You, Me & the Sea Read online

  There are no new birders. The lot that were supposed to be coming today cancelled at the last minute. It was Craig who messaged him, not Marion, so he has no idea if it has anything to do with Environmental Health. Craig was vague about it, said something about costs, and that he’s already told Rachel.

  Fraser has other things on his mind.

  He has more or less decided that he needs to finish things with Rachel.

  He has been thinking back to all the times they fucked, all those times he was inside her thinking it’s just sex and it doesn’t mean anything because of course it does. You don’t fuck someone regularly without it meaning something; that’s why he used sex workers and why he only saw Kelly every few months. He needs to finish it, now, before she gets too attached to him. Before she gets hurt.

  Added to which, he has received an email from Marion, and another one from Julia herself. Rachel will be going sooner than he thought. Of course this was always on the cards. But the past couple of months have gone by much faster than he had anticipated. He remembers that first day, thinking she wouldn’t last. He remembers her coming into the hallway covered in mud where she’d slipped on her way back from the bird observatory. But she’d stuck it out, and now he can’t quite imagine the island without her. Can’t imagine someone else coming here in her place.

  He is full of good intentions, here on the boat, watching the horizon swinging up and down and the island getting closer and closer. But who knows what will happen when he gets there?

  This, he thinks, is exactly why it’s easier to not get involved with anyone.

  Meanwhile he is thinking of the man he had a word with a couple of hours ago, in a bar near the harbour. He’d been easy enough to track down, easy enough to recognise from Kelly’s description. There hadn’t been a need for any actual violence, or any actual threats, or even a raised voice. Fraser had realised long ago that people are most scared of him when he’s quiet, when he’s calm. It’s as though they recognise the look in his eyes, and that, coupled with the sheer size of him, is enough. They can see in his eyes that look, the one that says that he genuinely does not give a fuck about anything. That he has absolutely nothing to lose, and would explode just for the hell of it if he needed to, and that he wouldn’t regret it afterwards.

  Nobody likes to challenge a man like that. And wee Kevin Murray didn’t, either, even with three of his friends. The only thing left to think about as he left the bar was to wonder what the hell Kelly had seen in the guy, even for a brief moment. Even in the fucking dark. Even with a drink inside her.

  Afterwards he’d sent a text to Kelly, telling her to call him immediately if she had any more trouble, although what he thinks he can do about it when he’s two hours offshore, he couldn’t say. It’s not that he enjoys hurting people. But if it’s going to happen, he’d rather do it to someone who deserves it, like Kevin Murray, or Lefty, than someone who doesn’t – like Kelly. Or Rachel.

  Robert shouts down from the wheelhouse, something about a flask. In the cabin Fraser finds a canvas bag that has a stainless steel flask inside it, an old ice-cream tub with what looks like two rounds of sandwiches inside. He takes the whole bag up the narrow metal stairs.

  ‘Ta,’ Robert says. ‘You want coffee?’

  Fraser thinks about it for a moment and declines, although his stomach is rumbling. ‘What’s in your sandwich?’

  ‘Sausage. Want one? Help yoursel’.’

  He opens the tub, catches a whiff of the cooked sausage. The sandwiches are a little clammy from having been put in the tub still warm, but the bread is fresh and they taste good.

  ‘How’s things going over there wi’out you?’ Robert shouts over the noise of the churning engine. ‘You heard?’

  ‘Not heard anything,’ Fraser replies, mouthful of sausage.

  ‘You reckon the lassie’s been okay over there wi’ him?’

  ‘She can look after herself,’ he says. ‘Besides, they’re best friends.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Don’t look at me like that. I feel shit enough about it.’

  ‘He been behavin’ himself, though?’

  ‘Aye. More or less.’

  There is a pause.

  ‘Cannae quite believe he’s still alive, if I’m honest.’

  Fraser thinks. ‘Me neither. Given the state he was in.’

  ‘Did you ever think about just leaving him where he was?’

  They have made this boat journey together a few times since Lefty arrived on the island. Fraser has had dinners at Robert’s house, with his wife, and his daughter Annie and her boyfriend and their wee baby. He has had plenty of nights drinking with Robert in the Dreel Tavern and has worked his way through a bottle of single malt in his own front room with him. But, every time this subject has come up, one or the other of them has shut it back down again.

  ‘Aye,’ he says. ‘I think about it all the time.’

  ‘But you didnae, though, did you.’

  ‘Hate myself for it, mostly.’

  ‘You couldnae win. Whatever you did, you would end up doing the wrong thing, right?’

  ‘I thought you would phone the coastguard.’

  Fraser thinks he detects a fleeting, wry grin before Robert replies. ‘Why would I want tae do that, eh? Far as I was concerned, he never got on the boat in the first place.’

  When Maggie was just a baby, Robert’s eldest daughter Rosemary had been just about to finish school. She’d been getting good grades, looking likely to get a place at university – the first in his family to go. There had been no real event, no point at which things had started to go wrong, although Robert had told Fraser he’d been through it in his head many times. She just started hanging out with the wrong people, he’d said. She was stressed over grades. Started smoking weed to relax, then other stuff, then crack. Then she’d left home and they’d lost touch for a while. Two years later she was dead, an overdose of heroin in a squat in Edinburgh.

  So Robert has his own issues with Lefty. Perhaps not with Lefty specifically, but with drug dealers in general. The dealers who supplied Rosie were never identified. Lefty has provided him with someone to hate.

  ‘Do you ever blame yourself,’ Fraser says, ‘for Rosie?’

  ‘Aye, it would be easy to do that. Jeannie does. She’s had counselling, you know, I told you. But I figure lots of girls get through schools and exams and life wi’out drugs. They tell ’em all about it in schools. She was a clever girl. She made her choices. But if it wasnae for the dealers, right, there wouldnae be the availability. They’re the bad guys, Fraser, no? Not us.’

  Fraser thinks it isn’t quite so black and white. If it were that easy, he would have tipped Lefty over into the loch that night. He’d had the anger right enough, but something had stopped him doing that, the same thing that’s still stopping him today. He thinks it has something to do with that skinny white child’s body, marked all over with ink and bruises and scars.

  Rachel

  Rachel can see the boat coming from her position at the top of the ladder. It’s still a long way off, about an hour, maybe more. She has been looking for it all afternoon and now she’s seen it she is finding it hard to concentrate on scooping the crap out of the bird observatory’s gutters.

  She is out here in a T-shirt with a fleece over the top, a pair of rubber gloves, two buckets. Lefty started off holding the ladder but there is no wind to speak of, just a warm breeze. Now his job is emptying one bucket of the mess of moss and dirt and crud while she fills the other, taking the mess who knows where but hopefully somewhere downwind of the bird observatory’s windows, because it stinks of rotten fish and slimy vegetation.

  Unsure how to bring it up, eventually she just comes straight out with it.

  ‘So,’ she says, ‘I’ll be going in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Going where?’

  ‘You know I’m just temporary, right?’ Even as she says it she wonders if Fraser has ever actually told him, ever bothered to explain
about Julia coming and how come she’s here instead.

  ‘Do you no’ like it?’ Lefty says, holding up the bucket of fermented seabird shit as if it’s pirate treasure.

  ‘I do like it. But this isn’t my job. I’m not allowed to stay, even if I want to.’

  Lefty shrugs as if he’s not bothered either way, but when the bucket’s still half-full he takes himself away to empty it, leaving her with a handful that she has to drop back into the gutter.

  A cloud crosses the sun and Rachel has a sense of time slipping, of all the things she could do, meant to do, all the things that need fixing and now she probably won’t get to fix them. Lefty being one of them.

  ‘Tell me about Maggie,’ she says, when he comes back.

  He looks at her, startled by the abrupt change of subject. ‘I’m no’ supposed to.’

  ‘He’s not here, though. And I want to hear about the Maggie you knew. Not his sister. She was your friend, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Aye.’

  He says she was a pain in the arse a lot of the time. He says she was unreliable and vague and was never answering her phone or turning up when you needed her. She was funny and bright and pretty. She argued with her mother a lot, hated school, hated teachers and losers. And she idolised her big brother.

  ‘She talked about him?’

  ‘All the time. But he was different wi’ me.’

  There is a pause while Rachel lets this sink in. She scans the horizon, and locates the boat again. She has a sudden sense of urgency, of this being an opportunity for Lefty to talk freely, that might not come again.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘She always said he was soft as shite, and all I saw was this huge fucking arsehole of a big brother.’

  ‘You knew him then?’

  ‘Only through her. But I met him loads of times, aye. Met him in the pub. Sometimes he was all right, but most of the time he was – well, you know … I telt him I’d look after her. That was my mistake, maybe.’

  She looks across at him, standing there swinging the empty bucket against his knee. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Couldnae look after mysel’, let alone a wee girl.’

  ‘He blames you for it,’ she prompts.

  ‘Aye. He does. He’s right to.’

  ‘It was an accident, though,’ she says, ‘wasn’t it?’

  He doesn’t say anything for a long time and she wonders if he’s heard her. He just stands there, holding the bucket. She looks across to the horizon – the boat is getting closer.

  ‘Aye, right,’ he says, at last.

  ‘You want to tell me what happened? Here.’ She passes him the full bucket and he hands her the empty one. For several minutes there have been three puffins sitting on the roof, watching her efforts critically. One of them has a beakful of sand eels and a moment later a razorbill flaps up and tries to grab at the silvery haul. The puffin lurches off and the other two soon follow, barking their disapproval.

  Without another word Lefty walks off with the bucket. She watches him go and glances again at the boat, wonders where Fraser has been and what he has done and who with. Wonders about Kelly.

  A few minutes later Lefty comes back. She’s not going to press him, she thinks. Besides, this part of the operation is requiring all her attention because the ladder is now just at the edge of a flight of three stone steps and it’s not completely level.

  ‘Anyway, I don’t remember what happened,’ he says.

  ‘Lefty,’ she says, ‘will you just hold the ladder again?’

  He comes up behind her and puts a foot on the bottom rung, which causes a distinct wobble. She grips the top and sucks in a sudden breath.

  ‘They said I was going too fast, lost control on the bend. Hit a tree.’

  ‘Were you unconscious?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ he says.

  There is a long pause, punctuated by slops of muck dropping into the bucket. The smell of it makes her gag. She blames the puffins – the smell on the island has worsened considerably since they came back. Out on the sea, the boat is closer. Maybe half an hour left, she thinks.

  ‘I remember her crying,’ he says, quietly. ‘I remember telling her it was going to be okay.’

  She looks over her shoulder at him, but he’s looking at his foot on the ladder, his fingers still tight around the empty bucket. They are nearly at the end of the gutter. She stretches to reach for the last handful.

  ‘Wasnae okay, though. Was it?’

  Rachel climbs down the ladder carefully. He puts the bucket down and grips the sides of it until she descends lower, and he moves to one side.

  ‘Are you still taking drugs?’ she asks.

  ‘No,’ he says, looking startled. ‘Course not – where would I even get them?’

  ‘When did you get clean?’

  A pause. ‘Here,’ he says vaguely.

  ‘Here?’

  He shrugs. ‘No drugs here, is there? Didnae have a choice.’

  ‘You could have gone back.’

  ‘The weather was bad, you know. The boat couldnae come back. At first when I thought he’d locked me in that cottage and taken ma gear I was sure I was gonnae die. I was sick wi’ it, ravin’. And then I got out and it was peltin’ down and I didnae have a fucking clue where I was and then I woke up in the lighthouse, fuck knows how long after that. By the time the boat came back I thought about going through that all again and I wanted tae gi’ it a try, you know, see if I could stand it. Not many places in this country where you physically cannae get drugs if you want them. If I was gonnae get clean anywhere, it was here.’

  ‘And Fraser let you stay?’

  ‘He didnae want me here really.’

  ‘I know. But – I mean, he could have got you back on the boat, couldn’t he?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘But he didn’t.’

  ‘No. And—’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And he fed me food wi’ vegetables, and gave me a bed. And an Xbox.’

  ‘So he must actually want you here, right?’

  ‘Aye. It’s like he wants me here as a reminder.’

  ‘Of Maggie?’

  ‘Aye.’

  He wants to keep hurting, she thinks. He’s punishing himself for letting her down.

  ‘Still, even with Fraser looking after you, I can imagine that getting clear of drugs must have been awful,’ she says. Pretty much everything she knows about drugs and drug addiction comes from Trainspotting.

  He says nothing to that.

  ‘What about now?’

  He looks at her, brows furrowed.

  ‘I mean, you could leave now, couldn’t you? If you wanted to.’

  ‘If I wanted to?’

  She goes back to the gutter, unable to bear the look in his eyes. Trying to keep it casual. Even as she says it, she wonders what the hell she thinks she’s doing. It’s the frustration of wanting to help, wanting to make things better for both of them, and not being sure of the best way to go about it. If you fling enough solutions at a problem, she thinks, maybe one of them will stick.

  ‘Where would I go?’ he asks.

  ‘You could come back with me.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To Norwich.’

  He makes a noise, like an incredulous pfft, as if she’s just asked him to move to the moon. Worth a try, she thinks.

  ‘Will you empty this and then fill the buckets with clean water? I just want to swill it through, check it’s all clear.’

  She passes him the last one, and he trots off willingly enough.

  The boat is rounding the south side of the island, skirting the coast. She can see it clearly enough to see the two figures in the wheelhouse. Thinks about waving.

  Fraser is nearly home.

  Fraser

  The sun comes out just as the boat comes in to the harbour. Must in all its glory, emerald-green and screaming with birdlife.

  He had not expected a welcoming committee, but as he throws his bag o
n to the jetty and steps across he notices Rachel at the top of the slope, wiping her hands on something. She sees him looking and waves.

  Robert passes across the two crates of extra stuff Fraser has acquired on the mainland and then says goodbye. By the time Rachel has joined him on the jetty the Island Princess is already manoeuvring her way out of the harbour.

  ‘Fuck me,’ he says. ‘What’s that smell?’

  She smiles at him, a bright, white, happy smile. ‘Well, hello to you, too,’ she says. ‘The smell is probably me. I’ve been clearing the guttering on the bird observatory.’

  ‘I was supposed to do that. It’s on my list.’

  ‘Well, now you don’t have to. Anyway, the bird observatory is my territory for the time being. Although not for much longer.’

  ‘Aye, so I heard. How’s it been here?’

  He means Lefty, of course. She doesn’t answer for a moment, as if she’s thinking about it.

  ‘Fine. How was your trip?’

  ‘Good. Got things done. You know.’

  He’s not hugged her – she stinks, and her fleece is spattered with God knows what – or kissed her. Lefty knows to keep out of Robert’s way when the boat comes. As soon as the boat rounds the headland, he’s entirely alone with her. But she’s already started heading back up the hill.

  ‘I need a shower,’ she calls.

  Rachel

  Lefty stays for dinner.

  He doesn’t want to, but Rachel asks Fraser while he’s standing in the kitchen, one hand on the door of the freezer, about to remove one of his frozen ready-burgers.

  Fraser has brought asparagus back with him and he’s adding it to a risotto. Rachel’s not entirely sure Lefty will eat that, but when she says, ‘It’s just like extra-tasty rice,’ he nods and looks at Fraser for his approval. Maybe Fraser can be persuaded to put peas in it, and get the ketchup out. That’ll help.

  While he was on the mainland Fraser has found the time to get a haircut and his beard has been newly trimmed. He looks very different. Smarter. Less wild. It’s taking her a while to get used to it.