Chapter 24 #2
Reuben’s face goes blank – that deliberate neutral look fishermen wear when they’re calculating odds they don’t like.
‘She’s a good boat,’ he says finally. ‘Kit keeps her sound.’
Not yes. Not no. Just facts.
‘And Kit’s a good swimmer,’ Bill adds from behind us. ‘Saved you enough times, Isla, if memory serves.’
I know he’s only trying to help. But those rescues were in summer – when the waves were just big enough to be exciting, and the worst I’d suffer was salty sinuses and a bruised ego when I realised I could stand up and touch sand.
This isn’t the same. This is a fishing boat with engine failure in a Force 9 gale.
This is Kit fighting for his life in black water.
This is different.
Another fisherman cuts in. ‘Pulled me out of the drink two summers back when we hit that reef. Boy swims like he’s half seal.’ The man nods like this makes everything okay.
It doesn’t.
It’s nearly an hour before the radio crackles.
We all freeze. Even the fire seems to still.
‘Ayo, turn it up,’ Reuben barks.
The whole room leans towards the radio like it’s holy as Ayo cranks up the volume.
A voice comes through, thin and fractured, but I know it’s Jude’s. ‘Sea Salt Bay – this is RNLI Six-One-Delta. We’ve got two – repeat – two in the water. Peter’s gone in after Kit. Last known position logged.’
A sound breaks out of me – something raw and cracked and not okay.
The pub erupts.
Nina drops her mug. Someone swears. Pretty sure I can hear someone offering up a Hail Mary.
I clutch at Nina’s arm. My mind is screaming, so loud it drowns the sounds of the pub. ‘What does that mean?’
She’s clutching me back. ‘I’m going down to the harbour.’ Her words come out a vow, and as much as I want to run down there to help, probably to hinder, but just to be there, I grab Nina’s hand. ‘Nina, no, it’s safer here.’
But she’s pulling away. ‘I have to.’
Fuck. She’s gone out of the door, leaving Ayo and the rest of the village staring after her. And I follow.
Because there are two in the water. Peter and Kit.
Kit is in the water.
The harbour’s a screaming mess of sea and spray and salt-slick stone. It wants to knock me over. I keep going. Everyone with sense is indoors. But I’m past sense, past reason. Past anything but the need to be closer to where Kit might be.
The storm has transformed the familiar inlet into something monstrous.
Waves crash against the stone wall with such force it vibrates through my boots.
Spray explodes upward, catching in the wind, raining down salty needles that sting my face, my hands.
The boats still moored buck and strain against their lines like panicked animals.
I’m drenched within seconds, coat useless against this onslaught. But I push forward anyway, one hand against the wall to steady myself as gusts try to snatch me sideways.
I’m not alone. Other figures huddle near the harbour master’s office – a makeshift coastal command post. Radios crackle. Voices shout coordinates and instructions that the wind tears to shreds.
A coastguard helicopter hovers in the distance, searchlight probing the churning darkness. Visibility can’t be more than a few metres in this weather. They’re searching blind.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ someone shouts near my ear. A woman in coastguard uniform, clipboard clutched to her chest. ‘It’s not safe.’
‘I know one of the missing,’ I yell back against the wind.
She hesitates, then nods once. Moves away without trying to make me leave. She understands. In places like this, everyone understands.
I find a spot along the wall where I can grip an old iron ring, anchoring myself against the wind. From here, I can see the harbour mouth where the lifeboat will return.
The rain doesn’t stop.
The sea has risen up in full fury now – waves smashing against the sea wall, spray leaping over the docks, wind howling like it’s got something personal to say.
I stand on the edge of the slipway, just out of reach of the worst of it, eyes locked on the harbour mouth. On the empty black.
The summer I was nine, there’d been a storm, Kit’s father had been out on the lifeboat, and I’d watched from the doorway of the Ship with Jude and Kit as the lighthouse blinked out over the water, illuminating the waves, the bob of the all-weather boat as it forced its way home.
But it’s currently useless, wrecked in a storm that must have been worse than this one.
Kit’s face had been pale in the darkness, but his shoulders had been pushed back. Brave. Determined.
I watch for the boat.
I wait.
Time loses meaning on the harbour wall. Minutes, hours, heartbeats – all just waymarks in a stretch of dread that seems to have no end.
More people arrive, Reuben among them, his tall frame easily recognisable even hunched against the weather. His face is a worn rock of worry as he takes up position at the harbour master’s door, where the radios live.
‘Any word?’ I shout when I make my way to him, the wind whipping my hair across my face.
He shakes his head, but his arm comes around my shoulders. ‘Peter’s still in the water. They’ve called in the Pencross boat for backup.’
Pencross is the next village over. Two rigs out means things have gone from bad to worse. I swallow hard, taste salt and fear.
‘What can I do?’
‘Nothing.’ The word is a gunshot. ‘None of us can. Just wait.’
So I wait. We all wait. The vigil moves from pub to harbour, bodies against the storm, faces into the wind.
A shout goes up from the harbour master’s office. The radio’s crackling again, but I can’t make out words. Just Reuben’s face, suddenly animated, his mouth moving.
‘They’ve got something,’ someone yells. ‘Port side, two hundred metres!’
I strain to see past the harbour mouth, into the black beyond. The coastguard helicopter has moved closer to shore, its searchlight focused on a patch of sea.
A dot of orange appears in the darkness. Then another. Reflective strips on life jackets catching the helicopter’s beam.
The lifeboat.
It’s moving erratically, fighting the waves, but it’s coming in. The whole harbour holds its breath as it creeps closer, metres feeling like miles.
‘How many?’ someone shouts.
No one answers. No one can be sure yet.
I count shadows on the deck. One, two, three – four… They’re moving, hard to distinguish.
The lifeboat breaches the harbour mouth, and suddenly the water is calmer, the waves less violent. It surges towards the slip, engine at full throttle.
Hands reach out to steady it as it comes alongside. Lines are thrown, caught, secured. Voices shout instructions that blend into a wall of sound.
I push forward, desperate for a clear view, but Reuben holds me back. Salty sea spray rushes into my mouth as I try and fight away.
‘Let them work,’ he says.
First figure off the boat: Jude. Soaked, shivering. One arm in a makeshift sling.
Tom is next, hand on Jude’s shoulder.
Third: Cal, who’s supporting…
Fourth: Kit.
My knees nearly buckle. He’s alive. Standing, though barely. His face is a mess of cuts and bruises, one eye swollen shut. But he’s breathing. Moving. Here.
But no one else follows.
No Peter.
Nina pushes through the crowd, face ghostly pale. ‘Where is he? Where’s Peter?’
Jude shakes his head, says something I can’t hear. Nina crumples, would have fallen if Reuben didn’t step forward and catch her.
I can’t process it. Can’t understand what’s happened. My focus narrows to Kit – being guided to the waiting ambulance, blanket around his shoulders, blood on his temple.
He doesn’t see me. Doesn’t turn. Just moves with the slow shuffle of someone operating on empty.
The paramedic is trying to guide him into the ambulance, but then like a man suddenly waking from a nightmare, he resists, pulling back, shaking his head, pointing back to the water, like he wants to dive straight into the deep dark void.
Kit shoves past the ambulance crew, eyes wild, shouting into the storm. ‘He’s still out there! We go back. We go back!’
The medic says something. Kit’s face contorts. Grief. Rage. Shock. He’s pushing, fighting, face torn, his skin as pale as moonlight. Jude stops him, hands on shoulders, face close.
Whatever he says makes Kit go still.
Too still.
Like something vital has been extinguished.
And I understand with sickening clarity: Peter isn’t coming back.
He went in after Kit. And now he’s gone.