Page 110 of Pull Me Under

Jude: A fsh.

Me: That’s terrible.

Jude: You laughed.

Me: I didn’t.

Jude: Liar. I can feel you laughing from here.

Me: Prove it.

Jude: Come to the cove tomorrow. Sunrise. I want to show you something.

I stare at the message. Sunrise means 6 am. Means sneaking out while the village is still dark. Means another secret, another stolen moment.

I’ll be there.

I put the phone down and go back to the section of Betty’s hull I’ve been sanding all afternoon. The old gel coat is flaking in sheets, revealing fibreglass underneath that’s mostly sound but needs sealing before I can even think about paint.

I’m smiling. Can’t seem to stop.

I should know better by now. I don’t want to.

The cove is empty when I arrive.

Not the surfing cove – a different one, smaller, harder to reach. I had to climb down a cliff path that was more suggestion than trail, following directions Jude texted me at midnight: Past the old coastguard station, left at the split rock, down through the gorse. You’ll know it when you see it.

He was right. I know it.

The beach is a crescent of pale sand, sheltered on three sides by dark cliffs. The water is impossibly clear, that blue-green you only get when the Atlantic decides to behave itself. And the light – God, the light. The sun’s just cresting the horizon, painting everything gold and pink and impossible.

‘You came.’

I turn. Jude’s picking his way down the cliff path, a blanket under one arm and a thermos in his hand. He’s wearing an old jumper with a hole in the sleeve and his hair is doing that thing where it sticks up in seventeen directions.

He looks like morning. Like hope.

‘I came,’ I agree. ‘Though if this is where you murder me, I want you to know Nina will figure it out. She’s very persistent.’

‘No murders.’ He reaches me, drops a kiss on my forehead like it’s the most natural thing in the world. ‘Just wanted you to see this.’

He spreads the blanket on the sand. We sit, shoulders touching, and watch the sun climb.

‘I used to come here as a kid,’ he says, after a while. ‘When things at home got too…’ He trails off. Shrugs. ‘You know.’

I do know. Not the specifics, but the shape of it. The need for a place that’s just yours, where nobody expects anything from you.

‘Who else knows about it?’

‘Kit. He found it first, actually. Brought me here when I was about eight, made me swear a blood oath not to tell anyone.’ A small smile. ‘We were very dramatic children.’

‘And now you’re showing me.’

‘Now I’m showing you.’ He turns to look at me, and there’s a blink of vulnerability in his expression. My eyes sting and I think it’s the wind. ‘I’ve never brought anyone else here.’

Just me.

The weight of that sits between us. Not heavy – warm. Like a stone that’s been in the sun.