You, Me & the Sea Read online

  ‘Fair enough,’ she says. ‘I’ll have to think about it, if I’m only allowed one. Am I never allowed to ask you anything else, ever?’

  He looks at her. ‘That your question, is it?’

  ‘No. Don’t answer it. I’m still thinking.’

  He watches her wiping round the sink with the dishcloth, frowning in concentration. One of his stupider fucking ideas, giving her one free pass. Of course, he doesn’t have to answer, whatever it is. She’s going to ask something about family, about his life, about why he’s on the fucking island, isn’t she? And he’ll have to think of some clever answer that will just get her off his back for a bit.

  ‘What’s your favourite bird?’ she asks.

  The question takes him by surprise, and then he has to think about it. He thinks about it for a long time, long enough to consider having another glass of whisky, although she’s wiped down the table and put the mats away, and is leaning against the sink with her arms crossed, waiting for him to decide.

  ‘That’s a tough one,’ he says, nodding.

  ‘I know,’ she says.

  ‘I thought you were going to ask me something else,’ he says.

  ‘Well, I thought I’d go in with something less confrontational, since you’ve obviously got a problem with it. I thought I’d give you something nice to think about instead.’

  ‘Very kind.’

  ‘Well? Have you got an answer?’

  ‘Chicken,’ he says.

  ‘A chicken?’

  ‘Aye, a chicken. They lay nice eggs and they’re sweet wee things, most of the time. And they’re nice roasted.’

  Rachel’s mouth drops open.

  ‘What? You’re a vegetarian all of a sudden?’

  ‘Do you eat your chickens?’

  ‘No, course not. Not while they’re still laying.’

  ‘What about when they stop laying?’

  ‘Then they’re old and tough and not very nice to eat anyway. I get my chicken from the supermarket, same as everyone else.’

  ‘It’s a bit weird, though, liking them and making friends with them and then eating their relatives.’

  ‘The eternal dilemma of the animal-loving meat eater.’

  ‘Like the birdwatchers, having eggs for breakfast and then getting all excited by the eggs and the chicks in the nest. Why are those eggs edible, just because they’ve come out of the arse of this bird rather than that bird?’

  ‘Eggs don’t actually come out of arses,’ he says.

  ‘I know that.’

  Rachel

  They have moved into the living room. It smells vaguely musty, underused.

  She watches as Fraser lights the woodburner, and now it smells of salt, wood, hot metal, burning dust.

  Rachel is a little bit drunk and she knows she should go to bed. She should have gone an hour ago. But she checks her watch, and sees that it’s actually only half-past ten. It’s been a hell of a day, in fact it’s been a hellish few days, and Dad’s whisky has rubbed the edge off it. She will regret this in the morning, probably, but the morning is still hours away, and she doesn’t have to get up early.

  ‘What are you smiling about?’ he asks, moving back to the sofa.

  ‘Nothing.’

  He doesn’t press it. Pours whisky into both of their glasses.

  ‘Cheers,’ she says, clinking his.

  ‘Cheers. I’m going to have to get Craig to bring us some wine. Not that I trust him to bring anything decent. Maybe I can get him to bring us more of this stuff.’

  Of course, he would be a wine snob, she thinks. Just as he’s a coffee snob and a foodie. What the hell’s he doing out here on an island? He should be living in a Victorian terrace somewhere just off the Earlham Road.

  ‘Something’s tickled you,’ he says. ‘Spit it out.’

  Caught out, she says, ‘You’re just – not what I expected.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The cooking. The coffee. Being choosy about your wine. How do you manage, being out here on your own all this time?’

  ‘I manage just fine. It’s other people’s opinions I can do without.’

  The smile drops from her face – she’s offended him. And he’s right, it is a bit judgemental of her, making assumptions about him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

  ‘I don’t mean you.’

  He still says it brusquely, and she wants to change the subject.

  ‘What were you doing before this?’ she asks.

  ‘Various things. Worked on the rigs for a long time.’

  ‘Oil rigs? Wow. I bet that was interesting.’

  He barks a laugh. ‘Now I know you’re winding me up.’

  ‘I’m not, at all,’ she says hotly. ‘I guess … it got you used to the isolation?’

  ‘No, the opposite. Being isolated with hundreds of other people – I guess it’s like being in prison.’

  He lifts his glass, not looking at her. His hand is shaking, just a tiny bit, so she’s not even sure if she saw it or not. What’s that all about? And then she thinks: he’s been in prison. Or – maybe not that – but something about it. Claustrophobia, perhaps. Maybe that’s why he’s here. Maybe he can’t stand being trapped.

  ‘What about you?’ he asks.

  He’s asked her very little still. The fact that he’s chosen this moment to come out with a question makes her realise how keen he is for the subject to move on. And, of course, it’s on to a topic that she’d really rather avoid.

  ‘I was just temping,’ she says, at last. Her cheeks are hot, her head swimmy.

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Just admin, for a pharmaceutical company. Nothing exciting.’

  She watches him, thinking. He sips his whisky – he’s only halfway through his; she’ll have to take it easy. She thinks of the water in the loch, the sinking blackness, depth.

  ‘Things didn’t work out,’ she says, out of nowhere. And then, without warning, she carries on. ‘I had a – a thing – I don’t know. I had a relationship with my boss. And it went a bit wrong.’

  ‘Ah,’ he says. He lifts the bottle and adds a dribble more to her glass. ‘How did it go wrong?’

  Fraser

  ‘Amarjit,’ she says. ‘His name is Amarjit.’

  He waits for her to continue, already thinking that Amarjit sounds like a right arse, despite knowing nothing at all about him other than his name and that he’s Rachel’s ex-boss, ex-whatever.

  ‘He was lovely … and interesting, and clever, and just basically charming. And I completely fell for it, idiot that I am.’

  She stops for a moment, drinks some more of the whisky. Dutch courage. He’ll remember this, remember that maybe it’ll take a drink to get her to open up. There’s more of it in there. He wants to know. He wants to see the cause of her pain, because then she might start to feel better, and, for some reason he can’t quite fathom, he wants to help. There’s only so much he can do with food, after all.

  ‘We got together – I mean – it was quite quick.’

  She won’t look at him now, twisting the glass and looking at the liquid swirling, as if she wants to dive in. She takes a big breath in. ‘Turns out he was also sleeping with several other women, including his wife, who I thought he’d separated from.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘He sounds like a right cunt.’

  Her shocked little face, he thinks. And then she manages a stifled little snort.

  ‘Besides anything else, it’s unprofessional. You’ve not just had a relationship end, you’ve left your job, too, presumably because of this twat. Did you complain about him? I mean, that sort of predatory behaviour … he took advantage. Right?’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ she says. ‘You’ve got basically no rights, when you’re temping. And how it happened, when I found out – well. It was at a conference, in front of everyone. I’d had too much to drink. I made a scene. People were laughing. Also, can you please stop using derogatory terms for the female anatomy? I don’t mind you swearing, just
not those words. I like to use them for other things. Nice things. Well, cunt. Not twat, so much. That one sounds too comical.’

  Jesus, he thinks. ‘Is that so?’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’ll call him a prick, then.’

  She smiles into her glass. ‘That one works for me. You can add “little”. Suits him.’

  ‘Ha.’

  ‘You know,’ she says, ‘I know it sounds like nothing. But I felt so ashamed of what I’d done. It was – it was … I don’t know. Like the absolute end of the world.’

  Fraser nods. He knows that feeling, right enough. The sharp stab of pain, the numbness, the months where you can think of nothing else, and then afterwards, when something else happens, you look back and think – what? That you should have coped better? That, if only you’d known what was ahead, you’d have managed your feelings properly?

  Something’s happened, he thinks. Her cheeks are pink.

  ‘I’d better go to bed,’ she says, and gets to her feet quickly.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘I just—’ she says, and doesn’t continue.

  And she turns and goes towards the hallway and the stairs.

  ‘Rachel …’ he says, and he has no idea what to say to her.

  She stops, a hand on the door frame. Doesn’t look round. When he doesn’t say anything else, she leaves.

  And he hates himself, because he can’t help feeling that he’s somehow made it worse.

  Rachel

  Rachel cries for a long time, and then ends up with the worst sort of headache, one that won’t go away on its own. She is empty of tears, at least: dry and shrivelled and hurting. So that was a complete bloody waste of time.

  She gets out of bed again and goes to the bathroom to get some water. Fraser is still downstairs. It’s late, for him, and she wonders if he has fallen asleep down there. Such a fuck-up, she thinks. Then: Pull yourself together, Rachel. How much longer are you going to do this? How much longer are you going to wallow in your misery? Enough, already. Enough.

  But she can’t help them, these unexpected waves of overwhelming emotion. And it’s changed, since she’s been here. Now she’s afraid, too, this horrible crushing fear that she’ll somehow never manage to be happy again. That she’ll just keep making the same mistakes, over and over again. That the next mistake she makes – for it feels inevitable, that she’ll fuck things up again – will be even worse. That maybe she won’t survive it.

  She thinks of Mel and how far away she is. How, actually, she was beginning to feel better – feel that maybe being here, being in a place that was so very different from the city, with the noise and cars and people everywhere, might somehow heal her. Make her realise that other lives exist, other places exist. That she can move on. That she can move away.

  She drinks water from the tap with her cupped hand, cold and delicious and making her head hurt even harder. She needs a cup or something to be able to take a couple of painkillers, but there’s nothing up here. In the end she takes the blister pack of paracetamol downstairs with her.

  The door to the lounge is open, lights on in there, the sound of the TV playing some sort of loud action movie.

  At least the kitchen is empty, she thinks. Empty and clean. It was only a couple of hours ago that they were standing here washing up, and Fraser has wiped down the kitchen table and everything is neat and tidy. She is still drunk but she has passed the happy swimmy stage; now she is entering the deep, soaking regret. She must have drunk several glasses, she thinks, before she made such a fucking spectacle of herself. And the crazy part of it was, she wasn’t even really upset about Amarjit any more. It was Lucy, and Emily, and—

  Enough.

  She takes the glass with her, glances at the door to the lounge. From the hallway she can see the rug, the edge of the armchair, Bess lying with her head on her paws, watching. Her tail thumps the rug.

  She should apologise, she thinks. It will be more awkward if she leaves it till tomorrow.

  With one hand she pushes open the door. Fraser is sprawled on the sofa, his long legs crossed on its far arm, his head resting on the other. He’s awake, but he hasn’t heard her, or maybe he has and is ignoring her. Maybe he’s engrossed in the television – a car chase through a city at night. Could be anything.

  ‘Hey,’ she says.

  He jumps up from the sofa as if she’s electrocuted him, tipping over the glass – thankfully empty – that’s balanced on his chest.

  ‘Sorry. Made you jump.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ he says. ‘Come sit down. How are you feeling?’

  ‘You’re up late,’ she says.

  He sniffs. ‘Got me started,’ he says, lifting the glass. ‘It’s a bad idea, really, drinking.’

  ‘Yes, it probably is.’

  ‘I drank quite a lot my first year here. Then I stopped.’

  ‘Why did you stop?’

  ‘Just realised if I carried on it was going to get … unhealthy.’

  She knows that feeling. She has felt it herself. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I guess I should have checked it was an appropriate present to bring you. I couldn’t think of anything else.’

  ‘No, you’re all right. Drinking with someone else is different.’

  ‘And drinking with good food.’

  ‘Aye, right enough.’

  ‘Perhaps we should just have a pact,’ she says. ‘One glass with dinner.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘I used to be a really happy drunk,’ she says. ‘I know you’d probably think the opposite, given my behaviour earlier. But honestly – I’m usually quite a laugh.’

  His eyes crinkle at the corners and he smiles down into his empty glass. ‘I bet you are.’ Then he adds, ‘You’ll get back there.’

  She looks at him, trying to smile.

  ‘You’ll get your happy back. You just need a wee bit of time.’

  She tips her head back, breathes in. ‘Solitude, fresh air, something to do …’

  ‘Aye,’ he says. ‘It works like magic, this place. And it’s your home now.’

  5

  Maggie

  Rachel

  Rachel wakes early despite the late night. It’s still dark, and it’s chilly.

  It’s your home now.

  He’d said it so casually. She’d wanted to come back with something equally casual. I’m only here for a few weeks.

  She has always thought of Norwich as home, but it feels like a million miles away. And this place, cold, windy, raining most of the time, bird poop and screaming seabirds and mud – weird how it feels as though she’s been here forever. She probes the thought, tries to work out why. A thought comes to her, out of nowhere: I like it here. Despite everything. She likes being away from people, from traffic. It’s as though she can think, or at least have the space to think or not think, if she chooses. There is light and air and room to breathe.

  She thinks about going back to Norwich, which will be happening soon enough; tries to think of Must as some sort of weird, rainy holiday. Tries to think about wandering down Elm Hill, eating chips from the Grosvenor Fish Bar, wandering around the Jarrold book department. Can’t imagine any of it. It feels as if the whole world consists of this island. Her beating heart is contained in the solid, soaring walls of the lighthouse; her entire life is circled by the sea.

  How will she ever go back?

  Now she’s awake there’s no point staying in bed. She washes in the bathroom, shivering, then dresses quickly in jeans and as many layers as she can find until she begins to feel warm.

  The kitchen is empty. Coffee and porridge, still hot. She’s glad Fraser has clearly already gone out, presumably taking Lefty with him. She’s not quite ready to face him just yet. All that stuff she told him about Amarjit.

  Oh, God.

  Nobody ever asked her if she consented, it wasn’t that sort of issue, but, now Fraser has suggested it, she realises that what Amarjit did was very definitely out of order.
And Fraser’s suggestion has her going over it in detail – the first time, the second time, the third time and just about every time after that – to try to find the moment when it all went wrong. The moment she made the mistake. Because it had to be her that had fucked up, didn’t it? It always was.

  She had been drunk enough to feel queasy, that first time. Drunk enough to worry that she might be sick on his pristine white sheets, especially when she went down on him and gagged. She remembered him laughing at that – not in a nasty way; she remembered him saying careful or maybe it was easy, tiger or maybe something else.

  His body had been beautiful, smooth and hairless, gym-sculpted. On a subsequent occasion she’d seen him shaving his chest in the shower and, despite it being a thing that guys did, she’d thought that she’d probably prefer him with hair. Although she would never have voiced that opinion out loud.

  She remembered being in his flat and looking at the clock and realising it was two in the morning, and closing her eyes and starting to drift off to sleep, only for him to turn on the light in the bedroom as he went for a shower. When he came back, wearing nothing but a pair of grey joggers, she’d been dozing. She’d heard the chink of crockery as he placed a cup and saucer – who even has cups and saucers these days? – on the bedside table. He’d sat on the edge of the bed and shaken her shoulder to wake her up, and said something about how much he’d enjoyed it.

  No, not that. It’s been fun.

  The lights were all on, searingly bright, making her wonder what on earth she must look like, so exposed, hair mussed, make-up smudged.

  She’d sat up and drunk the coffee and he’d said he’d call her a cab. He’d got up and gone to the living room, presumably leaving her to get dressed in privacy. She had sat there for a moment, hollow, hearing the sudden noise of the TV from the room next door. She’d gathered up her clothes and taken them into the bathroom, looking at her forlorn, pale face in the mirror and instantly regretting what she’d done. Not the act itself, but the stupidity of sleeping with her boss. He liked her, sure, but not enough to have her stay the night. Not enough to want to wake up next to her.