Page 160 of Pull Me Under

That’s always been the difference between us. I talk too much, fill silences, make jokes when things get heavy. Kit just listens. Takes it in. Processes.

I tell him everything. Brynn appearing in the doorway. Dad waking up, confused, calling her Helen. The confession that poured out of him – the affair, the ultimatum, the letters he burned.

Kit’s face doesn’t change as I speak. But his hands do. They start loose in his lap and gradually tighten, knuckles going white, until he’s gripping his own thighs like he’s trying to hold himself in place.

When I finish, the silence stretches.

‘She tried to contact us,’ Kit says finally. His voice is flat. Careful. ‘For years.’

‘That’s what he said.’

‘And he burned the letters.’

‘Yes.’

‘Every one.’

‘Yes.’

Kit stands up abruptly. Walks to the window. Stands there with his back to me, shoulders rigid.

I wait.

‘I used to check the post,’ he says. ‘When I was thirteen, fourteen. Every day, I’d get home from school and check the post before Dad could get to it. I thought maybe—’ He stops. Swallows. ‘I thought maybe she’d write. Explain. Tell us why she left.’

There’s this heavy thudding behind my heart. An ache. ‘Kit⁠—’

‘She did write. She did explain.’ His voice cracks. ‘And I never saw it. Because he made sure I wouldn’t.’

‘I know.’

‘Twenty years, Jude. Twenty years of thinking she didn’t want us. Of thinking we weren’t enough.’ He turns around, and his eyes are wet. Kit, who never cries. Kit, who held it together through Jess’s diagnosis and treatment and death. ‘Do you know what that did to me? To us?’

I don’t answer. Don’t need to.

‘When Jess got sick,’ Kit says, ‘I kept waiting for it to feel different. For the grief to be … clean, I suppose. Just about losing her.’ He laughs, but it’s bitter. Broken. ‘But it wasn’t. Every time she got worse, every time the doctors had more bad news, there was this voice in my head saying, You’re going to be left again. Like I couldn’t even grieve properly because it was all tangled up with Mum.’

‘Kit—’

‘And Isla.’ He shakes his head. ‘When we first got together, I almost sabotaged it. Kept waiting for her to realise she could do better. That I was too much baggage, too much grief. Because that’s what I learned, wasn’t it? People leave. One way or another, people always leave.’

‘But she didn’t.’

‘No. She didn’t.’ Kit wipes his eyes with the heel of his hand. ‘She stayed. She’s still staying. And I spent so long not trusting that.’

I think about Brynn. About the way she saw through me from the start – the bravado, the jokes, the good soldier routine. She noticed when I looked at the boat like it was a prison sentence. Asked questions no one else bothered to ask, like what I actually wanted, what I’d do if I wasn’t tied to Harding and Sons.

She saw the real me. The one who doesn’t want this life. The one who feels like the spare son, filling in gaps around the size and shape of my big brother.

And I let her see it. I let her in.

‘What do we do?’ Kit asks. ‘About him. About Mum. About any of it.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We could find her.’ His voice is tentative. Testing. ‘Mum. She might still be⁠—’

‘Sad thing is, Kit.’ I haul in a deep breath. ‘Brynn and I aren’t the first Harding and Trelawney. Brynn found letters. From Mum to her father.’ I can’t believe I’m saying the words. ‘Mum and Brynn’s dad had an affair, from what I can gather.’ I shake my head. ‘Nothing is making any sense.’ I look at him wildly. ‘Is any of this making any sense to you?’