Page 20 of Pull Me Under
‘You’re not, but we’ll pretend.’ She pauses, adjusting her scarves, and I know that pause. That’s the pause before Tilly drops information like grenades. ‘Interesting morning at Nina’s café.’
‘Is she all right?’ Tom asks immediately. Always immediately, when it’s Nina.
‘She will be. Had help, actually. You’ll never guess who from.’
Here it comes.
‘Little Brynn Trelawney. All grown-up and back in Sea Salt Bay. Helped Nina through the worst of it when the siren went – very capable, very calm. Looks just like her grandfather, that one. Same stubborn jaw.’
The silence is different now. Charged. Electric.
Dad’s head comes up slowly, like a dog catching a scent it hates. His eyes find mine across the pub, and I know I’m fucked.
‘You knew.’ Not a question. ‘You knew a Trelawney was back and you didn’t tell me.’
I shrug, aiming for casual and probably missing by a mile. ‘Wasn’t sure she was staying. Could be just passing through.’
‘Passing through.’ He’s standing now, the stool scraping against the floor. ‘A Trelawney. In my harbour.’
‘Technically, it’s everyone’s—’
‘Don’t.’ The word hits like a slammed door. He’s already heading for the exit, that determined stride that means someone’s about to get the full Reuben Harding experience. ‘Twenty years those people have been gone, and now one sneaks back while my back’s turned?’
‘Dad, for Christ’s sake—’ I’m following him out, aware that the entire pub is watching through the windows. ‘You can’t just—’
‘Can’t I?’
The harbour’s gone quiet – the ambient noise still there, the rigging and the gulls and the water, but the people have gone still. Watching. A cormorant surfaces near the breakwater, sleek and dark. Instantly I’m distracted, waiting for it to surface. Focus, Jude.
Dad’s heading straight for the Trelawney shed, and of course he knows exactly where it is, probably dreams about it. I’m half-running to keep up, bad leg protesting at the pace, trying to figure out how to defuse this before it goes nuclear.
‘Dad, stop. You don’t even know why she’s back—’
‘I know enough.’
‘You know nothing! You’re about to barge in there and what? Yell at her for existing? For coming back to property her family owns?’
‘Property they abandoned—’
‘Because you drove them out!’
That stops him, just for a second, but it’s enough for me to get in front of him. We’re face to face on the dock, and I can see the vein in his temple pulsing.
‘Business rivalry,’ he says, low and dangerous. ‘Fishing territory. They undercut us, stole our contracts, poisoned the well. That’s what happened, boy. Don’t you forget it.’
Business rivalry. That’s what he’s always called it. But business rivalries don’t make you spit when you hear a name. Business rivalries don’t empty a family out of a village at three in the morning. Business rivalries end in solicitors’ letters, not exile.
‘Dad. Please. Just … leave it.’
‘Move, boy.’
‘No.’
‘I said move.’
‘And I said no.’
We’re standing there, squared off in the middle of the harbour, and I can feel the audience – Frankie and Bill in the pub doorway, Cal pausing by the Celtic Pride, even Tom hanging back by the harbour wall, ready to intervene if needed. This is how it always goes – Dad charges forward, consequences be damned, and someone else cleans up the wreckage. Usually Kit. Now me.
