Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
KIT
The apartment is exactly what I expected and nothing like I hoped.
White walls. White furniture. White everything. Like someone bought the most expensive version of nothing and called it a home. Floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over Hampstead Heath, the kind of view that probably costs more per month than I make in a year.
Art on the walls that looks expensive but says nothing. Books on shelves that have never been read, spines too perfect, arranged by colour like a fucking Instagram post.
There’s no mess. No personality. No photos of family or friends. No half-drunk cups of tea or shoes kicked off by the door or mail piled on the counter.
It’s a shell.
A beautiful, expensive shell where Isla Quinn has been living but not alive.
The only sign someone actually exists here is the laptop open on the coffee table and a plate of pastries that look three days old.
And Isla herself, standing in the middle of it all in my old T-shirt – Christ, that’s my shirt, the one I thought I’d lost – looking like she hasn’t slept or eaten or moved since she left my bed.
Maisie’s already wandered to the bookshelves, running her fingers along the spines. ‘Isla, you have so many books! Have you read all of them?’
‘Some,’ Isla says quietly. Her arms are wrapped around herself. Defensive. Scared.
She should be.
I’m not here to make this easy.
‘You left Sea Salt Bay to come and find me?’ she asks, voice barely above a whisper.
‘Yes.’
‘You drove all this way—’
‘Yes.’
‘Kit, you didn’t have to—’
‘I did.’ I step closer. Not touching her yet. Not trusting myself to. ‘I told you I loved you, Isla. And I meant it. But now you’ve got to start giving me the truth.’
Her eyes dart to Maisie, still examining books. ‘I can’t.’
‘Yeah, you can.’
‘Not with—’ She gestures helplessly towards my little sidekick, the same sidekick who ate all the shortbread Nina provided us with and pointed out every yellow car she saw on a drive that took four hours and forty-five minutes.
Fine.
‘Mais,’ I call over. ‘Why don’t you go explore the rest of the flat? Maybe there’s a bedroom with a good view?’
Maisie looks between us, that too-smart expression on her face. ‘Are you going to argue?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Are you going to make Isla come home?’
‘I’m going to try.’
She considers this, then nods. ‘Okay. But don’t make her cry. She looks like she’s already been crying a lot.’
She disappears down the hallway, Mr Snuggles tucked under her arm. The moment she’s gone, I turn back to Isla. ‘Talk.’
‘Kit—’
‘No. No more “Kit” and then silence. No more running. You promised me you were staying and then you fucking left without even waking me up. So talk.’
Her jaw tightens. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘The truth. All of it. Every single thing you’ve been hiding from me for ten years.’
‘You saw the photos.’ Her voice breaks on the last word. ‘You know—’
‘I can tell you what I think I know if that helps you?’ I try and read her face, but it’s so pale and drawn, so tight around the edges that it’s almost blank of all expression.
I drag in a deep breath that hurts my throat like it’s the last gasp of clean air I might ever taste.
‘I think he’s a bastard who should be in prison.
I think those photos were taken without your consent.
’ I take another step closer. ‘I think you’ve been carrying this alone.
’ I reach for a strand of her hair and tuck it behind her ear.
‘But what I don’t know is why you didn’t tell me.
Why you thought running was better than trusting me with it. ’
‘Because I was ashamed!’ The words burst out of her.
Blooms of pink spread across her pale cheeks.
‘Because everyone I love has now seen me – seen what he—’ She presses her hands to her face.
‘Do you have any idea what it’s like? To know that people are going to look at those photos and think that I’m some sort of slut, that I just love to lie there, like that, and have someone take pictures of me.
Because that’s what all actresses want, right?
They’ll just sell whatever it takes to make it? ’
‘Do you have any idea what it’s like,’ I cut in, voice hard, ‘to wake up and find the woman I love gone? To realise she’d rather run to London alone than trust me enough to face it together?’
‘I was protecting you!’
‘From what?’
‘From having to deal with my mess! From having to explain to Maisie why her father is with someone the entire internet thinks is a liar! From—’
‘From seeing you as anything other than perfect?’ I’m shouting now. Can’t help it. Can’t keep the rage bottled up anymore. ‘Christ, Isla, I don’t need you to be perfect. I need you to be honest. I need you to trust that I’m strong enough to handle the truth.’
‘The truth is ugly.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘The truth is that I was stupid and naive and I let him—’
‘You didn’t let him do anything.’ I close the last shred of distance between us, grab her shoulders. Not hard. Just enough to make her look at me. ‘Whatever he did, it wasn’t your fault. So tell me. Tell me what happened.’
Her eyes are bright with tears. Angry tears. Terrified tears.
‘He drugged me, at least that’s what I realised the next day,’ she whispers.
‘It was a party to celebrate the wrap of filming. I had two glasses of wine, I didn’t want to drink, I was exhausted and then – then everything went fuzzy.
Wrong. I couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t stand up properly.
He said he’d take me home and that he’d make sure I was safe. ’
My hands tighten on her shoulders.
‘I woke up the next morning in his bed. I couldn’t remember anything, Kit. Just – fragments. The feel of sheets. Hands on me. But it was all underwater, you know? Like I was watching it happen to someone else.’
‘Isla—’
‘He showed me the photos.’ Her voice is hollow now. Flat. ‘That morning. On his phone. Dozens of them. Said I’d been “very enthusiastic” the night before. That I’d wanted it. That if I ever tried to leave him or speak against him, he’d make sure everyone knew what kind of girl I really was.’
Fury, white-hot and blinding, surges through me.
‘And you believed him?’
‘I was nineteen years old!’ The words come out sharp. Defensive. ‘I was alone in London with no one to call, no one to tell. And he was – he was Marcus Vale. Director. Producer. The man who could make or break my career. So yes, I believed him when he said no one would take my word over his.’
‘Why didn’t you come home?’
‘Because I couldn’t face you!’ She’s crying now, properly crying, tears streaming down her face, the tip of her nose turning pink.
‘Because you’d told me to chase my dreams and I’d done it and this is what I got.
Maggie had been so proud of me. I couldn’t come back to Sea Salt Bay and look any of you in the eye and tell you that the bright future you believed in turned into – into that. ’
I pull her against my chest. She resists for half a second, then collapses into me.
‘I missed Maggie’s last years because of him, because I knew she’d take one look at me and know the truth,’ she sobs into my shirt. ‘And you. I missed you because I was too ashamed to come back.’
‘You should have told me.’
‘How? How was I supposed to tell you that the girl you loved had been—’
‘Still loved,’ I correct roughly. ‘Still love. Present tense. Nothing he did changes that.’
She pulls back to look at me. ‘You still think I’m worth saving.’
My chest is so tight, it’s hard to form the words I need to say.
‘Isla. Every time you are swept away from me, I will dive to any depths to find you.’
‘Kit, your life is so beautiful, innocent, I feel like I’m darkness, a cloud that will blot out the happiness you deserve.’
‘Isla, I watched my wife slip away from her life.’ There’s a bastard stinging in the back of my eyes. ‘My life hasn’t been all roses. We both hold darkness.’
She doesn’t answer, so I focus on the feel of her chest rising and falling against mine. Until the silence becomes too much.
‘I’ll never let you suffer, never let anything happen to you. No one will ever touch you again. Or I’ll kill them.’
She laughs. Actually laughs.
‘Kit Save the Seal-Pups Harding is threatening death?’
I chuckle, bring her in close. ‘You make me feral.’
‘That makes two of us.’
‘Isla.’ I cup her face in my hands. ‘I saw you drugged. I saw you violated. I saw proof that Marcus Vale is a monster who belongs in prison. What I didn’t see was anything that makes me love you less.’
‘The whole world thinks I’m a liar.’
‘Fuck the whole world.’
‘Maisie’s classmates might have seen—’
I don’t tell her that they have. What would be the point? ‘Then I’ll deal with it. We’ll deal with it. Together. That’s what you do when you love someone. You don’t run. You don’t hide. You stand together and you fight.’
‘I broke my promise.’ Her voice is small. ‘I said I was staying and I ran.’
‘Yeah, you did. And I’m still furious about that.’ I let her see it – the anger, the hurt, the betrayal I felt waking up to an empty bed. ‘But I drove four and a half hours with my daughter to tell you something important.’
‘What?’
‘I should have chased you ten years ago. Should have got in whatever shitty car I had and followed you to London and made sure you were okay. I didn’t. I let you go. And you ended up with him.’
‘That wasn’t your fault—’
‘Maybe not. But I won’t make the same mistake twice.’ I lean my forehead against hers. ‘So here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to pack a bag. You’re going to get in my truck with me and Maisie. And you’re going to come home.’
‘Kit—’
‘Not forever if you don’t want. Not even for long if that’s what you need. But you’re coming home long enough to see that the village doesn’t hate you. That Maisie still loves you. That I still love you. And that whatever fight is coming with Marcus Vale, we’re in it together.’
‘What if I can’t?’
‘Can’t what?’
‘Face them. Face everyone who’s seen—’
‘Isla, you’ll never have to face anyone alone again.
I’ll always be with you. If you tell me we’re going to London, we go to London.
New York, then we go to New York.’ Using my thumb, I swipe at the trails of tears across her cheeks.
I wish I could erase what happened to her just as easily, but I can’t.
But I can do it the hard way, the long way, with her.
Just as she’s shown me it’s okay to love again after loss, I’ll teach her that she doesn’t need to hide.
She’s quiet for a long moment, her arms clinging onto me like I’m the life raft keeping her buoyant as the current wants to pull her under.
Like the rope that Peter threw to me only days ago that I held onto like my fucking life depended on it, because I knew I had to see Maisie again, see Isla again.
‘Maisie brought Mr Snuggles. She thought you might need him.’
‘When Piper called, she was the first person I thought of. I’d never want to hurt her, Kit, she’s an amazing kid.’
‘She’s your kid too, if you want her to be.’
The tears come again. But different this time. Softer.
‘I want to come home,’ she whispers. ‘I’m just so scared.’
I dig down deep into the parts of me that hurt, that still hurt, because only honest truth is right in this moment. ‘After Jess died, I couldn’t face anyone. I didn’t go to the pub, the shop, anywhere. I was driving thirty miles out just to go to the supermarket where no one would know me.’
A crease lines her face with a frown. ‘Why?’
‘Because I couldn’t bear the thought of people looking at me like they knew I lost everything. They knew that I’d sat there that day and when I’d walked out of the hospice I’d lived through my very lowest moment.’
‘Kit, I wish…’
I gently place my finger on her lips. ‘Let me finish. I had all this anger inside. In so many ways I hated Jess for leaving me. How could she leave me with a kid I had no idea how to look after? She was supposed to love me, but she couldn’t have, could she? She left me. Left her daughter.’
‘What changed?’
‘Sea Salt Bay happened. Dot dropped the newspaper at my door every day with a KitKat for me and a bag of sweets for Maisie. Nina left glass containers full of meals on the doorstep, with detailed instructions on how to warm them up. Tom and Jude drove me to a pub three towns over so I could have a beer without feeling it was being poured with sympathy.’
Isla smiles. It’s small, not the blinding brilliance that emits from deep within her, but it’s a small curve of a start, and I’ll take it.
‘Pack a bag, Isla.’ I glance around at the empty shell of her London house and I want to give her everything she’s never had. ‘Let’s go home.’
She nods against my chest.
And this time, when she promises to come with me, I believe her.
Because this time, she’s not running and I’m not staying.
This time, we are together.