place she didn’t know. Her knees still felt cold and damp as she knelt at the fireplace, no idea what to do. The logs seemed too heavy, the coal insufficient as she tried to build the fire. All knowledge of a task she knew well had been lost in the confusion of the night. No matter what she tried, the fire floundered.
“Let me help,” Tom said, taking the pot from her when a third match went out. His voice broke the silence, reminded Elizabeth that she wasn’t alone. The warmth of his body next to hers evoked the memory of just how cold her mother had seemed at the beach.
“Do you really think she’ll be all right?” Elizabeth asked as the earliest sparks engulfed the wood. But before he could answer they heard the crowd arriving with her mother, the slam of the door, the shuffle of feet. By the time they got her in the chair, the first flames of a decent fire were licking the sides of the chimney.
Elizabeth stood aside to let James work, watching as he measured her mother’s blood pressure and listened to her chest. Her father sat at her side, tears welling in his eyes, his cheeks pinched pink by the fire. Elizabeth had never seen him look so helpless. A single tear broke free and streaked across his wrinkled cheeks. The room was silent, her mother too, everybody waiting on James’s verdict.
“Miss?” Elizabeth heard a whispered voice coming from behind her. Tom was standing alone, his drenched clothes dripping salt water to the floor. “I’m sorry,” he said, pushing his wet black hair from his face, “but do you have a towel I could use?”
With James taking care of medical matters, she knew that the best thing she could do would be to help the person who had saved her mother. “You’d better come with me,” she said as she beckoned Tom to follow her toward the stairs.
Under normal circumstances it would have been inappropriate to ascend the stairs as they were together. Eyebrows would have been raised at the disappearance of two youngsters like that, especially in a small place like Porthsennen. Yet on that night nobody noticed as he followed her in silence. He waited at the top of the stairs while Elizabeth rooted around in her father’s closet. Moments later she emerged carrying a well-worn sweater and a pair of dress trousers that tapered at the ankle.
“Thank you,” he said as she handed him the pile of clothes, adding a pair of brown brogues that she knew her father didn’t wear anymore.
“I should be thanking you,” she said as she stood back. “For what you did, I mean. You saved my mother’s life, no doubt.”
With the top of his forearm, he brushed his floppy wet hair from his face. “Anybody would have done the same, miss.”
Elizabeth had so many questions buzzing around her head. She wanted to ask what he had seen, and how he’d ended up being the one to help. About how her mother fell. But she didn’t know where to start, because she was sure on some level that she knew the answer to at least one of those questions. And her father was very specific; they were not to divulge any details of the illness that had claimed her mother, not a word about her memory problems, or the strange things she sometimes did around the house. Elizabeth didn’t want her inquisitiveness to fuel the fires of speculation.
“Perhaps,” she eventually said, agreeing. “But you were the one who did. I would like to say that I am very grateful.”
“My pleasure.” Silence descended again. Tom glanced down at the puddle of seawater forming under his feet. “Where should I change?”
The floorboards creaked as she moved toward the bathroom, pipes rattling as they delivered warm water to the sink. Tom held back from following her, but when she looked up and saw he wasn’t there, she moved to beckon him through. For a moment all she could do was stare at him as he stood in the doorway to the bathroom, the man who had saved her mother. Gratitude swelled inside her, and she wondered if there was anything she could ever do to repay such a thing as saving a person’s life. “There’s plenty of hot water, and soap in that dish,” she said after a while. “Take as long as you like.”
As Tom stepped into the bathroom Elizabeth looked away, suddenly aware of their proximity in