Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
KIT
The world moves like it’s underwater. Distant. Muffled. Colours muted, filtered through fog.
I’m sitting staring at a wall I’ve seen ten thousand times but somehow can’t recognise. My body doesn’t feel like mine. Heavy as hell. Everything aches. Inside’s worse. The bruises throb under the dressings, but the real pain? That’s in my gut. Deeper than bone. Doesn’t stop.
Maisie sits cross-legged on the floor, closer to the TV than I’d normally allow.
Some cartoon flickers across the screen – bright colours, quick movements, meaningless noise.
She’s pretending to watch it, but I catch her glancing back at me every few minutes, her small face tight with worry she shouldn’t have to carry.
Jude’s somewhere behind me, banging mugs, kettle hissing. I can’t track it. Dad’s by the window. Still as stone.
The storm has passed. Radio says it tracked west, out to sea. Reports of damage all along the coast. Boats lost. Roads flooded.
One man missing.
Peter. His name’s a weight I can’t shift. In my chest. My throat. Behind my fucking eyes.
Peter, who went in after me.
Peter, who got the rope around me. Peter, who didn’t come back.
I close my eyes, but it doesn’t help. The sea is still there, playing behind my eyelids like a film reel I can’t shut off.
Black water. Blacker sky. The Mary Jane listing, the wave that pulled me off deck.
The cold shock when I hit the water. The desperate struggle to stay afloat as waves crashed over my head, again and again and again.
Then the lifeboat. Jude’s voice, shouting through the wind.
Peter, jumping in without hesitation.
His hand, gripping my life jacket. The rope around my chest. His face, close to mine, shouting words I couldn’t hear but understood anyway: I’ve got you. You’re safe.
Then being dragged towards the lifeboat. The wave that separated us. The weight of water crushing down.
And Peter, gone.
Because of me.
‘Dad?’ Maisie’s voice slices right through the noise in my head. I blink. She’s watching me. ‘Dad, you’re doing the thing again.’
‘What thing?’ My voice sounds wrong. Scraped raw.
‘The not-breathing thing.’
I exhale, hadn’t realised I was holding my breath. ‘Sorry, love.’
‘Are you thinking about the storm?’
The simplicity of the question scrapes against my frayed nerves. I nod, not trusting my voice.
She climbs up beside me, fits herself under my arm like she always has. Like muscle memory. ‘I was really scared,’ she says quietly. ‘When they said you were in the water.’
I put my arm around her, automatic, protective. ‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault the boat broke.’
Isn’t it?
But it is my fault Peter went in after me. My fault he didn’t come back.
My fault Nina’s world has shattered into pieces no one can put back together.
I was alone on the Mary Jane. Should have taken crew, but I didn’t.
Told myself it was just a quick trip – check the pots, haul a few strings, be back before lunch.
Head full of Isla. The way she’d looked at me that morning, sleep-soft and smiling. The dangerous hope blooming in my chest that maybe, maybe this time would be different.
I missed the weather update. Didn’t check the forecast at noon like I always do. Didn’t notice the barometer dropping until the squall line was already visible on the horizon.
By then, the Mary Jane’s engine was sputtering. Fuel line issue – something I should have caught during maintenance, would have caught if I hadn’t been so fucking distracted thinking about Isla in my bed instead of the job.
Engine died completely twenty minutes later. Dead in the water with a Force 9 bearing down.
The rest – the waves, the lifeboat, Peter jumping in to get the line on me, the wave that took him – that all happened because I went out alone, distracted, negligent.
Because I was too busy thinking about a woman to do my fucking job properly.
The guilt’s alive. Coiled tight in my gut, chewing through whatever’s left of me, tightening around my throat, crushing my ribs from inside.
It’s a fact so achingly obvious it’s gnawing into my bones.
People leave me. It’s a fact.
I can still see Mum’s suitcase by the door. Still hear her voice, tight and exhausted: ‘I can’t do this anymore, Christopher. I just can’t.’ I was ten. Jude eight. The spring before Isla arrived. Mum just … walked out.
I didn’t cry. Just sat on my bed and started making a list of all the ways I could be better. Good enough for her to come back.
Dad found me on the harbour wall that night, staring at the water like it had answers.
‘She’ll come back,’ I’d said. Desperate. Believing.
He shook his head. Slow. Final. ‘No, son. Some people just … leave.’
And they do. Mum. Isla. Jess.
Now Peter.
People leave because I’m not worthy of them staying. And Peter – loyal, steadfast, honourable Peter – has now gone because I’m not even worthy of calling myself a fisherman.
‘I love you, Daddy.’ Maisie squeezes her arms around my waist and I kiss the top of her head.
‘I love you, too, Mais.’
I do love her so much, but I’m not worthy of her either. Definitely not worthy of the implicit trust she puts in me every day.
With a final squeeze of her arms and a kiss on my cheek, she slips away, leaving me staring at the wall.
‘Kit.’ Jude appears in the doorway, mug in hand. ‘Drink this.’
I shake my head. ‘Not thirsty.’
‘It’s not a request.’
The tea tastes like nothing. Like the nothing that’s hollowed me out since they pulled me from the water. Since I watched them search for Peter long after I knew – we all knew – he was gone.
Jude sits on the coffee table across from me, leaning forward, elbows on knees. ‘You need to eat something. And then rest.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You don’t have a choice,’ Jude says. ‘Not with Maisie watching. Not after what Nina’s lost.’
Nina. The thought of her makes me physically ill. The look on her face when they confirmed Peter was gone – I’ll never forget it. The slow drain of hope. The terrible, blank stillness that followed.
‘Have they—’ I can’t finish the question.
Jude shakes his head. ‘Not yet. Coastguard’s still looking, but—’ He glances at Maisie, chooses his words carefully. ‘But they don’t expect to find him soon.’
Not soon. Not ever. Not alive. All the things he’s not saying crowd the room.
‘I should be out there. I should be the one looking.’
‘You’re in no state. Besides, you’ve done enough.’
The words land like a punch, though I know he doesn’t mean them that way.
I close my eyes again, and the sea is right there waiting. The waves. The dark. The cold. The crushing weight of water.
The sea’s still in my ears. Roaring. Hissing. Like it’s carved out space and never plans on giving it back.
‘I can’t do this,’ I whisper, too low for Maisie to hear.
Jude’s hand finds my shoulder, squeezes once. ‘Yes, you can. One minute at a time.’
The minutes stretch. The room darkens as evening falls, but no one moves to turn on lights. The TV glow paints Maisie’s face in shifting blues and greens. Jude paces between kitchen and living room until his phone beeps. My stomach lurches. They’ve found him. Found Peter…
His gaze meets mine. ‘Just Dad, they’ve righted the Mary Jane. Should be able to bring her back in.’
I don’t care though.
I never want to set foot on that boat again.
The waves keep rolling in my head. Endless. Relentless. Drowning me one breath at a time.
A knock at the door jolts through the quiet.
I don’t move. Can’t. Dad, who’s swapped Watch Kit Duty with Jude, glances at me, then goes to answer. I hear the creak of the hinges, the murmur of a voice too low to make out. A woman’s voice.
Then soft footsteps in the hallway.
And then she’s there. Isla. Soaked through, eyes raw, hair dripping rain down her cheeks.
For a second, she just looks at me. Like she’s making sure I’m still real.
She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t hesitate. Just crosses the room and kneels in front of me, her hands finding mine where they rest lifeless on my knees.
Her touch is warm. Real. The first thing that’s felt real since they pulled me from the sea.
‘Kit,’ she says, just my name, but it breaks something loose inside me.
I try to speak, but there are no words. Just a sound that tears from my throat, raw and wounded.
Isla moves without hesitation, rising from her knees to sit beside me, arms slipping around my waist. And suddenly I’m holding onto her, face buried in her hair, body shaking with the grief I can’t contain anymore.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. Over and over like it’ll undo it. It won’t. But it doesn’t stop me from holding on tighter.
I cling to her like a drowning man, which is what I am – drowning in guilt, in grief, in the knowledge that Peter is gone and I’m still here. Her sweater grows damp under my face, but she doesn’t pull away. Just holds me tighter, one hand coming up to cradle the back of my head.
‘It’s on me,’ I rasp. ‘He went in for me. I shouldn’t have been out there.’
‘No.’ Her voice is fierce, surprising in its intensity. ‘No, it’s not your fault. It’s the storm. The sea. Not you.’
‘I was the one stupid enough to be out there.’
‘And he was brave enough to follow. That doesn’t make either of you wrong. Just human.’
But she wasn’t there. She didn’t see his face just before the wave hit. Didn’t hear him shout my name as the current pulled us apart.
‘He’s gone,’ I say, and saying it makes it real in a way I’ve been fighting since they gave up the search. ‘He’s gone, and I’m still here, and I don’t know how to—’
‘Come on,’ she says, hands warm on my face. ‘One breath at a time. You’ve done harder things than this.’
I follow her lead, matching my broken rhythm to her steady one. In. Out. In. Out. Slowly, the roaring in my ears subsides. The weight on my chest eases, just enough to draw a full breath.
‘That’s it,’ she whispers, thumbs brushing away tears I didn’t know I was shedding. ‘Just stay with me. Right here.’
I become aware of the room again. Jude standing in the doorway, watching. Dad, returned to the window, shoulders rigid. Maisie, still beside me, small hand curled into the fabric of my sweater.
And Isla. Looking at me with eyes that hold neither pity nor judgement. Just steady, quiet strength.
‘You’re still here,’ I say hoarsely.
The corner of her mouth lifts – not a smile, but something close.
‘Where else would I be?’ She brushes hair back from my forehead with gentle fingers, while her other palm rests above my heart.
‘Every time a storm hits, I’ll be here.’ Her promise is so simple, it soothes me like a balm, luring me into a moment of peace.
But even as I lean into her, even as I want to believe it …
I know how promises work. They break. People leave.
And when Isla inevitably leaves – when the guilt and the grief and the weight of Peter’s death become too much – I’ll have no one to blame but myself.
For letting her in. For believing, again, that someone might stay.
‘I’ve got you,’ she says. And for tonight – just tonight – I let myself believe it.
Because tomorrow I’ll have to face Nina.
The village. Tomorrow I’ll have to figure out how to live in a world without Peter.
But tonight, I’ll let Isla hold me together.
Even though I know, deep down, that everyone leaves eventually. Even her.