by Emlyn Rees
‘No,’ Michael said, ‘it’s not like –’
‘It’s OK,’ Simon told him. ‘I don’t mind.’
He turned his back on Michael and began scraping the stone across the rocky wall.
‘Just like a real cave man, eh?’ Michael told Taylor a few seconds later, as he sat down beside her.
‘Cave boy,’ she told him.
Even back here the wind was still strong enough to ruffle her hair like the feathers of a bird. Michael’s throat was dry, from the booze and the exertion.
‘I’m so fucking angry,’ she said.
‘You mean your mum, the baby . . .’
‘No, I mean her. I mean, what the fuck is she doing here?’
‘Kellie . . .’ he guessed.
‘I mean, who is she? Why’s she here? And don’t tell me it’s because Ben brought her. I already know that.’
‘I don’t know her any better than you do. Just because she’s staying in the annexe doesn’t mean I –’
‘You might not know her, but my father does . . .’
‘You can’t be sure.’
‘Oh, get real, Michael. You saw. Both of them. In there. What? You think it was a coincidence? The two of them going into that boatshed, less than a minute apart?’
No, he didn’t think that – but he couldn’t explain it, either.
‘They know each other,’ Taylor told him. ‘They have to. And he lied to us all. To me. To Mum. To Granddad. He lied about why he wanted to go to the village this morning. He said he was going to the chandler’s. And he wasn’t. He had Granddad’s present all along. I saw him put the package – the one with Granddad’s present in it – I saw him put it in his coat pocket before we left. They must have arranged to meet there. Him and that bitch. I just don’t know how.’
Then it hit Michael. ‘The pub,’ he said. ‘They could have met in the pub last night. She was there and so was your dad, after he brought me home.’
Her eyes flashed with understanding. ‘That’s it, then.’
‘But that still doesn’t explain why they were going to meet.’
It did to her. ‘There’s only one reason you go to meet someone else in secret,’ she said.
Was she also talking about herself and Michael when she said this? He knew the question was a selfish one and that, right now, he was probably the last thing on her mind, but he couldn’t stop himself wondering, all the same.
Taylor stared into Michael’s eyes. ‘It would kill her, you know. My mum. She loves him so much . . . I mean, she even sent me away to school, so that she could be with him more . . . and now that she’s going to have another fucking kid – and, Christ, you should have seen Dad’s face when she told him about that – it would kill her, I know it would, if what I’m thinking is true . . . that somehow Dad and Kellie . . .’
‘You don’t know anything,’ Michael reminded her. ‘Only that they met. It could have been coincidence. It’s possible. She could have followed him in there to see what he was doing.’
‘Then why did he lie about the present?’
Michael had no answer for that.
‘She cries, you know. My mum. I’ve seen her. When she doesn’t think I’m looking. And do you know when she cries?’
‘When?’
‘At night. In the school holidays, when I’m at home, but he’s not. And at the weekends, too. When he’s had to go into work . . .’
Michael had seen her cry as well, when she’d thought that she’d been on her own. He remembered the way his father had been, towards the end. He’d left his mother on her own. He’d left her alone to cry.
Michael just said it: ‘So you think he’s having an affair . . .’
‘Yes.’
‘With Kellie . . .’
‘Yes.’
‘But she came here with Ben. It was an accident. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I know. But she is from London. And Dad got here after us. I know it sounds crazy, but he could have –’
She was suddenly looking away from him and he followed her stare. In foot-high lettering across the cave wall, Simon had scrawled the words:
SIMON AND TAYLOR AND MIKEL 4 EVER
Simon was staring at Michael and Taylor and tears were streaming down his face.
Michael jumped up as Simon ran to the front of the cave. In his hand was the stone he’d been scratching their names with. He threw it as hard as he could, out of the cave and down towards the boat. Michael grabbed hold of him and pulled him down out of the wind.
‘Don’t be crazy,’ he yelled at him, dragging him back. ‘You could have fallen!’
Simon tried shaking him off. ‘Let go!’ he shouted.
Michael wrestled Simon backwards, hauling him towards the darkness of the tunnel, where he half-dragged, half-carried him into the gloom. Here the wind dropped and all Michael could hear was Simon, hissing like a cat.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ Simon shouted, tearing one hand free and rubbing angrily, ashamedly, at his eyes.
‘Do you want to go home?’
Tears ran down Simon’s face. ‘They hate me. They don’t want me there.’
‘That’s not true,’ Michael said.
‘It is. I wish I was dead. I wish it had been me instead.’
Paul. He was talking about his dead brother.
Taylor prised Simon away from Michael and wrapped her arms around him. Michael watched helplessly as Simon shuddered against her.
‘They think it was my fault,’ he said.
‘No, they don’t. No one does.’
‘They do! They always will.’
‘No, Simon. I promise you.’
‘They will! It’s always going to be my fault. The doctor they send me to says it isn’t, but it is. She says everything will change, but it doesn’t. And she asks me the same questions over and over and I tell her the same things, and nothing ever gets better and it won’t ever get better, and now my mum hates my dad as much as she hates me . . .’
‘No,’ Taylor told him again. ‘They love you, Simon. They love you with all their hearts.’
‘All I wanted to do was save him,’ Simon sobbed. ‘That’s all I wanted to do.’ A thread of spit stretched between his lips, then snapped. He screwed his eyes shut. ‘I’d do anything to save his life. I’d do anything to make it all better.’
‘I promise you,’ Taylor told him. ‘Everything will be all right.’
‘I don’t want them to get divorced.’
‘No one said –’
‘I don’t want them to,’ Simon shouted, pulling back.
Taylor held him by the wrists and stared into his eyes. ‘Look at me, Simon,’ she said. ‘No one’s getting divorced. Do you hear me? No one.’
There must have been something, a spark of determination, a diamond of such strength inside her eyes that the tension dropped from Simon’s limbs and he fell against her, burying his head in her chest.
And then, as she looked at Michael – and he saw that spark, that diamond, now aimed at him – he could do nothing but believe her too.
‘That’s right,’ she whispered into Simon’s ear. ‘You let it all out. You let it all out and then we’ll go home together, before it gets dark.’
Chapter 19
‘That’s the end of it,’ Ben said, twisting the bottle and watching the last few drops of wine runnel into Kellie’s mug.
They were in the tiny sitting room of the annexe cottage, on the tatty two-seat sofa which they’d pulled up in front of the fire. Pans and plates protruded from the sink, waiting to be washed. The remains of the chicken carcass stood on the kitchen table, next to a hexagonal glass vase which Kellie and Ben had used as a gravy jug, and a tarnished ice-cream scoop which had served as a ladle.
Normally, Ben thought, as he gazed into the fire, on the back of a good meal and in good company like this, he’d be sparking up a cigarette, just to seal the moment’s perfection in his mind. But the nicotine cravings which ha
d been dogging him all day had dwindled. It was because of her, he knew, because of Kellie, because she didn’t smoke, and his being able to resist sitting here and blowing smoke in her face made him feel glad – and strong.
‘God, I feel great,’ Kellie sighed, taking a final swig from her mug. She set it down on the border of black and white tiles which separated the fire from the worn and faded blue carpet. ‘It’s so weird to think of what we were doing this time yesterday.’
‘Nearly dying, you mean.’
‘Exactly, and yet here we are now, rested and sheltered and fed.’
‘It’s not exactly the Dorchester . . .’
‘No, but we’re hardly slumming it either, and in a way it’s even better than a posh hotel.’
‘How so?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you were at the Dorchester, you’d expect it to be amazing, wouldn’t you? You’d want the best food, the best wine, an astonishing room, with an out-of-this-world bathroom, piled high with incredible lotions and potions. You’d expect it to be perfect, right? Because that’s what you’d be paying for.’
‘Yes . . .’
‘And you’d be pissed off if it wasn’t, wouldn’t you? Because your expectations would be sky high. But here. Today. When I woke up and you fooled me into coming round here, well, my expectations were virtually nil. All I thought the day had in store for me was a can of beans and some toast, followed by an afternoon spent shivering up against that crappy little oil radiator in my room.’ She stared up at the banner which Ben had taped to the beam. ‘But I was wrong. It’s turned out to be a million times better than anything I expected. So, yeah,’ she told him, ‘they can keep the Dorchester – because today, right now, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here.’
‘I get the feeling,’ he said, ‘that if you were a cat, you’d be purring pretty loudly right now.’
‘I get the feeling you’re right.’
She combed her fingers slowly back through her hair. If he could have made this day last for ever, then he would. He felt every passing second like a heartbeat. But today would end. Kellie would leave – tomorrow, or the next day. The moment the sea ice was gone, she would be, too.
Ben should have been happy, happy for the time he’d had with her, happy to have dug himself out of the introspection he’d been bogged down in these last few months, happy to have got on well with a stranger, even happy for the same reason she was, because they were safe and fed and here in the warm.
But he now wanted so much more. Their lives would never have collided this way in London. They’d never have achieved this current intimacy so soon. He wanted this day to turn into a tomorrow, and then another day, and then a future for them both. He wanted to make the most of the series of chances which had led them here.
‘No regrets, then?’ he asked.
‘None.’
She stood and took off her cardigan, then, as an afterthought, her jumper, too. She was wearing a tatty black singlet underneath, and it rode up her back as she pulled the jumper over her head. He caught a glimpse of a flat black mole just above the line of her left hip, a tiny imperfection against her skin. She tossed her jumper on to an armchair, and sat back down. The singlet showed off the curve of her breasts. As she looked at him, he turned away and stared into the fire.
‘Do you know what I’m going to do now?’ she asked.
‘What?’
She rolled up her jeans and peeled off her socks. Then she stretched out her legs towards the fire and wriggled her toes.
She lay back and closed her eyes. ‘Pretend I’m lying on a beach . . . being fanned by a warm Caribbean breeze . . .’
‘Hey,’ he complained, ‘I thought you said there was nowhere else you’d rather be.’
Her eyes stayed shut. ‘I meant in reality,’ she said. ‘This is just fantasy. Anyway,’ she added, ‘you can come too. It’s a free flight and all you need to pack is your imagination.’
‘Do we go business class?’
‘No, it’s a dream, we go first.’
His eyes ran the smooth length of her calves to her ankles. Then he, too, closed his eyes.
‘Do you know what my favourite thing is?’ she asked. ‘My favourite thing in the whole world?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘judging from your freakishly broad knowledge of the cinema, I’d have to guess that it was curling up on the sofa in front of a really good film. And at this time of year, I suppose you’d probably go for either It’s a Wonderful Life, or Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.’
‘Nope. Not my favourite thing. Though you’re right about both films being the ones I’d watch if I could right now.’
‘So what is your favourite thing, then?’
‘Watching nothing. Just being. Just lying on the sand, running my fingers through it, listening to the waves breaking gently on the shore . . .’
He pictured them there on this imaginary beach, the two of them, side by side. He was in shorts and she was wearing a green bikini. She had a necklace of dark beads around her neck and he could smell the coconut oil in her hair. The beach stretched for miles in either direction and was deserted apart from them. Palm trees arched above. Their shadows stretched across the white sand to the azure shallows beyond.
‘I’d go swimming,’ he said. ‘I’d walk slowly into the sea, deeper and deeper, until the swell of a wave lifted me off my feet.’
‘And leave me alone on the beach?’ she protested.
He smiled. So she could see him there as well . . .
‘I’d come back,’ he said, ‘after a while . . . I might even have caught some fish.’
‘With your bare hands?’
‘Why not? This is a fantasy, isn’t it? I’d be the fastest swimmer and have the fastest hands in the world.’
She giggled. ‘Kind of like The Man From Atlantis and Bruce Lee combined . . .’
‘Bruce Atlantis. Now there’s an idea for a TV series . . . Or how about Fighting Nemo?’
‘And, meanwhile, back on the beach . . .’ she reminded him. ‘What would we do next?’ she asked.
‘Next? We’d –’
He pictured himself lying down on the towel beside her, and reaching out to take her hand, then rolling over on top of her. Drops of sparkling water fell from his face on to hers . . .
‘We’d wait until sunset and then I’d build a fire,’ he said.
He wondered what the touch of her lips would be like on his, and how she’d feel as she moved against him. What might she whisper into his ear?
‘And then we’d –’
She sat up abruptly beside him on the sofa.
‘This is a silly game,’ she said, rolling down her trouser legs. She picked up her socks and began pulling them on.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘was it something –’
‘No.’ She seemed flustered. ‘It’s me. Look, can we just talk about something else?’
‘Sure.’ But for the first time since he’d met her, he found himself stumped for something to say. ‘Like what?’ he finally asked.
‘Anything,’ she said. ‘Food?’ She started to tell him about the best meal she’d ever had, at a restaurant called the Bather’s Pavilion in Sydney.
And then there they both were: back on safe ground. Just like they’d been during the meal, when they’d chatted about theatre and music and travel, the places they’d been and the things they’d seen. How they both lived in flats in different parts of London, him in Kentish Town and her in Chancery Lane. What their flats were like; how they’d never found the time or will to plant their window boxes, or make their kitchens as funky as those of their friends. Neutral subjects, in other words, the kind of conversation you could strike up with a complete stranger at a party, just for sociability’s sake.
‘ . . . and I tell you,’ she said, ‘that chef should be given a knighthood. Hey!’ She suddenly reached out and poked him in the ribs. ‘You’re not listening. Let me guess,’ she said, ‘it’s professional jealousy, right?’
‘What?’
‘Because you’re not such a bad cook yourself. You certainly took me by surprise, rustling up that lunch out of nowhere like that. You’re obviously a man of hidden talents.’
‘I’m not hiding anything,’ he said. ‘I’ve got no secrets. Not from you.’
He hadn’t meant to bring the conversation so abruptly back to the personal, but now that he had, he was glad. He didn’t want to do small talk. Not with her. Not today.
She looked him over curiously. ‘Why me?’ she then asked.
‘I don’t know. Because I trust you. I know I’ve got no reason to, but I do.’ He smiled. ‘And besides,’ he added, ‘you don’t know anyone I do. You’re safe. I could tell you all my hopes and fears and it wouldn’t matter, because we’ve got no friends in common, so you’ve got no one to tell.’
‘Like confiding in someone on a desert island.’
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Which is kind of fitting. Because I suppose we have been shipwrecked, in a way.’
‘Like Crusoe and Man Friday, hey? Or Hanks and his volleyball . . .’
‘Wilson.’
‘Like Hanks and Wilson . . .’
‘Two perfect strangers who get along just fine . . .’
‘I guess it is sometimes easier to talk to someone you don’t know,’ she said, ‘and sometimes more interesting, too.’ She stared at him. ‘But seriously, you’ve really got no secrets you’d keep from me? Because I should warn you, I can be a pretty nosy girl . . .’
‘You can ask me whatever you want.’
She folded her arms and contemplated him. ‘I’m not sure I know where to start. About your wife perhaps? Your ex-wife. About Marie. About why you’re not together any more . . .’
He opened his mouth to speak, but she raised her forefinger to her lips.
‘How about continuing this conversation outside?’ she suggested. ‘Only, if I stay here by the fire much longer, I’m going to fall asleep.’ As if to prove it, she let out a terrific yawn. ‘And I wouldn’t want you to think you’re boring me,’ she told him, ‘because you’re not.’
They walked down to the brightly coloured boatsheds, with the snow creaking like polystyrene beneath their feet. It was still freezing. Within a couple of seconds, Ben felt wide awake. They stopped by a wooden bench and looked out across the harbour. The few fishing boats moored there were gripped by ice, locked in unnatural angles, as if they’d run aground.
