Page 63 of Take Me Away

‘Fishing boat capsized. Pencarrow Point. Three missing.’ His eyes meet mine – tight, haunted. ‘And I believe your boyfriend is trying to call you.’

He nods to my phone, but I don’t miss the tic in his cheek, the grind of his teeth.

My phone is dancing again with a six-month-old version of me and the life I used to own.

‘Kit—’ But he’s gone, storming out of the back door.

I close my eyes. Fingers pressed to my lips.

I kissed him, and he kissed me back.

My phone starts trilling again. This time I swipe. ‘Reid?’

‘Babe, how are you?’

‘Fucking marvellous. You?’

There’s a pause. ‘Isla, I’m sorry. You know what it’s like, everyone has advice to give, an opinion. I just thought if we lai⁠—’

‘No, Reid. Just no.’

‘Isla, come on.’

I slide down the kitchen cabinets until I’m on the cold, tiled floor. ‘Did you know? Did you guess?’

‘Of course not, I’m not a complete arsehole.’

I think of him, probably all tanned and golden, sitting on his veranda in Malibu, green juice and iPad on the pristine white table in front of him. And I think about me, the woman who once sat opposite him, nibbling a quarter of toast, empty. Like a seashell that’s been dragged in by a dangerous current, hollow on the inside, shiny on the out, stranded at high tide in a foreign land.

‘But you were happy to write a statement in support of Marcus.’

‘You think I wrote that? Come off it, Isla.’

‘But you let it go out under your name. The whole world thought we were together and you took the side of the man who⁠—’

‘We are together, babe. You and me. This will blow over, you can come back, and then⁠—’

‘And then nothing,’ I cut in. ‘Nothing. Goodbye, Reid.’

I hang up, and lean my head back against Maggie’s canary-yellow kitchen cabinet, my tears landing with the hammering in time with the gathering storm outside.

The wind sounds like something alive, breathing and howling against Maggie’s cottage windows. Each gust seems stronger than the last, finding new cracks to whistle through, testing Kit’s repair job with vindictive glee. Rain lashes horizontally, bullets of water striking glass with such force I keep expecting something to shatter.

I’ve tried everything to distract myself. But all I can think about is Kit out there on that furious sea.

Kit Harding. Rushing into danger like it’s his job. Well, it is his job. Volunteer job, unpaid. Kit Harding risking his life for strangers because that’s who he is.

Meanwhile, I can’t even answer my agent’s calls.

I check the time again. Two hours since the siren. Two hours since Kit raced out the door with that look on his face – a mixture of fear and determination that I recognise from years ago, because his dad used to wear the same one when the alarm went off.

‘This is ridiculous,’ I mutter to myself, pacing the small sitting room again. My ankle throbs with each step. Even walking on a busted ankle feels like too big a risk these days. Meanwhile, Kit’s out there battling twenty-foot waves and gale-force winds.

I hobble to the window for the hundredth time, pressing my forehead against the cool glass, trying to see through the darkness towards the harbour. Nothing but blackness and sheets of rain. No sign of boat lights returning.

The scenarios playing through my head are cinematic in their horror – waves crashing over the sides, Kit swept overboard, Kit trapped beneath the capsized boat, Kit’s body washing up on shore tomorrow morning.

‘Stop it,’ I tell myself sharply. ‘Just stop.’