by Wells, Nicky
“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” I mused by way of response. “I mean, how often do three English people randomly turn up on this island at this time of year?”
“Never,” Greetje confirmed. “They’ve not made reservations anywhere, they’re simply coming, just like you. Oh, this is so exciting.”
I felt my mouth break into a big grin. “It is exciting.”
“What are you going to do?” Greetje wanted to know.
“I will wait for them here.”
“You won’t go and meet them at the ferry?” Greetje threw a big spanner in my mental works. I had never considered meeting them at the ferry.
“I hadn’t thought about that,” I admitted reluctantly. “Do you think it would be a good idea?”
Greetje um’d for a couple of seconds. “I suppose it would let them know that you’re welcoming them, not?”
“I suppose it would,” I repeated. “But…it would spoil their surprise. I was going to have food ready when they get here, the table laid, candles and all that… like a party.”
“Great idea,” Greetje enthused. “I like your style. Let them think they’re surprising you, and surprise them with a welcome party. Anyway, I must go, there are some customers. But wait, before I hang up… Folke reckons they’ll be on the next ferry so they should get here for about four, just so you know.”
“Four,” I acknowledged. “That’s great.”
“Be good,” Greetje advised. “It’ll be fine.”
I gulped. “I hope it will,” I said in a small voice. After I had hung up, I repeated it to myself, one more time. “I hope it will.”
The day carried on like something out of a spy movie, with me being command central and field agents ringing in periodically with vital strategic intelligence. I got a call at three p.m. that the ferry had left Bensersiel with the three English people on it. At half-past five, when I was going quietly mad with worry, Folke called me directly from the harbor, telling me in an excited stage whisper that the three strangers had arrived and were boarding the train.
Thanking him, I hung up and turned to survey my temporary little kingdom. The table was laid, candles ready to be lit, little dishes of nibbles nestling in between the plates. I had blown up and hung balloons all over the kitchen and even found some streamers in the local stationery emporium. I switched on the oven so that the sausages would start cooking and laid out the pizzas on baking trays ready to go in. I arranged the smoked salmon on a plate so that it would have time to come to room temperature, and I put a heap of fresh Langeoog prawns into a serving dish in the fridge, sprinkled with a little drizzle of lemon and a hint of garlic oil.
All the while, I imagined my friends’ progress on the island train, their arrival at the station and their route to the cottage. Had Mr. Snoop provided them with a map and instructions, or would they have to brave the locals?
I felt happy and light as a feather. Finally, finally, finally, I would fix everything that had gone wrong before. Whatever it took, I would fix it. I would laugh and forgive and forget and explain and reassure and apologize and grovel and flatter and hug. All of the above, multiple times over, in no particular order. I would fix it, and we would make up.
At quarter to six, Mareike from the Seeblick Hotel let me know that my friends had taken three rooms, one each, and had booked in for a couple of nights. “They seem very nice,” she commented but I didn’t feel like chatting so I begged to ring off.
The telephone rang again at six p.m. It was Greetje. Apparently my visitors had been pointed in the right direction and were at this very moment walking down the lane. ETA would be ten minutes, and Good Luck.
Adrenaline sloshed through my body in a rush of great excitement. This was it.
Music. Did I want music?
I flapped about a bit, shuffling through the few CDs I had brought and eventually deciding on my new Eighties compilation CD. No sooner had the first song started than there was a tentative knock. I did a final check; everything was ready.
I went to open the door.
Chapter Fifty-Four
My two best friends and the love of my life stood side by side on the doorstep of my lovely Langeoog hideaway cottage. Steve was holding a bottle of sparkly, Dan proffered flowers, and Rachel waved a pink-wrapped present. All wore big, beaming smiles.
For a moment, nobody moved. I wanted to say so much, yet I couldn’t find the right words to begin. All my preparation and rumination had left me wholly unprepared for the sheer emotion at seeing these three people again.
Rachel finally broke the ice. “We found you!” she screamed and launched herself at me for a big bear hug. The force of impact propelled me backwards and we half stumbled, half fell into the living room.
“Easy, easy,” Dan chided teasingly. “You might scare her off and she’ll run away again.” He threw me an inquisitive look and I shot him a smile back.
“Never,” I assured the three of them. “Never.” And I meant it.
Steve muscled in, gently disengaging Rachel’s arms from behind my neck and moving around swiftly for a hug. Despite my every resolution, my eyes filled up with tears and I blinked hard to keep them at bay.
“I missed you so much,” Steve whispered in my ear just as I whispered in his, “I’m so, so sorry.” He held me at arm’s length to look at me, then drew me close for a hug again.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said softly. “What a journey.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated again. “I’m sorry I ran, I—”
“Shh,” Steve hushed me. “Everyone has a lot of explaining to do. One thing at a time.”
“Yes,” Rachel chimed in anxiously. “I want to go first.”
“Hold it, hold it,” Dan laughed. “Isn’t it my turn to say hello and get a hug, too?” He exchanged a look with Steve, who reluctantly relinquished his space next to me.
“Only one, though,” he teased and Dan thumped him on the shoulder.
Meanwhile, Rachel, ever nosey, had been investigating the room and began exclaiming about the balloons and decorations.
“She’s having a party,” she kept repeating before swooping in on me and taking my hand. “I hope… I mean… We’re not coming at a bad time?”
There was silence in the room as Dan, Steve and Rachel contemplated the possibility that their appearance might not be convenient. I looked from one to the other and back again, trying to stop my mouth from twitching. I couldn’t contain myself any longer.
“Of course not,” I shouted. “The party’s for you. I’ve been counting the hours!”
“You knew we were coming?” the three of them uttered in one voice.
“Absolutely,” I assured them. “It’s impossible to arrive unnoticed on this island. I knew you were at Bensersiel before you’d even boarded the ferry. Besides…” I grinned mischievously. “That private detective of yours was a bit of a klutz. He totally gave the game away.”
Dan looked crestfallen. “You knew about him?”
Aha, it had to have been his brainchild.
“Everybody knew about him,” I stated simply. “You can’t come to a tiny, close-knit community like this, not speak a word of German, and expect not to stick out like a sore thumb.” I giggled at the recollection of Greetje’s description.
“He was meant to blend in,” Dan mumbled.
“Yeah, well, I guess it’s hard to learn that much German on a one-day trip,” I acknowledged, slapping Dan playfully on the hand. “Anyway, naughty you for setting a gumshoe on me.”
“We missed you. We needed to find you. We imagined all sorts of things…” Dan offered by way of explanation.
“Gosh, when we discovered you’d disappeared…” Rachel started, but didn’t know how to finish.
“We were distraught,” Steve offered solemnly.
“Is that why you had the bust-up in the pub?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“You know about that?” Steve was aghast.
“Of course,” I r
eplied nonchalantly. “They do have newspapers out here.” I neglected to omit how narrowly I had missed the story. Suddenly, I realized that everyone was still wearing coats.
“Aw, come on you guys, look at you. Take your coats off and let’s have some food. You must be hungry, right? And then we can talk.”
Within a couple of minutes, we were happily sitting at the table, pouring wine and bubbly and chatting away while the pizzas cooked and the sausages cooled. We picked at smoked salmon, prawns, and all the other nibbles I had bought, and we caught up with each other.
Rachel bit the bullet first. “Dan and I,” she began à propos of nothing, picking up a prawn and waving it about.
My heart stopped for a millisecond but I steeled myself. I was going to listen and to forgive.
Rachel opened her mouth but Dan spoke first. “We slept together,” he said flatly, looking a little anxious. “I… We…” He paused, clenching his fists, then unclenching them again before squaring his shoulders. “There really are no good words. We slept together five times.”
Rachel quailed at the totality of his confession but she held my gaze. A tear escaped her eye and rolled down her cheek, but she ignored it.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered. “I became a floozie. After all this time of knowing Dan, I got drawn to the flame. I was lonely and you were with Steve and I didn’t see the harm in sleeping with Dan, not to start with, I didn’t, I swear… We never meant to hurt you.”
I cried, too. “And why would you? You were both free and single and… I shouldn’t have known, it was none of my business, and I just walked in, it was my own fault…”
“Not your fault,” Dan interrupted firmly. “This is not your fault. We were being selfish and hurtful and thoughtless. The night you saw us…that was the last time. We ended it before…before I even found your keys.” He was emphatic on this point.
I was lost. “What about my keys?”
“You left them in…”
Realization broke over me. “I left them in the hallway when I entered. So I did. Oh God, you must have thought I was making such a point. I don’t even remember leaving them behind. What a mess.”
Steve cleared his throat. “What I need to understand is…” He hesitated. “Look, I’m not jealous or anything but…why is it such a big deal to you what Rachel and Dan did?
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I really can’t explain it rationally. It just made me sick.” Rachel shrank lower into the sofa, and her face crumpled with tears. I took her hand and squeezed it to show her that I was no longer aggrieved. “I don’t know why it made me sick. I’m sorry, I feel really stupid.” I grimaced and took a deep breath before plunging into a second apology.
“And while we’re on the subject of sorry…” I turned to Steve, fixing my eyes onto his. “I’m sorry I ran away from you.” Steve raised a hand and opened his mouth to speak, but I ploughed on regardless. I needed to say my piece.
“I waited for you at the end of the road. I wanted to come back and apologize, but then you whizzed by in the car and I knew I’d gone too far. You weren’t at the station when I finally got there…”
Steve couldn’t hold back any longer. Surprise played all over his face. “You were behind me? I thought you’d gone, taken the first train…”
We stared at each other, aghast.
“Is that why you didn’t answer your phone when I tried to ring you? Because you thought I’d left you there in Pitlochry?” My voice was small and tremulous, but I had to see this through.
Steve blinked. “Answer my phone? When? What?”
“On the Monday. I rang you at lunchtime and then again…later.” I tried very hard not to look at Dan or Rachel while I said that, but they got my meaning anyway.
Steve was shocked. “I didn’t know you’d called. I wasn’t in.”
“I noticed,” I responded dryly.
“I…I needed time to think. I was out at Richmond park.”
“Without your mobile?”
Steve shrugged helplessly. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I was annoyed, too, you know. What a rubbish trip.”
I giggled. Then I laughed. Then I guffawed. My friends looked at me with astonishment. I wiped tears of mirth from my eyes. “Ah. Life,” I pronounced between snorts of laughter. “You’ve gotta love it. It’s a complete bitch sometimes.”
“But thankfully nobody’s died,” Dan supplied, playing on one of his favorite sayings.
When the moment had passed, Rach turned all serious again.
“Will you forgive me?” she pleaded with me.
“Of course I will, silly moo.” We hugged hard.
“And you’re not cross?” She needed to hear it again.
“I’m not,” I confirmed. “But I won’t say I wasn’t. Oh my God, I was so angry.”
We hugged hard again and said no more. Steve and Dan simply looked on.
My turn to grovel, from the very bottom of my heart. “Will you forgive me?” I begged of Steve, hoping that he would see the pleading in my eyes. “Please?”
He said nothing at first and I could feel my face freeze in its hopeful expression. But gradually, a lovely, lazy smile spread across Steve’s face and he spoke. “Of course I will, my love. And I am sorry, too. For everything.” He held out his arms uncertainly, and I launched myself at him, embracing him into a hug that I never wanted to end. Thank goodness the nightmare was over.
I retrieved another bottle of wine and was busy opening it, feeling flushed and happy and overwhelmed with relief, when Dan threw out the killer comment.
“You look…well,” he suddenly announced. “Happy. Rosy. Serene. I’ve not seen you looking like this for… I dunno, for as long as I can remember.”
Steve and Rachel examined me closely, and Rachel seconded Dan’s observation. “He’s right, you know.”
I set down the bottle of wine deliberately and lowered my bottom onto my chair.
“D’you know,” I started carefully. “It’s weird that you should say that. I kind of… Well, I feel that way, what you said. Happy. I feel well. Content. I came here…” I poured myself a little glass of wine and had a quick sip.
“I was all in pieces when I came here. Somehow, I’ve put myself together again. I didn’t even have to do anything, it just sort of happened. Things are different here and you get a new perspective on what really matters. And I’ve slept so well…”
“Why here?” Rachel burst out. “I mean, it looks lovely and all that…but how on earth did you end up here?”
I smiled to myself. Good question.
“When I took off that Tuesday afternoon, I simply needed to get away, as far as and as fast as possible. I had no plans beyond that. So I took the Eurostar to get onto the continent. And …I don’t know really. Maybe it was fate. I was searching the Internet and I had this idea that an island would be good, and one thing led to another…” I rolled my shoulders helplessly. While I could recall the steps I took to get here, the reasoning, the logic was elusive even to me. It had simply seemed like a good thing to do at the time.
The three of them hung on to my every word. I laughed uncertainly. “Anyway, the only missing piece was my friends. And what I left behind—the mess. So…if you hadn’t come, I would have had to come back. But…” I raised my glass in a toast. “I’m so glad you came. I’m thrilled. You have no idea what that means to me. Here’s to being there for each other.”
“To being there for each other,” Steve, Rachel and Dan echoed and we clinked glasses.
There was the small awkward moment that so often follows a toast, and I experienced the overwhelming desire to do something crazy, to make my friends comprehend the grandeur and effect of this island.
“Hey,” I shouted, struck by inspiration. “Let’s go to the beach. I want you to feel this place, even if you can’t see it.”
Seaside boy Steve was on his feet instantly. “Oh, do let’s,” he agreed. “Some fresh air and some surf. Fabulous.”
Dan
looked a tad dubious but was quickly overruled when Rachel joined in the fray. “Yay! A midnight walk to the beach,” she enthused, always one for adventures. “This is so exciting. And weirdly romantic, don’t you think?”
Seeing our bemused expressions, she explained. “Four friends, finally reunited, after a lovely dinner…going to brave nature, going to the beach together in the dark, standing as one against the forces of the wild…”
Steve chuckled. “Methinks you’ve drunk a bit too much,” he ventured.
“Have not,” Rachel pouted and swatted at him with her free hand, the one that wasn’t still clutching her wine glass. The sudden movement made her spill some wine on the table, and she looked at her nearly empty glass with feigned surprise. “Oh well, maybe I have.” She hiccupped and added, “All the more reason for some fresh air, huh?”
Laughing and bantering and teasing each other, we geared up for a quick jaunt down the beach. Sensibly, my three visitors had brought rain gear and sturdy shoes, and I found a selection of torches in the tardis-like downstairs storage cupboard. Suitably attired, in high spirits and full of anticipation, we left the cottage lights a-blazing to guide us on the way back, and set off for the beach.
I led the way, taking my friends up the little path across the dunes, over the top and down onto a big expanse of beach. It was slightly surreal, being out at night in the dunes, on the beach. We stumbled-tripped our way over hidden roots and clumps of grass, unexpected holes and ditches. There was much shrieking being done by Rachel and me, and the men dutifully helped and supported us.
Finally, we reached level ground as we hit the tideline. The sea was going out and there was a thin layer of bubbly foam where the water was reluctantly abandoning its hold on the sand. Owing to yesterday’s high winds, the North Sea was still agitated and the surf was booming and crashing ominously. Yet at this moment, the sky was clear and there were tiny pinpricks of starlight twinkling above us. We had switched off our torches, and as our eyes adjusted to the darkness, it was just possible to make out the black hulk of the dunes behind and the vast wideness of sea in front of us.
