A Very Distant Shore

by Jenny Colgan

  Saif blinked.

  ‘As long as I’m looking after them, what do I care what people think?’

  ‘All the people?’ said Lorna.

  Saif looked at her just a moment longer.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not all the people.’

  Chapter 24

  The nights had got longer. It barely felt like evening as Flora and Lorna got ready. Angus was still sleepy.

  ‘Are you sure he’s okay?’ Flora had asked, giving him a slightly worried glance. Lorna had shaken her head and pointed out that this was much better than when he’d been in pain and grumpy during the treatment. This was totally to be expected in fact, and she was glad he seemed so much calmer.

  Lorna grasped his hand as they left, and promised to bring him back some whisky if she won the raffle. (Every time they got to the raffle too late, and nobody ever remembered who had won or could find their tickets anyway.) Mrs Laird had come to sit with Angus, even though he’d said loudly that he didn’t need a babysitter. For God’s sake, he wasn’t a wee one.

  ‘How are things up at Dr Handsome’s?’ Flora had asked impishly, glancing at Lorna. Mrs Laird didn’t notice.

  ‘Oh, fine, fine,’ she said. Then she sniffed. ‘He’s very tidy,’ she said. ‘Mostly. Except with the paperwork. Paperwork everywhere!’

  ‘What, like medical notes and things?’ said Flora, slightly outraged.

  ‘Oh no, no. That stays in the surgery. No. I can’t read it. It’s in a funny script.’

  ‘Arabic,’ said Flora, nodding.

  ‘FLORA!’ said Lorna. ‘Stop being a nosy parker!’

  ‘I’m not being nosy! None of us can read Arabic!’

  ‘It comes in from all over,’ said Mrs Laird. ‘Piles of it.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘I’m not allowed to dust anywhere near it.’

  Lorna thought of a different world, a country left behind and all that meant. An entire life shrunk to mounds of government paperwork. They had never discussed it. Not once.

  She looked at her father.

  ‘Is he all right?’ said Mrs Laird. Angus was snoozing in front of the racing.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ said Lorna. ‘Give him these’ – she pointed to the various pills she’d laid out – ‘at ten p.m. And don’t let him have any more whisky.’

  Angus snorted in his sleep and woke up briefly.

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ he said.

  ‘Nowhere,’ said Lorna immediately. ‘If you want me to stay here.’

  He blinked, then shook his head, as if suddenly confused.

  ‘Oh no, love.’ He half smiled. ‘You know, you look a lot like your mother in that dress. When she was young, I mean, a long time back now. But she was… she was lovely.’

  Lorna came closer.

  ‘I know. Look, I don’t need to go out. Why don’t I just stay?’

  He waved her away.

  ‘Don’t be daft. I’m absolutely fine. You’re in with me far too much. Everybody knows that. I want you to have a little fun. Go find yourself a nice lad, would you? I’m bored of you cluttering the place up.’ And he smiled, so she knew he was joking.

  Mrs Laird nodded.

  ‘Go and have a good time. We’ll be fine,’ she said, as Angus nodded, then seemed to be settling himself down for sleep again. She clasped Lorna’s arm, briefly. ‘You deserve it.’

  At the hotel on the dockside people were already spilling out into the cobbled streets. Usually they had to hold the dance in the function suite because of the weather, but tonight they’d taken over the large back garden. There was a marquee for bars and tables. The band were playing on a stage underneath a huge blanket of stars; smaller than the stars Saif was used to, but just as bright.

  It took the girls half an hour to reach the bar, held up as they were by everyone. People usually bought – and sometimes smuggled – bottles, to save themselves having to fight through the red-faced crush too often. Lorna and Flora chatted, said hello, swapped news. Lorna, as usual, did her best to duck out of the way of the more demanding parents. They were the ones who thought that, on a rare night out, she actually wanted to discuss the talents of their beloved children at length. But otherwise, she looked around happily. This would do, she thought.

  Chapter 25

  The party was in full swing. The noise was growing louder and louder, and the dancing was getting a little wilder. Lorna moved away from the dance floor to get some air. She was more drunk than she had realised. That was the problem with not going out very much: you got a bit overexcited. She’d been hopping from table to table, with people filling up her glass, and now she was feeling a little peculiar.

  To her delight, she suddenly spotted Saif. He’d come! He was wearing a simple blue open-necked shirt and a pair of trousers, which meant he didn’t stand out as much as he might have done. He was standing near the bar, chatting awkwardly with Ollie the vet and looking very uncomfortable.

  ‘Hey!’ she said, waving madly and dodging Valerie Crewsden, who’d moved up from England to launch an artisan craft business. Valerie had a lot to say about her daughter Cressida. She thought Cressida should be on a Gifted and Talented programme, despite there being no such thing on Mure.

  Lorna strode towards them and kissed Ollie, whom she liked. With Saif she thought about it, then, awkward and slightly blushing, shook hands with him instead. But the look of pleasure on his face couldn’t be denied.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, smiling at her.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ said Lorna.

  ‘So am I,’ said Saif, looking at his feet.

  ‘Drink?’ said Ollie.

  ‘Yes please!’ replied Lorna. At the same instant Saif said, ‘No thanks.’ Then, as Ollie and Lorna quickly nodded, he shrugged and added, ‘Ah well, you know… Beirut…’

  Ollie gave Lorna a worried look, but Saif just smiled.

  ‘Actually, I will have a little whisky. With Pepsi, please.’

  Ollie shook his head in horror.

  ‘No chance,’ he said. ‘Not Pepsi. Not in Scotland!’

  ‘I will never understand the ways of your country.’

  ‘You can have some water,’ said Ollie. ‘On the side.’

  Saif and Lorna watched him go, and they both laughed.

  ‘He seems very firm,’ said Saif.

  ‘It’s a serious business up here,’ said Lorna.

  ‘I see that.’ He smiled.

  ‘I’m disappointed that there’s no kilt,’ said Lorna.

  ‘You’re going to have to somehow get over that.’

  They watched the pink-cheeked dancers for a while. They were twirling faster and more violently. Some of the men were sweating as the fiddles and drums played frantically. There was nothing courtly or elegant about this; it was country dancing at its most basic and energetic. Even to Lorna’s eyes it looked quite off-putting.

  ‘Are you going to dance?’ she asked anyway.

  ‘No,’ said Saif, frowning. ‘I… I need my hands for work.’

  Lorna laughed, as Ollie returned with drinks. And then he got swept up in a wild dance, a Strip the Willow, and vanished into the crowd.

  ‘You’re funny,’ she said.

  Saif shrugged. ‘No. I am the miserable doctor with dark skin nobody likes.’

  ‘Everybody would like you,’ said Lorna, ‘if they got to know you.’

  ‘They don’t want to know me,’ said Saif. ‘They just want antibiotics.’

  ‘Can’t they have both?’

  ‘Antibiotics are bad for the environment. And I think people aren’t sure about me.’

  ‘Let me introduce you to some people.’

  He froze.

  ‘Can’t we… Let’s just stay here a while.’

  Lorna suddenly felt her heart beating strongly in her chest, and her face flushing pink. This was crazy. She felt like an underage teenager trying to get served with alcohol. That never worked on Mure, because everyone knew exactly h
ow old you were and what class you were in in school. You could try and fool the Polish boys who came in the holidays to work, but that rarely worked for long.

  Nevertheless, she felt exactly the same, at thirty-one years old: sick, giddy, as if her stomach was churning like a washing machine. Surely it must be obvious. She shrank against the side of the marquee, but if anything that made her feel even more on show.

  Neither of them could speak.

  She gratefully let herself be grabbed away to dance by a large group that needed an extra girl.

  ‘Come with!’ she said, tipsy and laughing, but Saif stood there frowning, and shook his head. She was hurled into the excited crowd, tossed around, laughing, twirling, but aware as she danced of his eyes on her. Not intense, not gazing. Just watchful, that was all. And she felt the colour come back into her face even stronger than before.

  After the dance, she headed back to the bar – and more wine was drunk. The crush was so heavy now that she couldn’t see Saif through the crowd. Then the music changed. The band, who had also been cheerfully drinking a beer or two, had stopped playing Scottish dance music. They were now playing wedding favourites, which meant, Lorna realised, it must be far later than she’d thought.

  Sure enough a conga started snaking its way through the garden. She rolled her eyes and disappeared to the loo with Flora, who was very drunk and giggling madly about something that seemed terribly important at the time but that she couldn’t remember later. Lorna did remember that they were queuing for the loos and suddenly Flora said, out of the blue, ‘So, are you going to go for it or what?’

  Lorna looked at her.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said, although she knew exactly what she meant.

  ‘He hasn’t taken his eyes off you all evening. You know that. You’ve been the same, you moony old cow. So. Are you going to go for it?’

  ‘Is everyone talking about this?’

  ‘No,’ lied Flora. ‘Just me, as I have stunning powers of awareness. And also you talk about him non-bloody-stop.’

  ‘I do not. Do I?’

  Flora nodded, her eyes slightly unfocused for a minute. ‘So. I mean. Tonight’s the night, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aren’t you on the pull too?’

  ‘Not having much luck,’ said Flora. ‘That’s why I want one of us to be successful.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Lorna. Though she had that fizzy, excited feeling inside her again just thinking of those eyelashes, so long they nearly brushed his cheekbones; his beautiful skin; the thick dark hair she longed to run her hands through.

  ‘Also, think how annoyed everyone else will be if you get him,’ goaded Flora, who could be a monkey sometimes.

  ‘That’s a terrible reason for trying to pull someone,’ said Lorna, laughing.

  ‘Got any better ones?’ said Flora, as Lorna bit her lip and caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked pink, but good with it; glowing. Some fronds of curly hair were tumbling down around her face. Her pretty summer dress was tied at the waist.

  Flora handed her a lipstick and sprayed her quickly with scent.

  ‘You’re gorgeous,’ she said. ‘Now hurry up before he’s gone.’

  ‘Do you think…’

  ‘I think,’ said Flora, ‘at the very least – at the very VERY least – you both deserve some cheering up. Don’t you?’

  And Lorna blinked several times, giggled once more, and set her face towards the dance floor.

  Chapter 26

  Shining, Lorna walked towards the garden – only to see no trace of Saif where she’d left him.

  She looked around, puzzled, and then was amused to see that the band were, for some reason, playing a Greek wedding dance, the famous one from the film.

  And she was even more amused and amazed to see that Saif was right in the middle of it. Many of the men were now unattractively sweat-soaked and had their tops off or unbuttoned fully. Their arms were around each other’s necks as they stumbled from side to side.

  Saif was not at all sweaty or pink. He was simply stepping smartly from left to right. He was slightly embarrassed but laughing more and more, as the men beside him laughed too and punched him fondly on the shoulder. That, as Lorna knew, meant they were glad he was there.

  It was a silly dance that nobody quite knew how to finish. But they carried on as the band played faster and faster. Saif looked no more or less out of place among the kilts than anyone else. Lorna watched and clapped until finally the music stopped and the men landed in a heap on the floor.

  As Saif emerged, he saw her there in front of him, clapping and smiling straight at him. He grinned right back and, without even thinking about it, without either of them thinking about it, she held out her hand to him in a courtly dance fashion, and he took it, laughing. The band started to build up to ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Last orders at the bar grew more frenzied, and everyone surged past them onto the dance floor. But they, they went the other way. In front of everyone.

  Chapter 27

  It had grown colder outside now. They were still laughing and a little tipsy, and excited from all the dancing. Lorna found herself – and this was not at all like her – pulling on his hand, behind the marquee. She led him up through the now silent garden of the hotel, its fairy lights sparkling among the trees, the revellers inside, or gone home to bed. The early roses gave out their spring scent along with the perfume of bluebells in the deeper grass. And she led him to the sturdy tree trunk, both of them under a spell, a cloud of summer nights and dancing and laughter and music.

  She turned her face towards his, his eyes so dark, hers clear, light pools. She could sense underneath the blue shirt every inch of his body, not touching her, but so close she could smell his sweet lemony scent, and feel the heat of him. Without taking his eyes off her, he lifted a large hand and moved it towards her. And she was aware how much taller than her he was, as he loomed over her, blocking the light from the dance floor. His hand cupped her chin. The breath caught in her throat as she reached up on tiptoes towards him, ever so gently, the two of them breathing together now, slowly closing the gap, and she closed her eyes…

  And nothing happened.

  Chapter 28

  Lorna opened her eyes. He was standing there staring at her, his face outlined in the fairy lights, his eyes trained on hers.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, backing away. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said, worried at first that he’d not understood. ‘It’s okay. I want… I would like you to kiss me.’

  She wanted him to kiss her more than anything else in the world.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she repeated, softly, her hand reaching out once again for him, but he did not take it.

  He shook his head.