Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
ISLA
Reuben arrived at seven on the dot, gruff but not unkind, nodding at me over Maisie’s head before ushering her out the door with her lunchbox and backpack. I’d managed breakfast without incident – cereal, orange juice (no pulp), and Maisie’s cheerful chatter about a school project on sea creatures.
‘You’re coming back tonight, right?’ she’d asked, so casual it nearly broke me.
‘If your dad wants me to.’
‘He does.’ She’d said it with such certainty, such simple faith, that I’d had to turn away to hide the sudden sting in my eyes.
Now I’m back at Salt Cottage, checking the time and wondering if Kit is back at the harbour yet and how long it might be until he’s finished being Kit the Fisherman and when he might get to kiss me again.
A wild wind has picked up, snapping the wisteria that crawls over the front of the cottage against the windowpanes.
The sky is dark and pregnant with a heavy expectation.
Welcome to Cornwall, where the weather changes its mind every three minutes.
Maggie’s wardrobe stands open like a reproach. I’ve been putting this off – the sorting, the packing, the final letting go. But Kit’s words from this morning won’t leave me alone.
You don’t have to keep one foot out the door.
So I start pulling things out. Cardigans in soft wool, hand-knitted and loved into shape. Floral dresses that smell faintly of lavender and the sea. A waxed jacket with ‘Sand Bay Lighthouse Committee’ stitched on the breast pocket.
Each piece is a memory.
I hold up a blue cardigan, the one she wore constantly that last summer before I left. Ten years ago, sitting in this very cottage, Maggie had wrapped it around my shoulders when I’d confessed about the opportunity in LA.
‘Go,’ she’d said simply. ‘Chase it. See what you’re made of.’
‘But what if I fail?’
‘Then you come home and try something else. That’s what home is for, my love. A place to leave from. A place to return to.’
Not like my mother. Never like my mother.
I sink onto the bed, cardigan clutched to my chest, and the memories I’ve been holding back come flooding through.
My mother’s voice, sharp and cold: ‘Hollywood? Don’t be ridiculous, Isla. You’re not special enough for that.’
Ten years old, showing her a school play programme where I’d been cast as the lead: ‘It’s a school play, not the West End. Don’t get ideas above your station.’
Fifteen, and crying after returning from Sea Salt Bay and leaving Kit behind with all these unexplored feelings still churning through me like high tide over sand: ‘Stop being so dramatic. This is why no one likes you.’
Seventeen, acceptance letter to drama school: ‘I’m not paying for you to prance around pretending to be someone you’re not.’
Every dream dismissed. Every hope diminished. Every time I’d dared to want something, she’d made sure I knew I didn’t deserve it.
But Maggie – Maggie had been different.
‘Your mother’s afraid,’ she’d told me once, when I was sixteen and raw from another cutting remark. ‘Afraid you’ll succeed where she failed.’
‘I don’t understand why she hates me.’
‘She doesn’t hate you, love. She hates herself. And she’s determined to make sure you hate yourself too, so you’ll stay small. Stay manageable. Stay hers.’
‘You must hate the fact she married your son.’ I’d swiped at my face, trying to pull myself together.
Maggie had stared out of the window of the cottage she’d lived in since her own marriage.
Grandpa died when I was only a baby; he was a fisherman, but it was a heart attack, not the sea, that had claimed him.
Then she’d turned to me, eyes bright, sharp.
‘I’d say they make a very happy couple. Come on, love, let’s go and put the kettle on.
I’ll see if I’ve got some of those cheese scones I can refresh. ’
Margaret Maggie Quinn. Keep Calm and Carry the Fuck Along.
I miss her so much. It hits me, this gaping wound of regret and longing. I bend over, pressing the cardigan to my face, breathing in the faded scent of Maggie’s perfume.
Kit was right. I’ve been running from good things my whole life.
From the possibility of what Kit and I could have been ten years ago.
From this cottage, this village, this belonging.
Running because my mother taught me that wanting things – wanting to be loved, to be seen, to matter – was dangerous. A current that could sweep you away.
And then Marcus had confirmed every terrible lesson she’d instilled.
You’re only valuable if you’re useful. You’re only worth loving if you’re grateful. Don’t ask for too much. Don’t think you deserve better.
But Maggie had shown me something different. And Kit – God, Kit, I think, would keep showing me every day if I was brave enough to let him.
You’re allowed to be here. In my bed, in my house, in my life.
How can I, though, when he doesn’t know the dark things I’ve got locked inside? That beneath the gloss, the shine, there’s this broken little doll abandoned in a sandpit that doesn’t know how to be whole again.
I’m being unfair to him by not telling him the truth.
Can I tell him the truth?
Can those words find their way out of my mouth and into the air, into existence?
I’m folding the cardigan carefully, thinking about keeping it instead of donating it, thinking about the words I could tell Kit. It’s late afternoon – he should be on his way back soon, before the worst of the weather hits.
That’s when the sound cuts through the cottage like a knife.
The RNLI siren.
One long, wailing note that sinks into my bones and refuses to let go.
I freeze, cardigan falling from my hands.
Kit.
The siren wails again.
I’m down the stairs and at the door, shoving my feet into boots, grabbing my coat.
I yank open the door and the wind nearly tears it from my hands.
Outside, it hits with the vicious lash of a personal vendetta.
Rain lashes sideways, sharp as shrapnel.
The wind steals your breath and doesn’t give it back.
The sky’s gone black, like someone dropped ink over the sun, and the lane is already turning into a river. It’s hard to breathe. Harder to see.
But doors are opening, boots splash in puddles, and people come. Silently. As one. Like tide following moon.
Sea Salt Bay knows this drill. And somewhere ahead of me, past the rain, the wind, and the warning wail of the storm alarm—
He’s out there.
I don’t know how I know. I just do.
The pavement is slippery as I launch myself down the lane, around the corner and towards the door of the Ship.
Inside, bodies are packing in tight, voices low and tense.
Busier than a Friday night, busier than the quiz.
Steam curls from soaked coats, the fire trying its best to fight back the cold. It’s losing.
I scan the room, my pulse counting out names.
Ayo’s passing out mugs like it’s the war all over again. Whisky. Tea. Doesn’t matter. People need something to hold. Maisie’s curled on the bench by the fireplace, hair still in its braid from school, too pale, no colouring book in sight.
My heart thumps. Once. Twice. Then I think it ceases beating altogether. There’s a silence outside of me, inside of me, that’s threatening to swallow me up.
A fear.
Unwarranted but niggling under my skin.
The familiar shape of Reuben moves in my peripheral vision and I spin to face him. ‘Where’s Kit? Did he make it back to the harbour before the storm hit? Is he out with the rescue?’
Reuben looks up. And for the first time, in his gruff, bear-like face I see something I never have before.
Fear.
Reuben doesn’t blink. ‘Isla, love.’ But there’s hesitation there as he leaves his friends and steps over to me, hands on my shoulders, firm and soothing. Except the look in his gaze, the pain, it’s putting the fear of God into me.
‘Isla.’ Every word seems to take an age. ‘Kit. Didn’t. Make. It. Back. Before. The. Storm. Hit.’ His words are coming up at me as though from the depth of the sea. Muffled. Incoherent. Just noises that don’t make sense.
‘No, he said he’d be back by tea. He said he would.’
Reuben’s face crumples momentarily, before smoothing out into his battered but stoic fisherman’s mask. ‘He radioed saying the engine failed. Dropped a beacon. We lost him after that.’
‘What kind of engine fail?’ My voice is tight, fraying around the edges. My knees go weak. ‘So he’s not part of the rescue? He’s the one in need of rescue?’
Reuben nods. ‘Launched ten minutes ago. Jude’s on her. Peter and Tom too. Cal will steer him back, I know he will.’
Maisie’s voice slices clean through the noise. ‘He promised he’d be back for tea. He said the three of us would have tea together.’
I walk over to her and kneel until we’re eye to eye, rain still dripping from my hair. ‘Your dad doesn’t make promises lightly. And he doesn’t break them.’
‘Except this storm is really, really big.’
I don’t have a good answer for that. She’s not wrong: the windows of the Ship are rattling. It makes me realise that yesterday’s rain and wind was just the warm-up act. I pull her in to me, hold her close. She’s shaking. Or maybe I am.
Nina steps over and slips a blanket around both of us, and I meet her gaze.
‘Come on,’ she mutters. ‘We need to believe in something, don’t we?’
The minutes stretch into an hour. Every new gust of wind draws eyes to the windows. Every crackle of the radio pulls the room taut.
I join the silent rotation that’s formed – people moving back and forth to the bar for refills, to the windows to check the sky, and to the radio for updates that don’t come. The rhythm of collective vigil.
‘Do they have a location?’ I ask Reuben when I find myself beside him again.
He nods. ‘Last known coordinates from the beacon. But in this?’ He gestures to the window. ‘Everything shifts. Currents, visibility, time. The Mary Jane could be half a mile from where the beacon dropped by now.’
‘Could she stay afloat?’ The question feels like swallowing glass.