Page 10 of Pull Me Under

Not watching from a cliff. Not pressing my nose against the glass of someone else’s life. But down there, in it, part of it – nets in my hands, salt on my skin, a Trelawney boat in the harbour again. If we’d never left, if whatever happened between the Hardings and us hadn’t blown our lives apart, I’d have grown up on those docks. I’d know every boat by name, every current by feel. I’d be the thing I’ve spent twenty years trying to become by working in other people’s boatyards and fixing other people’s engines – a fisherwoman. Home.

Instead, I’m twenty-seven, broke, and staring through a dirty window at the life that was stolen from me.

Good. Let it hurt. Hurt means it matters. Hurt means I’m not letting it go.

Somewhere down there, Jude Harding is probably telling his father that a Trelawney is back. Probably using words like ‘trouble’ and ‘problem’ and ‘get rid of’. Maybe Hardings only make exceptions for Hollywood actresses – Isla Quinn’s triumphant return to Sea Salt Bay was national news last year, splashed across every gossip site I hate-read on my lunch breaks. Funny how that outsider got a welcome.

The setting sun is turning everything golden, and for a moment – just a moment – I can see what this place could be. Fixed up, lived in, mine. A Trelawney house on the cliff again, like a raised middle finger to everyone who thought we’d stay gone.

I add one more thing to the list:

Show them all

Then I grab my holdall and head back down to the Land Rover. The harbour’s settling into evening when I get there, and I park in the Trelawney spot that Jude Harding thinks belongs to him, windows down so I can hear the water against the stones. Someone’s cooking dinner nearby – the smell of frying fish drifts across. Probably The Ship starting evening service.

Twenty years since I’ve smelled that exact combination of salt, diesel, and fried cod. Grandad used to say you could tell the quality of a fishing village by the smell of its chippy. He’d have approved of this one. He’d have sat here with me, window down, eyes closed, breathing it in.

Twenty years of being nowhere.

I’m home.

Whether anyone likes it or not.

The Land Rover’s getting cold, and I’ve already had one concerned local tap on the window asking if I’m all right. Can’t sleep in the harbour car park – too visible, too much like admitting defeat on day one.

Back up the lane I go, armed with a camping lantern, my sleeping bag, and a streak of the stubborn stupidity that’s got me this far. The cottage is different in the dark – softer somehow, like night’s forgiven some of its sins.

The back bedroom faces the moor rather than the sea. There’s furniture – an iron bed frame that might be Victorian, a mattress that definitely needs burning. But the room feels solid. The walls are dry back here, away from the leaking corner. It’ll do for one night.

I drag the mattress off and lean it against the wall. Open the window to let twenty years of stale air escape into the dark. The bed frame looks sturdy enough without the mattress – just springs and iron.

The sleeping bag rolls out across the bare springs. Not comfortable, but manageable. I test it with one knee first – seems stable. Then carefully, carefully lower myself down.

For exactly three seconds, I think I’ve won.

Then the ancient springs give way with a crack like this bed wants nothing more to do than die, and then I’m falling through the frame, metal and rust and twenty years of deterioration all giving up at once. I hit the floor in a tangle of sleeping bag and tetanus-inducing metal, my elbow catching on a sharp jag of metal hard enough to draw blood.

‘Fucking hell!’

My voice echoes through the empty house and probably out through the dodgy roof for good measure. Somewhere in the walls, a living being with four legs and a tail (hopefully on the smaller side of the scale and not a fox with cubs) scurries away from the noise.

I lie there for a moment, assessing damage. Elbow’s bleeding but not badly. Pride’s taken the worst hit. Even the furniture’s rejecting me. Message received, universe.

But Trelawneys are nothing if not adaptable. Grandad would have been on his feet already, dusting himself off, muttering about the quality of Victorian ironwork not being what it used to be. So that’s what I do.

I drag the sleeping bag free from the wreckage, shake off the rust and probable spiders, and set up camp directly on the floor. Push the broken bed frame against the wall – it’ll make a good clothes rack if nothing else. The floorboards are actually more solid than the bed was, wide old planks that have survived longer than most marriages.

The camping lantern throws strange shadows on the walls, making the damp patches look like maps of places that don’t exist. I spread out my belongings like I’m claiming territory: toolbox in the corner – his toolbox, his initials, his legacy – clothes folded on the windowsill, laptop charging from the one working outlet I found (miracle), notebook beside my makeshift bed.

From the floor, I can hear the sea. Not see it – the window faces the wrong way – but hear it, that constant shush and pull that’s been the soundtrack of every dream I’ve had since I was seven. The tide coming in, doing what it always does. Coming back.

‘Not lost,’ I tell the cottage, the sea, Grandad, myself. ‘Not passing through. Staying.’

So why can’t I stop thinking about Jude Harding? Those green eyes and that bloody surfer’s tan and the way he said You can’t park there like he owned the whole harbour. I bet he’s planning payback – a complaint to the harbour master, a village petition, some Harding power play to push me back out before I’ve even unpacked. The boy who pulled pigtails and proposed with Haribo will definitely be making a plan, but my plan is to be there to block him.

The Hardings and the Trelawneys don’t get to be friends. That’s as sure as the tide coming in and ebbing out. But I’m not leaving. Not this time. Not for him, not for his father, not for anyone.

The question isn’t whether I want to stay.