Page 1 of Pull Me Under

Chapter One

JUDE

The harbour at half five is supposed to be mine. Just me, the slap of rope against masts, seaweed stink and gulls tearing at yesterday’s chip papers, and the grim routine of nursing this business along when everyone else has the good sense to be in bed. But this morning, my brother Kit’s out there loading his Range Rover like he’s prepping for the apocalypse, and I’m watching him from the quay wall with coffee gone stone-cold in my hand, and there’s a twist and pull tight behind my ribs that I’d rather not name.

‘That’s Maisie’s activity bag, you daft bastard.’ I don’t raise my voice. I’ve never been the shouting type. That’s Dad’s territory. Kit’s trying to wedge his daughter’s pink unicorn carry-on between Isla’s matching designer luggage, and Christ, it’s painful to watch. ‘Unless you fancy Maisie singing, “Are we there yet” from here to Heathrow, I’d leave that where she can reach it.’

Kit straightens up, runs a hand through his hair in that nervous tic of his which means he’s overthinking everything. Again. ‘You could help instead of standing there like a useless bloody ornament.’

‘Could.’ I take a deliberate sip of cold coffee, letting it sit bitter on my tongue. ‘Won’t though. This is entertaining.’

Truth is, if I help, I’ll have to think about what this means. Six weeks. Six weeks of running Harding and Sons solo while Kit plays supportive partner in Manhattan, cheering Isla on from the wings while she remembers she’s Isla Quinn, not just another face in the Sea Salt Bay school-run queue. Six weeks of managing the quotas, the buyers, and Dad, who’s been calling me Kit more often than Jude lately.

That last bit. I tell myself it’s nothing. Grief does that. Scrambles things. He’s just tired.

The thing about Harding and Sons Fisheries is the plural on sons. It’s right there in peeling paint above the office door. It’s a two-brother operation. Except it hasn’t been, not really, not since Kit stepped back to build a life with Isla and his little girl. He’s still here, lives two streets up, comes to the harbour when the mood takes him. But his head’s been somewhere else for a while now. Broadway, apparently. His heart, his future, his family that doesn’t smell of diesel and brine.

Can’t blame him for that.

Doesn’t stop me wanting to.

I’m the one who stays. I’m always the one who stays.

Kit doesn’t know about the other Tuesday, when I found Dad waiting at Peter’s mooring at three in the morning, asking when Peter was getting back from his holiday in Plymouth.

Peter’s been dead six months. Some holiday.

I’d wanted to tell Kit. Nearly did, twice. But he had Maisie’s school play that week and Isla’s new and improved agent on speakerphone every other hour negotiating the Broadway contract, and there just wasn’t a gap that felt like the right shape for Dad might be losing it and I don’t know what to do. So I walked Dad home, made him tea, and sat on the end of his bed while he told me the same story about catching a bluefin off the Scillies in 1987 that he’d already told me at breakfast.

He was fine the next morning. Completely fine. Knew what day it was, knew the tide times, called me by my actual name.

So. There you go. Nothing to worry about.

My eyes drift to that mooring now, where the Jenny’s Dream sits exactly as Peter left her. Lines coiled with his particular obsession for order, his lucky cap still hanging from the cabin hook, that stupid air freshener shaped like a mermaid he swore brought good catches. Nina can’t bring herself to sell the boat, and none of us can bring ourselves to suggest it again. She’s become part of the harbour’s architecture now, a memorial that bobs with the tide, pretending everything’s normal when nothing has been since the storm took Pete.

The truth is nothing’s been normal since that night. Since Kit’s engine died three miles out in a force 9 and the shout went up and Peter, RNLI to his bones, climbed onto that lifeboat and went out to bring my brother home.

Kit came back.

Peter didn’t.

Now his fishing boat sits here like it’s waiting for a man who’s never going to untie the lines, and my brother can barely look at the harbour without seeing the debt he can’t repay.

‘The monthly MSY returns are due by the fifteenth,’ Kit’s saying, still fighting with luggage but unable to stop himself listing duties. ‘That’s Maximum Sustainable Yield to⁠—’

‘I know what MSY means, you patronising git. I’ve been doing the paperwork for this business since I was twelve.’ The sigh that leaves me is both wordless and loud. That’s the thing Kit never quite grasped. He was always the one out on the boats with Dad, learning the trawls, the nets, the engine temperaments. I was the one in the office, making the numbers work, keeping us the right side of every regulation the MMO could dream up.

Different kinds of useful.

Though you’d never know it from the way Dad talks.

‘Right. And the buyer from Newlyn’s coming Thursday. Don’t let him lowball you on the megrim sole. Market price is up fifteen per cent this month.’

‘Twenty, actually. Checked yesterday.’ I drain the cold coffee, grimacing. ‘And before you start your whole speech, yes, I’ll check the shot ropes on the beam trawls, yes, I’ll make sure Billy doesn’t forget the escape panels in the nets again, and yes, I’ll keep the catch composition records for the Marine Management lot.’

Kit pauses, gives me that look. The look that says I see you and I’m worried about you and I know I’m leaving you holding everything again and I feel guilty but not quite guilty enough to stay.

‘The new regulations about spurdog⁠—’