You, Me & the Sea Read online

  Is that what’s happening now, too? From outside, she can hear the sound of the quad’s engine getting louder. Listens to it idling for a second, and then cutting out. The vibrations of the engine feel suddenly weirdly, intensely erotic. It’s a curious thrill that goes through her, almost fear. As if she’s afraid of what she might say, what she might do, especially given what she’s just been thinking about in detail. She takes a breath in, holds it, squeezes her thighs together.

  He’s coming for me.

  She brings over the vegetables and the serving spoons, and there’s a knock at the door. Everyone looks over and Fraser comes in, huge, filling the doorway.

  ‘I’ll just be a minute,’ she says, not looking at him. Her cheeks are hot from the steam coming off the veg.

  ‘Aren’t you lucky?’ Jane says, nudging Carol. ‘Does he always come to give you a lift back?’

  ‘Only when it’s raining,’ Fraser says.

  But the truth is he’s come to get her every evening for quite a while now. Even when it’s sunny.

  Fraser

  Without a word he goes into the outbuilding, out of the rain. If she doesn’t follow him, he’ll come back out again. Make some excuse.

  But she does, and he holds her very tightly and kisses her straight away. He’s hard, again, but he’s been hard most of the day, thinking about last night. It hasn’t felt quite real.

  She makes a sound when he kisses her, like a gasp. It takes her a second and then she’s kissing him back, and he’s so happy about it that he could actually cry with relief.

  He has been thinking about this morning’s conversation, about the things she said when he was too busy staring at her to pay full attention, thinking she was just wittering on because she was nervous or embarrassed or regretting what had happened. Now he’s thought about it, he has decided – although such a thing seems so unlikely as to be almost impossible – that actually she might be willing to do it again.

  I can be happy on my own, she had said. And then, again, that thing she said about the option of occasional good sex with someone she’s attracted to. He thinks she must have been referring to him. So she’s okay about them both being single, about there being no commitment, about them just having sex. Occasionally.

  He manoeuvres her back until her bottom hits the washing machine, hoists her up on to it. Now she’s more on his level, his mouth near hers, her arms around his neck. He unzips her jacket and puts his hands around her waist, tugging at her top, trying to find bare skin. Through the wall he can hear a woman laughing. Not sure which one it is, but he thinks of them as interchangeable, the prof’s women. Last time they were here he’d caught them at it, the three of them. He hadn’t intended to; he had been up on the cliff and some movement had caught his eye. His binoculars had sought out the movement and he’d found himself looking at one of the back windows of the observatory, the three of them on the bed. Of course he had looked away quickly, laughed at it.

  Thought a lot about it since then, mind you.

  She pulls back, suddenly. ‘Stop,’ she says, breathless.

  He stops kissing her, stops stroking her. Leaves his hand where it is, though, because he can’t quite bring himself to remove it yet.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’ll wonder why they haven’t heard the quad.’

  ‘Right.’

  He helps her down from her perch and they go outside to the quad. Her arm tight around his waist. He has a vague thought about her hand dropping down lower, thinks that he would crash if she did.

  Rachel goes for a shower while he finishes dinner. He’s done lamb, slow-roasted, with new potatoes. He’s gone easy on the garlic. He’s put a bottle of wine on the table, one of the better ones. It’s not a seduction attempt; he just thinks he could do with a glass of something alcoholic. There is no whisky left, which is what he really wants. He has added it to the list for Friday, but Friday feels a long way off.

  Stop it, he thinks. Just stop.

  Lefty comes in through the back door into the hallway. He comes into the kitchen, dripping.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Fraser asks, his voice rising.

  Lefty looks at him in surprise. ‘Chickens,’ he says.

  Lefty has something of a relationship with the five chickens. He has gradually taken over the care of them, and by and large he has done a good job. He’s not so good at tending to injuries and mite infestations – Fraser still gets called on to deal with that – but Lefty is the one who feeds them, cleans the coop, changes the water and makes sure they’re locked away. If he isn’t in his room, then the first place Fraser always looks for him is outside in the workshop, where probably he will be cradling one of the hens in his lap, talking to her. He thinks he has probably named them all, although he told him not to.

  ‘What’s goin’ on?’ Lefty asks warily. He’s standing in the doorway with the can of Coke he’s just retrieved from the fridge.

  ‘Nothing,’ Fraser says.

  ‘Smells good. What is it?’

  ‘Roast lamb.’

  ‘Ah.’

  There is a long pause. Fraser’s back is to the doorway but he can sense Lefty is still there. He has developed an acute sense of where he is at all times. He turns his back to Lefty often. It’s like a challenge. A dare. He knows that if the lad moved towards him it would be slow. His own reactions are faster. He knows that he can think more quickly than Lefty can move.

  ‘You want some?’ he asks, at last.

  Now he looks round. Lefty is looking startled. ‘Me?’

  ‘Don’t see anyone else in here.’

  ‘You mean – I can take some tae ma room?’

  ‘No, you fucker – you eat my food, you sit at my table. You want some, or not?’

  ‘Aye,’ he says, eyes wide.

  ‘Right, then. You lay the table.’

  Something about Lefty coming in, water dripping off him, has reminded him of the first night.

  Fraser had gone back up to the lighthouse, had left the kid down at the harbour with Robert. He had been raging, absolutely raging. In the kitchen he had drunk a glass of vodka and then another one straight after. An hour later he had gone outside to find the lad crouched on the doorstep. It was raining, and he was wet through.

  ‘The fuck are you doing?’ he’d said.

  No reply. Just a wild shrug.

  Fraser had assumed he was on something. He’d marched back down to the harbour, not looking back to see if Lefty was following. If he did, he might just pick the boy up and throw him into the water.

  Robert was still there, the motor on the boat idling. He’d been just about to cast off. ‘Cannae wait any longer,’ he’d said. ‘He coming, or what?’

  Fraser had looked round at last, and there was no sign. ‘He fucking better be. He’s not staying here.’

  At Fraser’s insistence, he and Robert had both gone back up to the lighthouse. But the lad wasn’t there any more: he’d disappeared. They had performed a quick search of the lighthouse – the door was never locked, of course, so he might have gone inside – and the outbuildings, but there was no sign of him.

  Robert had said, ‘I’ll miss the tide …’

  So the boat had left. Fraser had stood on the jetty, rigid with fury, watching it go. The wind had picked up, it was raining, but he’d barely felt it. When the boat was out of sight around the bay he’d walked back via the cottages, in case he’d decided to hide there, but there was nothing. By then it was getting dark, the rain hard, the wind biting.

  He had walked up the hill to the lighthouse, feeling sick with it. Thinking that at any minute a crazed wee figure might jump out at him, push him backwards, that he’d end up in the loch.

  Inside he had searched the lighthouse from top to bottom, even those small spaces where a human body couldn’t possibly hide, all the time muttering, ‘I’ll get you, you wee fucker, come out, show yourself.’ But there was nothing. He’d known the boy wasn’t in the house anyway, because Bess was watching
all this, utterly baffled. He had made cheese on toast, fed Bess, drunk vodka. Woken up chilled on the sofa at eleven. Outside, the wind had been blowing a fierce gale, rain hammering at the windows on the eastern side. He’d wondered again where the boy was. Even if he had found shelter somewhere – the cottages, maybe – it would be freezing cold, damp. If he was anywhere at all, other than the bird observatory, then he would probably not survive. There was also the possibility that he’d been on the boat; that he’d got on board while Fraser and Robert were at the lighthouse, that he’d stowed away somewhere. That was the best bet. But somehow Fraser knew in the pit of his stomach, swilling sourly, that that wasn’t what had happened.

  He had thought about going to look, but he was still staggering drunk and, although the rage had gone, what was left behind was just a sort of dull nausea; he’d known he should care but he absolutely couldn’t find the energy to do it. It could wait till morning.

  Now, he looks at Lefty, sees him look up and smile as Rachel comes in, hair still damp, like all the colours of autumn. The sour feeling is still there in his stomach. He doesn’t touch vodka any more.

  ‘I’m having dinner,’ Lefty says brightly.

  ‘So I see. That’s brilliant. Anything I can do to help?’

  ‘No,’ Fraser says. ‘Sit. Eat.’

  Rachel

  Downstairs, she is surprised to see Lefty sitting at the kitchen table looking pleased with himself. Fraser’s expression is giving nothing away. He must have issued some sort of invitation; there’s no way Lefty would have taken it upon himself to ask if he could eat with them, for all Rachel’s efforts in getting them together.

  Fraser pours the wine. To everyone’s surprise, he tips the bottle questioningly in Lefty’s direction.

  ‘No,’ he says, wiggling the can of Coke. ‘Thank you.’

  Rachel’s grateful for it, though. She is bone-tired, thinks that drinking is probably a bad idea, but, like most of her bad ideas, she is going to do it anyway.

  ‘This is cool,’ she says.

  ‘What’s that?’ says Fraser, without looking up.

  ‘Having a meal together. Isn’t it?’

  Fraser shrugs and says nothing.

  ‘Aye,’ says Lefty. He looks from one of them to the other and then back at his plate. He’s a noisy eater when he gets going. There is no picking at the meat today. He is going for it as if he hasn’t eaten in days.

  ‘What did you do today, Lefty?’

  ‘Checking the trap. Fixing holes.’

  ‘The bird trap, thing? For the passerines?’

  ‘The Heligoland, aye.’

  ‘Anything in it?’ Fraser asks.

  ‘No,’ says Lefty. ‘All empty. There was a big hole in the top netting right enough.’

  She watches them eating, the two of them, both heads down. The conversation stalls. Even so, she feels that some massive leap forward has taken place, unexpectedly. There’s a silence but, unlike the other day, there doesn’t seem to be that tense hostility.

  Lefty finishes eating first. Given how he’s been inhaling his plateful, this is not a surprise. He sits there awkwardly for a minute, looking up furtively, wondering what’s expected of him. This is clearly new territory.

  ‘Go on, then,’ Fraser murmurs, ‘if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Lefty says, takes his plate to the sink, washes it up very quickly and scoots off to his room.

  Rachel sips her wine, waiting for Fraser to look up. Eventually he does. She catches herself in his gaze and tries to read his expression. It’s completely blank. ‘That was nice,’ she says.

  His mouth twists in a grin. ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Nice of you to ask him.’

  ‘Well, he was here. And I thought you’d like it.’

  ‘I did like it. Maybe we could do this more often. Maybe – once a week?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  That’s as much as she’s going to get.

  They’ve both finished eating. Minutes pass. Rachel sips her wine.

  ‘I’d suggest Monopoly,’ he says.

  That wasn’t what she’d been expecting. ‘But?’

  ‘You’d beat me. I’ve no ability to concentrate.’

  ‘Me neither. I’m a bit tired, I think.’

  ‘Aye. Wonder why that is.’

  What she wants right now, what she really wants, is to go upstairs and get into bed with him and curl up against his warm, solid human body and sleep. She thinks about how this isn’t something she’s supposed to ask for, how really she’s supposed to wait for him to do the running; that she has made this mistake before. That you shouldn’t be too keen. That you shouldn’t ask; you should wait, you should take what you’re given and you’re supposed to be grateful for everything. She wonders if he has any inkling of all this should and supposed to going on in her head. She wonders if he has ever thought about what he should do, or whether he just does what he wants, whenever he wants to do it.

  She drinks the rest of her wine in one gulp. ‘Can we go to bed?’

  Fraser

  She says she just wants to be held. There is half an hour or so during which he holds her as requested and is quite happy to do so. But then the holding becomes touching and then long, deep kissing, her hands on his face and then on his body, and then there’s a point where he has to ask her to stop.

  ‘I changed my mind. I don’t want to be just held,’ she says.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asks.

  ‘I want to be on top,’ she says.

  ‘Right, then. Off you go.’

  He prefers to be in control, it has to be said. He has always been in control because that’s just the way things have been. But right now he wants her to get exactly what she wants, and he wants to be there to watch her face as she gets it.

  There is something intensely sexy about holding her hips loosely as she moves. His hands on her waist, trying hard to concentrate or it’ll be over in seconds. Counting kittiwakes in his head. Thinking of the time he drove to Arbroath in the summer and got sick with food poisoning from a supermarket sandwich. The telephone number of his flat in Aberdeen, twelve years ago.

  He slips his fingers in between their bodies and times it carefully, watching her face. Tries to hold back, tries to wait for her. Can’t. He explodes inside her. He has to grab hold of her to stop her toppling over.

  She’s on her back, breathing hard. Without looking at her, he mumbles, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘That was too quick.’

  ‘Well, that was my fault, not yours.’

  He turns on to his side so he can look at her. Rests his hand on her stomach, fingers tracing the patterns. ‘I like these,’ he says, eventually.

  She looks down. ‘They’re stretch marks.’

  ‘I know what they are. I’m saying I like them.’

  ‘I have a spongy belly,’ she says, moving it with the palm of her hand to demonstrate.

  ‘I like that too.’

  It’s soft, lightly rounded, painted with tiger stripes. He bends to plant a kiss, ends up staying there.

  ‘You’re a little bit mad,’ she murmurs.

  ‘It’s not just that I like it,’ he says, moving lower, lifting her knee. ‘It’s the proof of what you did. Of how brave you were, how selfless. It’s like the medal Emily gave you to say thank you for helping to give her life.’

  Rachel makes a little ‘hmph’ which might be agreement. ‘Lucy emailed me about Emily’s christening a while back,’ she says. ‘She wants me to RSVP.’

  ‘When is it?’

  ‘The twenty-seventh of July.’

  ‘That’s ages away.’

  ‘I know, and there’s a chance I might still be here then. I’m sort of counting on it, to be honest – that would be a really good excuse.’

  ‘She wants to know now?’

  ‘That’s Lucy for you. She’ll be crafting personalised table decorations. Will you come with me, if I get forced into it? I realise I’m
not selling it as an exciting prospect.’

  ‘If you want me to,’ he says, a little bit distracted.

  ‘Promise?’

  He settles himself between her thighs. Uses his tongue. Takes his time with it, edges her for as long as he can. Eventually she grabs at his head, panting, pushing him away. He kisses her thigh, not quite wanting to move away from what he thinks is the best view on the island.

  ‘You’re a bit bloody good at that,’ she says, when she gets her breath back.

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’m glad you think so. I could do with more practice.’

  ‘I’m the one who’s out of practice. Even for someone who’s practically celibate you probably had sex more recently than me.’

  He moves up the bed. She snuggles against him. His hand in her hair.

  ‘Who said anything about celibate?’

  She looks up at him. ‘Oh. I just assumed …’

  ‘Well, don’t assume.’

  ‘So when was the last time you had sex?’

  He thinks. Has to think quite hard about whether he really wants to go there. ‘Just before Christmas.’

  ‘Seriously? Who with?’

  She shifts on to her belly, props herself on to her elbows. Now he can feel the full force of her eyes on the side of his face.

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘A friend?’

  ‘I do have some.’

  ‘A female friend?’

  ‘Aye. I have one or two of those.’ Actually, that’s probably not entirely true, he thinks. ‘Well, one.’

  ‘But not a relationship?’

  ‘No. Just someone I see occasionally.’

  ‘Like a fuck buddy?’

  ‘Jesus, Rachel. So many questions. No. More of a … whatever you’d call it. Friend with benefits.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘Look,’ he says, ‘while we’re talking about it. I’d better tell you something. In the interests of being honest.’

  He risks a glance at her, sees the way her eyes look. She’s braced herself.

  ‘I used to work on the rigs,’ he says, by way of introduction.

  ‘And?’

  ‘You don’t meet women on the rigs. Well, not in those days, probably a lot more of them now, but maybe not the sort of women who really want to fuck men, I don’t know. Anyway. So there’s a certain way you go about things.’