Page 84 of Carry Me Home

I climb aboard, pull back the canvas, and sit in the cockpit.

The smell. Salt, diesel, the mustiness of a boat closed up too long. And underneath – fainter now, almost gone – the ghost of Peter. His cigarettes. His too-strong coffee. The lingering scent of the cheap mermaid air freshener he’d hung from the cabin door: Every vessel needs a figurehead, Neen. This is ours.

The mermaid’s still there. Sun-bleached, barely recognisable. Smiling her faded smile at nothing.

I sit. I don’t know how long.

The lines are coiled the way Peter always coiled them – obsessively neat, each loop identical. His lucky cap is on the hook inside the cabin. I can see it through the doorway. I don’t go in.

The last time we took her out was on a Sunday, three weeks before he died, cold and bright, autumnal sun had reflected on the water, breathtakingly beautiful. We’d motored past the headland, cut the engine, drifted. Peter had talked about spring – the trips we’d take, the coves we’d anchor in. He’d talked about the future like it was guaranteed.

That’s what I can’t forgive. Not the dying – death is senseless and nobody asks for it. But the plans. The certainty. The way he said next year like next year was a place we’d both arrive at, and then he went out on a call and the sea took him and next year became a country I travelled to alone.

‘I miss you,’ I say out loud. The words are too small. ‘I miss you and I’m angry at you and I don’t know how to stop either one.’

The boat rocks. A gull lands on the cabin roof, looks at me with complete indifference, and flies off.

I stay until the sun starts dropping. Until the marina fills with returning boats and voices and the sounds of ropes being tied. Until I’m cold in a way that has nothing to do with temperature.

Then I climb off Jenny’s Dream. I don’t look back.

The Ship is heaving by eight.

Darts tournament. Village tradition. I’ve showered, put on actual clothes, left Chips with a bone and a promise to return. I’m here because Brynn told me to be, and because the alternative was another evening alone in the flat with Peter’s things watching me from their shelves.

‘Nina!’ Tilly calls, swooping in with wine. ‘You’re alive. I had money on the elopement.’

‘Sorry to disappoint.’

‘Never a disappointment. Just a constant source of speculation.’ She presses the glass into my hands. ‘Bill’s defending his title. It’ll be carnage.’

I let the crowd absorb me. Brynn finds me, squeezes my arm, says nothing. Jude appears with a second glass I didn’t request. The noise and warmth of the village wrap around me like something I didn’t know I needed until I was inside it.

And then I see the dartboard.

The frame beside it – the one with the list of tournament winners in chalk. Peter’s name used to be there. Third from the top. 2021. His one and only darts victory, which he’d crowed about for months, insufferable and delighted. I’m a champion, Neen. I need a trophy. Build me a trophy.

It’s gone.

The frame has been wiped clean. Fresh chalk, fresh names, fresh history.

Peter Curnow, 2021. Erased. Not cruelly. Not carelessly. Just – making room, I guess. Overwritten by the ordinary passage of time.

‘They had to,’ Brynn says quietly, at my shoulder. ‘The frame was full.’

‘I know.’

‘Tilly asked if she should check with you. I told her it was just chalk.’

‘It is just chalk.’ I take a long drink of wine. My throat works around it. ‘Was I wrong to say that? Should I be more upset?’

‘I think you’re exactly as upset as you are, and that’s the right amount.’

The tournament starts. Bill wins the first round. Frankie loses spectacularly. Dot throws a dart for the first time in fifteen years and nearly takes out Ayo behind the bar. I laugh in the right places, cheer when I’m supposed to.

But I keep looking at the clean frame.

And I keep thinking about Jenny’s Dream. The coiled ropes. The lucky cap. The faded mermaid. All the things I’ve preserved like a museum, afraid to touch, afraid to change, as if keeping everything exactly where he left it could somehow keep him from being completely gone.