You, Me & the Sea Read online

  The towels that she left draped over the clothes horse are still slightly damp. She needs a washing line really; a line strung between the bird observatory and the well house would do it – something to catch that breeze on dry days. Otherwise, how is she supposed to dry the linen?

  She adds it to the mental list of questions for Craig – she’s going to email him later.

  If the towels aren’t dry by four p.m. then the birdwatchers will have to make do with the remaining towels in the bale, the brand-new, unwashed ones that probably have the absorbency of the plastic bag they came in.

  She goes back out of the bird observatory, heading for where she saw Fraser. She turns in a slow circle, buffeted by the wind, looking for him, and eventually sees a figure striding in the direction of the harbour where the boat dropped her off yesterday. She walks in that direction, which thankfully is downhill, but nonetheless she’s out of breath when she gets close enough to shout to get his attention.

  He turns and sees her, waits for her to catch up. He’s heading for a strange-looking structure that she’d wondered about when she’d seen it from the boat – a long, curved thing, a timber framework with netting over it, like the fruit cage that Dad has on his allotment, to stop birds getting at his raspberries. Only much bigger. It’s like a tunnel, she realises, getting smaller and narrower at one end. Like a funnel.

  ‘What’s this thing?’ she asks, giving Bess’s head a scratch.

  ‘This? It’s a Heligoland trap.’

  ‘A trap?’

  ‘So we can ring birds. Come and look.’

  Fraser takes her to the pointed end, where there is a wooden box attached with a flap. He lifts the flap and she leans forward to see: it’s empty.

  ‘Passerines fly in and get trapped, then I ring them, record them and release them. But not so many at this time of year. We’ll have more later in the summer.’

  She wants to ask what a passerine is, she’s never heard of one before, but she doesn’t want to appear stupid. It seems a big structure to build just to trap one type of bird.

  ‘About half of all birds are passerines,’ he says, as if he’s reading her thoughts. ‘Most garden birds, for example. They have three toes pointing forwards and one back, so they can perch.’

  ‘Like, not a seabird?’

  ‘Shorebirds and waterfowl,’ he says. ‘Mostly shorebirds, and eider ducks. That’s what we get here. But we get plenty of passerines in the summer, some rare ones too.’

  She smiles. This is good, she thinks. She has learned something so she won’t look quite such an idiot if a birdwatcher asks her a question.

  ‘Will you show me how to do ringing?’

  Fraser looks surprised, just for a moment. ‘Sure, if you want to. You can help.’

  ‘I’d like to. Besides, it’s in my job description that I’m supposed to help you.’

  He closes up the trap again and stands awkwardly for a moment, waiting for her to ask something else.

  ‘Oh! Thank you for the porridge. And the coffee.’

  He shrugs. ‘I can do eggs one day if you prefer.’

  ‘Oh, lovely. From your hens?’

  Of course from the hens. Where else is he going to get eggs from? Unless he harvests them from the seabirds’ nests.

  ‘Do you have something like a washing line?’

  He frowns at her, shakes his head.

  ‘Only, the towels aren’t dry. I can’t imagine how I’m supposed to dry bedding and towels in a day each week, really. I think if I leave them on the clothes horse they’ll just stay damp and get smelly.’

  ‘You can bring them up to the lighthouse,’ he says. ‘There’s a tumble dryer in the workshop. Better check it actually works.’

  ‘Ah, that sounds great. Wouldn’t it be better just to hang it all outside, though? It seems a shame to waste this wind.’

  He smirks at her. ‘Aye, well, you might get it dry right enough, but you’ll likely have to wash it all over again. And that’s if the wind doesn’t take it out to sea first.’

  She had forgotten about the seabirds. They would just shit all over everything, wouldn’t they? How stupid she feels!

  ‘I can bring the dryer over to the bird observatory,’ he says. ‘There’s no point in you carrying everything there and back, and I don’t use it.’

  ‘Really?’ she says, suddenly happy again. ‘That would be great, thank you. Can I give you a hand?’

  He shakes his head but she follows him back up to the lighthouse anyway, and he doesn’t seem surprised or perturbed to have her as his shadow. She goes with him round to the workshop at the back. It’s much bigger than she’d first thought: she can make out breeze block walls and the door that leads back into the house, a cobweb-threaded UPVC window giving a little light; but it’s difficult for her to see much more until he flicks a switch and a fluorescent light overhead reveals the tool chests round the walls, a big workbench, old wardrobes and shelves stuffed with tins of paint, plastic crates, cardboard boxes. The quad bike has been backed in, complete with trailer.

  The tumble dryer is near the door and he quickly starts wiping it down, as if he’s ashamed to let her see it. He drags it out from the corner it’s been living in, and plugs it in – it works. It squeaks painfully, as though it needs some oil somewhere, but, when he pauses it a moment later by opening the door, Rachel can feel a gust of warm, slightly stale air coming from it.

  ‘Great! That’s fabulous,’ she says.

  ‘Can you get the bottom?’ he asks, and between them they lift it over to the quad bike and haul it into the trailer. He tips it over on to its side and ties a ratchet strap around it, presumably to stop it jumping around when they go over the bumps. ‘Want me to take it over there now?’

  ‘If you’ve got time.’

  He grunts as if he isn’t doing her a massive favour, starts up the quad bike and waits, looking at her expectantly.

  ‘You coming?’ he asks at last.

  Oh, she thinks, and climbs on the back of it. Is there a way to climb on board without grabbing his shoulder for support? Is there a way to ride the quad without actually holding on to him? If there is, she hasn’t found it yet, but actually she is already starting to get used to it, this strange sort of partnership that’s come from nowhere. Because what else can they do? He might not like having her in his space, and she might not be comfortable with this new level of solitude, but they have to get through it, don’t they?

  It’s raining now, but Fraser’s back is sheltering her from the worst of it. She hunkers down as the quad speeds along the clifftop, seabirds calling at them, affronted at the intrusion. In no time at all the bike is decelerating and he eases up as close to the generator shed as he can. The rain is driving at them sideways and she can hardly see through it, but Fraser doesn’t seem in the least bothered.

  She takes the bottom of the dryer again. Lifting it out of the trailer is much harder than putting it in; it’s heavy, and it’s wet, the smooth sides slippery. But she is determined not to look weak, and she lifts it, feeling the pull of her core muscles that are still not as strong as they were, hoping she’s not going to have to drop it.

  There are three steps up to the building, and a doorway that looks too narrow to get the dryer in. They didn’t think about this. She should have measured the doorway first. Will they be able to fit it through the bird observatory porch instead?

  But before she can think about this any further he’s somehow moved his hands from the side to the back of the dryer and it slides in through the doorway with just a centimetre to spare either side.

  ‘Okay?’ he asks. ‘You can put it down.’

  She tries not to drop it, going for a controlled descent. Her fingertips are screaming with the effort.

  ‘Where d’you want it?’

  She looks around. ‘I’m just hoping there’s a plug socket.’

  There is a double one on the far wall – where the washing machine is, of course. He walks the dryer over to it.

&n
bsp; ‘Thanks again,’ she says. ‘I’ll go and get a cloth and give it a wipe down. Do you want a cup of something?’ She thinks of the coffee machine in the lighthouse and assumes he’s going to decline.

  ‘I’d better get back to work,’ he says.

  ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Thanks again.’

  He hesitates for a minute, frowning, hands in his pockets, a silence that’s suddenly awkward.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ she asks.

  He breathes out, then shakes his head. ‘No. We’ll – we can talk later.’

  ‘Talk?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Later.’ And he turns to go.

  She cleans the dryer as best she can, and dries off the plug and the cable and anything else that looks as if it wouldn’t take kindly to being rained on and then connected to the electricity, then she goes to get the towels and lets it run for an experimental half-hour, while she has a cup of tea in the bird observatory. The place is looking better. It could do with something to take that slightly musty smell away, but clean bedding and towels will do that, and now she has a dryer she will be able to get everything washed. She emailed Craig last night, asked him for some fabric freshener and some reed diffusers or something. He hasn’t replied.

  And now, of course, she keeps thinking about Fraser. He wants to have a word with her. As if she’s done something wrong. She only has to be here for a few weeks; surely he can put up with her if it’s only temporary? Surely he’s not going to tell her to pack her things and go?

  Fraser

  Murder. He’s thought about it a lot, since that night.

  He had been asleep in bed when the phone had rung downstairs. He hadn’t bothered to get out of bed, and an hour or so later – two-fifteen – there had been a knock at the door. The sort of knock you don’t ignore.

  His uncle, his face wet with tears, staggering, illuminated in the bright orange of the streetlights. A taxi idling against the kerb. Somewhere a dog barking.

  ‘What the fuck …?’

  ‘It’s Maggie. There’s been an accident. She’s dead.’

  The next few hours had passed in a bone-white fog of shock and denial. There had to be a mistake, he’d thought, over and over again, pulling on his jeans and sweater and going to the hospital with Jack. Maggie was, actually, still alive. She was on life support. He didn’t see her immediately. The two of them were shown to a small, windowless room where his mother was waiting, red-faced and red-eyed, hands shaking around a fragile scrap of tissue, a cup of tea on the low table in front of her untouched, dark skin congealing on the surface.

  They’d sat in a silence punctuated by wet sniffs, none of them able to find words. Two weeks earlier, Jack, who was a heavy drinker, and unpredictable, had had a row with his sister – merely the latest in a long series of incidents between them, but one that had ended in Jack storming out shouting the sort of things that were difficult to come back from. He’d wished death and disease upon her and her friends. He had called her a drunk and a hoor and had told her she’d never see him or her nephews, his sons, again as long as he drew breath.

  All of this had been related to Fraser as, supposedly, a neutral party. He had been the go-between for years, the one that kept Jack, and their mum, and Maggie, all linked by a thread even when they’d done their level best to hack through it. Now, the memories of those fierce words still fresh in their minds, brother and sister had apparently lost the ability to communicate, as if they’d have to resolve that particular crisis before they could deal with this one.

  A moment later a tired-looking young man in scrubs came in, and sat down. He introduced himself, but Fraser immediately forgot his name. He told them that Maggie had suffered catastrophic internal bleeding. That an artery somewhere had been torn by the impact of the car crash; that it had been impossible to treat her injuries. She was being kept alive, he said, but there was extensive brain damage from which there was no possibility of recovery.

  Later, there was talk of organ donation – Fraser brought it up – but that was quickly shut down. She wasn’t suitable, they said. But they really appreciated the consideration at such a difficult time, so many families didn’t, what a difference it would make, but unfortunately blah blah.

  They couldn’t use her organs because she was an IV drug user. It was only later that Fraser had realised. She’d been off the gear and back on it several times already and she was still only eighteen. Fraser had thought she was doing better. He’d seen her three days ago and she’d been bright and happy but not high. She’d been talking about a charity that was helping her find a flat. She’d been asking if she could stay at his until the offer came good. He’d even said yes, because she looked as though she was doing great, and even if she’d been rattling how could he ever have said no to her? But he had, in the past. Tough love. Cruel to be kind. Trying to help her ‘grow up’.

  But how can someone grow up when they’re expending all their energy fighting an addiction?

  It was only in the days following her death that the full picture began to emerge.

  She’d been using. The lad she’d been with – Jimmy Wright, someone who’d supplied her, a local scrote of a dealer – had got her in a car. Jimmy had been similarly off his face, had crashed head-on into a tree. Maggie had been wearing a seatbelt but had still ended up crushed into the dashboard.

  Jimmy Wright had a fractured ankle and cuts and bruises, and was back home two days later. Until he was arrested.

  He’d got six years for causing death by driving while under the influence of drink or drugs. He got an extra year because he was driving without a licence. Having served a year on remand, and having completed all suggested courses and therapy while in custody, he was out on licence two and a half years after his conviction.

  So yes, Fraser knew what it felt like to want to murder someone. He had wanted to track down Jimmy Wright, to tear the smug grin from his face and choke him with it. He’d imagined – awkwardly at first and then with increasing fury, because after all who could interfere with his thoughts? – different ways he could kill him and make him suffer for it. He’d imagined how to get away with it. Where to bury a body, whether you could dismember it and bury it in several different places, or whether you could drop it out to sea. He had thought about sticking the body in a car and torching it. He’d thought about all the possible ways to get away with it, but he’d recognised that such a thing was impossible, unless you were an expert on forensics. There was no way to be certain of not leaving evidence, of not being seen on some CCTV camera somewhere, of there being no witnesses. And besides, it had felt like a dishonourable thing to do, hiding it. Never mind it being a waste of everyone’s time. He’d never had much to do with the police but he respected how kind they’d been to his mother. And they had done a good job in getting Wright into custody quickly. It wasn’t their fault that the judge had been so lenient in the sentencing.

  If you were going to do it – get revenge for something so personal, so desperate – why not just admit to it? Why not just rip the bastard to pieces, then call the police and hand yourself in to them? You’d be in prison for life, or at least for the next thirty years or so – you’d come out an old man – but you’d have done it, got proper justice for her. Got your revenge.

  And what else was he supposed to do with his life, now Maggie was gone?

  Then he was collared by a journalist at the airport, when he was waiting for a helicopter ride to the rig he was working on at the time. He almost told her to piss off, at first, as he had done all the others. But her approach was different. She offered her condolences, and looked as though she meant them. She asked if he’d considered appealing the sentence, given the information (which was news to him) that Jimmy Wright was suspected of being involved in the supply of a batch of heroin that had contained, among other things, anthrax, and was linked to the deaths of three other addicts in the months before the accident. This had come out a month or so after the sentencing. Fraser had been away, avoiding
the news. He was only just going back to work.

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I’m going to kill him.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ The journalist had looked startled. Looked at her phone, which she had held up to his chest, her way of asking permission to record what he was saying. He didn’t give a fuck, anyway. He’d not been sleeping since the trial, hadn’t slept a full night since Maggie was killed. Maybe she’d caught him off guard. Maybe he had just had enough.

  ‘You heard me. I’m waiting till he gets out. Then I’m going to kill him.’

  It made the newspapers – the front page, of the local one.

  Two police officers came to talk to him on his next shore leave. They were calm, sympathetic, but very firm. ‘You can’t go around making threats to kill,’ the older one said. ‘We can manage a verbal warning this time. We don’t want to caution you, or arrest you. Please don’t do it again.’

  He had tried to stay away from journalists but if someone asked him he was going to give a straight answer. He had dog shit put through his letterbox, although by the time he got back to the flat weeks later it was dried almost to dust, smeared down the back of the door and stuck between a flyer for double glazing and a kebab shop menu. His uncle Jack was assaulted outside a pub by three of Wright’s cousins, although he wasn’t actually hurt, and was pleased to be able to give one of them a fractured jaw; the other two ran off. The whole thing was captured on CCTV and showed that the initial assault was not his fault. The one with the fractured jaw put in a complaint, but the Procurator Fiscal declined to prosecute Jack for anything.

  When Wright was released, back into the arms of his dysfunctional family, Fraser had been living on the island for nearly three years. He’d thought, many times since he came here, about the loch. The dark, still water, and how quickly a body would decompose. Or be consumed.

  Out of the blue he got a phone call from a radio chat show – how they got the number, he had no idea – for a comment. He was told that Wright had expressed no remorse, and had been talking to journalists about how he was waiting for the confrontation so that he could show Fraser Sutherland how little he cared for empty threats.