Page 111 of Carry Me Home

I look at her. This woman who lost her only child. Who somehow found her way to Lisbon, to vitamin D and cheap wine, to pocket-sized grief. Who is sitting in her dead son’s favourite chair telling me to stop holding on.

‘How did you do it?’ I ask. ‘How did you start living again?’

‘I decided to.’ So simple. So direct. ‘One morning I woke up and I thought, Ellen, you can lie here and feel sorry for yourself, or you can book a flight somewhere warm and drink sangria until you remember what it feels like to be alive. So I booked the flight.’ She shrugs. ‘It’s not about forgetting him. I’ll never forget him. But he’s not here anymore, and I am. That has to count for something.’

The fishing boat has been tied up now. Two men on the quay, sorting nets, their voices carrying faintly through the glass. The café smells of coffee and warm pastry and gin, and the light through the window has shifted from grey to something almost gold, the way it does in Sea Salt Bay when the cloud cover thins and the sun finds a gap.

‘I haven’t been to his boat,’ I say. ‘Not properly. Not since⁠—’

‘Jenny’s Dream.’ Ellen tilts her head to read my face. ‘I wondered about that. What are you going to do with her?’

‘I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d want her. Or want me to sell her, split the money⁠—’

‘God, no.’ Ellen laughs and it’s a proper laugh, startled out of her. ‘What would I do with a boat? I get seasick looking at the bath. No, she’s yours. Peter would have wanted you to have her.’

‘I can’t just leave her sitting there forever.’

‘Then don’t.’ Ellen sets down her empty glass. ‘Do something with her. Sell her. Sail her. Burn her, if it helps. But don’t let her rot at the mooring like some kind of monument. That’s no good for anyone.’

‘I’ve thought about—’ I stop. The idea feels fragile. Half-formed. Not ready for air.

‘Thought about what?’

I shake my head. ‘It’s stupid.’

‘Try me.’

‘There’s this thing I saw. In Bude. A floating coffee shack. Someone converted an old boat, set up a little café on the water. People row out to get their morning coffee, or they moor up alongside.’ I’m talking to my hands now, not to Ellen. ‘It probably wouldn’t work here. The harbour’s too exposed in winter. And the licensing would be a nightmare. And it’s Peter’s boat, I can’t just⁠—’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it’s his.’

‘It was his. Now it’s yours.’ Ellen leans forward, elbows on the table. ‘And you’re a woman who runs a café, looking at a boat she doesn’t know what to do with. Seems like the universe is being fairly obvious about this one, Nina.’

‘But—’

‘Peter would have loved it.’ Her voice softens. The sharpness drops away and underneath it is the voice of a mother who still knows her son, present tense, always. ‘He really would. You know what he was like – always had some scheme or other, always dreaming up ways to make things work. If you’d told him you wanted to turn Jenny’s Dream into a floating café, he’d have been down there with a paintbrush before you finished the sentence.’

I can see it. That’s the thing. I can see him – sleeves rolled up, paint in his hair, grinning at me over the gunwale while he suggests some ridiculous addition like a karaoke machine or a slide.

The image doesn’t hurt the way it used to. It aches. But it’s a warm ache. The ache of a thing you loved that’s becoming a memory instead of a wound.

‘I’d rename her,’ I say quietly. ‘I couldn’t keep the name. Not for that.’

‘What would you call her?’

The answer has been sitting in the back of my mind for weeks. Maybe longer. I didn’t know it was there until Ellen asked.

‘Lavender Dreams.’ I say it and it feels real for the first time. Solid. ‘It combines – it’s both. The café and the boat. Peter and what comes next.’

Ellen looks at me for a long moment. Her eyes are bright – not with tears. Recognition. The look of a woman seeing someone take the first step out of a room she knows intimately.

‘Lavender Dreams,’ she repeats. ‘That’s perfect, Nina. That’s absolutely perfect.’

‘You don’t think it’s⁠—’

‘I think my son fell in love with a woman who builds things. Who takes what’s broken and makes it whole again.’ She reaches across the table, takes my hand. ‘I think he’d be so proud of you. And I think it’s time you started being proud of yourself.’