helen’s face. Pride, maybe. Or fear. Probably both – the sea gives and the sea takes, and she’d know that better than most.
‘His first wife died,’ I continue. ‘Jess. A few years back. Cancer, I think.’
Helen’s hands clutch and twist together. ‘Oh, my poor boy.’
‘They had a daughter. Before Jess passed.’ I hesitate, not sure if this will break her or heal her. ‘Her name’s Maisie. She’s eight or nine – I haven’t actually met her yet, so I’m not sure exactly.’
Helen goes completely still.
The kitchen is silent except for the tick of a clock somewhere and the distant sound of traffic.
‘A daughter,’ Helen whispers. ‘Kit has a daughter.’
‘Mum.’ Lily reaches across and takes her mother’s hand. ‘Mum, you okay?’
‘I’m a grandmother.’ Helen’s voice cracks on the word. ‘I have a granddaughter. I’ve never – I didn’t even know she—’
The tears come then. Different from before – not grief for Gareth, or the passing of time without her own boys, but something rawer.
All those years. First steps, first words, first day of school.
Birthday parties and Christmas mornings and scraped knees.
Years of a little girl’s life, growing up without knowing her grandmother existed.
‘What happened?’ Helen asks quietly.
And there it is. The question I’ve been dreading since I got in the car and pointed it toward Bristol. The question I don’t know how to answer without unravelling everything.
Your ex-husband had a heart attack. While he was confused, he confessed to forcing you out. Jude heard everything. Then he looked at me like I was the enemy and told me to get out. Because I knew – I’d found your letters the day before – and I hadn’t told him.
And now I’m here, in your kitchen, because I didn’t know what else to do.
Because sitting in that empty cottage waiting to see if he’d forgive me was going to drive me mad.
Because there’s a girl called Lily who deserves to know she has brothers, and a woman called Helen who deserves to know Reuben’s lies finally caught up with him.
Because doing something is better than doing nothing, even if I’m not sure it’s the right thing.
I take a breath.
‘It’s complicated,’ I say.
Lily rolls her eyes. ‘It’s always complicated. Just tell us.’
‘Lily—’
‘No, she’s right.’ I look at Helen. ‘It is complicated. But you deserve to know.’ I pause. ‘All of it. Even the parts that are going to hurt.’
Helen crosses to the table. Sits down across from me. Her hands are steady now – whatever shock she felt at the door, she’s gathered herself. I can see where Jude gets his composure. That ability to hold himself together when everything’s falling apart.
‘I’ve been waiting twenty years,’ she says. ‘I think I can handle complicated.’
The cat jumps down from its chair. Stalks out of the room, tail high. Apparently this conversation is beneath its dignity.
I almost envy it.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Tea first. Then I’ll tell you everything.’
For better or worse, this time, I plan to say everything I know as soon as I know it. I just wish I could rewind time and wake Jude up in the middle of the night with the revelation that changed all this.
It’s gone, though, and I doubt I’ll get it back.