Even after these few short months, I already feel more like my old self, more connected to my past, and freer. I’ve put some weight on and cut my hair. My skin is clear and healthy from daily walks by the sea, and I try to avoid routine as much as possible. I never eat lamb on a Tuesday.
I have a job. I’m working in a café overlooking the wide, golden beach at Praa Sands. It’s easy to get to by bus. I haven’t braved driving lessons yet, though when I’ve saved enough money, it’s on my list. The work is straightforward enough, the pay isn’t bad, and there are tips which are shared between the staff. The others tell me that tips are good over the summer. The people I work with are lovely and I’m beginning to make friends. Last week I even went for a drink with a few after work, and the owner of the café, a middle-aged hippie with a wide smile and tie-dyed trousers, has asked me to join her book club. They only serve vegan snacks, she told me. But there’s wine, of course. When I imagine what Nathan would think of her, I smile.
Alex and I sit on the wall and I unpack the picnic we put together this morning. Chelsea buns from the bakery in Newlyn and pasties. Hopeful young seagulls with mottled feathers hop about near us, waiting and watching for carelessly discarded tidbits. I pass Alex a bottle of water. He drinks and passes it back.
‘Happy birthday, Granddad,’ Alex says, looking up at the gulls who are wheeling above us.
When I left Nathan, we stayed with Vicky and Phil for a month or so. Phil was kind and welcoming, but was quick to offer to drive our stuff to the flat on the outskirts of Camborne when it was time to go. The flat was pretty grotty when we got the keys, but it’s ours and I loved it from the first night we spent there. Vicky helped us give it a lick of cream paint and I made curtains with some material she picked up from a discount fabric sale in Falmouth. Cass sleeps in with Alex, supposedly in a basket in the corner of his room, but as soon as he thinks I’ve turned in, he pats the bed and she jumps up beside him. Some nights, when I can’t sleep, I stare at them from the doorway. The sight of the two of them warms me to my bones.
According to my solicitor I am entitled to half of everything Nathan owns. It’s complicated because he doesn’t own the house. It’s still in his mother’s name. The solicitor seemed concerned about that, but I don’t care. If it was up to me I’d take no money at all. It feels like blood money. Vicky has told be to stop being an idiot.
‘Think of it as back pay.’
I will put anything I get into savings for Alex. My mother is happy. The home the council put her into isn’t as bad as I’d feared. The view out of her window isn’t as lovely as the rose garden at Heamoor as it looks out over the car park, but there’s a tree right outside. I hung a bird-feeder filled with peanuts and lard in the branches and she sits in her chair and watches them for hours. I visit every day and help out when I’m there: empty the bins, freshen the place up, take her soups and casseroles I’ve made for her. She struggles with speech and can become frustrated, but mostly she seems content. The little bird, my storm glass, sits on her window ledge and keeps her company when I’m not there.
Two weeks ago, Nathan sat outside the flat at night for four hours. It’s not the first time. He parks across the road. He has a different car now, a navy Range Rover, but it was him without a doubt. I concealed myself behind the curtain and watched him. He didn’t move a muscle. Eyes bolted to the front door. Hand tapping the steering wheel non-stop. Last week I found a bunch of flowers on the doorstep. No note. Roses – pink and white – tied with a purple ribbon. I unceremoniously dumped them straight in the wheelie bin.
Alex found them and asked who gave them to me and why I’d chucked them away. My instinct was to lie and tell him they were nothing to do with me, that someone had shoved them into our bin, maybe a disgruntled girlfriend not interested in the empty gestures of her cheating boyfriend. But I don’t lie to my son anymore. I vowed I wouldn’t in the hospital that day. He is worth more than that. It’s worrying how often I have to stop myself lying. It’s as if, after years and years of dishonesty, it became my default. It seems to be getting easier and certainly the truth is becoming less intimidating.
‘No note,’ I’d said to him. ‘But I’m pretty sure they’re from Nathan.’
Alex nodded. ‘Right place for them then.’
Cass barks on the shingle below us. With a pasty in one hand, Alex jumps off the wall and, as he eats, he searches for a piece of driftwood. When he finds what he’s looking for he draws his arm back and throws it as far along the beach as he can. Cass bounds after it, scoops it up in her mouth and runs a huge circle around him. I laugh and watch them tear off down to the water’s edge.
There is a shout. My name. I turn and he waves at me and walks down the steps from the road. Alex spots him and waves at him. Cass spots him and bounds over to greet him, jumping around him, barking excitedly. He bends and ruffles her fur with both hands, kissing the top of her head. Alex jogs up to him and they exchange a few words. Alex runs off with Cass nipping at his heels and Cam shoves his hands in his pockets and walks towards me. I shield my eyes from the sun and smile up at him.
‘You ate without me?’
‘You’re late and we were hungry.’
I plucked up the courage to call him around Christmas time. It – we – felt unfinished. I needed, as the Americans call it, some sort of closure. We met for a drink and talked until they started clearing up around us. Cam and I had been together for seven weeks in 1998. Is seven weeks enough time to fall in love? I do believe so. We were lovers derailed by tragedy. I don’t know if I knew how much I loved him at the time. I think it was only when I watched him walk away that day fifteen years ago, traumatised and broken, that I realised.
We aren’t together. Not officially. We’ve kissed but not slept together. I’m not ready. Maybe I never will be. But I love his company. He makes me feel at ease. Safe. He listens to me. Listens properly, as if he’s interested in what I’m saying, in what I think. He laughs at my jokes as well. In fact, we spend a lot of time laughing. It’s nice to have someone to curl up with on the sofa. Someone to make me a cup of tea. Someone who notices what kind of mood I’m in.
Cam sits on the wall beside me and grins. His hair is tousled from the wind and his eyes are glinting as if somebody’s lit a fire inside him.
‘You look like you had a good morning?’ I say.
‘Yep.’
‘And?’
‘Lawrie Mould offered me full-time.’
‘As deckhand?’
Cam beamed. ‘No. Not on the boat. On shore. His fish agent resigned and he reckons I can handle it. It’s a great job. Decent money, holidays, regular hours. He thinks it’ll be right up my street.’
‘That’s great and of course you can handle it. I’m really pleased for you.’
He puts his hand inside his jacket pocket and takes out his cigarettes. He doesn’t offer me one. I don’t smoke anymore. I haven’t since the day I left Nathan.
Cam smiles then looks out over the sea. We sit there for a while and watch Alex and Cass playing on the beach as the seagulls screech. I’m aware of him next to me, the heat of him, his hand resting on the concrete between us. We are nearly touching. I inch my own hand a little closer. My finger brushes his skin and his thumb almost imperceptibly rubs against me.
Chapter Fifty-One
Nathan
‘Everybody leaves in the end.’
My mother said these words to me twice.
The first time was soon after my father killed himself. That day will haunt me for the rest of my life. The air in my bedroom rang with the echo of the gunshot. Kerensa started screaming. Glass-shattering shrieks which tore up the house. I ran out on to the landing and took the stairs two at a time, heart hammering.
She was in the doorway of his study.
‘What is it?’ I said, my voice breathless with adrenalin.
She turned, her face white, eyes wide. When she saw me she thrust open her arms as if tied to a crucifix, blocking my view. I cr
aned my neck, ducked and dived, to try and see past her, desperate to know what she was trying to hide.
‘No!’ Her sharp cry was strangled by tears. ‘No, Nate. No! Go back to your room. Do you hear me? Now!’
‘But I want to see—’
She was sobbing. Begging me not to look. Then Mother appeared, looming over both of us. She pushed Kerensa to one side and I saw him lying there, crumpled on the floor, a gaping bloody hole where the right side of his face should have been. That’s quite a sight for a child to see and the image etched into my mind hasn’t dulled one fraction over time.
Kerensa grabbed me and pressed my face into her chest. Her arms wrapped around me and held me to her. I struggled and pulled against her but she held on, whispering words I couldn’t hear into my hair.
‘Upstairs both of you.’ Our mother’s voice was cast iron. ‘Now!’
We ran, Kerensa pulling me after her, our feet hammering the stairs, across the landing, into her room. She pulled the door shut and we sat on her bed, holding each other, neither of us speaking for what felt like years.
Everything else is snatched memories. The police arriving. The ambulance. The sounds of people in the house. Mother’s shrill voice barking orders at people. We knelt up on the bed. Looked out of the window and down at the people moving about in semi-darkness. There was a stretcher. On it was a huge black bag. There was no sign of my mother and I remember wondering if I’d still get to open my birthday presents. She appeared around midnight. Her silhouette filled the doorway. ‘Go to sleep,’ she said, her voice dry and flat. ‘Everybody leaves in the end.’
A few nights later, I can’t remember how many, Kerensa crept into my room. She lifted my bedcovers and climbed in beside me. She was crying. She hadn’t stopped. The day after my birthday, I found her sitting under the apple tree, sobbing so hard her body shook like she was having a fit. I worried she might actually cry herself to death. She was a sensitive soul. Gentle and pure.
‘Aren’t you sad?’ she asked through her shuddering sobs.
‘Of course,’ I said, then pinched myself hard until tears came. ‘See?’
But rather than sad I felt angry, angry he didn’t care enough about us to stay alive, and angry he was so weak. In the hours which followed his death I grew to despise him.
‘Coward,’ my mother had said, her voice edged with hatred and disrespect. ‘A weak-willed coward.’
Even at thirteen, I knew there was no glory in weakness and cowardice. The only things he left behind, other than his mutilated body and a ruined rug, was a hidden stash of empty bottles and a debt which threatened to bankrupt us. What kind of a husband and father would do that?
I lay in bed with Kerensa, my manufactured tears long dried up, and stared at her beautiful, devastated face in the blue-white moonlight which spilled in through the window.
‘Nate,’ she whispered, when her sobbing finally stopped.
‘Yes?’
‘I want you to promise me you’ll be different to them. Promise me you’ll be happy. You need to find love. You have to be happy. Do you understand?’
I’m not sure I did. Not then. Not aged thirteen.
‘Whatever you do, make sure you find love, and when you do – are you listening? – when you do find it, do everything you can to hold on to it. We aren’t going to be like them. Do you hear me? We are going to find love and we’re going to hold on to it. We’re going to be happy.’
‘But how will I know?’
‘Know what?’
‘When I find love?’
She thought for a moment or two. ‘You’ll know because it will hit you. Maybe out of the blue. That’s what they say, don’t they? They say, when you know, you just know.’
‘Who says it?’
‘The people who know about love.’ Then her hands squeezed mine. ‘Promise me you’ll find love and, when you do, you’ll never, ever, let it go. Promise me.’
I nodded.
‘Say it.’
‘I promise you.’
She smiled, but it was fleeting. ‘Nate?’
‘Yes?’
She hesitated. ‘I have to go away for a while.’
‘What?’ Horror hit me full on. ‘No! No. You can’t—’
She put her fingers against my lips. ‘I have to. Mother and I are fighting all the time. I hate her. I hate it here. I can’t get the image of him out of my head. I need to get away.’
‘But what about me?’
Her face twitched, as if some sort of pain had grabbed her, and she was quiet for a few moments. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said finally. ‘It won’t be forever. I’ll be back, I promise.’
I idolised my sister. She was a mother and father wrapped up in one person. It was Kerensa who read to me when I was small, who kissed me goodnight, who made me laugh behind Mother’s back and rolled her eyes when our father came back so drunk he couldn’t walk. It was Kernesa who snuck into my room when the shouting and screaming got too loud and covered my ears with her hands. She was the only joy I knew and when she died all the lights went out.
You asked me, Hannah, why I didn’t tell you I knew Alex wasn’t mine. I thought your question was strange. Because if you knew me at all you’d know. My family was destroyed by scandal. It was destroyed by a weak man, a coward, who allowed his family name to be dragged through the dirt. I vowed at thirteen I’d be nothing like him. The Cardew name would never again be associated with scandal and immorality. How would it look if word got out that I wasn’t Alex’s father? That I was the type of man who’d take on a philandering wife? That I was a man unable to father my own children? Most men wouldn’t have forgiven their wives for what you did, for the lies and the deception. But I’m not most men. You brought a cuckoo into the nest. I could have thrown you both out. But I didn’t. And now, looking back, knowing what I know about Alex’s father, I understand you so much more. I know what it’s like to be damaged and how the darkest things can erode us from within.
I still love you, Hannah.
When you left, I remember thinking how sad you looked. How full of regret. You moved heavily, laboriously, not with the energy of somebody doing something they want to do. I watched you heave your two suitcases to the front door and tried not to picture the empty cupboards upstairs, your creams gone from the bathroom, my dressing gown hanging alone on the hook on our door.
‘Where will you go?’
You didn’t answer me. Perhaps you didn’t trust yourself to speak. Perhaps you knew if you did your resolve would falter.
‘With him?’
A flicker of doubt crossed your face. You shook your head. Told me, again, there was nothing between you and Cameron Stewart. But I saw the lie in your eyes. He’d got to you, wheedled his way inside your head, poisoned you against me. Blood pumped faster around my veins. Were you really going through with it? The pain I felt when you opened the door was intense.
‘Don’t leave me.’ Desperation strangled my voice.
For a moment I thought you might stop, turn back, kiss me, and tell me how sorry you were.
But you didn’t.
‘Goodbye, Nathan.’
The door closed and I was left alone with nothing but my mother’s voice ringing around the bricks and flagstones like a tolling bell.
Everybody leaves in the end.
The second time she said those words was when I found her sitting in my father’s study with a photograph of my sister in a silver frame on the desk in front of her. She turned and looked at me. No tears. Mouth set with what appeared to be hatred.
‘Your sister is dead.’ Her clipped words like slivers of ice.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘What’s to understand? I told you, didn’t I? Everybody leaves in the end.’
And now, here I am, parked in the car park overlooking the beach. You are sitting on the wall, your hair taken by the wind, and you are smiling. I recall the first time I saw you through the bakery window. Your skin clear and fresh, your eyes bright with a
n innocent joy, reminding me, in that split second, of my sister.
Kerensa was right.
When you know, you just know.
You laugh and I can hear the noise in my head. Then you catch sight of something and wave. And that’s when I see him walking across the shingle towards you. Alex runs to him. You smile and when he sits beside you it’s all I can do to stop myself screaming. His face is smug and triumphant. He thinks he’s won. But he hasn’t.
I won’t give up, Hannah. I’ll bide my time and I’ll get you back.
It’s not the end. Not yet.
I’ll get you back if it’s the last thing I do.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my wonderful editor, Kate Mills. You give me the space to breathe and, with your insightful direction and guidance, help make my stories better. Thank you also to the entire HQ team. Without exception, your combined enthusiasm, talent, professionalism and dedication make this journey a pleasure. Thank you to my agent Broo, as always a tower of strength, encouragement and friendship.
Thanks to Dieter Newell for donating to CLIC Sargent and naming ‘Young Lawrence Mould’. Generous as ever.
Heartfelt thanks to author and friend Quentin Bates who helped me sort the gunwales from the winches, and provided me with such fabulous anecdotes from his time on the Newlyn trawlers ‘back in the day’. Any fishing-related errors are my own. To my early readers – Cos, Sara, Melissa and Charlie – thank you for your kind words, positivity and suggestions. Siany, thank you for your superb observations and constant cheerleading. You are always there for me, even when facing tough times. What a friend you are. Dearest Lucy, thank you for forensically reading such a horrendous early draft of this book and not telling me to burn it forthwith. From patiently discussing initial thoughts, through to brainstorming final drafts, I can’t thank you enough. To Hannah, thank you for lending me your name and for offering excellent input at the eleventh hour. Thank you to my ‘local crew’ who are always there to cheer me on. You know who you are.
I’d like to thank my readers – you, in fact – who make it all worthwhile. Thank you for sharing the ride with me. To the reviewers, bookshops, librarians, festival organisers, and bloggers who help spread the love of books far and wide. You are incredible. Thank you for your unending support.
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