You, Me & the Sea Read online

  ‘Okay, then,’ he says, and she giggles.

  Then he takes her breath away.

  8

  Deep water

  Rachel

  Rachel thinks she should really get back to her own room. Fraser is asleep, or dozing at least, his arm heavy on her waist. His hand occasionally moves half-heartedly, as though he’s some huge beast succumbing to an anaesthetic.

  She is very aware that she is in his bed. Despite what they’ve spent the last several hours doing, sleeping feels like a different sort of intimacy. And besides, she’s absolutely wired, and there’s no way she is going to actually sleep.

  No man has ever made Rachel come during sex, so the fact that she didn’t was really not a surprise, despite the not inconsiderable effort Fraser had put in. Amarjit had never really bothered much about that, once she had admitted that she found it difficult. In all the time she was with him, she’d got there herself maybe a couple of times. This is what is normal to her, but being with Fraser last night has made her question whether it is normal at all. She has no problems on her own, even after a year of abstinence. Maybe she just needs to relax a little bit? Fraser hadn’t said anything about it but he’d kept trying until it got awkward and she’d had to say, ‘It’s fine, I’m just tired’. She had probably been more turned on than ever before, but something about it made it impossible.

  She knows it’s a bad idea to compare them – Fraser and Amarjit – since they are clearly so different in so many ways, but she can’t help herself.

  It’s not just that Fraser spent so much time over it. All of a sudden it feels important, that she had been in a supposedly loving relationship with someone who was not in any way bothered about her pleasure, and here is someone she isn’t in a loving relationship with who seemed to be treating it as a personal mission. It’s everything else, all the things she can see as if someone has turned on some sort of light. How did she fail to see that yawning inequality between her and Amarjit? How did she ever think it was okay that he never wanted her to stay the night? That he never took her out anywhere, to the cinema or for a meal? That he never introduced her to his friends outside work and that he never wanted to meet hers? It all seems so very basic now, so fundamentally wrong, and at the time she just had no idea.

  She will never let that happen again.

  Fraser’s breathing has deepened. She eases his arm away from her waist, and he grunts, fidgets, turns on his side away from her, and farts.

  Well, she thinks. But now she can get out of bed, at least. She finds her clothes discarded on the floor. She reaches for his bedside lamp and turns it off. The grey square of the window makes her realise that it’s later – earlier – than she’d thought it was.

  Back in her own bedroom, she lies still, thinking about what’s just happened. Out of nowhere, apparently. She’d had no idea he felt like that about her. Perhaps he doesn’t. Perhaps it was just a shag, which was, after all, what she had said to him right before it happened. What she had asked for.

  The irony of it all, though. All that time she has spent loaded down with the shame of falling for a man she worked with, a man whose circumstances made it more or less impossible for any relationship to have worked. And now what does she think she’s doing? Almost exactly the same thing.

  The same thing, and yet entirely different at the same time. At least Fraser’s being honest. At least he’s been upfront about it.

  Whatever this is, it’s definitely not a relationship.

  Fraser

  Rachel is sitting in the kitchen with her laptop when he gets downstairs. It’s still early – nearly seven – but it’s later than usual for him. In fact it was the noise of the shower in the bathroom next door that woke him.

  He eyes her warily and then concentrates on making coffee to give himself something to do, the grinder sounding horribly loud in the quiet of the kitchen.

  ‘You okay?’ he asks, eventually. His voice sounds hoarse, as if he’s spent the entire night talking, or shouting. He hopes he didn’t do any of that after he fell asleep. When he woke up this morning she had gone, and he’s gutted about that, as he had gone to sleep looking forward to a possible round two. He already has a deep, churning anxiety that he might have done something wrong.

  ‘Yes.’

  He risks a glance at her. She looks pale, but perhaps that’s just the light from her laptop screen reflecting on her face. And she’s probably tired, he thinks. God knows he’s pretty worn out himself. Three hours’ sleep? Something like that.

  ‘Did I hurt you?’ he says.

  She looks up, frowning. ‘No.’

  ‘Hm, okay, then. You want coffee?’

  ‘I’ve just had a tea. Thank you, though.’

  It’s an oddly formal exchange, given that a few hours ago he was buried deep inside her, his face in her hair, thinking himself dreaming or at least just extraordinarily lucky.

  While the coffee is brewing he stands with his back to the counter, pretending not to be watching her, when in fact he’s finding it quite difficult to look away. He wants to sit down opposite her at the table but he can’t quite trust himself not to touch her again and there is something about her this morning, something about her demeanour. As though there is a forcefield. As though she doesn’t want him near.

  ‘Last night …’ he says, and the sound of his voice takes him by surprise. He’d been thinking it and suddenly it was out there. Clears his throat.

  She looks up, focuses on him properly. He thinks maybe she’s been crying, but maybe he’s imagining that, projecting it on to her.

  ‘So, I wanted to say, just to be clear. Right? This isn’t a thing.’

  ‘A thing?’ she echoes.

  ‘A whatever you want to call it. A relationship.’

  ‘Fraser, we just had sex.’

  He can’t help himself, he flicks a glance out to the hallway to Lefty’s room, but unsurprisingly the door is shut. Lefty has never voluntarily emerged from his room before late morning, on those rare occasions Fraser hasn’t dragged him up and out with him.

  ‘I know that. But I wanted to be clear about where we are.’

  ‘You already said you don’t do relationships. I was listening when you said it.’

  Her voice isn’t hostile. There’s just a strange sort of resignation to it.

  ‘Right. Well. As long as that’s okay with you.’

  She doesn’t answer. She has already gone back to her laptop. What’s she looking at? He has a sudden burning desire to know.

  ‘I don’t want you to get hurt, you know?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Fraser. I’m used to not getting things I want. My parents’ approval. Amarjit. Emily. You.’

  Her words take his breath away. He feels them like a stab. Behind him the coffee machine is gurgling away. The warm rich smell of it; his morning cup of coffee is like the capital letter at the start of every day. Usually it makes him feel better. But today everything just feels slightly wrong.

  ‘It was good,’ he says at last. ‘Last night, I mean. Really good.’

  He can’t shake the feeling that somehow he got a lot more out of it than she did. He knows she didn’t come. That bothers him.

  This time she doesn’t even look up. He has forgotten about the porridge, feels oddly exposed, here, as if he can’t remember how to operate in his own kitchen. He gets the oats into the pan and adds water to them, sets them on the stove. Then he lets Bess outside, although she gives him the side eye as though she’s already been. The fresh air gives him a jolt. It’s raining outside, a dull persistent drizzle, the clouds heavy with the promise of not letting up all day. Maybe he’ll stay inside. Maybe he’ll do the laundry, or run the vacuum round. Change the sheets. Maybe he won’t do that.

  The oats begin to boil and he turns the hob right down, stirring. Bess comes back in and shakes herself vigorously, droplets of water flying all over the place.

  ‘I fed her,’ Rachel says, from the table.

  ‘Did you? Thanks. Yo
u’ll get no extra from me,’ he says, to the dog. ‘No point looking at me like that.’

  She gives him an affronted look and retreats to her bed, chin on paws, looking from one of them to the other as if she’s trying to work it out.

  More stirring. He adds a pinch of salt, a glug of cream from the fridge.

  ‘I thought it was good, too,’ she says from behind him. ‘For the record.’

  ‘You want some porridge?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  It gives him an excuse to sit with her, at least. He brings over the bowls and she shuts her laptop and puts it to one side.

  ‘I was looking at the blog. New entry.’

  He blows on his spoon. ‘About last night?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. I wanted to let the world know about it.’

  He looks up and meets her eye and this time they both smile.

  ‘About the terns, actually. Can I get some pictures of them?’

  ‘Sure. They’re all still arriving, though. We won’t get eggs for another couple of weeks.’

  There is a quiet pause. From the corner, Bess lets out a tiny whine.

  ‘Did you get any sleep?’ he asks.

  ‘Not really.’

  There is a pause while he thinks about asking why she didn’t stay. Manages to not say it out loud.

  ‘I was thinking about Amarjit.’

  He wonders about the significance, tries not to link it to her dissatisfaction, despite his best efforts. They spent the night fucking and first thing in the morning she’s thinking about her previous lover.

  ‘He’s been in touch?’

  ‘No, it’s not that. And I know I shouldn’t compare things, that’s just … bad. I know I told you it was a mistake, you know, one of Rachel’s inevitable fuck-ups. And I have the strong sense of being about to do the same thing with you, that I’m going to fuck things up and make a fool of myself again, only I’m not, I’m really not. I’m not going to push you into a relationship because I know that’s not what you want, and it might surprise you to learn that it’s really not what I want either. Honestly. I’ve had enough of all of that. I think I can be happy just on my own, especially if there’s the option of occasional really good sex with someone I’m attracted to, someone … kind. I think I need to be happy on my own, and I don’t need – I mean I shouldn’t need, should I? – I shouldn’t need a relationship for that. To be happy. Although I don’t think you’ve really said what you think a relationship is; maybe what you think a relationship looks like is very different from what I think it is, and also I think maybe you’re just as confused as I am. But anyway.’

  Finally she pauses for breath. He looks at her, eyes narrowed, thinking how she talks a lot when she’s nervous. As if all the thoughts become words and it all just comes pouring out, a distraction from what’s really going on.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t know. Going on about it.’

  He heard everything she said but if he’s honest his concentration had wavered when he heard the words the option of occasional really good sex and his body seems to be hoping that it means what he thinks it means, at the same time as his brain is trying to stay rational.

  He’s caught now, snagged on her gaze like a fish on a line. Her lips look dark, full, like last night when he’d been kissing her so hard he thought he might have bruised her. The urge to kiss her again hits him like a punch to the throat.

  As he always does when he starts to feel caught, he gets up from the table, takes the bowls and washes up.

  ‘No problem,’ he says. ‘Whatever.’

  Rachel

  Rachel heads for the bird observatory at five. It’s still raining, a slow, quiet drizzle, the clouds overhead dark and low enough to shroud the higher points of the island in a dark grey blanket of damp. It feels more like October than the middle of May.

  There are eider ducks everywhere now. They nest in random places, including on the paths, just sitting there. She has to pay attention to where she’s walking because the brown females are so still and tucked in that they look like rocks sometimes, especially when the weather is dull, as it is today. She thinks about it, takes a couple of pictures of a female sitting on eggs, although the light’s not very good. She’ll do a blog about the ducks. They are cute, really, even if she’s come close to accidentally booting them once or twice.

  She knocks and goes into the bird observatory, hoping that there’s nobody there, but Professor Brian is in the living room with Carol. After a moment Jane comes out to say hello. They went out this morning, came back early because of the weather. Brian and Carol are in pyjamas. Jane disappears again and Rachel hears the shower running.

  She leaves them to it and begins to prep the veg. They’ve got casserole this evening, the one that she put in the slow cooker last night. Just a bit of mashed potato and green beans, maybe, to go with it. This lot seem great so far at keeping the place clean; they feel much more like the sort of customers she was expecting, as if they are holidaymakers and this is a holiday let, rather than her running some sort of hostel for people used to roughing it.

  Meanwhile Rachel has started to enjoy birdwatching. Especially with Fraser, who is the best sort of expert – patient at explaining things. He has no expectations of her knowing anything at all, but manages to impart his knowledge, somehow, without sounding patronising. Not only does he know what all the birds are, he knows most of them as individuals, can tell you where they’ve been, how many chicks they’ve had, how old they are. Most of them were hatched here themselves. She tries to imagine the scale of the migrations that some of them undertake: from Scotland to the Antarctic, in the case of the Arctic terns – every single year, completely under their own steam. Just because that’s the way it’s always been done; that’s what they do. And then flying all the way back again, to here, the place where they first opened their eyes, took their first drink, ate their first mouthful. This tiny island, in a sea of other islands, all looking very similar. It’s mind-blowing.

  And the puffins – she shouldn’t have favourites, but they already are. They are everywhere now. Over the course of a couple of days a week or two ago, they were landing on the turf and marching about shouting at each other, claiming the island back as their own. They are smaller than she’d thought they would be, and bossier, and not at all bothered about her presence. If she gets too close to one it moves away, but complainingly. She thinks of them already like City types, queuing for public transport, or maybe like a huge family at Christmas, everyone talking at once. They all seem to know exactly where they’re supposed to be and yet there is no discernible organisation, no pattern to their movements.

  And they look so funny in flight, their legs dangling haphazardly underneath them, as if they’ve forgotten to tuck them away the way other birds do; or they simply can’t be arsed.

  ‘In a group, they’re called a circus,’ Fraser told her, and she can see why. Not so much a circus with a ringmaster and clowns, she thinks, more like Piccadilly Circus, full of noise and bustle and attitude. Everyone moving and somehow not colliding.

  Her mind keeps drifting back to last night, to how it felt. All day there has been a delicious sort of ache between her thighs, a soreness from being unexpectedly battered and stretched that has now developed into a sort of longing to have that all over again. She wants it again. She wants more of it, without any stress or debate, preferably without having to talk about sad things first. She tries to imagine that conversation, whether she can ever be that bold; whether she is going to have to wait for him to suggest it, or make a move on her. She thinks that last night she did make the first move, and he did respond, but will two nights in a row make him wary? It’s not exactly casual, is it, two nights on the trot? He did seem to be enjoying himself, but he was quiet all the way through it. Amarjit used to talk to her during sex, which even at the time she’d thought was weird but it was quite sexy too, this constant narrative of yeah baby that’s it
take it and you’re so wet for me aren’t you you needy little bitch. Once Fraser got down to it he hadn’t said anything. He hadn’t guided her or given her instructions when she went down on him, apart from once when he stroked her cheek and she looked up and caught his eye and he closed both of his, as if it was too much.

  What does that even mean? she wonders. He said it was good. Not great. Not amazing. Maybe it was just okay, and he’s given it a go and he’s really not bothered.

  And he didn’t come until right at the end. She’d thought he would want to come in her mouth or on her face or her breasts. But they were fucking and he lifted her thigh higher so her knee was up to her chest and he went really deep, gasped and swore and that was when.

  Was it good, though? Was she good? Is she good enough for him, even just as a casual fuck?

  She wasn’t good enough for Amarjit.

  It hurts now, she thinks, bringing the casserole over to the table and placing it carefully on the trivet, but for some reason it hurts much less than she thought it would. It’s as if she is watching it from this distance, seeing Rachel being so wounded and feeling nothing but sorrow for her. There is a strange sort of clarity that has appeared out of nowhere. She used to think, who am I without him? – as if she had no definition, no shape, except that which he had given her. She had shaped herself into Amarjit’s lover, into something she’d thought he wanted and needed and loved. And without him she had felt inconsequential, half of something, irrelevant. She wants to blame him for that, for making her want him so badly that she lost her sense of self, but it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t want her to dissolve against him.

  He didn’t, actually, want her at all.

  She thinks that if he had told the truth at any point she would have been okay. It was the lies that did it. Because you will tell yourself lies in order to believe that someone you love is telling the truth.

  That’s what happens when you’re infatuated, she thinks. Your judgment is clouded by it.