Page 4 of Pull Me Under

Time’s a construct.

So is malnutrition. I’ll bring sandwiches.

I don’t reply, but we both know he’ll show up anyway. That’s what Tom does. Shows up, brings food, doesn’t ask the questions that don’t have answers.

Six weeks.

Starting now.

I look at Peter’s boat once more, that fucking mermaid air freshener visible through the wheelhouse window, and make myself turn away.

There’s work to do.

There’s always work to do.

That’s the point.

The sun’s properly up now, turning the water into hammered bronze, and somewhere beneath it the fish are running their ancient patterns, completely indifferent to our human disasters.

Lucky bastards.

I could sit here all day just watching, noting, understanding. Unravelling the whole secret language of the sea.

Instead I’m up here with a spreadsheet and a diesel bill.

And the sea keeps its secrets to itself.

Chapter Two

JUDE

The afternoon stretches out like old fishing line – taut, unreliable, likely to snap if you pull too hard. I’m taking stock of nets with Tom, pretending my shoulder doesn’t still ache from yesterday’s haul, when the sound cuts through Sea Salt Bay’s usual Tuesday quiet like a gutting knife through mackerel.

Tom and I are sitting in companionable silence eating his sandwiches. The March sun is doing its best to pin us in a small globe of tepid spring warmth, but it’s a losing battle – the wind keeps finding us, sharp-edged and salt-heavy.

I’ve got half an eye on the swell which is decent. Clean lines, glassy faces. An ache pulls through me, the faintest longing for the freedom of walking out with my dusty board under my arm, the rush of freedom. I push it back, lock it down. Focus on anything other.

Like watching for Dad to come back in to dock. He’s been out for hours after turning up about an hour after Kit and Isla left with Maisie. Dad, you remembered they were leaving, right? I’d asked him.

His answer is now looping around my head with the churning of the cheese and pickle sandwich Tom handed over. Course I did. Did they need a fanfare send-off?

But I saw the look in his eyes.

The spark of remembrance. The half-second where his face went blank before it rearranged itself into his gruff but familiar exterior, making it look like intention rather than forgetting. I’ve been seeing that more lately – small lapses, tiny gaps, like a net with holes he doesn’t know are there. It’s nothing. He’s sixty-three and tired. That’s all it is.

I didn’t say anything and neither did he.

A cormorant surfaces near the breakwater, sleek and dark. Thirty seconds they can hold their breath. I used to time them. Focus, Jude.

The Mary Jane needs her filters changed. I should be doing that instead of sitting here eating Tom’s sandwiches and watching Dad’s boat not come in. But the paperwork mountain on my desk won’t climb itself either, and someone’s got to reconcile last month’s catch logs with the harbour master’s records before Friday.

I check the horizon again. Dad’s boat – there, finally, rounding the headland. Moving slowly. Too slowly.

It’s nothing. He’s fine.

Tom and I both turn as the sound of music, angry, female, and turned up loud enough to wake the dead, blasts down the sleepy lane behind us. The harbour freezes, all eyes zero in on a vintage Land Rover – rust-orange like dried blood, chrome catching the sun – as it tears into the harbour car park. I’m almost expecting doughnuts and burnt rubber, but instead the music cuts off abruptly, leaving a silence that feels louder than the noise. Then the door opens.

She steps out in ripped jeans and steel-toed boots. ‘Christ,’ Tom mutters beside me. ‘Who’s that then?’