Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
KIT
Iwake to silence.
Not the bad kind – not the heavy, grief-soaked silence that’s filled this cottage since they pulled me from the water. This is different. Lighter. Like the world’s taken a breath and held it, waiting.
There’s still a melody threading through my head. ‘The Parting Glass’. The way the whole pub sang it last night, voices layered and rough and true. The way Isla’s voice blended with mine even though she didn’t know all the words.
I can’t remember the last time I slept without nightmares.
Can’t remember the last time I woke up feeling something other than the crushing weight of everything I’ve lost.
But this morning, there’s something else. Something that feels dangerously close to hope.
I reach for Isla.
My hand finds empty sheets. Cool to the touch.
For a second, panic spikes – that old fear that everyone leaves, everyone always leaves – but I push it down. She’s probably downstairs. Making tea. Burning toast. Doing that thing where she mutters at the kettle like it’s personally offended her.
I smile despite myself.
Christ, I’ve got it bad.
I open my eyes properly, blinking against the pale morning light filtering through the curtains. The white walls stare back at me. White ceiling. White room. The same sterile nothing it’s been for two years.
Maybe it’s time.
Maybe it’s time to paint it.
What colour though?
Blue, like the rest of the house? Blue like the sea? That feels too obvious. Too much like admitting the ocean owns me, which it does, but I don’t need to advertise it on my bedroom walls.
Yellow? Too cheerful. I’m not that far gone yet.
Green, maybe. A soft green. Like—
Like Isla’s eyes.
Fuck.
I stare at the ceiling and the reality settles over me like a blanket I didn’t know I needed.
I want to paint this room green because of a woman’s eyes.
I want to wake up to a colour that reminds me of her.
I want her here. Not just for now. Not just until the grief eases or she gets bored or Hollywood calls her back. I want her here for good. For always. For every morning and every nightmare and every stupid decision to paint a room a colour I’ve never even considered before.
It’s official.
I’ve got it bad.
So bad that last night, standing by the harbour with stars overhead and her hand in mine, I told her I loved her. Meant it. Didn’t even hesitate.
And she said it back.
She said she was staying.
The thought fills my chest with something warm and terrifying and good.
Maisie’s already attached. Asked me last night if Isla was staying forever, like it was the most natural question in the world. Like she couldn’t imagine a future where Isla wasn’t in it.
Neither can I.
And that should scare me more than it does.
I swing my legs out of bed, feet hitting the cold floorboards. Pull on the jeans I left in a heap last night, find yesterday’s T-shirt. The cottage is quiet. No sound of the kettle. No footsteps downstairs.
Maybe she’s asleep on the sofa. Didn’t want to wake me by coming back to bed after she got up for one reason or the other.
Or maybe she went back to Salt Cottage to get some clean clothes.
That thought sits wrong in my gut, but I ignore it.
She’s here. Somewhere. She promised.
And for the first time in twenty years, since my mum left, I’m letting myself believe someone when they promise to stay.
I head for the stairs, already planning breakfast. Scrambled eggs, maybe. Toast that’s not burnt. Coffee strong enough to strip paint.
I’ll make it for her. For us.
Because that’s what you do when someone stays.
You make breakfast.
You paint the walls green.
You build a life.
The stairs creak under my feet – the third one especially, the one that always wakes Maisie when I try to sneak past her room at night. But this morning, there’s no small voice calling out ‘Dad?’ No padding of feet. Just the old wood settling, the cottage breathing around me.
The kitchen should smell like coffee. Or burnt toast. Or that vanilla-and-salt scent that follows Isla around like she’s carrying the sea in her hair.
It doesn’t.
It smells like nothing. Like a room that’s been empty all night.
The kettle’s cold when I touch it. The mugs sit in their neat row on the windowsill, unused. The breadboard is clean. No crumbs. No evidence of breakfast started and abandoned.
‘Isla?’
My voice falls flat in the empty space.
I check the living room. The sofa still has the dent from where I sat last night, watching her and Maisie draw starfish. The blanket’s folded. The cushions straightened.
Too neat. Too tidy. Like someone’s covered their tracks.
My chest tightens.
She’s probably just gone back to Salt Cottage. Wanted a change of clothes.
That’s normal. That’s fine. That’s—
I head for the door, barefoot, not bothering with shoes. The cobbles are cold and damp under my feet, still wet from last night’s mist. The morning air tastes like salt and seaweed, that low-tide smell that means the harbour’s pulled back, exposing rocks and mud and secrets.
The lane’s empty. Just gulls crying overhead and the distant hush of waves.
Salt Cottage sits quiet at the top of the hill.
No lights on.
No sign of life.
I knock anyway. Three sharp raps that echo too loud in the morning stillness. ‘Isla? You in there?’
Nothing.
I try the handle. Locked.
She could be inside, sleeping, ignoring me because—
Because why? Why would she ignore me?
Ignoring the mud that’s oozing around my toes, I head around the back towards the kitchen and cup my hands against the window, peering through the glass into Maggie’s old kitchen.
Empty.
I try the door, but I already know it’s going to be locked. My gut is ice cold, squeezing.
The cottage looks exactly like it did the day she arrived. Like no one’s been living there at all.
My heart starts to pound.
I head back down the lane, moving faster now. Check the harbour – maybe she went for a walk, needed to clear her head, wanted to watch the sunrise.
The harbour wall is empty. No figure standing against the grey morning light.
Just boats bobbing on their moorings and the Mary Jane sitting heavy in the water, waiting for me to decide if I can ever set foot on her again.
The café. Maybe she went to help Nina. Maybe—
The café’s dark. Closed. I have no idea if it will open, or when.
I’m jogging now. Back to the cottage. Up the stairs. Into my room like maybe I missed something, maybe she’s there and I’m being an idiot, maybe—
The bed’s still empty.
Her side of the duvet is thrown back, the sheet cool and smooth like she’s been gone for hours.
I check the bathroom. Her toothbrush—
It’s not there.
The spot where she left it on the sink, next to mine. Empty.
I yank open the drawers. The spare clothes she’d put here only days ago after the accident, when she didn’t want to leave me alone – gone. The jumper she borrowed from me last week. The socks. The—
All of it. Gone.
My breathing’s too fast. Too shallow.
I grab my phone from the nightstand, fumble it open, call her.
It rings once. Then goes straight to voicemail.
‘Isla. It’s me. Call me back. Please.’
I try again.
Straight to voicemail.
Again.
Voicemail.
She’s turned it off.
My phone buzzes in my hand. Notifications I haven’t checked yet. Messages.
A missed call from Jude half an hour ago.
I sink down onto the edge of the bed, phone heavy in my hand, staring at the white walls I was going to paint green.
For her.
Because she was staying.
Because she promised.
The room smells like her still. Vanilla and salt. Like she was just here. Like she might come back any second and laugh at me for panicking, for thinking the worst, for not trusting that she meant it when she said—
My phone buzzes again.
A text from Jude: Brother, have you seen this? Is Isla okay?
Followed by a link.
My thumb hovers over it.
I don’t want to open it.
I know – I fucking know – that whatever’s on the other side of that link is why she’s gone.
I open it anyway.