Page 178 of Pull Me Under

‘They won’t,’ I say, but even I can hear the uncertainty.

‘You don’t know that.’ Helen wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Lily’s been asking me for years to reach out to them. To find them, write to them, something. And I kept saying, When the time is right. But the truth is, I was hiding behind that phrase because I couldn’t bear the thought of them rejecting me.’

‘So what – you’re just going to wait here for ever?’

‘No.’ She straightens. Pulls herself together, brick by brick, the same way I’ve watched Jude do a hundred times. The same careful reassembly. Like mother, like son, and neither of them knows it. ‘I just need to think. You turning up has changed everything.’

I think about my own father. About all the letters he wrote but never sent. About him dying alone in that Bristol hospital ward, convinced the woman he loved had abandoned him, when the truth was they’d been writing to each other across a void.

Sometimes people aren’t ready. Sometimes the fear is bigger than the want.

But sometimes waiting is just another word for giving up.

‘They’ll want to see you,’ I say. ‘I know they will.’

‘Maybe.’ Helen takes my hands in hers again.

She studies my face. That same searching look she’s been giving me all week – looking for traces of Gareth, of the man she loved and lost.

‘He’s lucky, you know,’ she says quietly. ‘My son. He’s lucky you found those letters. Lucky you came here instead of burning them.’

‘I’d never have burned them. My sister is here, and I’ve wanted to be a sister all my life.’

Something crosses Helen’s face – gratitude so fierce it looks like pain.

She releases my hands, steps back. ‘Harding men are stubborn. God knows I have experience with that. But they’re not stupid. Give him time.’

‘I’ve given him a week.’

‘Sometimes it takes longer.’ She smiles, but it’s sad, a little knowing. ‘Sometimes it takes twenty years.’

The daffodils are still nodding along the path. The red door gleams behind me. Somewhere inside, Lily’s probably watching from the window – she’ll have her phone out, ready to fire off the first of approximately nine thousand Snapchats before I’ve even reached the motorway. It’s the only acceptable form of communication between sisters, apparently.

I’m halfway down the garden path when I hear the car.

An engine, getting closer. Slowing down.

I look up.

A truck – battered, salt-stained, unmistakably Cornish – is pulling up to the kerb.

And behind the wheel, looking like he hasn’t slept in days, is Jude.

Chapter Thirty-Four

BRYNN

For a long moment, neither of us moves.

Jude’s hands are still on the steering wheel. His knuckles are white. He’s staring at me through the windscreen like I might disappear if he blinks.

The passenger door opens first.

Kit.

I haven’t seen him since I was a child, but I’d know him anywhere – the Harding jaw, the dark hair. He’s broader than Jude, a little taller, but they have the same eyes. Helen’s eyes.

He looks at me. Then at the house behind me. Then back at me.