The body was never recovered. The days and hours which followed his disappearance were hellish. What felt like the whole of Newlyn assembled at the church the following Sunday to pray for his safe return, yet not one member of that congregation believed he was alive. You could see it in the way they carried themselves, broken by sadness, resigned to the loss and trying to process the tragedy. The church buckled beneath the weight of shared grief, the town mourning one of its own, brother, friend, pupil, son, a young man with his whole life ahead of him, exhausted, emotionally traumatised, so drunk he wasn’t thinking straight, took a boat out at night in rough seas, and never returned.
I had to lean on my father to keep myself steady during the service. I couldn’t look at any of them. Couldn’t look at Cam. Whispers swept the church and the bakery, the pub and the post office, street corners, playgrounds, the dock, and the fish market. Children throughout Newlyn and Penzance, Long Rock, as far as Hayle and beyond, were warned – yet again – to respect the sea. Don’t be foolish. Don’t take risks. Never take the sea for granted, never take your boat out when you’ve been drinking.
Foolish boy.
Even he, the whispers said, who knew the sea like the back of his hand, who’d grown up with it, who earned his livelihood from it and faced its power every day. Even he made mistakes.
His upended dingy was found stranded on rocks below Penlee Caravan Park, not far from Mousehole.
The current was strong that night, the whispers said. We won’t find him. Not now. He’ll be halfway to America.
I stumbled through those days in a stupor. The lies started immediately. First I lied to my parents. I told them he was a dear friend of mine, we were close, and his loss hit me hard so I needed time to get over it. I went up to my bedroom, closed the door, pulled the curtains shut, and climbed beneath the covers. Every part of me ached as if I’d been beaten with steel bars. My head throbbed so violently the light stung my eyes.
Cam visited. Once. He sat on the chair in my room holding the mug of tea my mother made him. We didn’t talk. Instead we sat in silence and stared at nothing, our tentacles of guilt wriggling outwards, knotting together, snarling up the space between us.
On the fourth day, in the morning, after my fifth sleepless night, Nathan came. I could hear his voice at the front door. My mother telling him I was too sick for visitors. But he insisted. He told her he wouldn’t be long. She appeared at my door.
‘It’s Nathan Cardew to see you, melder. I told him to come back another time, but he’s hard to argue with.’
I can’t recall my reply, what I said, if, indeed, I said anything. Moments later he walked into my room. Shut the door. Sat on the end of my bed and calmly told me what he’d seen. He appeared victorious in some way, elated, as if he’d won a sports match he was expecting to lose. He seemed to relish telling me in intricate detail about the body of a man in Cameron Stewart’s boat. How he’d seen Cam untie a dingy then drag it out of the harbour on a rope. How he’d waited and seen him return some time later with no dingy and no body. He peppered the story with dramatic pauses and snide comments on Cam’s violent character. He told me how at first he wasn’t sure what he’d seen, but the next morning, when he heard a man had drowned at sea the night before, well, he said, it was easy to put two and two together. All the while he spoke he held my hand. I couldn’t see straight as spores of panic multiplied like bacteria and spread throughout me.
‘Did you know about it? Did you know it was him?’
I didn’t answer.
‘I see. Well, that explains why you look so pale and drawn. You know I have to go to the police, don’t you?’
I shook my head. Tears scorched my cheeks. ‘Please don’t.’ He made a regretful face. ‘It’s out of my hands.’
Cam couldn’t go to prison. Not for this. If he went to prison there would be no justice in the world. I had to protect him. It was the only thing that mattered.
I squeezed Nathan’s hand.
‘Don’t go to the police.’
‘I have to. I love you, and I don’t want to upset you, but can’t you see? I have no choice.’
I lifted his hand to my face, rested my cheek against it.
‘If you love me,’ I whispered, ‘you won’t tell the police.’
He didn’t answer immediately. His eyes clouded a little as he stroked my cheek. His fingers played with my hair. He stared at me with such intensity it scared me.
‘Do you love me, Hannah?’
I held back my tears. I had no idea what to say, but I knew if I said no, if I told the truth, that Cam would be arrested. My head began to fuzz up. Nathan became indistinct as my vision blurred.
‘Because if you really loved me, you’d be with me, not him…’
And there it was, hidden in that hanging sentence, Nathan’s deal. Cam’s freedom. In exchange for mine.
‘I do love you.’
His face broke into a childlike smile. ‘Oh, Hannah, you have no idea how happy hearing that makes me. You must tell him. You’ve been wrong to let him think you’re in love with him and not me. Do you understand? Don’t be scared of him. I’ll protect you. You must tell him now. He needs to know you don’t love him and he needs to know you want to be with me. You have to send him away.’ He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it. ‘He needs to leave. If I see him here again I’ll go to the police. Do you understand, Hannah? Cameron Stewart has to leave Cornwall and must never come back.’