Page 22 of Pull Me Under

The silence that follows is enormous. I can hear my own breathing, too fast. Can hear hers, deliberately slow. Can hear the crowd outside pretending to disperse while absolutely not dispersing.

‘You’re not going to defend him?’ she asks. Voice flat as a held line.

I lean against the doorframe, suddenly bone-tired. ‘Not sure which one of you needs defending.’

‘Right.’ She lifts her tea. Sips it like we’ve been discussing the weather. ‘Well. I’ll add “local fury” to my welcome basket.’

‘He’s not—’ I start, then stop. Because he is. He’s exactly that. ‘He’s scared. Not that he’d ever admit it.’

‘Scared of what? Me?’ She almost laughs. ‘I’m five foot four and I weigh nine stone. What exactly am I going to do?’

‘Come back. Stay. Make us deal with whatever happened twenty years ago that he’s spent my entire adult life pretending doesn’t exist.’

She goes quiet at that. Sets down the cup with that precision that means she’s thinking hard.

‘Your brother’s in New York?’ she says, changing direction so fast I get whiplash.

‘Yeah.’

‘And your mother?’

The question hits like cold water. ‘Gone. Long time ago.’

She nods, not looking at me. ‘Things we lose when we’re young tend to leave the biggest holes.’

I don’t know if she’s talking about my mother or her grandfather or Peter or all of us – this whole fucking village built on absence and silence and pretending the gaps aren’t there.

‘Yeah,’ I say, because what else is there?

A beat. Then she picks up the manual again, casual as anything, and says over her shoulder: ‘Your hydraulic problem. On the Mary Jane.’

‘What about it?’

‘It’s the feed line, not the pressure valve. You’ve been coming at it backwards.’ She turns a page. ‘I watched you struggling with it yesterday. You had the right spanner but the wrong diagnosis. Intermittent feed pressure drop. It’s a worn seal in the distribution manifold, not a valve fault.’

I stare at her. She’s not even looking at me – just reading, tea at her elbow, like she’s casually dismantled my professional competence as an afterthought.

‘How did you⁠—’

‘Because I know engines. Because I’ve been trained. Because your harbour hasn’t had a proper mechanic since Peter died and it shows.’ Now she looks up, and those dark eyes are steady and challenging. ‘You need help, Jude Harding. Whether you want it or not.’

She goes back to the manual. I’ve been dismissed.

I’m being dismissed. In her shed. That she’s right about. Because she is – I’ve been fighting the pressure valve for two days and getting nowhere, and if the problem’s actually in the feed line, then I’ve been wasting my time and Peter’s notes would have told me that if I could read his bloody handwriting.

I make it to the door before she speaks again.

‘Jude.’

I turn. She’s not looking at me, focused on the manual like it holds the answer to everything.

‘Your father called me “your mother’s lot”. I’m not my mother. My mother left when I was a baby. She’s got nothing to do with this.’

I file that away. Another piece of a puzzle I can’t see the edges of.

‘I know,’ I say, though I didn’t.

‘Good.’ A pause. ‘The seal you need is a Parker 2-012. Nitrile, not silicone. Peter kept spares in the third drawer down, left-hand shelving unit.’