Page 54 of Pull Me Under

The harbour’s grey and choppy as I walk. The lifeboat’s already gone – I can see the empty slip where it should be, the doors to the station still open. Somewhere out there, beyond the breakwater, people are in trouble.

And Jude’s heading towards them.

Not my problem. Not my concern. Not my anything.

I walk faster.

The café’s open but quiet. A handful of tables occupied – retired couples, a young mum with a toddler building a tower of sugar packets, the usual morning drift. Nina’s behind the counter, and she looks … intact. Upright. Hands steady as she froths milk for someone’s latte.

She spots me as I push through the door, and a tightness in her face eases. Just slightly. Just enough that I know I was right to come.

‘Coffee?’ she asks.

‘Please. Black.’

She makes it without asking anything else, slides it across the counter.

‘Lifeboat’s out,’ she says quietly, not looking at me. ‘Cal radioed ten minutes ago. Fishing vessel in trouble south-west.’

‘Right.’

‘It wasn’t as bad this time. The panic.’ She wipes the counter with unnecessary thoroughness. ‘I made it through the whole alarm without Tilly having to scrape me off the floor. Progress, right?’

‘That’s something.’

‘It’s something.’ She finally meets my eyes. ‘Thanks for coming.’

I shrug, awkward with the gratitude. ‘Told you I would.’

There’s a pause, deep and long. She tops up my coffee without asking. ‘I hate the crew is so short without Peter, but then I hate it more for taking him away, even though I know it does good.’ She gives a brief dry snort. ‘I mean, it’s the damn lifeboat crew, for God’s sake, how can I resent something that vital? That important?’

I shrug, because I don’t have an answer for her. What she’s been through in some ways I get, I understand, like watching my dad fade to alcohol, losing someone is hard, but losing someone to something that’s good? I don’t have words to soothe that pain.

We lapse into a silence that isn’t all awkward, there is room in the space for both of our unspoken thoughts. Until she looks up, gaze a little sharper. ‘Would you join the crew? If you’re planning on staying. I mean, you clearly know your shit about boats?’

I wrap my hands around the mug. The heat seeps into my palms, loosening the tightness in my fingers from two hours of spanner work. If they asked. If someone walked into my shed and offered me a role – a purpose, a reason to stay that isn’t just stubbornness and a half-restored trawler and a list of plans I can’t afford.

‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

Nina nods slowly. ‘Peter would’ve liked that. You, on the crew. Using your skills.’ A pause. ‘He would’ve liked you, full stop. Every time you come in here with grease under your nails and that look like you’re solving equations in your head – he would’ve liked you.’

My throat tightens. ‘You keep saying that.’

‘Because it keeps being true.’

The door jangles. More customers. Nina straightens up, slips back into café-owner mode.

I take my coffee and leave. The harbour’s still grey, still choppy. No sign of the lifeboat yet.

I don’t look towards the station.

I don’t.

Dot’s shop hasn’t changed in twenty years, I’ve only got the vaguest memories, just snatches of images like faded photographs that my brain can no longer decide if are make believe or fact.

But it’s exactly how I think Dot’s shop should be. Cramped aisles and a bell that jangles when you push open the door. The smell of newsprint and peppermints and decades of dust that nobody wants swept away.

Dot is behind the counter, glasses perched on the end of her nose, newspaper spread in front of her. She looks up when I enter, and her eyes narrow, taking me in, placing me, deciding what to do about me – all in the space of a heartbeat.