Page 69 of Carry Me Home

‘Have you tried? Or have you just told yourself you’re trying while organising your entire life around her?’

I don’t answer. The fishing boat rounds the headland and disappears.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Cara says, and her tone shifts – lighter, deliberately so. ‘About what’s next for me. I can’t stay unemployed forever. And your dad’s retiring properly this time – you said so. What if we did something together? A practice. You and me. Your patient rapport, my surgical experience. We could build something real.’

I let out a loose laugh. ‘We talked about that once. After too much wine at the uni Christmas party.’

‘It was a very detailed conversation. We had a napkin with numbers.’ She grins, but then the smile drops, just slightly. ‘I’m not proposing, Tom. I’m just saying – you have options. You’ve always had options. Not just here. Cornwall, Devon, Scotland – anywhere.’

The word Scotland catches. The conservation project I’d applied for at twenty-two and then withdrawn from because I came home and Nina was here and the rest of my life rearranged itself around that fact like water around a stone.

‘Think about it,’ Cara says. ‘No pressure. Just think about what you actually want, instead of what you’ve convinced yourself you have to settle for.’

She stands and starts back along the path. I stay on the bench one more minute, looking at the village below. The café. The harbour. The life I built.

The life I built around her, without ever deciding to. Without her ever asking me to.

I stand up and follow Cara back down the hill.

The Ship is heaving by nine o’clock.

Tilly’s declared it karaoke night – a monthly tradition the village either loves or dreads depending on who’s had enough to drink to volunteer first. The speakers are crackling, the songbook is dog-eared, and Bill is warming up with what might be Tom Jones but could also be a medical emergency.

‘This is incredible,’ Cara says, watching Bill attempt the high notes of ‘It’s Not Unusual’ with the commitment of a man who has never once considered failure. ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘Wait until Dot does Celine Dion.’

‘Dot does Celine Dion?’

‘The entire Titanic soundtrack. Annually. Without mercy.’

Brynn appears with a tray of drinks – umbrella-laden things in colours not found in nature – and slides into the booth. ‘Nina’s on her way. She’s just closing up.’

My throat tightens. Not the vague kind – the specific, muscular contraction of a man who has been bracing for this all evening, the moment Nina and Cara are in the same room while he’s in it too.

Cara catches my eye. Her expression says: I see you. I look away.

Nina arrives ten minutes later, slightly flushed from the walk, bangles announcing her before the door finishes opening. She squeezes into the booth next to Brynn, across from me, and reaches for one of the umbrella drinks.

‘What did I miss?’

‘Bill’s Tom Jones.’

‘Damn. I love Bill’s Tom Jones.’ She takes a sip and her face creases. ‘What is this?’

‘Tilly’s special. Don’t ask what’s in it.’

‘I’m afraid to.’

‘You should be. I think I saw her put Cointreau in a blender with something purple.’

‘That tracks.’ Nina laughs, and beside me I feel Cara go still – not obviously, not in a way anyone else would notice. Just a small settling, a recalibration. She’s heard me talk about this laugh. She’s hearing it for real now, and she’s measuring the distance between what I described and what it actually does to a room.

The drinking game starts – Ring of Fire, chaotic as always, rules half-remembered, arguments about whether a six means categories or waterfall. Cara picks it up fast, deploying strategy with the precision of someone who wins everything she enters. Nina is across the table from me, the fairy lights from The Ship’s ceiling catching her bangles every time she moves, and I’m trying to watch the cards and not watch her and failing comprehensively at both.

‘King!’ Brynn slams the card down. ‘Make a rule.’

‘Everyone has to speak in a French accent until the next King,’ Nina declares, immediately producing the worst French accent I’ve ever heard. ‘Zis is ze new law.’