Page 118 of Carry Me Home

‘He knows you’re his sister.’

‘I’m going to teach him everything.’ She’s fierce now, protective. ‘How to swim and catch crabs and which rocks are best for climbing. And I won’t let anyone be mean to him. Ever.’

Kit’s eyes are bright. ‘I know you won’t.’

Isla reaches for my hand, squeezes it. ‘See?’ she whispers, eyes blinking heavily. ‘Family.’

Brynn and Jude drive me home.

The sun’s setting over the coast, everything turning gold and pink, the kind of evening Cornwall does better than anywhere – the light so saturated it doesn’t look real, the sea flat and burnished, the sky going through colours that don’t have proper names.

I sit in the back seat. Exhausted. Full. Emptied out and filled back up with different things.

‘You okay?’ Brynn asks, twisting round from the passenger seat.

‘Yeah.’ It’s true. For the first time in a long time, it’s actually true. ‘Yeah. I am.’

The village appears around the bend. The harbour. The boats. The café with its lavender shutters.

And Lavender Dreams at her mooring. Waiting.

‘Drop me at the harbour?’

Jude pulls over. I climb out, wave them off. Their taillights disappear up the lane and then it’s just me and the harbour and the evening.

The air smells of salt and cooling stone. The water is flat, barely lapping at the harbour wall. Somewhere a halyard clinks against a mast – that small, persistent sound that means home to me the way nothing else does.

I walk to the harbour wall. Rest my hands on the stone.

A new baby. A new name for an old love. A boat that’s becoming a café. A life that is, slowly and painfully and without anyone’s permission, reassembling itself into a shape I didn’t expect and couldn’t have planned for.

I stand there until the gold drains from the sky and the first stars appear over the headland. Then I push off the wall, and I walk home. My hands smell of hospital soap and new baby, and my chest aches in a way that isn’t grief – or isn’t only grief – and the café is waiting, and the boat is waiting, and tomorrow there is work to do.

I don’t know what comes next. But for the first time in ten months, I want to find out.

Chapter Twenty-Five

TOM

The sky here is enormous.

That’s the first thing I noticed when I arrived, and it hasn’t stopped being true. In Cornwall, the sky is caught in glimpses – between cottages, above the harbour, framed by cliffs. Here, it stretches from horizon to horizon, an endless grey dome pressing down on the land.

Today it’s the colour of wet slate. It’s been the colour of wet slate for three days.

The surgery is quiet. Tuesday afternoon lull. I’m updating patient files when my phone buzzes.

Jude.

‘Mate.’ His voice is bright, excited. ‘You sitting down?’

‘I’m at work. What’s happened?’

‘Baby’s here. Arrived yesterday. Boy. Peter William Harding. Seven pounds four ounces. Everyone’s healthy.’

Peter.

The name lands in my chest and sits there, heavy.