Page 56 of Carry Me Home

He turns to the next child waiting for the coconut shy. I take my bear and go.

Mum finds me at the stall an hour later, restocking cups, the bear wedged into a corner where it’s already attracted a small crowd of fascinated toddlers.

‘So,’ she says, settling back into her chair.

‘So.’

‘Tom Darcy won you a bear. That’s kind of romantic, Nina.’ She’s got a calculating look on her face.

‘Tom won a bear and gave it to me because Brynn didn’t want it. It’s not romantic. It’s logistics.’

‘Hmm.’

‘That’s a very loaded “hmm”, Mum.’

‘It’s a factual “hmm”. He’s lovely, isn’t he? Tom. He’s always been lovely.’

‘He is lovely. He’s a lovely friend.’

‘Friend.’ She repeats it the way you’d repeat a word in a foreign language, testing whether it means what you think it means. ‘I remember when he used to come round for tea. So serious. Eighteen years old and already worried about everything. You’d be talking about saving the whales, or Greenpeace, or what crystal would best soothe a headache, and he’d be nodding along, agreeing with everything.’

I bristle, and I don’t know why.

‘He wasn’t just nodding along agreeing with everything I was saying.’

She adjusts her sunhat. Doesn’t look at me. ‘He still does that, doesn’t he? Agree with everything you say?’

‘Mum.’

‘What? I’m making conversation.’

‘You’re making insinuations.’

‘I’m making observations. About the way he looked at you when he handed over that bear.’

‘He looks at everyone like that.’

‘He doesn’t, actually.’ She turns to me properly, and her expression is softer, serious. ‘I’ve been watching him all day, Nina. He looks at you differently. Always has.’

Something in me goes very still. The kind of still I’m not good at. The kind that means there’s a thought, a feeling trying to land on a moving ship, but the sea is too rough and it’s not safe for it to touch down.

‘Mum—’

‘I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what I see.’ She picks up her tea. ‘And I think you see it too. I think you’ve got very good at looking away.’

The rubbish brass band, which is basically just Frankie and Bill on trumpets they can’t play, starts up again with a jaunty tune that’s horrifyingly out of tune and time.

‘Tom’s my friend,’ I say. ‘He’s my best friend.’

Mum looks at me for a long moment. ‘If you say so, love.’ She pats my arm. ‘If you say so.’

The fete winds down as the afternoon softens. The brass band packs up. The bunting comes down. Families drift home, sun-tired and sand-crusted, carrying prizes and ice-creams and the satisfied exhaustion of a day well spent.

I find Tom by the water’s edge, helping Kit stack chairs onto the trailer. The sun is low, turning the sea gold, and the heat has finally started to ease. Someone’s strung fairy lights along the cleanup trailer and they’re blinking on now in the dusk, warm and familiar, and I don’t know why fairy lights keep catching my attention lately – in the café, at the pub, here – like they’re trying to tell me something in a language I don’t speak.

‘Survivor,’ Tom says when he sees me. ‘How’s the bear?’

‘Currently being photographed by seventeen different tourists. It’s more popular than I am.’