Page 168 of Pull Me Under

‘No, she’s right.’ I look at Helen. ‘It is complicated. But you deserve to know.’ I pause. ‘All of it. Even the parts that are going to hurt.’

Helen crosses to the table. Sits down across from me. Her hands are steady now – whatever shock she felt at the door, she’s gathered herself. I can see where Jude gets his composure. That ability to hold himself together when everything’s falling apart.

‘I’ve been waiting twenty years,’ she says. ‘I think I can handle complicated.’

The cat jumps down from its chair. Stalks out of the room, tail high. Apparently this conversation is beneath its dignity.

I almost envy it.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Tea first. Then I’ll tell you everything.’

For better or worse, this time, I plan to say everything I know as soon as I know it. I just wish I could rewind time and wake Jude up in the middle of the night with the revelation that changed all this.

It’s gone, though, and I doubt I’ll get it back.

Chapter Thirty-Two

JUDE

The hospital discharge nurse hands me a carrier bag full of Dad’s belongings and a folder of paperwork thick enough to choke a seagull.

‘Medication schedule’s on top,’ she says. ‘Three times daily with food. No alcohol. No salt. No stress.’

I almost laugh at the last one. No stress. Right. I’ll just tell Reuben Harding to stop being himself.

‘Any questions?’

About a thousand. None I can ask her.

‘We’re fine,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’

Dad’s in the wheelchair by the door, looking shrunken in his clothes. He’s lost weight – I can see it in the way his collar gaps at the neck, the way his trousers bunch at the waist. A week ago he was the man who loomed over my entire childhood. Now he looks like someone I could break with one hand.

I don’t know what to do with that.

‘Ready?’ I ask him.

He grunts. Doesn’t look at me.

We haven’t spoken properly since that night. Since Helen’s name on his lips. Since the confession that tore through twenty years of silence like a blade through fishing net.

I push the wheelchair toward the exit.

The first couple of days are a masterclass in avoidance.

I make his meals. He eats them without comment. I remind him about his medication. He takes it without thanks. I help him to the bathroom when his legs won’t cooperate, and the shame on his face is so raw I have to look away.

We don’t talk about what happened. Don’t talk about Helen. Don’t talk about the letters or the lies or the twenty years of manufactured abandonment.

It sits between us like a third person in the room. Present. Unavoidable. Never acknowledged.

Kit takes shifts. Turns up in the mornings so I can escape to the harbour, check on the Mary Jane, pretend I still have a life outside these walls. Maisie comes too sometimes – her chatter filling the silence, her questions forcing Dad to respond in more than grunts.

‘Grandpa, why do you have so many pictures of fish?’

‘They’re not pictures. They’re charts.’

‘They look like fish.’