You, Me & the Sea Read online

  ‘Hormones,’ Lucy said, flapping her hand, and Rachel, who in the past few months had not thought it possible that she could find any more reason to be annoyed by her only sibling, had suddenly found she could.

  Emily was fast asleep in her car seat in the back. Rachel did not turn to look, although she could smell the delicate scent of her. Milk-breath and soft skin.

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ Lucy said, as if it were Rachel crying and not her. ‘Email me,’ she said. ‘Every day? And I’ll send you pictures of Emily.’

  Rachel wanted to say, Don’t. Sometimes it was easier just to keep quiet. ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to miss the train.’

  They had hugged awkwardly across the central console. ‘I’ll miss you,’ Lucy said, into her ear.

  ‘You too.’

  And she’d got out of the car, retrieved her backpack from the boot and walked towards the station, trying not to run. It didn’t feel like an escape.

  It’s not an escape if you have nowhere else to go.

  Fraser

  His mobile rings while he is in the kitchen making coffee. It’s Craig, out of breath from tramping back down the hill to the boat. He has left the quad outside instead of putting it in the shed, which is fucking typical. But that’s not what he’s phoning for – he wants to talk about the girl. Woman. Whatever she is – his new lodger. Housemate.

  ‘Aye, she’s nervous about sharing with you. Go easy on her.’

  ‘Why’s she nervous?’

  ‘Apparently Marion never told her she’d be sharing. She was thinking she was staying in the bird observatory.’

  ‘And you’re just leaving her here?’

  ‘What am I supposed to do? Marion will have my guts if I take her straight back.’

  ‘Fucking Marion.’

  ‘She looked panicky so I told her about the lightkeeper’s cottages.’

  ‘They’re not fit for a pig to live in.’

  ‘Aye, well, I did mention that as well.’

  Fraser makes a sound, a giant pissed-off huff.

  ‘Well,’ Craig says, ‘I’m sure she’ll come round. Just don’t, you know, attack her or anything.’

  ‘Fucking as if.’

  ‘I was joking.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t find it funny. Why didn’t they just employ a man, for fuck’s sake?’

  ‘Because it’s not the 1970s, Fraser, you can’t actually discriminate like that any more. And besides, I don’t think they had any other applicants. Funnily enough.’

  Fraser disconnects the call and stomps about in the kitchen, wondering whether he is going to have to watch his language around her and be careful not to startle her all the time. It’s been a long time since he has been near a woman for more than a few hours at a time, and he has never actually shared a house with one. There were women on the rigs, years ago, but they had their own quarters and most of them behaved like blokes, which he supposed was their way of dealing with being so vastly outnumbered.

  And then there is the other matter. He’s going to have to talk to her about it. He will have to get her on side. He will have to get her agreement, and in order to do that he will have to be Nice.

  Other than that rather crucial detail, he doesn’t have a clue how he is expected to behave.

  On his own island. In his own house.

  Rachel

  Why didn’t they just employ a man, for fuck’s sake?

  Rachel stands in the hallway, silent, awkward. Not wanting to be caught eavesdropping on Fraser’s phone conversation. Not wanting their first encounter to be an argument.

  Once upon a time she had been good at standing up for herself, and for other people, but she isn’t that person any more. Now she is the sort of person who stands frozen to the spot in a chilly hallway listening to the man she is now living with expressing a sentiment so outdated he might have landed straight out of the last century, and she already knows she is going to have to pretend to not have heard because she isn’t brave enough to say something about it, and if it’s even possible she hates herself just a little bit more.

  She waits for further sexist ranting, but there is only an alarming clatter of crockery, as though he’s doing the washing-up in a temper.

  Awkwardly she opens the door again and closes it firmly, sniffs loudly and eases her backpack to the floor, dropping the duvet and pillow on to the tiles. She pulls off her boots and slots them next to a series of enormous trainers, hiking shoes and wellies. Her boots, which had felt so huge and cumbersome after the shoes she normally wears, look tiny beside them.

  Be brave, she thinks.

  ‘Hello? Fraser?’

  ‘Aye,’ he says, and steps out from the kitchen, holding a tea towel and a mug.

  Rachel takes a deep breath. ‘Craig tells me I’m staying here.’

  ‘Aye,’ he says again.

  ‘It feels a bit like we’ve just been landed with each other. Accidental housemates.’

  He shrugs, and stares. ‘Makes no difference to me. I’m out most of the time.’

  ‘Well, I guess I will be too.’

  He smirks, the first time his expression has changed. ‘You’ll find there’s not gonnae be much for you to do.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You’ll be busy on Fridays and Saturdays and the rest of the week sitting on your arse. Room’s upstairs,’ he says, and turns and heads into the kitchen again.

  ‘Which one?’ she asks.

  ‘Any one you like, other than mine.’ And then, as an afterthought, ‘There’s linen and towels in the airing cupboard. Let me know if you need anything.’

  She drags her backpack up the stairs. It feels bigger up here, and there are six doors, all closed, along a narrow hallway. The mustard-yellow carpet is thin and badly laid, wrinkled and threadbare in places, the floorboards creaking beneath her feet.

  She opens the door at the top of the stairs and finds a bathroom, big enough for a separate shower, a huge rolltop bath that should be trendy but actually is original, rust and limescale staining the ancient enamel in a long trickle from the hot water tap.

  It smells of men, of men’s things. Shower gel and Lynx. Damp, cracked tiles, a mirror that’s so filthy she can barely see her reflection. Black mould has been wiped off the tiles around the sink, settling into the grout. She looks at the toilet, seat up. Can’t quite bring herself to look down into the pan because she already knows it won’t have seen bleach in a long while. Lowers the seat and wipes it with a wad of toilet paper before using it.

  Next to the bathroom is the airing cupboard. She moves on to the next door.

  It’s clearly his room. She shuts the door again quickly.

  That leaves three rooms to explore, and after a few minutes she sees that she has the choice of a large double the other side of the bathroom, with blue flowery wallpaper, a wardrobe that looks like the gateway to Narnia and a basin in the corner which hangs at an angle off the wall; a smaller room at the back with bare floorboards, a bed with a stained mattress and a large damp patch on the ceiling; or the room next to his: yellow wallpaper, a flat-pack wardrobe and a chest of drawers, a view over the harbour from the large sash window, and a cast-iron double bed with a mattress that at least looks newer. There is a blanket folded on the armchair.

  She sits on the bed in the yellow room for a while, wondering if she should go and sleep in the bird observatory tonight at least, when there’s nobody in it. There is a moment where she thinks, not for the first time: what have I done?

  She pulls her phone out of her back pocket and looks at it, thinking that she might have a message from Mel or even Lucy, something to take her mind off the fact that she’s on a rock miles from anywhere and so far out of her depth she’s in danger of drowning, a little bit.

  No signal at all. Not even one bar.

  Ten minutes pass with her staring at the wallpaper, then she forces herself to get up. In the airing cupboard she finds several sets of sheets and pillowcases, chooses one. It smells clean but
a little musty. Once the birdwatchers are settled in she’ll wash it, she thinks. Freshen it up a bit.

  When the bed is made up with her new duvet everything feels a little bit less awful, and the sun comes out and floods the room with light. She goes to the window and looks out through the salt-washed glass over to the jetty, the sunlight twinkling on the surface of the water. The Island Princess has gone.

  She has a sudden pang of something: a gasping panic, a fear of falling, a fear of drowning, a fear of being trapped somewhere small and dark and tight. Strange, when actually she’s somewhere so open. The room is big and airy. And yet she feels cornered, trapped. Alone. Not alone enough.

  Islands are only islands because of the sea over the top of them, she tells herself again. I am still connected to the land, the same land that stretches all the way home. To Lucy, to Emily, to Mel, to Mum and Dad.

  She gets a few things out of the backpack to try and make it feel a bit more like home, but quickly gets bored with unpacking. Besides, she might not be here for long. It’s only until Julia takes over. That might be anything from a few weeks to a few months. She doesn’t want to start to feel at home only to get her marching orders. She takes the present out of her bag, the one Dad gave her from the drinks cabinet before she left. Does Fraser deserve it? He’s clearly a misogynist twat, after all. But what’s she going to do, drink it herself?

  ‘It’s a good one,’ he had said to her.

  ‘Dad! You got that for Christmas.’

  ‘Never mind, I’ll get another. Can’t hurt, you know,’ he said opaquely, ‘to oil the cogs.’

  When she leaves the bedroom she can smell freshly brewed coffee. Fraser is in the kitchen and there is a large filter coffee machine, and a grinder, and a bag of beans. He is leaning back against the worktop with a mug in his hand. The dog is lying in a dog bed near the range cooker, head between its paws, looking at her.

  She gives him the whisky and thinks he likes it. She is careful to say that she brought it for him, rather than bought it. After what she overheard, she wouldn’t spend money on a gift for him, and now begrudges her dad losing his Christmas present.

  ‘What’s your dog called?’ she asks, and adds, to make a point, ‘Craig didn’t know.’

  ‘Bess,’ he says.

  At the sound of her name Bess lifts her head and looks at her master with those brown, intelligent eyes. Rachel drops to one knee and Bess wags her tail and dips her head so she can fuss her.

  ‘Hello, Bess,’ she says. ‘You’re a good girl, aren’t you?’

  ‘Made you a coffee,’ Fraser says. What he means, of course, is that he made himself a coffee and there is some left over. She is not fooled.

  ‘Thanks.’ There is a mug tree so she helps herself, finds the fridge and adds to the cup from a bottle of semi-skimmed. Then takes a deep breath and decides to get it over with.

  ‘So, this is weird.’

  ‘Aye,’ he says, drinking.

  ‘I’ve never moved in with someone I’ve just met. It’s like I’m in your house.’

  He shrugs. ‘It’s not my house. I just work here, same as you.’

  ‘Do you get your own shopping? I mean, do I owe you for the coffee and the milk?’

  ‘I buy the coffee beans because if I asked Craig to get them he’d get the cheapest ones.’

  ‘So I do owe you for the coffee.’ It was good, though. Best she’d had in ages, better than the cafés back home, and some of them were supposed to be all that.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Unless you’re planning on drinking ten cups a day.’

  ‘I’ll have tea,’ she says, getting back to her feet.

  Bess looks up at her, and across to Fraser, confused by this new dynamic.

  They stand there in silence for a while. Rachel has the distinct impression he’s a man of very few words, and for her part she can’t think of anything to say. She is not usually like this. She wants to say, This isn’t me – normally I’m chatty and sociable. But is she? She’s been changed so much by everything that’s happened. Maybe the island will suit her after all. Maybe she will learn stillness. How to live with herself.

  But you can’t say any of that to a man you’ve just met, can you?

  Instead she says, ‘Can I see the lighthouse?’

  Fraser leads her back out into the hallway. She had not paid much attention to the layout on the way in, so distracted was she by the phone conversation she had overheard, but now she sees there are three doors other than the one to the kitchen.

  He opens one of the doors, which leads to a smallish living room, a threadbare sofa with sagging cushions, two mismatched armchairs, a woodburner with a stack of logs in a basket next to it, a flatscreen TV on a table next to it.

  ‘Cosy,’ she says, for want of something to say.

  ‘That’s the radio,’ he says, pointing at some electronic equipment on a table behind the sofa.

  ‘Oh,’ she says.

  ‘I’ll have to show you how to use it. It’s for the coastguard, if there’s an emergency.’

  ‘Is there no phone signal, then?’

  ‘Sometimes not in a storm.’

  ‘Do you have to use it often?’

  ‘Not really. We test it once a week. But you need to know how to use it, in case.’

  He shuts the door again, while she’s still wondering what sort of emergency might take down Fraser and leave her the only conscious person able to summon the coastguard, and swallowing down a fresh burst of panic.

  Maybe he sees the look in her eyes, because he adds – which doesn’t really help – ‘It’s not just for us to contact them. Sometimes they contact us, too. There’s a pager that goes off, in case we’re out of the building.’

  ‘Why would they contact us?’

  ‘Emergencies. You know,’ he says, vaguely.

  The next door, to her surprise, leads down a step into a space with nothing inside it but a huge spiral staircase, and a second door in the far wall. The hallway is cold, the chill of the stone and the height and the openness of it all.

  ‘Where does that go?’ she asks, pointing at the other door.

  He doesn’t answer, but opens it. Beyond is a sort of workshop, not a garage because there isn’t a car, but that sort of thing. There is a space in the middle that she guesses is where the quad bike is housed when it’s not in use. Beyond that, Rachel can see piles of wood offcuts, toolboxes against the wall, a ladder on hooks, double doors at the back which are propped open. Outside she can see sea, and sky.

  ‘Right,’ she says.

  He begins to climb the stairs, and she follows him.

  It’s a long way up, but there’s a landing just below the halfway point. He stops there and she thinks he’s trying not to show he’s out of breath. Indicates the window, and she looks out as best she can through the salty glass at a rather empty view: a bit of land, a bit of grey sea, a bit of grey sky. Wonders if she’s supposed to be noticing something.

  After a moment or two he continues up the stairs. They’re getting narrower, and, just when she’s at the point of thinking he’s going to have to pause for breath again, the stairs end on a small stone landing. There is a metal stepladder fixed to the wall, and a hatch. He climbs up through the hatch, and she follows.

  ‘Wow,’ she says.

  Up here there is a view, a proper view. She can see for a long way, even if it is much of the same sort of thing: choppy grey seas, a cloudy sky with a shaft of brilliant sunlight breaking through over the mainland, which looks, from here, closer than you might think.

  ‘May,’ he says, indicating a long, flattish island to the west. ‘That’s the Northumberland coast, over there. And that’s Fife. And the rest of it, well, nothing between us and Scandinavia.’

  ‘It’s amazing.’

  She turns to the light – the lamp – which is a nest of interlocking glass facets, brilliantly clean and beautiful, and the big glass bulb behind it.

  ‘And you don’t have to do anything? It’s all auto
mated?’

  ‘Aye. An engineer comes every three months.’

  She’s momentarily distracted by the birds, hanging on the air outside the lamp room, suspended on invisible threads.

  ‘You can see whales, sometimes,’ he says, as if he’s suddenly wanting her to be impressed.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Aye, great pods of them. Minke, orca. Sometimes even humpback.’

  ‘Gosh, I’d love to see that.’

  ‘Maybe you will, while you’re here.’

  ‘What about the stars?’ she says, turning back to the view. ‘I bet you get a brilliant view of them on a clear night, don’t you?’

  ‘Aye,’ he says, flicking a glance at the enormous light bulb right next to her. ‘You should come up here and have a look.’

  Now he’s teasing her. She remembers the comment about employing a man, and stiffens. Stares him out.

  ‘Craig said something about some cottages,’ she says.

  ‘Aye, look. See where the loch is? Next to that.’ He points, but all she can see is rooftops and a dark strip of water.

  ‘Can I go and see them?’

  ‘Help yourself,’ he says. ‘They’re in a state, though.’

  ‘A state?’

  ‘They’re basically derelict.’

  She takes a deep breath in. One woman’s derelict is another woman’s in need of updating, she thinks.

  ‘Perhaps I can have a look later,’ she says, turning away. ‘I’ve got the bird observatory to sort out.’

  Rachel

  There is a surprising amount to do. She is too tired, really, but she can’t leave it all until tomorrow morning, and besides, what’s she going to do until bedtime? Hang out in the lighthouse with Captain Grumpy?

  Rachel makes a cup of tea and sits down with the sheaf of notes Craig left her. At the back is a hand-sketched map of the island, and a printed list of the names of the people who are arriving tomorrow. Five of them. All men. There are no dietary requirements.