Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
JUDE
The hospital discharge nurse hands me a carrier bag full of Dad’s belongings and a folder of paperwork thick enough to choke a seagull.
‘Medication schedule’s on top,’ she says. ‘Three times daily with food. No alcohol. No salt. No stress.’
I almost laugh at the last one. No stress. Right. I’ll just tell Reuben Harding to stop being himself.
‘Any questions?’
About a thousand. None I can ask her.
‘We’re fine,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’
Dad’s in the wheelchair by the door, looking shrunken in his clothes.
He’s lost weight – I can see it in the way his collar gaps at the neck, the way his trousers bunch at the waist. A week ago he was the man who loomed over my entire childhood.
Now he looks like someone I could break with one hand.
I don’t know what to do with that.
‘Ready?’ I ask him.
He grunts. Doesn’t look at me.
We haven’t spoken properly since that night. Since Helen’s name on his lips. Since the confession that tore through twenty years of silence like a blade through fishing net.
I push the wheelchair toward the exit.
The first couple of days are a masterclass in avoidance.
I make his meals. He eats them without comment. I remind him about his medication. He takes it without thanks. I help him to the bathroom when his legs won’t cooperate, and the shame on his face is so raw I have to look away.
We don’t talk about what happened. Don’t talk about Helen. Don’t talk about the letters or the lies or the twenty years of manufactured abandonment.
It sits between us like a third person in the room. Present. Unavoidable. Never acknowledged.
Kit takes shifts. Turns up in the mornings so I can escape to the harbour, check on the Mary Jane, pretend I still have a life outside these walls. Maisie comes too sometimes – her chatter filling the silence, her questions forcing Dad to respond in more than grunts.
‘Grandpa, why do you have so many pictures of fish?’
‘They’re not pictures. They’re charts.’
‘They look like fish.’
‘They’re nautical charts. For navigation.’
‘Boring. Where are the pictures of Daddy when he was little?’
Dad’s face does something complicated. Kit’s does too.
‘Upstairs,’ Dad says finally. ‘In the spare room.’
It’s the most Dad’s said in days.
Training is on Monday.
I almost don’t go. The thought of standing in that boathouse, seeing her empty spot—
But I’m crew. That’s how it works.
Tom’s taken over her station. He’s competent – more than competent – but he’s not her. Doesn’t have her instincts, her precision, the way she could read the sea like a language.
Afterwards, he catches me by the kit room.
‘Heard anything?’
I don’t pretend not to know who he means. ‘No.’
‘Nina says she’s gone to Bristol. Some family thing.’ He pauses. ‘You know anything about that?’
‘No.’
It’s not entirely a lie.
Tom studies me for a moment. ‘She was good for you, mate. Whatever happened … might be worth fixing.’
He walks away before I can respond.
That night, Kit turns up at the cottage with a bottle of whisky and a look on his face that means trouble.
‘We need to talk.’
‘I don’t want to—’
‘Not about feelings.’ He pushes past me into the kitchen.
‘So what about?’
‘And I’ve been thinking.’ He takes a drink. ‘She found letters at her cottage. Letters from Mum to her father. That’s how she knew where to look.’
I see where this is going. ‘No.’
‘The letters are probably still there.’
‘Kit—’
‘She took herself to Bristol. She didn’t take the evidence.’ He leans forward. ‘Don’t you want to know what they say? Don’t you want to read Mum’s words for yourself instead of hearing it second-hand?’
I stare at my untouched whisky.
The truth is, I’ve thought about nothing else. What was in those letters. What Mum tried to tell us. What Dad destroyed, one envelope at a time, until all that was left was silence.
‘It’s her cottage,’ I say. ‘We can’t just break in.’
‘Your stuff’s still there. You told me – your clothes, your toothbrush. You’d be collecting your own belongings.’ Kit shrugs. ‘If we happen to see some letters lying around…’
‘That’s not—’
‘I don’t reckon she’s coming back tonight. And I need to know.’ His voice cracks, just slightly. ‘I spent twenty years checking the post, hoping Mum would write. She did write. Don’t I deserve to see it?’
I pick up the glass. Drain it in one.
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘But if we get arrested, you’re explaining it to Maisie.’
The cottage is dark when we get there. ‘Round the back,’ I say. ‘I know where she keeps the key for the back door.’
We circle through the overgrown garden, stepping over mossy clumps and spilt soil from tubs that have fallen over. By the back door is the boot rack, underneath is the key. I’d like to say she left it there in case I needed to let myself in, but I think that’s wishful thinking.
‘After you,’ Kit says once I’ve unlocked the door and used my booted foot to give it a firm push open. Pretty sure the whole house is swollen with water.
I edge through and swerve past the kitchen table to flick the light switch, letting the illumination blink across everything that I’ve managed to leave.
The cottage smells like her. My heart aches with it.
‘Where would she keep letters?’ Kit’s already moving, torch sweeping the room.
‘Sitting room. I think all her grandad’s stuff is in the backroom.’ I point to what would be the dining room if this were a standard family home and not a relic to a past once destroyed.
‘This place is…’
‘Disastrous.’ I agree with Kit’s observation. ‘But you should have seen it before she started doing it up. This is practically five-star now.’
Kit shivers and we edge our way into the back room where Old Man Trelawney must have hoarded loads of his paperwork and belongings.
We find it in the corner. A cardboard box, lid askew, papers spilling out.
Kit kneels beside it. Starts sorting through.
‘These are old,’ he says. ‘Bills. Council tax. Some stuff from her grandfather—’
‘There.’ I spot it. An envelope, already opened, the paper inside folded and refolded. The handwriting on the front is faded but legible.
Gareth Trelawney. Trelawney Cottage. Salt Bay.
It’s our mother’s writing. I might not have seen it in a very long time, but I recognise the slope and curves. Can almost visualise her holding a pen and writing it.
Kit’s hands are shaking as he pulls out the letter. My gaze is on his face, so I see him swallow.
We sit there in the gloom, the naked light bulb swinging from the ceiling, circling us in a small ring of light.
‘Together,’ I say.
Kit holds the letter so we can both see, and makes a sound; low, wounded.
I keep reading.
‘This is killing me,’ Kit whispers and his face crumples. It’s not just sadness – something deeper. Something breaking apart that’s been held together with wire and stubbornness for twenty years.
‘She didn’t leave us.’ His voice is barely a whisper. ‘She didn’t— All this time I thought—’
He can’t finish. Drops his head, shoulders shaking.
I put my hand on his back. Don’t know what else to do.
‘Every girlfriend,’ he manages. ‘Every time someone got close, I’d think, why would they stay? My own mother didn’t stay.’ He drags in a breath. ‘And she did. She tried to stay. She tried to come back. And he—’
He looks toward the window. Toward the village. Toward the cottage where our father is sleeping, unaware that his sons have just discovered the full weight of what he stole from them.
‘I built my whole life around being someone people leave,’ Kit says. ‘And it was a lie.’
My throat closes. All those years. Every birthday wishing she’d remember, wishing she’d care. And she did. She did care. Dad just made sure we’d never know.
We flick through the letters, until we find an envelope, still tacky with dust. This one is newer, not so faded. The Queen on the stamp is older. I unfold it, scanning the date.
I’m pretty sure Kit stops breathing.
I grab the torch, angle it closer, certain I’ve misread.
‘Brothers,’ Kit says. His voice is wrecked. ‘She knows about us. She’s been asking about us.’
We sit in the dark, in Brynn’s cottage, surrounded by the wreckage of everything we thought we knew.
A sister.
We have a sister?
Lily. She was thirteen when Mum wrote this – she’d be nineteen now, maybe twenty. Growing up in Bristol, wondering why her brothers never came.
‘The address,’ I say. ‘She said it’s at the bottom.’
Kit turns the letter over. A Bristol address, written in careful letters.
‘Didn’t Tom say Brynn had gone to Bristol for family stuff? Do you think Brynn has gone to find her?’ Kit asks. He sounds dazed, and I get it, because my head is thudding like I’ve been hit by a freight train. ‘She wasn’t running away from you, brother – she might be finding our family.’
‘We have to go,’ I say.
‘What about Dad?’
‘What about him?’ The anger doesn’t surprise me – sharp and hot, rising up like the tide. ‘He lied to us for twenty years. He burned her letters. He kept us from our mother, from our sister, from—’
‘I know.’ Kit’s voice is quiet. ‘But he’s still sick. We can’t just leave him.’
‘Tom.’ The name comes out before I think it through. ‘Tom can check on him.’
‘Tom who’s a vet?’
‘He’s practically a doctor.’
Kit stares at me. ‘He treats sheep, Jude.’
‘Same basic concept. Stubborn, prone to wandering off, doesn’t listen to instructions.’ I’m already standing, already moving. ‘I’ll call him. He owes me a favour anyway.’
‘What favour?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Get Maisie. We’re going to Bristol.’
Tom answers on the third ring.
‘Jude? How are you? I was going to call in a bit, check in. Is Reuben home yet?’
‘I need you to check on Dad.’ I don’t mean to sound like an uptight bastard, but now I know where Brynn is, where my mum is, my sister … I just want to teleport there and get all this resolved.
A pause. ‘Your dad? Why, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong. I just – I have to go somewhere. Kit’s coming with me. We might be gone a day or two.’
‘And you want me to nursemaid your dad?’ Tom’s voice is distracted, a faint bleating audible in the background.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Birthing a sheep.’
‘Right, lambing season. Right, well, my dad should be easy in comparison. Can you? It’s important.’
‘Important how?’
I take a breath. ‘I’m going to find Brynn. I’m going to Bristol. The district nurse is coming in, too, but…’ I could tell him that I’m also hoping to find my mum and my mystery sister, but I don’t. Finding Brynn is reason enough.
‘Right,’ Tom says finally. ‘I’ll pop round in the morning. Check he hasn’t choked on his own stubbornness. I’m practically a doctor.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘Great minds.’ I can hear him grinning through the phone. ‘Go get her, mate. And Jude?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Don’t muck it up this time.’
Kit’s waiting by the truck, Maisie half-asleep on his shoulder.
‘Okay, get in, let’s do this.’
We load up. Maisie in the back, already curling into the blanket Kit brought. Kit in the passenger seat, the letters in his lap.
I start the engine.
‘Bristol,’ Kit says. ‘Four hours if we don’t stop.’
‘We’ll stop. Maisie needs breakfast.’
‘Maisie needs to meet her grandmother.’ Kit’s voice is thick. ‘And her aunt. Christ, Jude. She’s got an aunt she’s never met.’
Maisie stirs in the back seat. ‘Are we going on an adventure?’
‘Something like that, sweetheart.’
She’s out within seconds. The easy sleep of children, unburdened by the weight of what they don’t know.
I pull out of the village. The road unspools ahead, dark and empty, leading toward a woman who went to find my mother because I couldn’t.
Because she’s brave where I’m not.
Because she does the hard things while I hide.
Not anymore.
Kit’s quiet beside me, the letters clutched in his hands. Our mother’s words. Our sister’s existence. Everything we should have known, finally found.
‘Jude,’ Kit says.
‘Yeah?’
‘Thank you. For doing this. For—’ He stops. ‘I couldn’t have read those alone.’
‘You’re not alone.’ I keep my eyes on the road. ‘We’re brothers. Whatever happens next, we face it together.’
The headlights cut through the darkness. Somewhere ahead, Bristol waits. Helen. Lily.
Brynn.
I press the accelerator a little harder.