Page 68 of Carry Me Home

‘She is.’

‘Very warm. Very funny. Exactly like you described.’ Cara glances at me sideways. ‘Also very clearly the centre of your entire existence, but we’ll get to that.’

‘Cara—’

‘I’m not attacking you. I’m observing.’ She stops at a bench overlooking the cove and sits, patting the space beside her. ‘Come on. Sit. Talk to me properly. We haven’t done that since I got here.’

I sit. The view from here is the one I’ve known my whole life – the curve of the bay, the harbour, the boats at their moorings. The café with its faded shutters. From this distance I can’t see Nina, but I can see the window where she stands, and the door Chips sits outside of, and the fairy lights she leaves on every night. I know the geography of her life the way I know my own pulse. Without thinking. Without choosing.

Cara is watching me look at it. I feel her watching me look at it and I stop.

‘She’s very attached to that dog,’ Cara says. ‘Chips. It’s sweet – the way she talks about him, like he’s the best thing that’s happened to her in years.’

‘He’s good for her.’

‘I’m sure he is.’ Cara pulls her legs up onto the bench, turning to face me. ‘I know what you were doing, by the way. Finding a dog. Bringing it to her. Hoping it would help.’

‘The dog needed a home. Nina needed⁠—’

‘A reason to stay. A thing to take care of.’ Cara nods. ‘It’s very you. Thoughtful. Strategic, in that way you have of pretending you’re not being strategic.’

‘I wasn’t⁠—’

‘You won her a bear, Tom.’

The words land clean.

‘At the fete,’ she continues. ‘You won a bear – the big one, three coconuts in a row – and you gave it to her. In front of the whole village. It’s sitting in her café right now, in the corner by the door, bright pink and enormous, like a monument.’ She pauses. ‘You know what it looks like, right? To everyone?’

‘She doesn’t see it that way.’

‘I know she doesn’t. That’s what makes it worse.’ Cara’s voice is gentle, which is harder to take than sharp. ‘You keep making these declarations she can’t hear. The dog, the bear, the fuchsias, the windows, the closing-time visits. You’re saying it every single day and she’s not listening, and you just keep saying it louder in the same silent language and hoping one day she’ll learn to read it.’

My hands are on my knees. I’m gripping them. I make myself let go.

‘I’m not trying to make declarations,’ I say. ‘I just⁠—’

‘Want her to be happy. I know.’ Cara looks at the harbour. ‘But what about your happiness, Tom? Does that factor in?’

‘I am happy.’

‘You’re functional. There’s a difference.’ She turns back to me. ‘Do you remember what you were like at university? Before you came home?’

‘Sleep-deprived. Useless at parties.’

‘Ambitious. Curious. You had that list of places you wanted to work – the wildlife programmes, the conservation project in Scotland. You were going to do things. And then you came home for Christmas in third year and everything changed. Suddenly all you talked about was the village and the practice and⁠—’

‘Nina.’

‘You said her name like it answered every question anyone could ever ask you.’ Cara shakes her head. ‘I should have known then. I think I did know.’

‘Cara, I’m sorry⁠—’

‘Don’t be sorry. Ancient history.’ She waves a hand. ‘My point is – you had possibilities. A whole life that could have gone anywhere. And you chose to come back here and wait.’

The breeze picks up. Salt and gorse. Below us, a fishing boat is heading out of the harbour, its wake spreading behind it – movement, direction, purpose.

‘I don’t know how to want anything else,’ I say. ‘I’ve tried.’ I don’t add that I tried with her, at the wedding, tried to lose myself in a moment that sang with pleasure but left a hollow out-of-tune note after.