Shadow Over Sea And Sky

by K H Middlemass

  “I have to be somewhere tonight, but I don’t have anything planned right now. Can we meet later this afternoon?”

  “Sure, why not?” Simone said. “There’s this place on the pier that does a passable chocolate cake. Shelley’s. I’ll meet you there at about two o’ clock.”

  “I think I know it,” Emily said, trying to recall when she last went to the pier. “Sounds good.”

  “It’s a date then,” Simone said. She paused briefly. “Emily?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I did miss you,” Simone said. “I could have called you too. You know me. I am nothing if not a prideful creature.”

  “I know,” Emily said fondly. “It’s okay.”

  “Anyway, I should go and make myself beautiful for you,” Simone said. “Get all of your best stories lined up. Your adventures will sustain me for months.”

  “Okay,” Emily laughed. “You remember what I look like, right?”

  “I could probably conjure up something from the haze of my memories.”

  “I trust you,” Emily said. “Bye, Simone.”

  “Bye, Em.” Simone replied cheerily. “Thanks for calling.”

  “Thanks for picking up.” Emily said, meaning every word.

  They hung up at the same time, the way they used to. Emily leant against the wall and smiled to herself, feeling like a weight had been lifted from shoulders. She saw the bond that tied her to Simone like spiders’ silk; a thin, shining strand that only seems fragile to the eye.

  In the end, Victoria insisted that she was well enough to be left alone for a few hours. It was true that her colour was better and she certainly had more energy, so Emily wasn’t too worried. Really it wouldn’t have mattered if Victoria had been on her deathbed, so long as her daughter was socialising with someone other than her family. Emily wrapped herself up in her warmest coat and went down to the pier with an excited spring in her step.

  At one point in Emily’s life, the pier had been the only place for her and her friends to while away the penniless hours between school, homework and bedtime. There was an old arcade full of outdated video games and creaking claw machines, and they would go there when they had change in their pockets to promptly waste it all away. The rest of the time, they sat with their legs dangling over the pier, either staring out to sea or watching people walking up and down the promenade, making up stories about them and screaming with laughter when they inevitably descended into smut and silliness. They were often bored out of their minds, but they made the best of it.

  The promise of clear skies and sunshine had drawn people from their homes and down to the promenade, despite the still sharp chill in the air. Elderly couples sat on peeling benches eating fish and chips from the bag, parents cautiously watched over their children, who were paddling in the shallow rock pools down on the beach below, calling out to them when they went too far. People threw the ball for their overexcited dogs and laughed when the dogs kicked sand into their own faces. The air was alive with it. Emily watched people eating ice cream and strolling along the board together, observing the nuances and quirks of those other than herself with fascination. When she was younger, they had been an amusement for her and her friends, a distraction from her own dull life. Now, she envied them. She would wonder about their lives and how everyone around her seemed to get it. Their lives were in order; they were happy with what they had. People didn’t leave Caldmar Bay, and if they did then it was only a matter of time before they came back. It was a strange and unsatisfying piece of Eden, a place completely separate from the world around it. Emily felt that on some level her dissatisfaction with her life here was a failing on her part. She might have been an alien trying to live in disguise amongst humans. She looked like them and talked like them, but she wasn’t really like them. Hardly at all. Here and now, walking alongside these happy and whole people, she felt completely alone.

  Shelley’s turned out to be a little café facing the waterfront; the name painted across the window in an elegant and looping hand. Emily arrived a little after two and found Simone waiting for her.

  Emily recognised her immediately. She looked the same and yet entirely different. She had grown out her blonde hair into a less severe version of her old, spiky cut, and it was no longer shot with the brightly coloured dyes she favoured as a teenager. Her dark blue eyes were heavily made up with smoky eyeliner, her mouth a streak of ruby-red lipstick. She wore her old leather jacket over a faded and baggy band shirt, a pair of tattered jeans hanging off her skinny hips. She had grown up, become a fraction more conservative, but she was still as fierce and beautiful as she had been in her teens. When she saw Emily, she immediately reached out and pulled her into a tight hug that told her everything was going to be fine. Emily breathed in the smell of smoke and perfume and old leather and immediately felt sixteen years old again. She had expected some awkwardness, some uncertainty, but it felt completely natural, like nothing had really changed at all.

  “Told you I remembered what you look like,” Simone’s breath tickled her ear. Emily laughed into her shoulder.

  “You look great, Si.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  They parted and looked each other over for a moment, both smiling with genuine affection, then Simone gave Emily a quick pat on the shoulder and said, “I need some sugar, let’s go inside.”

  The café was busy, the air alive with the sounds of teaspoons clattering and the dull buzz of other people’s chatter. The air was warm and close inside, with the windows so steamed up from the heat that the view outside was completely concealed. Simone found two chairs tucked away in the corner. As they moved through the café, Emily noticed a few people glancing their way, their eyes attracted by Simone’s appearance. An older woman shook her head in obvious disapproval; if Simone noticed, she didn’t care enough to act on it.

  They sat and looked at each other for a moment. Simone ran a hand through her choppy hair; her nails were painted with black nail polish, already chipped, exactly as it had been that weekend years ago.

  “So,” she said with a grin. “Here we are.”

  “Here we are,” Emily repeated.

  “Feels just like yesterday,” Simone said, then gave an exaggerated sigh which sent the tendrils of her fringe flying from her forehead. “I tell you, at twenty-six I feel positively ancient.”

  “Wasn’t it your birthday recently?”

  “Last month,” Simone confirmed with a nod. “I don’t really remember it though, so it must have been spectacular.”

  Emily laughed. “Do you remember your sweet sixteenth? We spent the whole night passing that cheap bottle of red wine back and forth down on the beach with our feet stuck in the sand, just talking crap and laughing.”

  “Baby’s first hangover,” Simone said. “What a morning after that was.”

  A slightly frazzled looking and tired-eyed waitress appeared to take their order. Emily asked for a pot of tea, while Simone requested a cup of strong, black coffee and, as promised, a slice of chocolate cake.

  “And two forks,” she added, reaching over and laying her hand over Emily’s. She looked back to the waitress with a beaming smile. “It’s our first date.”

  Emily snorted inelegantly, but the waitress scribbled on her pad without a word. Emily noticed her thin eyebrow arch up and her lips thin out as she finished writing. She brusquely thanked them for their custom and hurried away to her next table.

  Simone smirked. “Homophobe.”

  “That was mean,” Emily whispered, barely able to conceal the laughter brewing in her chest.

  “Whatever, I wouldn’t want to date you anyway,” Simone retorted. “I don’t go in for arty, emotional types.”

  “I wouldn’t want to date you either,” Emily said, half-giddy at being swept along in the silliness. It had been such a long time that she had really, genuinely laughed. “I don’t go in for whatever you’re supposed to be.”

  “Speaking of which,” Simone said with charact
eristic directness. “Are you seeing anyone?”

  Emily scrunched up her nose. “No.”

  “Really?” Simone seemed genuinely surprised at her response. “Not even at university?”

  “There were a few guys, I suppose,” Emily said vaguely. “I don’t know. Nothing ever happened. Not really.”

  “I slept with someone on my first night as a fresher,” Simone said. “One of the organisers. I thought it’d be a good idea to get the first fuck out of the way.”

  “I didn’t even leave my room on my first night,” Emily admitted sheepishly, remembering how she had spent the evening lain across her single bed, trying to focus on a book whilst pushing down the terror of living away from home for the first time fizzing sickeningly in her gut. She had been surrounded by the sounds of students, all rowdy and very, very drunk. That first night had not been what she had hoped it would be.

  There had been a few boys, and she could only call them boys, that had shown interest in her in their uniquely awkward ways. Some were sweet, and a fair share of them were not.

  “Of course you didn’t,” Simone said. She leant back in her chair and shook her head. “You little virgin, you.”

  Emily shrugged. “I just didn’t have time for any of that.”

  “For what? Sex? Fun?” Simone asked incredulously. Emily shrunk in her seat, hoping no one could hear her friend’s increasingly loud voice. “Bloody students.”

  “What about you, then?” Emily said quickly. “Are you seeing anyone?”

  “I am, as a matter of fact,” Simone replied. “His name is Nick.”

  “Nick?”

  “Yeah, I bagged one,” Simone said, stretching her limbs with cat-like grace. “Guess how long we’ve been together.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Emily said, flapping her hands at her. “Don’t make me guess, I hate guessing.”

  Simone lifted her index finger. “One year last week.”

  When Emily and Simone had been teenagers, Simone seemed to have a different boyfriend every other week. It had never bothered Emily because there wasn’t much to worry over; the relationships were typically shallow, overly intense and, probably because of that intensity, short-lived for a young girl. Simone herself never seemed particularly broken up when they inevitably came to an end. She wasn’t looking for anything serious then, and had refused to be convinced that ‘settling down’ was the sort of thing all young girls should want. It was one of the things that Emily admired about her. Now, she found herself intrigued by the man who had somehow tamed Simone’s wild, roaming heart.

  “That’s great, Si,” Emily said, beaming with genuine pleasure. “I’m so pleased for you.”

  “I’m pretty pleased for myself, too.” Simone replied.

  “Tell me about him,” Emily demanded eagerly. She folded her arms and leant forward on the table, closing some of the space between them.

  “There’s not that much to tell,” Simone said. “He’s a good guy, hot as hell mind you.”

  “Does he tell you he loves you every day?” Emily teased. “Does he send you love letters? Does he buy you flowers?”

  Simone laughed. “I told him I’d break his balls off if he ever bought me flowers.”

  The tired-looking waitress arrived at their table for a second time. She silently unloaded the contents of the tray onto the table, clattering the porcelain and cutlery a little louder than necessary. Simone and Emily stared at each other, lips pressed thin like children who know they’re not allowed to make a sound. After the waitress had scurried away, Simone brandished her fork with relish.

  “We’ve been talking about moving in together,” she said, sinking the fork into the gooey, yielding centre of the cake in front of her. She speared a piece on the end of the tines. “I’m trying to save up the money so we can get a place that doesn’t completely suck.”

  “You’d live here?” Emily asked, unable to let the disbelief change the inflections in her voice. She poured a little hot water into her cup; the kettle was made of tin and the residual heat burned her knuckles when they accidentally touched it. She had to be careful not to drop it. Simone shook her head quickly.

  “God, perish the thought,” she said theatrically. “No, Nick doesn’t live here. I met him in the city. His band played the pub I was in.”

  “Ah, so a musician,” Emily said, nodding her head knowingly. “How very Simone a choice that is.”

  “He’s their manager,” Simone replied. She shoved the cake into her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully for a few seconds. “I’d have to move out there to be with him. Whoever managed a band from a place like this?”

  “Are they any good? The band?”

  “Oh, about as good as you’d expect when they’re playing in pubs,” Simone said through a mouthful of crumbs. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand inelegantly before visibly repressing a belch. “But they’re getting better. They’re talking about touring.”

  “That must be hard,” Emily said. “You can’t get to see him much.”

  “He pays for me to come up every other weekend,” Simone said. Her eyes softened as she spoke, as if the very memory of him relaxed her very being. “I tell you Emily, it’s like seeing colour for the first time after an eternity of black and white.”

  Emily sipped at her tea. Simone offered her a bite of cake, and she took it as a sign of good faith. Simone had been right; it was a pretty decent chocolate cake after all. Simone chattered on a little more, about Nick and the life she had lived in Emily’s absence. She still lived with her father, but he had found himself a girlfriend and spent most of his time at her house, so life with him was even more simple and sparse than it had been before. She revealed that she was working as a bar girl at the Anchor, a notoriously dingy and depressing pub off the waterfront that was inhabited almost exclusively by old and lonely drunkards. They openly leered at her and tried to touch her when her hands were occupied, but there was nothing she could do to stop them other than verbally castigate them, which she did with gusto. She had been looking for a second job for a while, hoping that she could scrape together some savings so she could finally get out of Caldmar, but no one wanted to hire her because she looked different, even though she’d grown her hair out and had taken out most of her piercings in desperation. She hadn’t been able to part with her nose stud though, no matter how hard she’d tried, and she hated having to compromise herself just to get around the petty narrow-mindedness of everyone around her. Simone was animated and fascinating when she talked, the kind of person that naturally attracted the attention of others. When they were growing up, Emily had viewed her as an exotic bird trapped amongst pigeons, a dash of bright colour swirling through a uniform sea of grey. Emily felt content simply sitting and listening to her talk, swept up in a life other than her own for a while. She drank her tea and nodded in the right places, speaking only to ask a question or to prompt a new train of thought that set her off again.

  “Anyway, stranger,” Simone said, when there only crumbs left on the plate and Emily was down to the cooling dregs of her tea. “I’ve been talking your ear off for the last half an hour. What on earth have you been doing since you got back?”

  Emily placed her cup down and let the words flow out of her; when she started she couldn’t stop. She told Simone everything there was to tell, about the embarrassment of returning a failure and the way people had looked at her during the funeral. She told her about the way she’d isolated herself and how her parents didn’t really understand it. When she got to Volkov and her visit to his home Simone sat up straight, eyes suddenly ablaze with attention.

  “Wait, back up a second,” she said, holding up a hand to halt Emily’s speech. “You’ve actually met the new owner?”

  “Richard Volkov,” Emily said calmly. “And yes, I’m going to be working with him for a while.”

  Simone leant back in her seat and gave Emily a look that could only be described as a mixture of awe and amazement. Emily stared back at her, brow c
reased in complete seriousness.

  “So I guess we can add ‘mysterious strangers’ to the list of people you shouldn’t be hanging around with but do anyway,” Simone said with a quick, breezy laugh. “What’s he like? No one’s heard a peep from him since he moved in, apart from you of course. Terribly mysterious.”

  Emily halted for a moment, unsure of how to answer the question. What was he like? She couldn’t quite collate the various jumbled thoughts she had about him, or reconcile the polarised feelings she had when she heard his name or saw his face. What she did know about him somehow made him seem more distant, more detached.

  “He’s… unusual.” she said, finally. It seemed as good a word as any.

  “Is that it?” Simone looked disappointed. She stuck out her bottom lip in a parody of a pout. “Come on.”

  “I don’t know what else I can say,” Emily shrugged.

  “You never were any good with gossip,” Simone said glibly.

  “I’m seeing him later tonight,” Emily said. “I’ll be sure to tell you about it in searing detail.”

  Simone finished the last of her coffee in a single gulp. “You’d better. Shall we get out of here?”

  Emily nodded and gathered up their things. After they’d paid their sullen waitress, forgoing a tip for obvious reasons, they hurried back out onto the pier where they squinted blindly in the sun. They stood for a few moments, looking out at the water and watching the boats bob along its surface, before Simone turned to Emily with a wicked glint in her eye.

  “I have an idea,” she said mischievously.

  A few minutes later, they were sat at the end of the pier with their legs dangling off the sides; two pairs of heavy leather boots knocked gently against each other as their limbs swung from side to side. Simone reached into her inside jacket pocket and retrieved a slightly squashed joint, brandishing it proudly like a sceptre.

  “Miss Emily Van Buren, I present to you the only thing worth living for around here.”

  Emily looked nervously over her shoulder, but the crowd along the pier was starting to thin out as the day crept towards its end. The air was even cooler now, the sun now hidden behind some errant clouds, and it seemed as good a time as any to pack up and head back home. When she looked back to Simone, the joint was hanging somewhat comically from her painted lips as she struggled with her lighter, curling her hand around it to protect it from the breeze. Emily watched the flames dance from its spout, watched as the fire took to the tobacco and began to curl back, softly crackling as Simone inhaled. She closed her eyes, tipped back her head and expelled a stream of smoke which dissipated into the air as quickly as it appeared. A satisfied purr played on her lips.