Page 6 of Pull Me Under

‘No.’

‘Brynn—’

‘What are you going to do, Harding? Chase me with seaweed until I cry?’ Her smile is sharp as fish hooks. ‘Oh wait, that already didn’t work.’

The memory surfaces fully now. Her laughing as she ran, not really scared, turning it into a game until I caught her by the old boat shed and told her I loved her with all the seriousness a nine-year-old could muster. She’d punched me in the face and run home crying.

Then the Trelawneys were gone.

‘Welcome home, Brynn,’ I say, and it comes out more sarcastic than intended. ‘Try not to run away crying this time.’

Her face flushes, lips pursed, gaze narrowing like a wild cat, before it hardens into an expression truly terrifying. Blank. Closed. Empty. Her gaze sweeps across me, taking in what she sees and clearly finding it wanting.

‘Fuck you, Harding.’ She says it like a promise. ‘And get your shit out of my space by tomorrow.’

She stalks off towards the harbour office, and I absolutely do not watch her go. Except I do, because apparently, I’m still nine years old and stupid around Brynn Trelawney.

‘So,’ Tom says, appearing at my elbow with that grin he gets when he’s about to be insufferable. ‘Want to tell me what that was about?’

‘That,’ I say, still staring after her, ‘was Brynn Trelawney.’

‘And?’

‘The girl I asked to marry me once.’

Tom chokes on nothing. ‘What the hell?’

I rub my jaw, phantom pain from a twenty-year-old punch. ‘I was seven and she hit me. Broke my nose. There was a lot of blood. Very romantic.’

Tom’s laughing now, the bastard. ‘You proposed to a Trelawney?’

‘We were both seven. Different times. Less family politics.’

‘Your dad’s going to lose his mind.’

And there it is. The fact of this new developing situation. Dad’s held a grudge against the Trelawneys for twenty years. Business rivalry, he calls it – fishing rights and territory disputes – though I’ve always suspected it was more personal than that. The type of feud that gets passed down like inheritance, until it’s become a lore where nobody remembers the original sin but everyone knows who to hate. And Dad – Dad remembers everything about that feud, even on the days when he forgets his own son’s name.

‘Yeah,’ I say, watching Brynn disappear into the harbour office like she owns that too. ‘He really is.’

Tom claps me on the shoulder. ‘Want me there when you tell him?’

‘What, so you can watch the explosion?’

‘Obviously.’

I’m still watching the spot where she disappeared, trying to reconcile the sharp-edged woman with the wild-haired girl in my memory. The one who built elaborate sandcastles just to knock them down, who knew the name of every boat in the harbour, who hit harder than any of the boys.

‘She came back,’ I say, more to myself than Tom.

‘After twenty years,’ Tom agrees. ‘Question is why.’

Why indeed. But standing here, with the phantom taste of Haribo cherries and the ghost of childhood humiliation, I have the sinking feeling we’re all about to find out.

‘Come on,’ I tell Tom. ‘If I’m going to tell Dad that a Trelawney’s back in Sea Salt Bay, I’m going to need a drink first.’

‘It’s two in the afternoon.’

‘Your point?’