Page 105 of Swept Away

“Bonding time,” Lyra says. “Mother’s insistence.”

“Ah.” I should’ve guessed.

I catch Jeremy shooting Lyra a look, like,Play nice, would you?

The day after I got back, Lyra announced she was sick of walking on eggshells around me and I’d just have to tell her if she said something “triggering” (her quote marks) because she was no good at this weird fake thing everyone was doing. I’ve never felt more grateful for Lyra’s bluntness. The weird fake thing’s horrible. People fix on a smile when I turn up, and then they exclaim everything.Zeke! How are you! Wow! So good to see you safe and well!

“We would also like to spend time with you,” Lyra adds, widening her eyes as though this should have been obvious. “Here, this’ll do,” she says.

Jeremy spreads out the blanket on the grass in a spot shaded by the castle wall.

“Would you like to…talk about it?” Jeremy asks eventually.

You can hear the effort it takes him. The strain in his voice. We’re all a bit tense, especially Lyra, who has already announced she’s on her sixth coffee of the day.

“The boat, you mean?”

I think of the ship’s logs. The secrets once tucked into the houseboat’s walls, now deep in the ocean. Everything Jeremy doesn’t know, and whether it’s my responsibility to tell him. My therapist’s response to this question was an annoyingOnly you can know, Zeke. I keep turning up at his office and waiting for him to make me feel better, and he keeps saying,You know therapy is a slow process, and I want to scream at him that there’s not time for slow. I can’t go on like this, without her.

“What else would we mean?” Lyra says.

“I dunno,” I say, but I think,Lexi. Everyone assumes it’s the trauma of getting stranded at sea that’s got me so lost and depressed, but I know it isn’t that.

“You bought the boat looking for answers,” Jeremy says after a moment. He glances sideways at me. “Did you find them?”

“Yeah, your whole Dad’s-not-your-dad thing,” Lyra says, turning her body toward me, the way she does when she’s really listening. “How did that play out?”

My eyes flick to Jeremy. I didn’t know he’d told Lyra about this. He looks back, unapologetic. Of course—the two of them share pretty much everything.

“It’s all under the sea now, I guess,” I say, looking down at the bag of food between us.

I start unpacking. I’m surprised to find my eyes pricking at the thought of Dad’s logbooks being gone for good—I didn’t realize that was bothering me. But it’d been like meeting him again, reading those passages, and I wish I’d had him for longer.

“I always thought it was a bit of a mad theory,” Lyra says, reaching for a Scotch egg. “Jeremy’s thing about Dad hiding stuff in the boat. The idea that something would still be there.”

“They were still there,” I say, noncommittal. “Some of Dad’s logbooks, and some papers.”

“Oh! So?” Lyra pushes. “What did you find out?”

“Lyra,” I say.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think we should talk about it now.”

“You say that about literally everything at the minute.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not feeling chatty.”

“How unusual!”

“Can you not?” I snap. “I’ve had a difficult fortnight, in case you didn’t know.”

She rolls her eyes. “I liked you better when you’d just got off the boat.”

“Excuse me?”

“This,” she says, waving her hand at me. “Sad victim Ezekiel. Lonely you-don’t-get-me Ezekiel. He’s come back over the last week. But when you got off that boat you had some grit to you for the first time in your life.”

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