Page 143 of Pull Me Under

The bin bag is where I left it, shoved behind the cleaning products under the sink. I drag it out, crouch on the kitchen floor, and start pulling envelopes out one by one, dropping the bills in a pile until my fingers find it.

There it is.

Addressed to my father – Trelawney Cottage, Sea Salt Bay, Cornwall – in that same looping hand. The stamp is faded with age. The glue on the seal is old and brittle.

I go back to the box. And there, at the very bottom, tucked beneath everything else: a second envelope. Same handwriting. Same feminine script. But the postmark on this one reads 2006.

Neither has been opened.

He never read this. Either of them. All those years, and he never knew what they said.

My hands shake as I pick up the older one first.

My darling Gareth,

I’m writing this knowing I can never send it – or if I do, knowing you may never read it. But I need to say the words, even if only to paper.

I can’t leave with you. I’ve tried to convince myself otherwise, tried to imagine a life away from here, but I can’t do it to Kit and Jude. They’re so young. Jude especially – he’s only nine, and he looks at me like I hung the moon. How can I take myself away from that? How can I teach him that love means leaving?

I’m choosing to stay. For them. For my boys.

But please know that this choice is killing me. That I love you – have always loved you – and that if things were different, if I were braver or more selfish or less of a mother, I would run away with you tonight and never look back.

I’ll always love you.

H.

The letter shakes in my grip. I read it again. A third time.

She was going to stay. Helen Harding was going to stay with Reuben, stay in Sea Salt Bay, stay for her sons.

She chose them.

So what happened? Why did she leave?

I reach for the second envelope. 2020. Fourteen years later.

The seal breaks easily, the glue old and brittle. Inside, two pages covered in the same looping script – but different now. Heavier. The handwriting of someone older, wearier, carrying years of weight.

Dear Gareth,

I don’t know if this letter will reach you. I don’t know if you ever came back to the cottage, or if you’d even want to hear from me after all this time. But I have to try. I’ve spent twenty years living with silence, and I can’t do it anymore.

I never got to tell you the truth about why I left.

Reuben found out. About us, about everything. He told me to leave quietly – disappear, never contact the boys, let him tell whatever story he wanted – or he would destroy me. Turn Kit and Jude against me for ever. Make sure they believed I’d abandoned them for someone worthless.

I was a coward, Gareth. I took the quiet way out.

I’ve written to the boys so many times over the years. Birthday cards, Christmas letters, apologies, explanations. Reuben intercepted all of them. I only found out years later, when I hired someone to investigate. He made sure they never knew I’d tried.

They think I left because I didn’t love them enough. The opposite is true – I loved them so much I let Reuben convince me that disappearing was the kindest thing I could do.

I was wrong. I know that now.

But there are things you need to know. Facts I should have told you twenty years ago.

When I left Sea Salt Bay, I was pregnant.