Page 19 of Carry Me Home

‘Metaphorically.’

‘I was fine.’ The tea is still too hot, but I keep sipping, letting it scald all the way down. ‘I am fine.’

‘Of course you are.’

‘Tom called last night,’ I say. ‘He found a dog.’

This does have her stopping and turning, one of her eyebrows up near her hairline. Mum has perfectly groomed brows, insists it’s the one expense a woman should never spare on. ‘Tom called you?’

I frown. ‘Of course he called, why wouldn’t he?’

Mum gives me one of those pointed looks. ‘I just didn’t think you were talking, that’s all.’

‘Of course we’re talking, we are best friends, always have been, always will be.’

A silence detonates in the kitchen while she reads my face, but then she shrugs and smiles brightly. ‘So, a dog?’

I exhale. Weird.

‘Yes, a dog on the coast path. The poor thing was stuck in the gorse. He’s been looking after it while he tries to find the owner.’ I grin. ‘He says it has the energy of someone who’s seen too much and made peace with the fundamental absurdity of existence.’ It’s so Tom. Finding a dog and immediately diagnosing its philosophical outlook. ‘We named it Chips,’ I tag on, with a random shrug.

‘We?’

‘He needed help. He has no imagination for names.’

‘Tom Darcy has plenty of imagination.’ Mum’s watching me over her mug. ‘He just doesn’t show it to everyone.’

I don’t know what to do with that, so I drink my tea. Outside, Truro continues waking up – more cars, more voices, the distant rumble of a lorry. The air through the open door is already warm. It’s going to be hot today, the kind of thick, airless heat that sits on your chest.

I miss the sea.

The thought arrives sharp and uninvited, the way Peter’s name arrives sometimes – in the middle of something ordinary, without warning, like a hand on my shoulder in an empty room. I miss the salt and the gulls and the light on the water and the coffee machine that sticks and Brynn’s voice carrying across the harbour to make her a strong one because Jude snores like a train.

My phone buzzes on the counter.

Another photo of the crappy little dog. No message – just the picture. A small brown dog on a leather armchair, looking directly at the camera with an expression of profound resignation. One ear up, one ear down. Ridiculous eyebrows. And, yes, a small, dignified beard.

I laugh out loud, the alien sound reverberating.

‘What?’ Mum asks.

‘The dog.’ I turn the phone to show her. ‘Look at its face.’

She looks. Her mouth twitches. ‘It looks like it’s contemplating the futility of existence.’

‘That’s what Tom said. Basically.’

‘Tom has good instincts.’

I look at the photo again. The armchair the dog is sitting in is the old leather one, cracked and soft, from when Tom’s dad still lived in the flat. Tom moved in after he qualified. Temporary arrangement. Five years ago.

Everything in Sea Salt Bay is temporary until it isn’t.

‘I should go back,’ I say.

The words come out before I’ve decided to say them. They hang there like stars waiting to fall or shoot across the sky, unsure yet of their path, and I wait for Mum to argue, to ask if I’m sure, to point out that I’ve only been here three weeks.

‘I wondered how long it would take.’