He studied her for several long seconds, then nodded slowly. ‘This would be Magnús. I heard he’d had to rush back to Iceland – something about his mother, I think?’
Of course he already knew, Merry told herself. This was Orkney, where people spoke to their neighbours and everyone looked out for each other. Magnús would have had work commitments to cover and friends to notify. He wouldn’t have simply left with no word to the other people who cared about him.
‘Yes,’ she said to Niall, as a black-and-white clad waitress appeared to take their drinks order. ‘This is about Magnús.’
Merry took Niall’s recommendation and chose the Johnsmas gin with a matching tonic, while he ordered a bottle of the terrifying-sounding Skull Splitter. ‘It’s an Orkney ale, quite light and citrussy,’ he explained when he saw her staring. ‘The name makes it sound worse than it is. They also brew a beer called Clootie Dumpling, but that’s more of a winter ale.’
‘Of course,’ Merry said, straight-faced. ‘So, there’s a brewery, a gin distillery and more than one whisky distillery on Orkney. You take your drinking seriously here, don’t you?’
He grinned. ‘We’re mostly descended from Vikings. What did you expect?’
And that made her think of Magnús again. Niall must have realized because he cleared his throat. ‘I didn’t know you and Magnús had become such good friends.’ He stopped and seemed to review the sentence in his head. ‘I mean, obviously I knew you were friends, but I hadn’t thought you were – well – good friends, what with you being…’
He trailed off and Merry could see he was blushing. With her being what, she wondered. Only on Orkney for a few more months? Or apparently engaged to another man? ‘Niall—’ she began.
His cheeks turned an even deeper shade of crimson. ‘You can tell me to mind my own business if you like.’
This was it, she realized, the moment she’d been dreading. It was time to tell Niall the truth. But then she spotted the waitress approaching with their drinks and decided it could wait, at least until after they’d ordered their meals. They sat in uncomfortable silence while the woman arranged their drinks and turned a friendly smile on each of them. ‘Now, what can I get you to eat? The soup of the day is broccoli and Stilton, and the chef’s special is sea bass with garlic and lemon.’
Merry chose the pan-seared scallops to start because Niall’s recommendations had always been on the money when it came to island food, followed by the Scapa sirloin. Their waitress beamed in approval as Merry made her choices. ‘The whisky cream sauce that comes with the steak is especially good.’
Niall went for the scallops too, after checking Merry didn’t object to them both having the same starter. ‘Some of my friends take a dim view of that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘They claim it removes the opportunity to try each other’s food.’
Merry smiled, because that was very much the way Jess saw things. ‘At least if we both have the same thing, neither of us will have food envy.’
Once he’d ordered the sea bass, the waitress left. Niall raised his glass of beer and held it towards Merry’s gin. ‘Cheers.’
She tapped her glass against his. ‘Yes, cheers.’
The gin was good, she thought as she took a long cool sip. It might even have been very good, but it was hard to tell because the stress of what she was about to do next was enough to prevent her from enjoying the flavours as much as she might. But there was no backing down now. ‘Niall, there’s something you need to know.’
To his credit, Niall listened without a single interruption, not even when she got to the part where she’d misled him about still being in a relationship with Alex. When she finished the whole excruciating explanation, he sat in silence for a moment and then drained his glass in one movement.
‘Suddenly, a lot of things make sense,’ he said, meeting her gaze with a rueful expression. ‘I could never understand why Alex hadn’t come to visit – if you were my girlfriend, I’d have been here as often as I could. But I just assumed he was the sort of city idiot who was always working. Turns out he’s an idiot for entirely different reasons.’
The urge to defend Alex was still there; even after all these months, her brain automatically lined up excuses for him and she belatedly wondered how long she’d been mentally excusing his lack of attention in all aspects of their relationship. But there was no point in raking over the coals of a stone-cold fire – Alex and his failings were most definitely part of her past.
‘I wish I’d told you sooner,’ she said to Niall. ‘I don’t really know why I didn’t.’
She certainly wasn’t about to advance Jess’s theory for her reluctance; the evening had been embarrassing enough. But Niall seemed to accept the words at face value. ‘Better late than never,’ he said, his tone curiously cheerful. ‘As I say, it all makes sense. You didn’t seem like the type to cheat, either, but now I know you were always perfectly free to date Magnús.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if I put you in an awkward position. I didn’t expect any of this to happen.’
He waved away her apology. ‘Don’t worry about that. I’m more concerned with whether or not you’re happy now. Has being here on Orkney helped?’
It was a question she could answer with total honesty. ‘Yes, in so many ways.’ She took a deep breath. ‘In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s saved me.’
She expected him to flash his Superman smile, but instead he fixed his gaze on the still waters of Scapa Flow. ‘You’d be surprised how many people feel that way,’ he said quietly, after a few seconds had passed. His eyes met hers. ‘Or maybe you wouldn’t.’
She thought of the sense of peace she felt while running along the cliffs above Brightwater Bay, her hair streaming on the breeze and the birds calling across the endless sky, the way the words of her stories came more easily here, and the feeling of belonging she’d had almost from the first moment she’d arrived, the way her heart had been soothed over the last few months until it no longer felt fractured and was steady. All of that and more crowded into her mind as she returned Niall’s gaze and she knew she’d never be able to say it all out loud. But she might just be able to capture it on the page.
‘No,’ she said, and realized with a sudden bloom of warmth that where Niall was concerned, she didn’t have to explain a thing. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised.’
Chapter Nineteen
When Magnús finally rang her, it was after eleven o’clock. She and Niall had finished their meal at The Skerry around nine-thirty, and she’d dropped him home with her stomach full of good food and her mood considerably lighter. She’d settled in front of the fire with a glass of Valkyrie and the new Rivers of London novel, and was soon lost on the city’s supernatural streets. She was so engrossed that it took her a moment to work out what the buzzing sound was and she half expected to see a magically enabled drone outside the window, like the one she’d just been reading about. And then her mobile vibrated against the wood of the coffee table and she picked it up to see Magnús’s image on the screen.
‘Hello from Reykjavik,’ he said when she answered the call, and his voice sounded cracked and weary.
‘How are you?’ she replied. ‘How’s your mum?’
‘I’m okay. My mother…’ he trailed off and cleared his throat. ‘My mother is in intensive care right now. Stable but serious, the doctors say.’
Pity clutched at Merry’s stomach. ‘I’m so sorry, Magnús. Have they been able to tell you what happened?’
There wasn’t much to tell, he said. One minute his mother had been fine, eating breakfast with his sister, Lara, and laughing about something on the morning news, the next minute she’d been unable to breathe and clutching at her chest. She’d been unconscious when the ambulance had reached the hospital and hadn’t woken since. The doctors said she’d suffered a severe heart attack and suspected there was significant damage, but it was too early to tell how badly the rest of her body had been affected.
‘She�
��s breathing on her own,’ he finished. ‘That’s something at least.’
The sadness behind the words made Merry’s own heart ache. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I,’ he said. ‘But she’s strong – a fighter. Lara and I both believe she will come through this.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’ Merry asked, although she knew the answer before he gave it.
‘Thank you, but no.’ He paused. ‘But it’s good to hear your voice. I’m sorry to call you so late.’
‘It’s no problem,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you got there safely, even if the news awaiting you wasn’t quite as positive as you’d hoped. And you must be shattered now – why don’t you get some rest? We can talk again when you get the chance.’
‘Okay,’ he said, and she heard him stifle a yawn. ‘Goodnight, Merry.’
‘Goodnight,’ she replied. ‘Speak soon.’
She sat for a short while after the conversation had ended, staring into the glowing embers of the fire, her book forgotten. Magnús had sounded worried and exhausted, which was hardly a surprise, and she felt terrible for him. Both her own parents were gone. They had died within a year of each other, from different illnesses, but she sometimes thought her father had simply given up after he lost her mother. She hoped the doctors’ suspicions were wrong. She hoped Magnús’s mother was the fighter he said she was and would battle her way back from the seriousness of her condition. And most of all, Merry hoped he would be spared the pain of grieving for a parent taken too young. She knew from experience how much that hurt.
* * *
The days rolled by. May became June and Merry finished the changes to her book suggested by her editor. Sam Silverton asked for the latest draft because he’d found the perfect screenwriter to adapt it and Merry slowly started to believe that this time would be different. This time, perhaps, something might actually come from a movie option on one of her stories.
Meanwhile, she spent her non-writing time exploring Orkney. At first, she half expected to run into Magnús on her travels, the way she had so many times already, but he was never there and she started to grow used to his absence. His phone calls and messages had been sporadic, snatched between what she assumed was an endless whirl of hospital visits and meetings with medical staff and whatever sleep he could get. She knew how draining it all was and didn’t blame him on the days when she heard nothing. But when those days started to stretch to two or three, and her messages went unread, a cold feeling grew in the pit of her stomach.
‘Don’t read too much into it,’ Jess warned, when Merry confided her anxieties over the phone. ‘He’s probably chasing around sorting out his mum’s care. Didn’t you say she’d regained consciousness?’
She had, Merry said, although the message from Magnús had been brief and scant on detail. ‘And you’re right – I’m sure he’s horribly busy.’ She hated the way complaining made her feel, like a demanding toddler who wanted her favourite toy. ‘It’s just that it reminds me a lot of how Alex was for the last year or so of our relationship – distant, like I couldn’t reach him. And even when I could, I felt as though I was annoying him.’
‘But this isn’t Alex,’ Jess reminded her gently. ‘It’s Magnús and he’s got some pretty serious stuff going on. Have you had The Conversation yet?’
The implied capital letters told Merry she was asking if she and Magnús were still at the seeing each other stage or whether they’d pinned things down into an ‘official’ relationship. ‘We haven’t talked about being exclusive,’ she said hesitantly. ‘But I didn’t think we needed to. Neither of us is dating anyone else.’
‘Well, then,’ her best friend said in a brisk tone. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about. He’ll come back to you once things settle down, I’m sure.’
Merry nodded, knowing she was talking sense and feeling ashamed of wanting more than Magnús could possibly give at that moment. But how much time did it take to read a message? On the other hand, Jess knew much more about dating etiquette than Merry, who’d only ever had one partner.
‘Okay, you’re right,’ she said and gave herself a mental shake. ‘Now, hadn’t we better plan this event? Niall has asked if there’s a theme we’d like to focus on – something that’s common to both our writing styles, or perhaps the different ways we approach creating characters and stories?’
Her best friend laughed. ‘I spend a lot of time looking at Instagram photos of beautiful men. And then I imagine what it would be like to have sex with them, and write it all down as fast as I can before I forget.’
Merry grinned. She knew for a fact that a number of the men Jess had met through various dating apps had found their way into her books too, although names had been changed to protect the innocent, the guilty and the downright terrible in bed. The Argentinian rugby player she’d hooked up with in Cannes one weekend had formed the basis for several characters that her readers had fallen head over heels in love with. And then Merry thought of the book she had just delivered, of the characters who were loosely based on real people – people she knew from Orkney – and she wondered how she and Jess were going to find any common theme between their work.
‘What about escape?’ Jess asked slowly. ‘You know – as in novels are a good way to escape from everyday life, especially when it sucks. Some people call my books guilty pleasures and I’m perfectly on board with that – as long as they’re giving pleasure.’
Merry considered the idea. She used to think her books brought joy to readers, back when writing was easy and she’d taken enormous satisfaction in writing something her fans would love. But she wasn’t sure her new book would have quite the same effect; some parts were bound to make them cry, despite her best efforts to lighten the mood where she could. It was a story about love, and all the ways love showed itself, set against the terrible losses of the Second World War. It featured no Argentinian rugby players with biceps the size of branches.
‘How about happiness?’ she said. ‘Why do books make us happy, even when they make us cry? What kind of stories do we reach for when times are tough?’
Jess was quiet for a moment, and Merry could picture her thinking the suggestion over, a long strand of golden hair twisting between her fingers. ‘You know, that might just work,’ she said. ‘Good job, Mer.’
The conversation moved onto the more practical aspects of Jess’s upcoming visit: where she’d stay and who would meet her at Kirkwall Airport. Merry recalled her first impressions of the tiny plane that flew to Orkney and told Jess what to expect. Just before Jess signed off, she asked a question that caught Merry off-guard.
‘Have you heard from Alex lately?’
‘No,’ Merry replied, frowning. ‘Not since I saw him in Chiswick. Why?’
There was a brief pause. ‘No reason. I just wondered, that’s all.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Listen, don’t worry about Magnús. It’ll be fine.’
The call ended shortly after, leaving Merry to draw what comfort she could from the reassurance. Jess was right – he wasn’t Alex and, besides, the situation was entirely different; a few dates, however wonderful, wasn’t the same as a long-term relationship that spanned years and Magnús didn’t owe her anything.
It was just that it had felt like the start of something, she thought wistfully. Something good. And she couldn’t help wondering whether the distance she sensed in his messages was down to more than just the ocean between them.
* * *
On Tuesday, Merry returned from her run with Sheila to find a scene of devastation at the croft. The washing she’d carefully hung out to dry in the sunshine that morning was strewn across the grass; her favourite blouse was draped over the bench that overlooked the bay, one sleeve snagged on the wood was all that had prevented it from floating away on the breeze. A pair of jeans were making their way inland and several pairs of knickers were adorning the roof.
‘Shit!’ Merry exclaimed, dropping her water bottle and hurrying forward to collect the scattered clothes. She cast a
suspicious look at the clothes airer, which now only held a few lonely socks and a tea towel, and then up at the sky in search of an explanation. There wasn’t enough wind to explain the mystery, not when she’d taken care to pin everything securely with clothes pegs. So how had it happened?
The answer became apparent when she ventured around the back of the croft to make sure she hadn’t missed anything – and discovered Gordon the goat placidly munching on her best La Perla bra.
‘Hey!’ she yelled and ran towards him. ‘That’s not for eating, you monster!’
Gordon regarded her quizzically for a moment, then dropped the bra and ambled a few steps to one side. Merry reached for a soggy, grass-flecked strap and groaned. Just as she’d suspected, the bra was ruined. The gauzy material, delicate at the best of times, had not coped well with the machinations of a goat’s teeth, which were famously designed to grind anything the animal ate into pulp. One underwire was poking out, like an antenna. The other was completely gone and Merry could find no trace of it anywhere around the croft.
She turned to gaze at Gordon, who was now tearing up mouthfuls of grass to round off his lingerie main course, and a horrible thought occurred to her: what if he had swallowed the missing underwire? Goats had a notoriously robust digestive system but surely even they couldn’t cope with twelve centimetres of curved metal. And as much as Merry was furious with Gordon, she wasn’t angry enough to ignore the potential consequences of his crime.
She was going to have to call Clare Watson.
The call went straight to voicemail and there was no answer on the landline Clare had given Merry for emergencies. Placing all the washing back into the machine, Merry dithered for a few minutes, Googling the effects of animals eating metal objects and not liking what she found: a perforated gullet or stomach was a serious risk. And although Gordon didn’t seem to be showing any signs of distress, Merry wasn’t about to take the chance that he might deteriorate. She found a length of rope in the shed that housed the Mini and tied it as firmly as she could around the goat’s neck.
Coming Home to Brightwater Bay Page 22
