Silence sliced through the room. Pete’s gaze fell to the floor.
ChapterNineteen
Pete looked fragile, exhausted.
All Verity could think was that Sam’s gut feeling had been right. ‘You killed Joe? How?’
Verity knew her question was direct but a man had lost his life here and it seemed some kind of secret had been covered up for decades. There was no way to pretty up the questions that were burning inside her.
Suddenly aware of a figure standing in the doorway, Verity swung her head in that direction then briefly closed her eyes. Sam had arrived to make amends with Pete, to put the past behind them. She wasn’t sure whether his timing was the best or the worst it could be.
‘Nowthat’sa question I’ve wanted answered for years.’ There was a coldness to Sam’s tone, his eyes darkening.
Betty was up on her feet in an instant, grasped Sam’s arm and guided him to a chair. ‘Take a seat. This isn’t exactly what everyone is thinking and as much as you’ve been beating yourself up for years…’ She glanced towards Pete and moved closer to him. ‘Pete, I know you from old. And from what you’ve told me today, it was a set of unfortunate circumstances. I just wish you’d told me years ago.’
Verity could tell from Sam’s face that though Betty might be content to talk about ‘unfortunate circumstances’, he was going to take some convincing.
Betty took a deep breath. ‘By my reckoning, if anyone is to blame for the unfortunate set of circumstances that played out that night, it’s probably me. I pushed the first domino that toppled onto the next, creating the chain reaction of events.’
‘You, Betty?’ asked Verity, confused.
‘But I promise I didn’t know that Hetty had chosen that night to leave.’ Betty gave Pete a reassuring look.
Verity glanced towards Sam, who looked even more confused than she felt, and rushed to fill in the blanks of what he’d missed. ‘It appears my granny had men falling all over her. Your grandfather fell for her and Pete did, too.’
Sam looked like he was about to say something but Pete cut in. ‘To be clear, Joe never had a relationship with Hetty. He was just smitten from the moment he saw her.’
‘But then you swooped in and took her? You were his best friend. Why couldn’t you have stayed away from her? It’s not as though the girls weren’t swarming around you. Why would you want to pick the same one my grandfather had his eye on?’
‘It wasn’t quite like that. Hetty and I were attracted to each other straightaway and of course I felt shitty about it. Joe was my best mate and we tried to deal with the situation the best we could without hurting anyone’s feelings, but it seemed Hetty had other secrets that even I didn’t know about. We made each other promises that we were going to be together forever and I was going to sit down with Joe soon, so I was devasted when she left. I still don’t fully understand what made her choose that night to flee. I know she was your granny but she was also my whole world. If I’d known from the start that she had a life waiting for her back home, things might have been different.’
‘Do you mean you wouldn’t have got involved with her?’ asked Verity.
Pete nodded. ‘I sit here every day thinking what we had was so real and pure, hoping she would walk up that hill towards the cottage. I’d welcome her back with open arms. But now I know I was just a footnote in her story, and that the forever we talked about was nothing more than a dream.’
‘Hetty didn’t lie to you, Pete, and I do think she sincerely cared for you. She was just confused. She came for the summer because she needed space to work out what she wanted from the future,’ said Betty, kindly.
‘Apparently me and Puffin Island were just not enough.’
‘That simply wasn’t the case. Hetty loved it here, I know that, but there were circumstances that led her to leave.’
‘What circumstances?’ asked Pete. ‘What is it you aren’t telling me?’
Betty briefly closed her eyes. ‘Hetty left me a letter when she left. I didn’t know about you and her, so I assumed it would be Joe who was broken-hearted at her departure. I didn’t want him to hear the news from someone else so I headed towards the coastguard hut, as I knew you were both on shift that night. That’s when I saw you and stopped to tell you Hetty had left. I was so worried about breaking the news to Joe, I didn’t really take in your reaction, and then you took off in the opposite direction before I could say anything else.’
‘I did. I ran from the jetty all the way to the causeway to try and stop her, but it was too late. I couldn’t find her.’
‘I carried on to the hut to see Joe, and when I arrived, he was pacing up and down, extremely agitated, waiting for you to arrive. He told me that he thought he’d seen you and Hetty the night before, up on the cliff top together. He was waiting to confront you.’
Pete looked bewildered. ‘Why didn’t you ever say?’
‘Because what was the point? It wasn’t going to bring Hetty or Joe back after…’
Verity looked towards Sam, who hadn’t said a word. She guessed he was remaining quiet on purpose, not wanting to interrupt and cause Pete and Betty to clam up. He had waited a long time to know the truth of how his grandfather had ended up in the water that night.
Betty carried on. ‘I assured Joe that was impossible because surely I’d know if something was going on between you both. I thought at least one of you would have told me. Thinking he’d just got the wrong end of the stick, I gave him the letter that Hetty had left me, so he could see her goodbye for himself, but in hindsight…’
‘Why in hindsight?’ probed Pete.
