Page 9 of Pull Me Under

Paint (everything – twice)

Priority Three – Make it Mine

I stare at that last line, pencil hovering. Make it mine. Like I know what that even means anymore. Like I haven’t spent twenty years being nowhere’s daughter, belonging to nothing, taking mechanic jobs in coastal towns because at least I could smell the sea and pretend it was this sea.

Every place I’ve lived, I’ve lived near the water. Bristol docks. Southampton marina. Plymouth – God, Plymouth was the closest, just up the coast, and I still couldn’t make myself drive the last stretch. Every job I’ve taken has had me elbow-deep in engines and hydraulics, boats and motors, learning the trade that should have been my birthright if we’d never left.

Grandad saw it. Even in our cramped flat in Bristol, even working odd jobs that had nothing to do with the sea, he saw where I was heading. Bought me my first Haynes manual when I was twelve. Drove me to the boatyard in Portishead on weekends so I could watch the mechanics work. Never said, This could have been yours. Never needed to. We both knew.

The pencil keeps moving:

Money needed:

All of it

Time needed:

As long as it takes

Chance of success:

I don’t fill that in.

Outside, a car rumbles past on the lane – unusual up here where the road leads nowhere except to these cottages and eventually the coastal path. I move to the window, wipe a clear spot in the grime just in time to see a Land Rover disappearing around the bend. Could be anyone. Lots of Land Rovers in Cornwall. Doesn’t mean anything that it looked like⁠—

No. Not doing this.

Back to the list. Practical things. Things I can control.

Immediate needs:

Somewhere to sleep tonight

Builder references

Electrician who won’t rip me off

Way to make money fast (Marina? Boatyard? Anyone need a mechanic?)

Miracles, several

The cottage groans around me like it’s commenting on my plans. Twenty years of emptiness have settled into its walls, and I’m here with a notebook and attitude thinking I can bring it back to life.

But I’ve spent twenty years wanting to come home. Grandad spent twenty years wanting me to. That’s got to count, right?

Heading back to the front door, I scoop up the avalanche of mail that toppled as I pushed the door open. There are countless brown envelopes that my childhood memories of both my grandfather and father tell me are never fun to open. There’s a handwritten letter to my dad, the handwriting loopy and feminine. Not from the taxman then. I slide my finger under the edge of the seal, almost unsticking itself, and am about to rip it open when what sounds like the flap of wings from the upstairs of the house echoes down to where I’m hunched in the hall.

Sweet Jesus. Please not bats. I can cope with anything but bats.

I climb the narrow stairs to the first floor, testing each step because falling through on day one would be embarrassing. They hold – solid wood under the dust. The bedroom that used to be mine is empty except for cobwebs and memories. The window’s intact though, and through it, I can see down to the harbour.

I find the flapping noise. The window in the master bedroom is open and has been for years, water damage stains the floor, and the curtains are slapping back and forth against the glass panes.

And that’s when it hits me. Not gently. Not gradually. Like a fist to the sternum.

The boats. The nets drying on the harbour wall. The lobster pots stacked in neat towers. The morning’s catch being sorted on the dock, gulls wheeling overhead. The whole machinery of a fishing village going about its business like it always has, like it always will, tide in and tide out, the same rhythm my grandfather built his life around.

That should have been mine.