Page 165 of Pull Me Under

‘Trelawney,’ she repeats. Like she’s tasting the word. Testing it.

‘Gareth’s daughter.’

Her other hand comes up to her mouth. Pressed flat, like she’s holding something in.

‘I found your letters,’ I say. ‘At the cottage. In Sea Salt Bay. You wrote to him, and he never—’ I stop. Breathe. ‘He never got them. He never knew.’

‘Never knew what?’

‘Any of it.’ I swallow hard. ‘But I think that you loved him.’

Helen makes a sound. Small, broken. Like something cracking open after being sealed shut for decades.

‘He thought you chose Reuben,’ I say. ‘He thought you didn’t want him. He spent the rest of his life believing that.’

‘The rest of his—’ She stops. Her eyes search my face. ‘Gareth. Is he⁠—’

I nod and I can almost imagine my blood draining like sea water through a fishing net.

She closes her eyes. Sways slightly against the doorframe.

‘When?’

‘Two years ago. His heart,’ I say with a gentle tap against my chest. I don’t mention the drinking. The slow collapse. The way he’d stopped wanting to live long before his body gave up. I also don’t mention Rueben Harding whose heart has also given out. ‘Walter, my grandad, he left me the cottage and the boat shed.’

Helen’s crying now. Silent tears sliding down her cheeks, twenty years of grief finally finding somewhere to land.

‘I wrote to him,’ she says. ‘For years. I sent letters to the cottage, to the boat shed, to everywhere I could think of. He never answered. I thought—’ She presses her hand harder against her mouth. ‘I thought he hated me.’

‘The cottage was empty. You know me and Dad left.’ I hesitate. ‘The letters were still there. Behind the door. Unopened until I arrived back.’

She makes that sound again. That small, shattered noise.

‘I told him—’ She’s struggling to get the words out. ‘In those letters, I told him everything. About Reuben. About Lily. About⁠—’

She stops.

Looks at me.

‘Mum? Who is it?’

Footsteps in the hallway. A figure appearing behind Helen, peering over her shoulder.

And the ground drops out from under me.

She’s young – nineteen, maybe twenty. Dark blonde hair falling past her shoulders. Slim and long-legged with baggy ripped jeans and a blue hoodie that’s the same style choice her older brother would make. Grey-green eyes that I recognise instantly. My father’s eyes. The ones I didn’t inherit but saw every day of my childhood.

‘Mum?’ The girl looks between us, confused. ‘What’s going on? Are you okay?’

Helen reaches back. Takes her daughter’s hand.

‘Lily,’ she says quietly. ‘This is Brynn. She’s⁠—’

Helen stops. Looks at me. There’s a question in her eyes. Can I? Should I?

How do you explain this? How do you compress twenty years of secrets and silence into something a doorstep can hold?

‘She’s your sister,’ Helen finishes, putting it right out there. No secrets. No half-truths. ‘Your father’s other daughter.’