by Con Riley
His keys were in the bottom of his duffle, snug between rolls of colourful fabric that spilt onto the cobbles as he fumbled beneath them, so bright compared to the grey reality of home. Jude stalled before drawing a deep breath. Then he crossed to the pub’s front door to slot his key into the lock.
It wouldn’t turn.
In fact, the whole lock looked new.
Had Louise mentioned changing it in any of her messages lately? If she had, he’d skimmed it. Jude almost knocked on the door until a seagull cried behind him, a reminder that only fishermen and gulls were awake at this hour. His watch showed confirmation; it was too early to wake her.
That left one more option: he’d bed down in the boatshed before facing his sister. Maybe he’d sleep instead of lying awake like usual, thinking about what-ifs with someone spoiled to the core, like Rob. There was no point thinking about him now, Jude knew, despite the sparks Tom had mentioned. And there was definitely no reason to replay their one kiss, not when Rob would have forgotten that he even existed.
Jude shouldered his bag and walked to the far end of the harbour. The boatshed looked unchanged from the outside, the upturned hull of its roof was the same as ever, just like the weathered lock on its door, thank goodness. This time, his key slid in. It was dark inside, inky, but Jude knew the layout like the back of his hand. There were two bunks at the far end. No doubt the bedcovers would be dusty, but he’d slept in much worse places before Tom had hired him. He made his way towards them.
Jude’s shin struck something solid. He bit back a curse and tugged aside a curtain covering a porthole window. The dawn light was weak, but Jude caught his breath at what it revealed.
Far from living it up in London, or fighting with his famous father, Rob Martin slept in Jude’s bunk, sprawled across the mattress as if he owned it.
2
At the sight of Rob asleep in his bunk, Jude stepped back as if shoved, hitting something else in the shadows that shouldn’t have been there. It wobbled, sounding very much like the teetering of the barstool his mum kept in the pub kitchen.
Before he’d learned that cooking could be his ticket out of Porthperrin, Jude used to jump off that stool more often than he’d sit willingly on it, avoiding cracking eggs by their dozen to help feed summer tourists. One sound was all it took to remind him of the loss he’d tried so hard to stave off. Now he was home, there was no way to avoid it.
He’d do whatever she asked now, Jude knew; crack a thousand eggs for his mum if that meant he got to see her again. His heart ached as he stopped the barstool from falling, while behind him, Rob grumbled in his sleep, as if annoyed by the sound.
He should have let the stool fall, Jude decided, fury swamping his initial surge of regret.
He should have let it fall with one hell of a clatter; give Rob as big a shock as he’d had.
Jude had so wanted to come home to find two other people safe and sound here, not him.
Only that wasn’t the entire truth, Jude accepted as Rob shifted in his sleep, his bedsheet slipping. Jude had wanted to see more of Rob before he’d left London in a panic. He’d wanted that despite Rob being a contender for a cash prize Jude so badly needed.
Rob shifted again, the sheet slipping some more. Jude focussed on its progress southward in the dim light, breath catching again, but it wasn’t the glimpse of hair trailing from Rob’s chest to his pelvis that caught his attention—black as sin like he’d imagined. No, it was a familiar anchor keyring that gleamed close to Rob’s sleep-curved fingers.
What was he doing with the set of keys that belonged to Jude’s mother? And why were they dumped next to a half-drunk glass of—Jude leaned closer and sniffed—cognac?
Jude weighed his choices. He could go along with his first instinct and wake Rob to get some answers. Or he could steal back the keys and get Louise’s side of the story—find out why Rob was here, and what he’d told her about Jude. He inched closer and crouched before freezing at a muffled murmur.
“Lou?” Rob mashed his face into the pillow, his voice sleepy. He turned his head a fraction. “Did the prodigal son finally return?” That previously slack hand reached out. “No?” Fingertips skimmed Jude’s bent knee before patting it as if in reassurance. “Maybe that’s for the best, sweetheart.” Rob’s eyes remained closed, dark brows drawn down as he mumbled. “It’s not like him being unreliable is surprising.”
That stung, but adding insult to injury, Rob rolled over to face the wall, making some more space behind him. He lifted the sheet as if he expected Jude’s sister to spoon him. “Get in, darling.” His yawn was jaw-cracking. “I’ll adjust the business plan in the morning.”
Like hell, he would.
Months might have passed without Jude being present, but that was no reason for Rob to talk as if it was his role to run things in his absence. His parents had left Louise in charge, not someone Jude had made damn sure to keep well off their radar. He hadn’t mentioned Rob even once in calls home, even as each heat of the contest had brought them closer, two moths circling a bright flame of attraction. Talking about any of that with them would never have happened—couldn’t have—so why was Rob talking as though he had any say in managing Jude’s parents’ business?
Jude scooped up the set of keys and retreated quietly, retracing his steps across the workshop and avoiding what he now saw were multiple stacks of chairs and tables. He closed the workshop door with the softest of clicks behind him. A minute later, the pub door opened for a new key on his mum’s ring just as the church clock chimed half past the hour.
“Rob?” His sister called, her voice faint. “I thought I told you to go to bed? I’m okay waiting up on my own, I promise.” Jude followed the sound of her voice to a kitchen he hadn’t set foot in for what felt like a lifetime. He hesitated in the doorway, a sense of being entirely in the wrong place striking at the sight of new stainless-steel workbenches instead of worn wood, the homely clutter he’d grown up with missing. Louise had her back turned, elbow-deep in suds at the sink. “You really should go back to sleep, Rob.” Dejection wearied her tone. “You were right. Jude’s not coming back this time either.”
Jude’s throat was so tight, his greeting came out raspy. “Hi, Lou.”
Louise shrieked, soap-suds flying and water slopping as she threw herself at him and clung. She let go just as fast to clock him with her wet cloth. It dropped with a splash before she launched herself at him again, tears adding to the dampness of his shirt.
“Hey, less of the violence.” Jude buried his face in her hair, red-gold frizz tickling as she sobbed. “Although I guess I deserved that.” He admitted what he’d put off saying via email or phone call.
“I couldn’t find them, Lou. Not a trace of them, or the One for Luck either. Every lead turned out to be a dead end.” Every single potential sighting of a woman with similar uncontrollable hair to his sister’s, or a man as tall and fair as Jude, who let his wife speak for him more often than not. Each scrap of washed-up wreckage that might’ve proved conclusive turned out to be a red herring. Nothing he’d found had come even close to proving their fate. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t find them for you.”
Her nod was silent, her hold on him even tighter.
It was the brightness of the kitchen light this time, Jude decided, that made his eyes sting. He blinked hard a few times before he got out a whisper. “I mean it. I’m so sorry that I didn’t call to let you know for sure that I was coming home, this time. I meant to—”
“You meant to what, exactly?” Louise pulled back, fingers still twisted in his shirt, tethering him as if she feared he’d drift the moment her grip loosened. “Tell me that you’d stay half-way around the world, looking for them forever?” Her gaze was watery, red-rimmed eyes the image of their mum’s, but the jut of her jaw was all their dad’s. “I knew you’d want to, until you found some proof, Jude. But honestly, I also knew they both had to be d- dead”—she stuttered over a word Jude still avoided thinking—“I knew before you even
left to find them. We both saw the weather reports; that typhoon was devastating. There was barely any chance they could have survived it.”
Jude had spent many a long night weighing up his mum’s nursing background, and his dad’s sailing knowledge, only to come to the same conclusion. Could any of their combined skills have counted for much against the full force of nature? “I know, Lou. I do. But I’m going back. After the summer season, I mean.” He couldn’t stay here, not until he knew for certain. Without the cast-iron proof of wreckage, the faintest trace of doubt still niggled. It was the same doubt that had made him cancel his return last time, spending almost every penny that Tom had paid him on following leads that thinned like smoke the moment he tried to grasp them. That doubt only increased whenever he remembered the care his dad had taken when building the One for Luck. It had been as buoyant as any of the luxury yachts the Aphrodite had berthed next to, and twice as full of provisions. If any hand-built vessel could withstand typhoon weather or shipwreck, it just might be her. It was bad luck that her geolocator had winked out right when it would have been most useful. Jude had used its data to replicate their sailing direction, information that had petered out days before the storm struck, just like his dad had plotted his planned course on maps pinned to the wall of the boatshed.
The boatshed.
He held Louise by the shoulders and gently pushed her back. “Lou. My key didn’t work when I got back, so I let myself into the boatshed first. Planned on bunking down there for the night, only—”
“You found Rob asleep there already?” Even under the bright glare of the kitchen lights, Jude struggled to parse his sister’s expression. “Isn’t he amazing?” she asked.
Jude had started to think so as well, towards the end of the contest, despite his gut feeling that Rob was only playing with affection that Jude couldn’t risk exploring. The amazement he felt whenever he’d been caught in Rob’s bright spotlight had always come with a sense of worry. Her question also didn’t exactly tell Jude how much she knew about them. Had Rob outed him to Lou? He hedged instead of asking.
“Why is he here, Lou?”
“Oh, Jude.” This time, the kitchen’s bright lights hid nothing, Louise’s expression close to hero-worship. “Rob came here to save us.”
Jude escaped his sister for a shower that he stood under for a long time. Steam filled what he’d always thought of as a small bathroom before working aboard a yacht schooled him on size. Now the room dimensions seemed generous as he scrubbed salt from his hair. The heat loosened muscles tightened by the last hard push home, and by worry at what he’d found here.
A door opened along the hallway outside—Louise done with her nightlong vigil now Jude was back, perhaps. Or maybe she was still listing all the ways Rob was the Anchor’s saviour, her expression very telling, as if Rob meant far more than someone average she’d hired for the summer.
There was nothing average about Rob.
Jude had realised that shortly after they’d first met, at the start of the contest. Rob had joked with the other contenders and poked fun at the judges, fearless, as though none of their opinions mattered a jot to him. Then as the pressure had ramped up, he hadn’t seemed at all spooked.
Rob hadn’t cared, Jude realised now, about winning or losing, and why would he need to with a chain of restaurants his for the asking? None of it had been serious to him, Jude decided as he lingered under the spray, replaying Rob’s wink after they’d both got through the semi-final. He also remembered the shared taste of champagne when Jude had forgotten his better judgement and finally let Rob kiss him.
He shut off the water and grabbed a towel.
Stupid. That had been so stupid.
Rob hadn’t meant anything by it. He flirted with everyone, his wide-eyed gaze making everyone around him blossom. Jude would have been better off not knowing what it felt like to have all that attention solely on him; easier if he hadn’t had that kiss to recall over and over. Besides, the last he knew from Louise was that the pub was barely breaking even. How the hell could she afford to pay someone used to central London wages? And why the hell would Rob waste his time in a run-down pub in the back of beyond? He could take his pick of his dad’s restaurants.
Maybe he’d misread his sister’s last business updates, Jude thought as he dried himself on a towel that was new and fluffy. He noticed a subtle anchor emblem embroidered on its hem that was also at the centre of each new wall tile. It was a classy look, he had to admit, rather than the homely hotchpotch he remembered. Trade must be improving if the pub could pay for a live-in chef and expensive upgrades like this bathroom remodel.
Louise passed in the hallway again. He opened the door, towel around his waist, and gestured over his shoulder. “Why’d you put in new bathroom tiles?”
“Let’s talk tomorrow. Today, I mean.” Louise yawned. “I’m going to bed. See if I can’t get a few hours of sleep before breakfast.” She stifled another. “If you’re sure you don’t want anything to eat now, that is. I could make you something?”
“No. No, thanks.” Jude’s stomach was in knots, this homecoming fraught enough without finding out his sister had reached out to someone he’d tried so hard to get out of his head. “I’ll sleep too.” He stepped back into the bathroom to dress, the boxers he pulled on sticking to his still-damp skin, his legs tanned a deep caramel compared to the white cotton. He emerged, still rubbing at his wet hair as he crossed the hall to his bedroom, lifting the heavy black door latch just as Louise called out.
“No, wait!”
The door swung open into a room that bore no relation to the one where he’d slept for his whole childhood.
“Jude….”
Instead of the twin bed and desk set he remembered, a generous king-size was covered by snowy linens. His posters and noticeboard were gone too, no sign of his college textbooks either. Instead, more thick towels were folded at the foot of the bed along with a menu. It too featured the anchor motif he’d first noticed in the shower room.
Jude stepped inside this alternate reality on legs that once again felt like rubber. “What’s this?” He snatched up the menu and scanned it from top to bottom. “Come and experience fine dining courtesy of ‘Britain’s best new chef’, Rob Martin, while you stay at the New Anchor,” he read. “The New Anchor? What’s new about it, Lou? And what’s all this about ‘fine dining’?” He turned in time to see Louise flinch, so he spoke more quietly, voice low-pitched and insistent. “We do pub grub, Lou. Pub grub, not fine dining courtesy of Rob fucking Martin.” Jude swiped drops of water away from his eyes. “You know, for the first few months I was away, it sounded like you were low-key worried about cash every time we spoke. But the summer season is almost here, and that’s our one chance to make some real money. You know it as well as I do. It’s why I came back—” he only just managed to rein in the words when I should be searching, but that guilt still clung, almost strangling him as he continued. “So imagine my confusion when I find half the pub remodelled and that you’re paying for a fine-dining chef we don’t need.” Maybe it was tiredness that made his control slip. “For fuck sake, if you’ve got money for all this, why’d you need me to come back? I could have—”
“You could have what?” Louise bit back, stricken. “You could have stayed thousands of miles from home, wasting your time on a wild goose chase.” She clapped a hand over her mouth, voice muffled. “I didn’t mean that.”
Jude crossed the room and pulled her into a hug she barely resisted. “Me either. Shit. I’m sorry. It’s just… this place isn’t how I remember, that’s all.” Even the seascape on the wall over her shoulder looked new, wild splashes of oil paint somehow mirroring the inner storm he felt imagining his parents’ final moments. How the artist had conjured a storm with so few brushstrokes was impressive, and most probably as expensive as hiring a chef like Rob must be. “Why’d you hire him?”
Louise’s back stiffened under his hands. “I didn’t exactly hire him, but I had to do some
thing.” Her swallow was audible. “If there was going to be a business here by the time you got done looking for…. Well, I had to do something; make some big changes to the business. I had to.”
Jude said, “Okay, okay,” even though her response was far from the reality of this business, as he knew it. The minute the summer tourists arrived for their greasy breakfasts before spending the rest of the day on the beach, the pub would have broken even like usual. Jude kissed her temple and then cupped her small chin in his hand, her skin paper-white against his. “Let’s sleep. We’ll talk in a few hours, although…” he tried to tease like they used to. “I’m not sure how I’ll cope with sleeping in this level of luxury. I’m more used to tiny crew quarters, or sleeping on deck lately. We save beds like this for clients.” Even then, the staterooms hadn’t been this spacious, the Aphrodite at the smaller end of the luxury sailing charter market.
“Well, you’re not sleeping in this stateroom either. Not when I’m living in hope of getting some paying guests soon.” Louise grabbed his hand, maybe still fearing that he might drift. She led him along the hallway. “I switched all the rooms around to maximise what I can charge for them. You can have the pullout mattress from under my bed until we sort out where you’ll sleep from now on.” Her next yawn was massive. Jude pulled out the trundle while she found some spare bedding. “I’m knackered. You better not still snore.”
“That was always you, not me.” It was so easy to fall into the childhood bickering he’d perfected on sailing trips over the years to distract Louise from her seasickness.
He lay down. Louise blinked owlishly at him. “I’m glad you’re home, Jude.”
“Me too. Although I’m sorry to spoil your summer plans with your new love—” he made air quotes “—famous fine-dining chef, Rob Martin.”
“Shut up,” she laughed. “You’re just jealous because he won that contest.” Then she added, quieter, “Rob said you would have if you’d stayed. Won it, I mean. Besides, he’s not my new love.”