Page 144 of Pull Me Under

Her name is Lily. She’s thirteen years old, and she’s ours, Gareth. Yours and mine. She has your eyes – that same grey-green that I fell in love with. She’s clever and fierce and full of questions, and lately all those questions are about her family.

She wants to know about her brothers. About you. About why she’s grown up without any of you in her life.

I don’t have good answers.

I’m living in Bristol now. I’ve written my address at the bottom of this letter. If you want to meet her – meet us – I’ll be here.

If you don’t, I understand. I’ve given up any right to ask things of you.

But please, Gareth. For Lily’s sake, if not for mine.

She deserves to know where she comes from.

All my love, still, always, Helen

The letter falls from my fingers.

I can’t breathe. The room is spinning – or I’m spinning, I can’t tell which.

Lily.

There’s a girl called Lily. Thirteen in 2020, which makes her nineteen or twenty now. And she’s⁠—

She’s Helen and Gareth’s daughter.

Which means she’s Jude’s half-sister through his mother.

And she’s my half-sister through my father.

Jude and I share a sister.

I press my hand to my mouth, but it’s not enough – a sound escapes anyway, half sob, half laugh, the noise you make when the universe reveals itself to be even more absurd than you feared.

My father never opened this. He never knew. He spent the last six years of his life drinking himself into the grave, mourning a woman he thought had chosen someone else – and the whole time, she’d been waiting for him.

She’d had his daughter. She’d reached out. And he never knew, because he never got the fucking envelope.

All that grief. All that wasted, pointless grief.

He died thinking she didn’t love him. And it was a lie.

The tears come then, hot and furious. I’m not sure if I’m crying for my father, for Helen, for Lily growing up without any of us – or for myself, left holding the wreckage of everyone else’s mistakes.

I don’t know how long I’ve sat here.

Long enough for the tea to go cold. Long enough for the light to shift from dawn-grey to proper morning. Long enough for my tears to dry and leave my face feeling tight and strange.

I’m still surrounded by letters when I hear the knock.

I shove everything back into the box, heart hammering. Jude? No – he wouldn’t knock. He’s got a key now, or at least the understanding that he doesn’t need one.

I wipe my face, take a breath, and open the door.

Nina.

She’s standing on my doorstep with a paper bag from the café and a careful expression. ‘Heard there was some drama yesterday. Thought you might need pastries.’

‘Nina.’ My voice comes out rough. ‘You didn’t have to⁠—’