Chapter 3 #2
Maisie’s voice. Shit. How is it the end of the school day already?
My muscles freeze; there’s this wild thudding in my chest. I could punch Jude.
I always try so hard to keep things upbeat in front of Maisie.
I turn, forcing a smile. She’s behind us, hair wild in the wind, school jumper askew, and somehow I didn’t hear her coming.
That’s a parenting red flag right there.
‘No one,’ I snap too fast.
‘Just an old friend of your dad’s.’ Jude, traitorous twat, grins at his niece and reaches out to wipe a sticky spot of what looks like jam from the corner of her mouth. ‘A lady friend.’ He wags his brows. So damn childish.
I could throttle him.
Maisie lights up like it’s Christmas morning.
‘What’s her name? Who is it? Is she on that app?
’ I think back to her swiping at the kitchen counter this morning.
Is she really ready for me to move on? Jess seems like only yesterday.
This feels like one of those trick parenting hurdles where if you fuck it up your kid will spend the rest of their life in therapy.
‘Maisie,’ I sigh, but she’s already leaning in towards Jude. I don’t know who’s worse at gossip. ‘How was school? And shall we ask why you are walking around when you’re supposed to be at the café being looked after?’ I ask in a vain attempt to stop this conversation before it derails.
They both ignore me and my sigh whistles through my teeth.
‘Isla Quinn,’ Jude says, like he’s announcing the Queen.
Silence. I swear the sea even stills for a second.
Then Maisie’s big and dark blue eyes widen to dinner plates. ‘Like the actress?’ Her little rosebud mouth, which is all Jess and my poor broken heart, opens into an O. ‘Isla Quinn. You know Isla Quinn and you’ve never told me?’
My stomach turns and tightens. ‘How do you even know who that is?’
She gives me the look. The one that says Dad, please, you’re ancient.
‘Everyone knows Isla Quinn. She was in The Lighthouse and Burning Days. We watched Moonrise at Lily’s house.’
Christ. Moonrise. That one where Isla cries in the rain with the guy in the leather jacket.
I turned it off. Not because it was bad.
Because it wasn’t. Jess had laughed, tucking her feet up with those slipper socks on she always wore, especially when the chemo started and she was always cold.
‘Poor baby with the bruised heart.’ She’d wiggled her toes into the gaps between my ribs and I’d rolled my eyes.
Isla Quinn said she’d come back, but didn’t. My wife didn’t get the choice.
The memory is raw and catching at the back of my throat.
‘She’s just someone who used to holiday here,’ I say. Clipped. Final. ‘She moved away. Let’s move on.’
‘You’re so grumpy.’ Maisie’s mouth turns down at the edges, before her blue gaze lights up with her next thought. ‘Was she your girlfriend?’ Maisie asks, all innocent eyes and inconvenient curiosity.
Jude snorts. I shoot him a look that I hope will turn him to stone, or at best make him just disappear.
‘No,’ I say. Not quite a lie. ‘She wasn’t.’
Maisie doesn’t press. Just shrugs and scuffs her foot against the dock like it doesn’t matter. But I know my kid. She’s storing it. Waiting for the right moment to bring it back.
‘Go on, then.’ I nod towards the path. ‘Back to Nina’s. Five o’clock, remember? I don’t want you running around, it’s getting dark. Stay in the café until I get there.’
‘Oh, here.’ She hands me a brown paper bag that’s leaking a buttery grease stain. ‘Doughnuts.’
Shoulder dropping a good few inches, I peer into the bag and then back at her innocent expression. ‘Saved us some, did you, Mais?’ I finish rubbing the sticky mark off from the corner of her mouth that Jude didn’t quite get.
She holds two fingers up, smile almost devilish, and then I watch her skip away, back to Nina’s Lavender Café where she will stay until I’ve finished for the day.
What’s that they say about raising a family?
It takes a village? Some shit like that.
Well, in our case it really does. Dad picks her up from school, but then she goes and sits in the café with Nina Ellis, pretending to do homework, but really gossiping with the customers.
Nina and Jess were good friends and I know Nina feels protective of Maisie.
I watch her go, that endless ache tinging around the edges of my heart.
Jude’s gaze is on me before she’s even out of earshot.
‘You gonna keep pretending you’re fine?’ he asks.
I go back to the engine. The bolt I need has gone somewhere under the bilge pump.
‘I’m not pretending anything,’ I say.
But it’s a lie. And we both know it. I’ve been pretending since Jess died, and the scariest part is that I’ve become so good at it that it’s almost starting to feel real.
‘Don’t do that again.’
‘What?’ He has the decency to look a bit guilty. ‘I didn’t think she’d know who—’
‘She’s eight, not stupid. And she doesn’t need to know about…’ I can’t even finish the sentence.
‘About what? About the life you had before you became Dad of the Year? Or the woman who might be staying in the cottage at the end of the lane – about fifty yards from your front door?’
My blood runs cold. ‘What?’
‘Maggie left her the place,’ Jude says quietly. ‘You didn’t know? Dad said Dot told him weeks ago.’
‘Why the hell didn’t Dad say anything?’ I meet my brother’s gaze. He shrugs. But we both know the answer neither of us wants to voice. He probably forgot. He’s been forgetting more and more recently.
I stare out at the water, at the horizon that never changes while everything else falls apart. Something twists in deep under my ribs – an old, familiar pain.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say eventually. ‘She won’t stay. She never does.’
Jude gives me a long look before picking up his toolbox. ‘Right. Well. I’ll leave you to your not caring, then.’ He walks away with that slight drag to his step that I’ve learned to stop noticing, but never stop feeling responsible for. Another epic Kit Harding fail.
I don’t watch him leave. Instead, I stay rooted to the spot, staring out at the sea like it might offer some wisdom. It doesn’t. It never does. Just rolls in and out, in and out, marking time.
Isla Quinn is back in Sea Salt Bay.
Isla Quinn is staying in Maggie’s cottage.
Isla Quinn, who left me standing in the rain outside the lighthouse ten years ago. I’d told her to go – to chase those dreams, to not let me hold her back. I’d meant but come back to me. I think all she heard was goodbye.
Goodbye is all I seem to hear.