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‘Badly. I broke his heart.’
‘How?’
‘He was a lovely guy, but he lacked oomph, and that started to frustrate me. He was a bit like a puppy, permanently eager to please, and I wanted someone who would step up more. He cried when I told him it was over, and I felt like an awful person for ages.’
‘Who came next?’
‘Sean. I met him in my first year of university. He was the total opposite of Damien. He was a bad boy, and I think I was attracted by the danger after drippy Damien.’
‘Harsh.’
‘But probably true, at least in part. Anyway, that ended the way all relationships with bad boys end, in flames.’
‘Sounds intriguing.’
‘How can I put this? He was reckless, he drank heavily and took a lot of drugs. He was wickedly funny when he wasn’t high or drunk, but the times when he was lucid became fewer and farther between, and eventually, the university lost patience with him and threw him out. He didn’t seem to mind, he just carried on living in his student house and partying harder than ever. In the end, I couldn’t take it any more. To be honest, I’m not sure he really knew who I was by the time we split up. He died of an overdose a year after I graduated.’
‘Wow. That must have been hard for you.’
‘Yeah. I wondered whether I should have stayed, whether I should have tried to help him. I was pretty messed up for a while, but my sister, Ava, rescued me. It took a while, but she helped me to see that there was nothing I could have done. He was hell bent on self-destruction, and it would only have been worse for me if I’d stayed until the bitter end.’
‘And then there was Lee,’ Noah says.
‘And then there was Lee,’ I agree.
‘Don’t you think it’s odd that he hasn’t tried to get you back?’
‘It’s not his nature. If I know him, he’s convinced that I’m going to fail down here, so he’s just biding his time until I go crawling back, begging for forgiveness. Either that or he’s moved on already.’
‘He sounds like a charmer,’ Noah observes.
‘He’s not all bad, but I’ve come to realise that he is a narcissist. The centre of Lee’s world is always going to be Lee. I need more than that.’
‘Plus, he never taught you how to hang tiles.’
‘You’re right!’ I laugh as we pull into the pub car park. ‘What on earth did I see in him?’
27
In the end, I had nothing to worry about. Noah’s family were lovely and I got on particularly well with his sister Rachel, who has skippered the boat since their father allegedly retired last year. I say allegedly because, even though he no longer goes to sea, he still acts like he’s in charge. Rachel reminded me a bit of Ava; she has the same no-nonsense attitude to life, and I picked up early on that she’s very good at completely ignoring her father when she disagrees with him. Noah wasn’t exaggerating when he said that everything revolved around the boat; even Rachel’s husband James, a solicitor with no apparent interest in fishing, was pitching in, and I felt a bit sorry for Noah, who spent most of the day looking decidedly queasy even though the boat was tied up and not moving at all.
‘It’s the smell as much as the movement,’ he reminded me when I asked about it. ‘I just have to catch a whiff of diesel oil and fish and I want to puke.’
The only people who weren’t on board doing something were Noah’s mother (a formidable woman called Pat) and Rachel’s two children who, at three and five years of age, were considered too young to help out. They stayed onshore under the watchful gaze of their grandmother. Thankfully, she seemed to like me as well, and Noah was certainly in a good mood when we got back into the van to head home.
‘They definitely loved you. I told you they would,’ he’d sighed contentedly as we left Ramsgate behind us.
‘There’s one thing I don’t get,’ I’d replied. ‘I don’t want to sound grasping on your behalf, but that boat must be worth quite a lot.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it fair that Rachel gets all of it? Shouldn’t some of it come to you?’
‘You’re assuming my family owns it.’
‘Don’t they?’
‘No, of course not. The finance company owns it.’
