It's Nothing, Really

John Barrett Lee

Dinner was over and the plates had been cleared, but we were still sitting there, held in that slack moment between the dregs and the bill. The pub was low-ceilinged and nautical, its yellowing ropes and framed chart of Cardigan Bay lining the walls. Background chatter in English and Welsh lulled us, and the cooling air held the smell of grilled fish. One of the windows was open and I could hear the waves breaking on the shingle of the Parrog across the coast road, steady and close.

Elio, our youngest, was slumped against Monica's shoulder, mouth open, his sandbag weight pressing into her. One arm hung boneless at his side. She shifted to keep his head from slipping, a movement so practised it barely registered.

Anita wriggled beside me and pressed her hand into her side.

"My tummy hurts," she said.

She didn't sound frightened. Just weary. They'd had a day of sun and sugar, eaten too much, moved too fast, ignored every warning to calm down. Her nose and cheeks were pink, her hair stiff with suncream and salt. She prodded the spot beneath her striped t-shirt and frowned.

Monica leaned in at once. "Dove ti fa male?"

Anita pointed under her ribs. "It hurts here."

"How long?" Monica asked.

"Since before."

"Since the beach?"

Anita nodded, her breath catching halfway through, like she'd misjudged the movement. I felt the familiar tightening then — the moment when something small threatened to become a thing. "She's probably got a stitch," I said. "It's nothing. She does this sometimes."

Anita slid closer to her mother without saying anything.

Monica's mouth tightened as if she were about to argue, then she turned back to Anita, putting a hand on her side, then her forehead. "She doesn't have a fever, but she's not herself," she said. "I don't like it."

"She's exhausted," I said. "We all are. Sun all day, heavy dinner. Of course she's wiped out."

Monica didn't move her hand. "Anita says it hurts," she said quietly, glancing at me sideways — a look I'd grown used to.

"I know, but —" I whispered. "We've both had a drink. Elio should be in bed. We're not driving twenty miles to A&E for a tummy ache. Not unless we have to."

She looked at me properly then. "You Brits think avoiding the doctor is character building. Pain isn't a test. It's information."

I almost smiled. We'd had this conversation before, in different kitchens, different countries. In her world, The Fever lurked in drafts and damp hair. You didn't wait for proof; you acted. I'd learned to translate this into fussing.

What can you expect, I thought, watching Anita lean into her mother, coming from a place where everyone puts their coats on at the end of September.

"I'll take her back," Monica said after a moment. "Get her washed, into bed. See how she is."

"That's all I'm saying," I replied. "If she's worse later, we deal with it then."

She straightened quickly, as if embarrassed, her lips pressed thin together. Then she looked at me with large brown eyes.

"Mi fa male la pancia, Daddy. My tummy's sick."

"I know, carina. You're just overtired." I brushed her dark hair back. "You'll feel better once you lie down."

Anita nodded glumly. I believed it enough.

They gathered their things — fleeces, bags, toys, the usual scatter — and waited for me to move. I rose, kissed Anita's head and then Elio's. They smelled of the sea.

"I'll be back soon," I said. "One more drink and sort the bill. You ok to walk back?"

"Don't be long, Will," Monica said, heaving Elio into his pushchair.

"I won't. Call me if you're worried."

The door closed behind them and the pub seemed to settle, as if relieved. I ordered another pint and paid the bill, then sat listening to the murmur of the Welsh I couldn't follow, and the wash of the sea. I thought about how thin the line was between paying attention and making a fuss. I took out my phone and read the thriller I hadn't touched since Gatwick, letting the sentences take me somewhere else.

I was still there half an hour later when a heavyset man wandered over from the bar. He had a salt-and-pepper beard and cropped hair, a grey hoodie pulled on against the evening chill. He moved with the unhurried confidence of someone who belonged there, who knew exactly where to stand without asking.

He stopped beside my table, nodded in greeting, and looked at me longer than politeness required. I became aware of the linen at my shoulders, the tapered chinos, the suede loafers — dressed for somewhere else.

"Rhys, isn't it?" I said, breaking the silence. "You used to work behind the bar in Pebbles."

He smiled at that, a flicker of recognition on his weathered face.

"You're Willy Harries," he said, with a wry smile. "Christ, you haven't changed. Still doing headstands on bars?"

"Only on special occasions."

I sipped my pint, trying not to betray my irritation at the nickname and the stubborn stickiness of the village ledger. I had a sudden picture of myself upside down on the bar, pissed on cider, blood rushing to my head, locals chanting my name in a tone between admiration and mockery.

"Just pulling your leg," Rhys said, clapping me on the shoulder and standing too close. "We're a bit old for that nonsense. Same again? Brains Dark, is it?"

"Cheers. Go on, then."

As he turned to the bar, I looked at the two women beside him, talking softly in Welsh. One regarded me with a quizzical look, as if trying to decide whether I had failed a test or was about to. She was very pale in the pub's low light, with thick black hair pulled back from her face, no effort made to tame it. She could have been thirty or fifty; it was hard to tell. She wore a purple fleece over a t-shirt and shorts — the clothes people from the coast put on without thinking, practical and unremarkable, as if she might head to the beach or the supermarket.

I was on the verge of introducing myself — the instinct rose automatically — and then stalled. It would have been a faux pas, I realized, to say my own name when she so clearly had one for me already. The moment stretched. No one filled it.

"Hello, William," she said at last. "It's been a long time."

The way she said it — not accusing, not warm — made it worse. Familiarity settled in without bringing anything useful.

"I'm sorry," I said, and then, because that wasn't quite it, added, "I know your face, but I just can't place you."

She nodded as if she'd expected to hear it, and said nothing.

The smaller woman who'd been silent until now shifted beside her. She was slighter with a rather long face and grey-streaked sandy hair. She too wore the all-purpose outfit. Leaning in, she said something in Welsh. I caught only "toilet".

Across north Pembrokeshire, in villages like Newport and Cilgerran, they switched between languages without noticing. I'd only ever had one. Raised in Fishguard town — English house, English school, Radio 4 instead of Radio Cymru in the kitchen. A few miles away along the coast I was a stranger.

The dark-haired woman inclined her head again and followed the blonde one away from the table, our exchange closed without ceremony.

Rhys returned with the beers, setting them down carefully.

"So," he said, easing himself into a chair and picking up where he'd left off, "last I heard you were building trains in Italy."

I was used to having my past compressed into rural shorthand — You knows Willy Harries. Dr. Harries's boy. Builds trains in Europe. Likes doing headstands.

At least Rhys had got the country right.

"Signalling systems," I said.

"Rome, is it?"

"Turin. Up North."

"Right," he said slowly, consulting his mental atlas. "Been there a while, then."

"Twenty-one years. Got on a graduate scheme."

He whistled as if I'd been the brains behind a SpaceX launch.

"How about you," I said. "What've you been doing?"

"We've got the campsite at Nevern. And the fishing charter."

"Hard work, I expect."

"In the season, yes. Keeps me out of trouble. So you're back now, are you? Pembrokeshire pull got you at last?"

"On holiday. We try to get back every summer. Mum's still in Fishguard. First time in Newport for a while, though."

"Hasn't changed, has it?"

"Hardly. Those two women with you," I said. "The blonde one — that's Rhian, right? Used to work in the village shop."

"Yeah," he said. "My partner."

"And the dark one?" I said. "I can't place her. She looks familiar, though."

Rhys looked at me for a moment then sipped his pint.

"She knows you, boy."

My shoulders tensed. There was a drawing-in across my chest, as if I'd misjudged the space I was sitting in, and I felt the urge to be back in the cottage. I was aware of the pause that followed — long enough for a question to form, not long enough to say it. Her name. Then the women were back, standing beside us, close enough that the question no longer fit. Asking now would have meant insisting.

"Smoke?" Rhian said to Rhys, already zipping up her fleece. Then to me: "You still smoke, Willy? You used to have the best hash."

"Not since the kids were born," I said. "No time or disposable income."

"Go on," she said. "A few puffs won't kill you."

Rhys was already on his feet, reaching into his pocket. The decision moved ahead of me, so I followed.

Outside it was dark. Ten-thirty, maybe later. The coal-black sea swallowed what light there might have been. It was a proper moonless coastal dark. We crossed the road and walked along the low stone wall beyond the last dim streetlight and the smaller slipway opened up to our right — a narrow chute of concrete sloping down to the beach.

The tide was out. Pebbles shone faintly below, and the ropes of the dinghies tied up on the grass bank above tapped softly in the onshore breeze like the same recurring thought.

Rhys skinned up by the light of Rhian's phone, head bent, tongue between his teeth. It was a practised, delicate movement. He licked, sealed, twisted the end, and struck a lighter cupped against the wind. The first drag flared orange against his beard.

He passed it to Rhian. She took it, inhaled deeply, then squinted at me through the smoke.

"You still building trains in France?"

"Italy," Rhys said mildly, before I could answer. "And it's not trains. Signals."

"Signals what?" she laughed, and then switched to Welsh. I caught something sharp like "Mae e'n fancy nawr."

My neck prickled at being the butt of a private joke.

"I don't understand," I said, a little too tartly, resisting the urge to add, "Stick to English, for God's sake."

"I don't think you ever did," the dark woman said quietly.

The joint came to me. I hesitated too long before taking it. The smoke was harsher and grassier than I remembered. I coughed once, then steadied myself and tried again. It tasted acrid and faintly chemical — not like the soft, mellow hash of my youth. Maybe I was out of practice.

The buzz came on gradually. My mind retreated into my head, and sounds arrived a half-second late. The boat ropes kept knocking. Someone laughed back near the pub. The sea breathed in and out on the shingle shore.

For a moment it felt like the old closeness — the shared circle, the passing hand to hand. As the flare of the lighter briefly lit the dark woman's face, for a second it was the same light, close enough to brush against. But the circuit didn't close — a speck of solder was missing. What was her name?

Rhys and Rhian drifted away first. No announcement. They just began walking along the wall, talking low, crunching on the pebbles. Rhys reached for her hand without looking at her and she let him lead her into the blackness.

I watched them go, expecting them to circle back.

They didn't.

The dark woman stayed where she was, leaning against the slipway rail, looking out at the black water.

Now it was just the two of us.

We climbed back up the slope to the road, but instead of leading me towards the pub and the cottages beyond, she headed west along the Parrog, where the seafront houses thinned and the road narrowed into a coastal path. I made to leave.

"Not that way," she said, without looking at me. "Come on."

"I should get back."

She slowed, just enough that I could catch her up. "We're not finished."

The weed sat oddly with me — not heavy, but enough to draw me inward, to stretch the edges. As we walked, I kept almost recognizing the path: the bend in the hedgerow, the dip toward the water. Brambles and gorse snagged at my chinos and I had to tug them free. The grass was slick with dew and I could feel damp seeping through the suede of my loafers. Each memory rose and stalled before it fully arrived.

"I haven't been up here in years," I said. "Twenty, maybe."

She nodded, as if that answered a question she hadn't asked. "Do you ever think about who you were here?"

"Not much," I said. "It was half a lifetime ago. You move on."

"Do you?"

"I did." I glanced at her. "What about you?"

She told me, obliquely. Married young. Divorced now. Worked locally as a carer. Her son was grown and had moved on, as sons did. She didn't elaborate. Just kept walking.

"Mine are still small," I said. "I started late."

"You were busy."

My eyes had settled into the darkness and I took in the curve of her nose, the way she carried her weight as if leaning into bad weather. Her deep lilting voice — vowels lifting where mine had long since flattened — sparked recognition in my body, though my mind lagged behind. I tried to fix the memory, but it hovered out of reach. I began to explain myself. Bristol. Milan. Turin. Hundreds of names that slipped away. I heard how thin it sounded and carried on anyway.

Then we walked in silence for a bit. At last, she said, almost lightly, "Do you remember what you said before you left?"

I shook my head.

"You said you couldn't wait to get out of this hole," she said. "Full of bumpkins. You laughed."

The memory landed as posture — the careless ease of it. I winced.

We stopped and I took her hand before I'd quite decided to.

"I was an arse back then," I said. "I was… I don't know. I thought I didn't fit in here."

"You didn't. Posh townie from Fishguard."

I bristled. "Not just that. I thought I was… destined for something else."

"You were."

She didn't pull away. She said, almost as if she were asking about the weather, "Do you still listen to Faithless?"

"Faithless. Jesus." I gave a small laugh. "I had that album, No Roots. Played it to death. Dunno what happened to it."

"I borrowed it."

I looked at her properly then. "Did you?"

She shrugged, as if it were nothing. "You never asked for it back."

The pressure of the missing thing tightened. I studied her face, trying to force it into place.

"Go on," I said. "Put me out of my misery. Tell me your name."

She tilted her head slightly. "No."

I heard her inhale.

"If you don't know," she said, "that's on you."

With a sudden rush of certainty, I said, "Carys."

"Not quite."

"Your dad… he had a cattle farm at Crosswell, I remember that."

She looked at me for a moment. "You got that right, at least," she said. "He's still there. Milking every morning."

The relief collapsed into something sharper. I let go of her hand.

"I'm not doing this," I said, retreating into the sharpness of it. "This… game. Whatever it is."

She didn't flinch, as if this too had been anticipated. She watched me with the patient stillness of the landscape, then turned and began to walk back down the path. After a second, I followed.

I'm not sure how long it was before we found Rhys and Rhian again. Or they found us. They were in the Parrog car park, talking low, hands in pockets. No one asked where anyone had been. The four of us folded back together and walked down toward the shingle.

The tide was going out. At the far eastern end of the Parrog, beyond the reach of streetlights, a fire burned low and wide. A portable speaker thudded in the sand — bass-heavy, repetitive. The beat arrived a fraction late, as if it had to cross the water first.

We drifted towards it.

Up close the shapes separated — hoodies, bare legs, cans flashing in the firelight. Someone had dragged down sofa cushions. Pallets were stacked and burning. The fire snapped and flickered, resin popping. Heat pulsed against my shins. Smoke rolled low across the stones and then lifted, bent sideways by the breeze off the water, catching in my throat.

A tall boy near the fire was swaying, laughing hard at something that didn't seem funny. He blinked, took a step, missed it.

He went down shoulder first, knees folding underneath him.

There was a bark of laughter.

"Fucking hell, Jay."

He rolled onto his side and retched. The sound was violent, cutting through the bass. The smell hit a second later — sour and immediate. The wet patch gleamed briefly in the firelight.

"Jesus," a girl said.

"He's fine," a boy said.

Jay vomited again, darker this time, spreading across the stones.

"Mate, that's grim."

"He's shaking."

"He's not shaking, he's smashed half a bottle of Smirnoff."

He was shaking. Small, fast tremors running through his shoulders. His teeth began to chatter, sharp and small against the music.

"He's cold," the girl said. "He's actually cold."

"Don't fucking start."

He tried to push himself up and slipped in what he'd brought up. His face turned toward us. His eyes were open but unfocused.

The dark-haired woman stepped half a pace forward.

"He needs to be on his side properly," she said. Not loud. Just clear. "So he doesn't choke."

None of us moved. Beyond the fire the tide lay black, the shingle hissing faintly as the water shifted.

Another boy crouched halfway, then stood again. "He's alright. Just let him sleep."

The woman watched him a second longer. Long enough to see the rhythm of his breathing. Then she looked at me.

Not asking. Not accusing.

It would have meant stepping in. If I touched him, he would be mine.

I took two steps forward. The stones shifted under my shoes. I crouched, one hand half-reaching toward his shoulder.

"He should be on his side," I said.

The boy near his head shrugged. "He's fine."

My hand hovered a second longer.

"It's nothing, alright?" the girl said, louder, perhaps to me.

I counted my breaths. He's fine, I repeated.

The fire collapsed inward with a hollow crack. A gust lifted sparks into the dark and drove smoke straight into our faces. The boy's trainers scraped uselessly on the stones.

"Come on," the woman said.

She turned back toward the car park. Rhys and Rhian were already ahead, silhouettes against the dim orange glow of the car park light.

After a second, I stood up and followed her up the beach, the music droning behind us as if nothing had happened.

Rhys and Rhian peeled off with barely a word, and the woman and I were alone again.

"I need to get back," I said. "To the kids. God knows what time it is."

The village had that closed, post-midnight stillness now. We walked in silence up Parrog Road, past the village stores, past the sleeping cottages with their curtains drawn tight. As we reached the caravan site, the gate stood open. An empty picnic table sat on the lawn beneath a sodium lamp, its surface washed yellow.

"I need to sit a minute," I said. "Clear my head."

She didn't argue. We crossed over and sat opposite each other. The air smelled of cut grass and seaweed.

"You're a carer," I said after a moment. "That kid. Do you think he'll be all right?"

She leaned back, looking past me rather than at me. "He won't be the first boy to have a white-out," she said. "I've rolled you onto your side before now."

There was no smile in it.

We sat a while longer. A light flickered on briefly in one of the caravans and went out again.

"That summer after I graduated," I said, because the quiet needed filling. "God. I was insufferable."

"It's a long time ago," she said.

"Pembrokeshire felt like a waiting room," I went on. "Booze. Drugs. Same pubs from Fishguard to Nevern. I thought I was already gone."

"You were."

A flash of blue light skimmed past us on the road towards the Parrog and disappeared.

We rose and made our way back to the road. The wind lifted off the water. A trace of smoke drifted past — or maybe it had come from my jacket. It lingered as we walked.

"I remember you at Pebbles," I said. "I can see you stacking chairs the night the neighbours called the police on the lock-in. Everyone legged it out the back door. You couldn't stop laughing."

She walked a few paces without answering.

"I drove you home," I said. "On the back road past Carn Ingli. You wouldn't let me put the headlights on full beam."

"You were terrified," she said. "Thought the police were after you."

"I was wasted. I shouldn't have been anywhere near a car."

"You kept checking the mirror."

The road bent. The hedge brushed my shoulder.

"I thought nothing here mattered," I said after a moment. "Any of it."

She kept walking.

"When I heard you'd gone to Italy," she said evenly, "I cried until my sides hurt."

The words landed without drama. No accusation in them. That made them worse.

For a second I was aware of her hand close to mine again, the old ease of it threatening to re-form, muscle memory returning before sense.

As we came round the bend before the cottage, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

I almost ignored it.

It vibrated again. And again.

I pulled it out of my pocket. 01:03. Two signal bars. A cold white glow lit the screen.

Eight missed calls. Monica.

Two from an unknown local number.

WhatsApp messages stacked one on top of the other.

Where are you?

She's worse.

Call me.

Will.

The weed drained out of me like a plug had been pulled.

"I need to go," I said, already stepping away from her. "Something's happened."

She seemed to clock the urgency in my voice.

The cottage lights were on. All of them. Too bright for that hour.

She stopped at the gate.

I didn't ask her in.

I pushed the door open.

Monica was in the sitting room, still dressed. Anita was curled tight against her on the sofa, a blanket pulled up to her chin. Elio lay asleep in a tangle of cushions on the floor, oblivious.

Anita's face looked wrong. Not flushed now — greyed, drawn tight across the cheekbones. When she saw me she tried to straighten and couldn't.

"It hurts, Daddy," she said. Not complaining. Just stating it.

Monica looked at me once. No theatrics. Just a flat, exhausted reckoning.

"Dove sei stato, Will? I've been calling you. You smell like a bonfire."

"There was no signal," I said. It sounded rehearsed.

She let it hang there.

"Anita's been sick twice. The pain's moved."

"Where?"

Anita shifted her hand lower, to the right side of her belly.

The room seemed to contract.

"Since when?"

"Half an hour. Maybe more. She woke up crying. Then she started shaking."

I pressed my palm gently to her forehead. Warm. Not blazing. But wrong.

"Ok," I said. This time there was no hedge in it. "We're not waiting."

I dialled 999. Location. Seven years old. Symptoms. No known allergies. Yes, the gate's open.

Monica fetched fleeces and her bag. I lifted Anita into my arms. She felt lighter than she should have. Slack, but burning through her t-shirt.

"It's ok," I said into her hair. "I've got you. Daddy's here."

I sat down on the sofa and held her against me, rocking her without thinking. Monica stood close, one hand pressed flat against Anita's back as if to anchor her there.

We didn't speak.

Then, faint at first, the siren began to rise. It took me a second to realise it wasn't coming down from Haverfordwest. It was coming up from the Parrog.

"Come on," I said.

We stepped out onto the gravel, Anita in my arms, Monica behind me with Elio slumped on her shoulder. Once again, we found ourselves held in a slack moment with nothing to say. Then, blue light washed across the cottage windows and over the hedge.

The ambulance swung into the drive.

The paramedic took a look at her and nodded once.

"Likely appendix," he said quietly.

Monica let out a breath I hadn't realized she'd been holding. I pulled the blanket tighter around Anita's shoulders. She squashed her clammy cheek against mine. It smelled of vomit.

"You were right," I said, too quickly, the words sticking in my throat. "I'm sorry."

She didn't look at me. "I shouldn't have had to convince you."

A strand of Anita's hair was caught in her mouth, but she hadn't noticed.

She turned away, as if the sentence had cost her more than she meant to show. With Elio half asleep on her shoulder, she busied herself with his shoes until a paramedic guided her into the front of the ambulance.

The other paramedic took Anita from my arms and laid her onto the stretcher in the back.

"Where are you, Daddy?" she said, her voice pleading as the straps tightened across her chest.

"I'm here," I said quickly, climbing in after them. "Daddy's right here."

They locked the stretcher into place.

I glanced back. The woman was standing at the gate, half in shadow, arms folded tight across herself. The blue light passed over her face.

Then the rear doors came together with a solid metallic thud.

The air inside smelled sharply of disinfectant and warmed plastic. I took Anita's damp little hand. My jaw tightened. The strip light above us swam, then steadied. Anita winced, and I realised I was gripping her too tightly. I forced my fingers to loosen.

The engine revved. The cottage fell back.

We passed the turning for Feidr Ganol. The same narrow tree-lined lane where we'd parked that night when I was twenty-one and thought I could outrun these hedges, these fields, this smallness.

It came back then, raw and unbidden. The smell of the old car — mildew and stale tobacco smoke. Her hip pressed against mine, the skin pale and startlingly soft in the dawn light, her thick hair against my cheek. I remembered my finger catching on a thin, puckered ridge of white tissue just above the hip bone.

​"What's that?" I'd asked.

​"Old surgery," Nerys had said, not moving. "It's nothing, really."

Nerys.

I'd believed her. It was easier to believe what caused the least friction.

A week later I was gone.

​The ambulance lurched, throwing me against the metal casing of the interior. When I looked back through the window, the blue light still swept the gate, but no one was there.